(light music) >> Announcer: TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. Lisa Martin's been here all week. John Furrier is in our Palo Alto studio, banging out all the news. Don't forget to check out siliconangle.com, thecube.net. This is day four, our last segment, winding down. MWC23, super excited to be here. Wayne Duso, friend of theCUBE, VP of engineering from products at AWS is here with Iyad Tarazi, who's the CEO of Federated Wireless. Gents, welcome. >> Good to be here. >> Nice to see you. >> I'm so stoked, Wayne, that we connected before the show. We texted, I'm like, "You're going to be there. I'm going to be there. You got to come on theCUBE." So thank you so much for making time, and thank you for bringing a customer partner, Federated Wireless. Everybody knows AWS. Iyad, tell us about Federated Wireless. >> We're a software and services company out of Arlington, Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC, and we're really focused on this new technology called Shared Spectrum and private wireless for 5G. Think of it as enterprises consuming 5G, the way they used to consume WiFi. >> Is that unrestricted spectrum, or? >> It is managed, organized, interference free, all through cloud platforms. That's how we got to know AWS. We went and got maybe about 300 products from AWS to make it work. Quite sophisticated, highly available, and pristine spectrum worth billions of dollars, but available for people like you and I, that want to build enterprises, that want to make things work. Also carriers, cable companies everybody else that needs it. It's really a new revolution for everyone. >> And that's how you, it got introduced to AWS. Was that through public sector, or just the coincidence that you're in DC >> No, I, well, yes. The center of gravity in the world for spectrum is literally Arlington. You have the DOD spectrum people, you have spectrum people from National Science Foundation, DARPA, and then you have commercial sector, and you have the FCC just an Uber ride away. So we went and found the scientists that are doing all this work, four or five of them, Virginia Tech has an office there too, for spectrum research for the Navy. Come together, let's have a party and make a new model. >> So I asked this, I'm super excited to have you on theCUBE. I sat through the keynotes on Monday. I saw Satya Nadella was in there, Thomas Kurian there was no AWS. I'm like, where's AWS? AWS is everywhere. I mean, you guys are all over the show. I'm like, "Hey, where's the number one cloud?" So you guys have made a bunch of announcements at the show. Everybody's talking about the cloud. What's going on for you guys? >> So we are everywhere, and you know, we've been coming to this show for years. But this is really a year that we can demonstrate that what we've been doing for the IT enterprise, IT people for 17 years, we're now bringing for telcos, you know? For years, we've been, 17 years to be exact, we've been bringing the cloud value proposition, whether it's, you know, cost efficiencies or innovation or scale, reliability, security and so on, to these enterprise IT folks. Now we're doing the same thing for telcos. And so whether they want to build in region, in a local zone, metro area, on-prem with an outpost, at the edge with Snow Family, or with our IoT devices. And no matter where they want to start, if they start in the cloud and they want to move to the edge, or they start in the edge and they want to bring the cloud value proposition, like, we're demonstrating all of that is happening this week. And, and very much so, we're also demonstrating that we're bringing the same type of ecosystem that we've built for enterprise IT. We're bringing that type of ecosystem to the telco companies, with CSPs, with the ISP vendors. We've seen plenty of announcements this week. You know, so on and so forth. >> So what's different, is it, the names are different? Is it really that simple, that you're just basically taking the cloud model into telco, and saying, "Hey, why do all this undifferentiated heavy lifting when we can do it for you? Don't worry about all the plumbing." Is it really that simple? I mean, that straightforward. >> Well, simple is probably not what I'd say, but we can make it straightforward. >> Conceptually. >> Conceptually, yes. Conceptually it is the same. Because if you think about, firstly, we'll just take 5G for a moment, right? The 5G folks, if you look at the architecture for 5G, it was designed to run on a cloud architecture. It was designed to be a set of services that you could partition, and run in different places, whether it's in the region or at the edge. So in many ways it is sort of that simple. And let me give you an example. Two things, the first one is we announced integrated private wireless on AWS, which allows enterprise customers to come to a portal and look at the industry solutions. They're not worried about their network, they're worried about solving a problem, right? And they can come to that portal, they can find a solution, they can find a service provider that will help them with that solution. And what they end up with is a fully validated offering that AWS telco SAS have actually put to its paces to make sure this is a real thing. And whether they get it from a telco, and, and quite frankly in that space, it's SIs such as Federated that actually help our customers deploy those in private environments. So that's an example. And then added to that, we had a second announcement, which was AWS telco network builder, which allows telcos to plan, deploy, and operate at scale telco network capabilities on the cloud, think about it this way- >> As a managed service? >> As a managed service. So think about it this way. And the same way that enterprise IT has been deploying, you know, infrastructure as code for years. Telco network builder allows the telco folks to deploy telco networks and their capabilities as code. So it's not simple, but it is pretty straightforward. We're making it more straightforward as we go. >> Jump in Dave, by the way. He can geek out if you want. >> Yeah, no, no, no, that's good, that's good, that's good. But actually, I'm going to ask an AWS question, but I'm going to ask Iyad the AWS question. So when we, when I hear the word cloud from Wayne, cloud, AWS, typically in people's minds that denotes off-premises. Out there, AWS data center. In the telecom space, yes, of course, in the private 5G space, we're talking about a little bit of a different dynamic than in the public 5G space, in terms of the physical infrastructure. But regardless at the edge, there are things that need to be physically at the edge. Do you feel that AWS is sufficiently, have they removed the H word, hybrid, from the list of bad words you're not allowed to say? 'Cause there was a point in time- >> Yeah, of course. >> Where AWS felt that their growth- >> They'll even say multicloud today, (indistinct). >> No, no, no, no, no. But there was a period of time where, rightfully so, AWS felt that the growth trajectory would be supported solely by net new things off premises. Now though, in this space, it seems like that hybrid model is critical. Do you see AWS being open to the hybrid nature of things? >> Yeah, they're, absolutely. I mean, just to explain from- we're a services company and a solutions company. So we put together solutions at the edge, a smart campus, smart agriculture, a deployment. One of our biggest deployment is a million square feet warehouse automation project with the Marine Corps. >> That's bigger than the Fira. >> Oh yeah, it's bigger, definitely bigger than, you know, a small section of here. It's actually three massive warehouses. So yes, that is the edge. What the cloud is about is that massive amount of efficiency has happened by concentrating applications in data centers. And that is programmability, that is APIs that is solutions, that is applications that can run on it, where people know how to do it. And so all that efficiency now is being ported in a box called the edge. What AWS is doing for us is bringing all the business and technical solutions they had into the edge. Some of the data may send back and forth, but that's actually a smaller piece of the value for us. By being able to bring an AWS package at the edge, we're bringing IoT applications, we're bringing high speed cameras, we're able to integrate with the 5G public network. We're able to bring in identity and devices, we're able to bring in solutions for students, embedded laptops. All of these things that you can do much much faster and cheaper if you are able to tap in the 4,000, 5,000 partners and all the applications and all the development and all the models that AWS team did. By being able to bring that efficiency to the edge why reinvent that? And then along with that, there are partners that you, that help do integration. There are development done to make it hardened, to make the data more secure, more isolated. All of these things will contribute to an edge that truly is a carbon copy of the data center. >> So Wayne, it's AWS, Regardless of where the compute, networking and storage physically live, it's AWS. Do you think that the term cloud will sort of drift away from usage? Because if, look, it's all IT, in this case it's AWS and federated IT working together. How, what's your, it's sort of a obscure question about cloud, because cloud is so integrated. >> You Got this thing about cloud, it's just IT. >> I got thing about cloud too, because- >> You and Larry Ellison. >> Because it's no, no, no, I'm, yeah, well actually there's- >> There's a lot of IT that's not cloud, just say that okay. >> Now, a lot of IT that isn't cloud, but I would say- >> But I'll (indistinct) cloud is an IT tool, and you see AWS obviously with the Snow fill in the blank line of products and outpost type stuff. Fair to say that you're, doesn't matter where it is, it could be AWS if it's on the edge, right? >> Well, you know, everybody wants to define the cloud as what it may have been when it started. But if you look at what it was when it started and what it is today, it is different. But the ability to bring the experience, the AWS experience, the services, the operational experience and all the things that Iyad had been talking about from the region all to all the way to, you know, the IoT device, if you would, that entire continuum. And it doesn't matter where you start. Like if you start in region and you need to bring your value to other places because your customers are asking you to do so, we're enabling that experience where you need to bring it. If you started at the edge, and- but you want to build cloud value, you know, whether it's again, cost efficiency, scalability, AI, ML or analytics into those capabilities, you can start at the edge with the same APIs, with the same service, the same capabilities, and you can build that value in right from the get go. You don't build this bifurcation or many separations and try to figure out how do I glue them together? There is no gluing together. So if you think of cloud as being elastic, scalable flexible, where you can drive innovation, it's the same exact model on the continuum. And you can start at either end, it's up to you as a customer. >> And I think if, the key to me is the ecosystem. I mean, if you can do for this industry what you've done for the technology- enterprise technology business from an ecosystem standpoint, you know everybody talks about flywheel, but that gives you like the massive flywheel. I don't know what the ratio is, but it used to be for every dollar spent on a VMware license, $15 is spent in the ecosystem. I've never heard similar ratios in the AWS ecosystem, but it's, I go to reinvent and I'm like, there's some dollars being- >> That's a massive ecosystem. >> (indistinct). >> And then, and another thing I'll add is Jose Maria Alvarez, who's the chairman of Telefonica, said there's three pillars of the future-ready telco, low latency, programmable networks, and he said cloud and edge. So they recognizing cloud and edge, you know, low latency means you got to put the compute and the data, the programmable infrastructure was invented by Amazon. So what's the strategy around the telco edge? >> So, you know, at the end, so those are all great points. And in fact, the programmability of the network was a big theme in the show. It was a huge theme. And if you think about the cloud, what is the cloud? It's a set of APIs against a set of resources that you use in whatever way is appropriate for what you're trying to accomplish. The network, the telco network becomes a resource. And it could be described as a resource. We, I talked about, you know, network as in code, right? It's same infrastructure in code, it's telco infrastructure as code. And that code, that infrastructure, is programmable. So this is really, really important. And in how you build the ecosystem around that is no different than how we built the ecosystem around traditional IT abstractions. In fact, we feel that really the ecosystem is the killer app for 5G. You know, the killer app for 4G, data of sorts, right? We started using data beyond simple SMS messages. So what's the killer app for 5G? It's building this ecosystem, which includes the CSPs, the ISVs, all of the partners that we bring to the table that can drive greater value. It's not just about cost efficiency. You know, you can't save your way to success, right? At some point you need to generate greater value for your customers, which gives you better business outcomes, 'cause you can monetize them, right? The ecosystem is going to allow everybody to monetize 5G. >> 5G is like the dot connector of all that. And then developers come in on top and create new capabilities >> And how different is that than, you know, the original smartphones? >> Yeah, you're right. So what do you guys think of ChatGPT? (indistinct) to Amazon? Amazon turned the data center into an API. It's like we're visioning this world, and I want to ask that technologist, like, where it's turning resources into human language interfaces. You know, when you see that, you play with ChatGPT at all, or I know you guys got your own. >> So I won't speak directly to ChatGPT. >> No, don't speak from- >> But if you think about- >> Generative AI. >> Yeah generative AI is important. And, and we are, and we have been for years, in this space. Now you've been talking to AWS for a long time, and we often don't talk about things we don't have yet. We don't talk about things that we haven't brought to market yet. And so, you know, you'll often hear us talk about something, you know, a year from now where others may have been talking about it three years earlier, right? We will be talking about this space when we feel it's appropriate for our customers and our partners. >> You have talked about it a little bit, Adam Selipsky went on an interview with myself and John Furrier in October said you watch, you know, large language models are going to be enormous and I know you guys have some stuff that you're working on there. >> It's, I'll say it's exciting. >> Yeah, I mean- >> Well proof point is, Siri is an idiot compared to Alexa. (group laughs) So I trust one entity to come up with something smart. >> I have conversations with Alexa and Siri, and I won't judge either one. >> You don't need, you could be objective on that one. I definitely have a preference. >> Are the problems you guys solving in this space, you know, what's unique about 'em? What are they, can we, sort of, take some examples here (indistinct). >> Sure, the main theme is that the enterprise is taking control. They want to have their own networks. They want to focus on specific applications, and they want to build them with a skeleton crew. The one IT person in a warehouse want to be able to do it all. So what's unique about them is that they're now are a lot of automation on robotics, especially in warehousing environment agriculture. There simply aren't enough people in these industries, and that required precision. And so you need all that integration to make it work. People also want to build these networks as they want to control it. They want to figure out how do we actually pick this team and migrate it. Maybe just do the front of the house first. Maybe it's a security team that monitor the building, maybe later on upgrade things that use to open doors and close doors and collect maintenance data. So that ability to pick what you want to do from a new processors is really important. And then you're also seeing a lot of public-private network interconnection. That's probably the undercurrent of this show that haven't been talked about. When people say private networks, they're also talking about something called neutral host, which means I'm going to build my own network, but I want it to work, my Verizon (indistinct) need to work. There's been so much progress, it's not done yet. So much progress about this bring my own network concept, and then make sure that I'm now interoperating with the public network, but it's my domain. I can create air gaps, I can create whatever security and policy around it. That is probably the power of 5G. Now take all of these tiny networks, big networks, put them all in one ecosystem. Call it the Amazon marketplace, call it the Amazon ecosystem, that's 5G. It's going to be tremendous future. >> What does the future look like? We're going to, we just determined we're going to be orchestrating the network through human language, okay? (group laughs) But seriously, what's your vision for the future here? You know, both connectivity and cloud are on on a continuum. It's, they've been on a continuum forever. They're going to continue to be on a continuum. That being said, those continuums are coming together, right? They're coming together to bring greater value to a greater set of customers, and frankly all of us. So, you know, the future is now like, you know, this conference is the future, and if you look at what's going on, it's about the acceleration of the future, right? What we announced this week is really the acceleration of listening to customers for the last handful of years. And, we're going to continue to do that. We're going to continue to bring greater value in the form of solutions. And that's what I want to pick up on from the prior question. It's not about the network, it's not about the cloud, it's about the solutions that we can provide the customers where they are, right? And if they're on their mobile phone or they're in their factory floor, you know, they're looking to accelerate their business. They're looking to accelerate their value. They're looking to create greater safety for their employees. That's what we can do with these technologies. So in fact, when we came out with, you know, our announcement for integrated private wireless, right? It really was about industry solutions. It really isn't about, you know, the cloud or the network. It's about how you can leverage those technologies, that continuum, to deliver you value. >> You know, it's interesting you say that, 'cause again, when we were interviewing Adam Selipsky, everybody, you know, all journalists analysts want to know, how's Adam Selipsky going to be different from Andy Jassy, what's the, what's he going to do to Amazon to change? And he said, listen, the real answer is Amazon has changed. If Andy Jassy were here, we'd be doing all, you know, pretty much the same things. Your point about 17 years ago, the cloud was S3, right, and EC2. Now it's got to evolve to be solutions. 'Cause if that's all you're selling, is the bespoke services, then you know, the future is not as bright as the past has been. And so I think it's key to look for what are those outcomes or solutions that customers require and how you're going to meet 'em. And there's a lot of challenges. >> You continue to build value on the value that you've brought, and you don't lose sight of why that value is important. You carry that value proposition up the stack, but the- what you're delivering, as you said, becomes maybe a bigger or or different. >> And you are getting more solution oriented. I mean, you're not hardcore solutions yet, but we're seeing more and more of that. And that seems to be a trend. We've even seen in the database world, making things easier, connecting things. Not really an abstraction layer, which is sort of antithetical to your philosophy, but it creates a similar outcome in terms of simplicity. Yeah, you're smiling 'cause you guys always have a different angle, you know? >> Yeah, we've had this conversation. >> It's right, it's, Jassy used to say it's okay to be misunderstood. >> That's Right. For a long time. >> Yeah, right, guys, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. I'm so glad we could make this happen. >> It's always good. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, Dave Nicholson, for Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, John Furrier in the Palo Alto studio. We're here at the Fira, wrapping out MWC23. Keep it right there, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

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

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got two sets on the show floor, it's a virtual event, we've got the hybrid stream going, check out all the content we're here for wall-to-wall coverage. It's all been about data cloud transformation, culture change, and making things happen. I got a great segment here with Accenture, Chris Copeland, CTO of Accenture's Federal Services, and Mark Kim, the CEO of Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, also known as the MSRB. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John, it's a pleasure to be here. >> Thanks for coming, first of all, explain what the Municipal Rulemaking Board does, so people know what it is and we'll jump in. >> Sure, thank you, John, for the opportunity to have this conversation, the MSRB serves as the principal regulator of the $4 trillion Municipal Securities market. So Municipal Securities or muni-Bonds as there're most commonly known, finance the majority of this nation's infrastructure from the public schools that educate our kids to the hospitals that care for our sick. Muni-bonds even finance the airport that we flew into to get to this conference. But in addition to writing the rules that regulate this market, the MSRB also provides the technology infrastructure that supports this market. So, in addition to being a financial regulator, the MSRB is also a technology company and we saw the future of technology and cloud computing and that was our decision to embrace that future and to move the MSRB to the cloud. >> Correct, and obviously, Chris, this is critical infrastructure, you're talking about, legacy, has a lot of legacy as well. A lot of data, money's involved. I mean all the wrappings of transformation stories there. >> Yeah, and it's great. I mean, the MSRB and Mark in particular really had the right mindset of understanding that, we all talk about migrating to the cloud. That's really just the beginning. Like it's really about once you're in the cloud, the aperture that opens up the art of the possible and what you can really do. And the MSRB is like right on all of it, right? It's all about data. It's all about transformation, but I think the key for that transformational success that we've seen, is understanding that the organization needs to change too. And that we need to enable that organization to really be productive and deliver on that mission in a cloud first world. >> Well, Mark, I want to get into this 'cause this has been a big part of my reporting this past year during the pandemic and maybe the year earlier. I saw the public sector in particular really forced it to change. >> Yeah. >> Cultural shift instantly, they had no choice. It was a forcing function and there was the haves and have nots, the ones who have done the work, put their toe in the water, invested in some technology, knew about cloud and then ones that weren't, and they were thrown in the water. They had to figure out how to swim very quickly. So take us through the importance of that because we heard today and even in the keynote with Swami on stage from Amazon saying governance could be an enabler, not an inhibitor. So you're in this world of obviously muni-bonds, I'm sure there's a lot of compliance involved. So, take us through the journey, how you guys changed the culture? What was the outcome? Take us a quick highlight on the whole process. >> Absolutely, so, for the MSRB, the cloud migration was always about way more than just moving our applications from our servers to AWS's servers. This was an opportunity for the organization to put in place a cultural transformation. And that's the power of this opportunity for the MSRB. We were able to make a commitment to our people, which we did right at the outset, that we were going to bring all of our people with us on this journey to the cloud. This was a major investment in re-skilling and retraining our staff. We didn't have staff who had experienced migrating applications to the cloud. We didn't have software engineers who had prior experience working in cloud native environments. We trained them and we made that commitment to do that and to bring all of our people along. And that has enabled the MSRB to create a culture of innovation, of teamwork. It also allowed us to break down some silos within our organization. Not only within the IT organization, but between IT and business, it was a transformational opportunity. >> I mean, effecting change is hard, what was the learnings? When did you realize it's working? (John laughs) >> So having completed the migration itself, one of my fears was we've just literally spent millions of dollars investing in our staff, re-skilling and retraining them. We've just gone through a very technical, highly complex migration. These are people who are in high demand. Not to mention that AWS decided to put HQ2 right outside of Washington DC, announced plans to hire 10,000 people over the next 10 years. So I was worried on the other side of the migration that we would have a talent drain, and the best proof that I have that we've got our cultural transformation underway and going in the right direction is we didn't see that brain drain. We have staff that want to stay at the MSRB, that are excited about being able to continue to learn about new technologies, staff that are excited to be kind of on the cutting edge of financial regulation and being a part of building the future of the MSRB. >> Okay, there's a purpose there, I mean, I think this is, this highlights this whole conference here at re:Invent. I was just talking to someone off camera during lunch and like, it's an Amazon learning Conference as they say that their humble is learning, but it's also a thought leadership conference because they're introducing new stuff that's actually like, it gets the juices flowing and you're like, wait a minute, I can do more things. So, it's got that kind of conference, ted kind of vibe to it, plus it's real. >> I think that's one of the best benefits that we saw as part of this program that, and we talk a lot about how to infuse innovation into the fabric of your DNA and organization, and I don't think that personified itself anywhere that I've seen as well as at the MSRB. Mark was talking about people wanting to stay and work there. I'll even, I think he's understating it. People were excited about the process-- >> Yeah, they want to come to work everyday. >> There was competitions going on, on who was going to get certified. There was challenges about who's going to learn the most cloud and that desire to really continuously improve and bring those new innovations was unparalleled that I've seen. What Mark and the MSRB don't have the luxury of just keeping pace with those that they regulate. They've got to stay ahead. >> Yeah. >> And if you're going to stay ahead, you've got to have that innovative culture and you've got to take change as something that isn't this big mountain to climb, but something that's actually exciting to do every day. And I think it really, really came out in the program here. >> That's one of the things I think it's one of the smartest moves you can make and I think you've made it, by getting the people on the right wave of technology is a retention bonus. >> Absolutely. >> It's not just keeping them happy 'cause if you're working on cool stuff, it's fun. >> Right. >> But if you get them on the right way where they're constantly learning, and then they've to be a part of something. >> Yeah. >> This cloud migration, I think that's a real retention thing. Do you agree, you've seen the same thing? >> Yeah, absolutely. Its such a motivator to know that our staff is front and center leading the charge in transforming the MSRB. Not only culturally but also digitally. >> Yeah. >> And bringing us into the future. >> Okay, so I got to put you on the spot because I'm want to put my evil genius hat on for a second. Okay, I want to make money, I'm a FinTech arbitrager, I want to get in and work the muni-bond data angle, obviously worry about, you've got a lot of oversight, governance, regulation. Can you move fast enough to protect the data to make sure things are stable? Take us through that because there's a lot of money involved talking about like a serious part of our economy and a financial system. >> Yeah. >> It's critical infrastructure. >> Yeah. >> So, you got to also have that balance of innovation and compliance and governance without getting in the way. >> Absolutely. >> Take us through how you handle that. >> Absolutely, as a financial regulator that provides the market with its technology infrastructure, failure is not an option nor is falling behind the times. We have to evolve with our evolving market. And the pace of change is moving faster and faster. If you look at today, what's different about the MSRB being in the cloud than route being on-prem in our data centers, for our stakeholders, we don't have customers as a financial regulatory we have stakeholders, the entities that we regulate and the entities that we protect, our stakeholders will see systems that are more available. In the first 12 months of operations in the cloud, we achieved over 99.98% system availability. Performance has improved in our own internal benchmark tests, our systems are running 30% faster than they were and then finally our systems are more secure. This is a hard one to quantify or to explain or to kind of deliver to customers, but I-- >> There's no ROI conversation when you've been hacked. >> Exactly, I am-- >> Its only a disaster. >> But I am confident that our systems are more secure today in the cloud, than they were on-prem in our data centers. >> Yeah, Chris, this is a huge thing. I'm not going to rant a little bit, I'll do a side rant, but everyone who watches theCUBE knows I'm kind of a digital hawk. I truly believe that the red line needs to be changed because we are being attacked at a cyber level and almost like the, I get to see people being excited to work there because it's almost like the military, you got to protect. There's so much downsized, not so much justification of ROI. This is critical infrastructure, financial systems and databases. And there's no malice, there's no government forces to protect you. >> I mean, Mark said it well, failure isn't an option, right? And I think what we're seeing and why everyone is really rapidly moving to the cloud is you cannot get that level of cybersecurity, you cannot get that real time information access, and then run your models to look for trends of where the threats are maybe coming from, and proactively address those threats. You can't do that in a legacy infrastructure model on-prem, you've got to embrace the power of the cloud and the services that the AWS cloud provides to be able to truly try to stay ahead. I mean, you have to bring that innovation every day in your lunch bag and say, how are we going to use these tools that only the cloud affords us to bring security to the forefront? >> And John, can I add on that point? 'Cause I think it's an important one around security. In the legacy environment, in our data centers, the MSRB was handling security by ourselves, and I think one of the biggest lessons learned for us is pick your partners carefully. >> Yes. >> We chose AWS and we chose Accenture Federal Services and we've now tripled our investments in security, both what Amazon is investing in their infrastructure, we've also have AFS providing managed security services for the MSRB in addition to our own security team. So we've literally tripled our security. >> It's interesting and I think that's one of the reasons why you mentioned the retention thing and why people are happy is, it attracts a certain kind of individual to work there. It's the elite tech athlete, we call them, because they like, want the action, the young kids there, they want the tech, they don't want to be boring. So, what better wave to ride when you know there's a lot to protect, again, back to the cyber, this is huge cultural shift in the new generation coming in versus the old IT. The old IT was okay, we're operational, keep the lights on, add some servers, now it's like a lot more is at stake. >> Yeah. >> Okay, great, I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I do want to get the data question. I have to ask you-- >> Sure. >> You're a data company as well, you got to watch the data, what's the vision and data? How are you looking at the data with your team? >> So data is the future of the MSRB and we will remain a financial regulator and write the rules that regulate this market, that's our core mission and we will always do that. We will also always be a technology firm that provides the technology infrastructure for this market. But in the future what the cloud has enabled us to do is to become a data company. We serve as the central repository of market data for this $4 trillion market. And we now, thanks to almost infinite scalable computing power storage, we now have the ability to leverage cloud tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning, to actually get at an unlock insight from the vast amounts of market data that we have and deliver that to the industry that we regulate and serve. >> And you guys have so much headroom because Chris, with Graviton3-- >> Yep. >> And the Stack, you can actually write the apps built for the performance, for your needs. >> That's right. >> Yes. >> For the data needs, 'cause that's your advantage. >> That's right. >> Yeah, it's just incredible. I just find it like, I haven't seen anything like this since the shift from client server to inter networking back in the 90s where you saw a sea change of capabilities just completely change over, it's been pretty incredible. >> Yeah. >> Okay, final word. Just re:Invent, what do you guys think? >> This is my first business trip since the pandemic started and it's fantastic to be with people, to see people to do this in person instead of virtually, so thank you for this opportunity. >> I know, I felt so amazed. Chris, what about you, what's your take? >> It's wonderful to be here, it's great being back, back out in the world I guess. >> Yep >> Getting to meet with Mark, where we're not looking at a screen at each other, meeting with peers, but also just the collaboration and innovation you're going to get in an environment like this and the energy that it brings, you just can't match that. So it's been a great show so far and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. >> The phrase I hear a lot on theCUBE, also I say it a lot, a kid in the candy store 'cause there's so much coming out, just the capabilities, you're starting to see more ease of use, more infrastructure as code now, data as code, a lot of great stuff, all part of the cloud transformation. So great for coming on and sharing the story, Mark, I appreciate it. >> Thank you John. >> It's good to hear about your awesome program, Chris, thanks for coming on too. >> Yep, thanks for having us. >> Appreciate it, okay, Cube Coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in global tech coverage, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>And welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS summit public sector here live in Washington, DC, where we're actually having a physical event, but also broadcasting to a hybrid audience digitally. I'm John, your hosted, like you've got a great panel here. Martin Rieger's chief solutions, officer stack armor, the thin poli who's with Splunk group vice president of partner go to market Americas and public sector, and Troy Bertram, vice president sales, a telos. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on. It's great to be. So you guys stuck on them to have a great solution on AWS called faster. Okay. Which is nice name what's what's it all about? >>So faster is about getting cloud service providers to an authorization, to operate with the federal government, uh, basically as fast as possible. It is the collection of threat alert, which is a fed ramp designed solution and boundary solution. That includes all those key security stack components. Uh, primarily our partners over at Splunk and telos. Uh, those products are scripted, streamlined, and designed to get customers there as fast as possible in a compliant manner. >>I love the acronym fast tr faster on AWS. Uh, how did you guys come up with the threat alerts concept? What did, what's this all about? How did it all come together? >>Uh, threat alert was, was born out of one of our primary services, which is migration and, uh, for roughly about a five-year stretch migrating federal agency systems, um, to Amazon, both east, west and gov cloud, uh, we recognized quickly that there was a need to include a security stack of common components, such as vulnerability scanning, uh, security incident event monitoring, uh, as well as a number of other key components designed around the continuous monitoring aspect of it. And so we quickly realized that, you know, the packaging of this solution and putting together a dashboard that allows us to tie everything in, uh, deploy very, very quickly through infrastructure as a code, um, was a vehicle that could help, uh, our customers and CSPs as well as agencies get through the FedRAMP ATO process. Um, quickly >>Talk about the relationship with Splunk and telos. How's this all connecting with? Just what's your role? >>Yeah, so really with the support of NIST and the new Oscar standard, which I'm going to make sure I get the acronym right. Open securities controls, assessment language, or asked gal, um, with our release of Exacta and automation of the compliance standards working with, and the framework, we've been able to look at best of breed partners in the industry, and it is all around acceleration of how can we move faster to deliver the end customer, the controls they need and want in a secure compliant manner. Um, and as someone that served in the government, right, it's, it's passion for the mission. And that's really what brought the three companies together >>And my opinion, by the way, congratulations on Telus going public. You guys do a lot of great cyber work. Congratulations. Now that data is the heart of this. I mean, Splunk that's all you guys do is think about data. How do you guys connect into, into the product? >>Well, it's exactly that really providing that data platform, then they analytics capability to enable the subject matter experts to bring the data to life. Right. And that's what we, that's why these partnerships are so important to Splunk because, uh, they have the subject matter expertise and can really leverage the power of the data platform to provide services to customers. >>Yeah. One of the big trends that's kind of underreported, in my opinion, is that partnerships required to kind of get the cyber security equation, right? This is a huge trend. People are sharing, but also working together. How, how do you guys see that evolving? Because you know, there has to be an openness around the data. There has to be more open solutions. How do you guys see that evolving? Um, >>Well you kind of hit the hammer on the heads. Splunk is, is essentially the heart and soul of our auditing logging and continuous monitoring piece. Um, in terms of, of the relationships and how we all work together. We we've evolved now to a point where we are able to pre-stage customers well in advance. Um, and in working with our partners, uh, tell us on Splunk. By the time we get started with a customer, we, we reduced the amount of time this takes, uh, on average by 40%, um, and even faster with the exact piece because, uh, as, as Troy kind of mentioned, the OSC gal component, um, is the future of accreditation. And it's certainly not limited to fed ramp, but that machine language, that XML Yammel Jason code, we've got things to the point where not only are we deploying Splunk in a, in a scripted pre-configured manner to work with our technology, we're also doing the same thing with Exacta. >>So the controls are three documented for everything that we provide, which means we don't have to spend the time going through the process of saying, okay, tell me what you're doing. We already have that down. The other best of breed type components that were mentioned by Troy. Um, it's the same thing, right? So customers, when they show up, they have a security stack that's ready to go. They already have FIPs compliance for encryption. They already have hardening in place so that when, when they approach us, all they've really got to do is deploy their application and close a very small gap in documentation, which we do with Exacta and then auditors can come in, hit the, they can jump, get what they need out of Exacta. And eventually once everyone else catches up to OSC gal, we'll be connecting systems to other systems and just pushing the package, the days of PDFs. And those are almost gone >>As someone that went through, um, achieving an ATO, the paper process and the Excel spreadsheets. It's a nightmare. And you've got sales engineers, you've got solution architects that are spending their time, not focused on delivering mission outcomes or new products and services to our public sector customers, but on the process and the paperwork, >>Can you share order of magnitude the old way, time wasting versus this solution? What's, what's gained cause that's key. This needs a resources when people are >>Every CFO ad in ISV wants to do two things, right? They want to support the sales efforts to move into the federal or state environment, right? We're talking about fed ramp, but state ramp is upon us now. So they want two things. How do I do this at the lowest cost possible limit my resources that are really expensive on the engineering side and how do I shrink the amount of time? So 40% is a very conservative estimate. I believe that we can continue with implementations of Bosco and other ingestation points, especially across government. We can shrink that time, which reduces the cost immensely >>The time savings day. What about the stack? >>But if you want to put it in perspective, right? I've been doing this since the beginning in 2012, and I've stood up three different three pills. I've audited over 200 companies. I've been doing this a long time. And in the beginning it was an average of 12 months just to get someone ready, just to get ready. That didn't include the audit time. So we've evolved to a point now where on average, that's down to 12 weeks. And that was before the inclusion of the exact piece. We were able to shave off four more weeks with that, to the point where we're down to eight weeks and the government is pushing to try to get towards a 30 day ATO. And I think Oscar was the answer for that. And so to give you an idea of where we were to where we are now, we went from 12 months to 12 weeks. >>That's huge. So the data is the key in here. And then you got faster on AWS. Love the name wa how does that compare to other ATO solutions? How do you guys see that comparing a wonder place? >>I think in terms of the other solutions that are available out there, there, there's a couple key things that, that I think the rest of the market is trying to do to catch up. And one of those is the dashboard technology that we have in place integrates directly with Splunk and with Exacta, it pulls in from all the AWS sources that are available in terms of security and information and centralizes it in one spot. And so nobody else is doing that and we've been doing it for years. And this, this to me, OSS gal, and the addition of the exact component was the next evolution. >>Um, on the partnership side, how do you guys see it evolving? What's next >>More continuous monitoring, I think, right. It's not just about a FedRAMP authorization, but continuous monitoring in general for, for all of our public sector. >>That's day two operations continues ongoing AI operations. There's gotta be some machine learning in here somewhere. Is there? >>Yeah. I'll speak to the partnerships a little bit. And I think even back to AWS, right? Why we're here and it's great to be in person is it's around us working together as an industry and companies, right? The authority to operate on AWS, the ATO and AWS was started to bring like-minded companies together to help solve these problems. Yeah. >>I mean, it's a real benefit. It really shows that you can put a stack together, right. And then save time like that 12 months to 12 weeks. That's what cloud's about right now. Then the question is security. Think you should get that right. That is going to be an evolution. What's the vision of the product? >>Um, well, there's two things around that we, we, we talked about, yes, it's, it's planned prepare authorized, right? That is the current fed ramp mantra and post ATO. The continuous monitoring piece is really a core element. But in terms of the future three PAOs, the third-party assessment organizations that, that audit our customers, that, that we're all preparing together. Eventually they're systems, they're all developing audit systems around. And so where we're going is the auditor will connect to Exacta and they will simply over API or whatever calls they make. They will pull all of that audit information control information, which is only going to accelerate this even more. >>Yeah. I mean, the observability, the data, the automation all plays into more speed, more agility, faster, >>And, and meeting all of the standards, right? Whether it's smart Z or it's HIPAA state Ram home in Austin, Texas Tex ramp is, is a thing, right? How do we help each one of these customers with their own compliance or super smart, >>You know, the business model of reduce the steps it takes to do something, make it easier and faster is a good business model. Wow. >>It's not, it's becoming an ecosystem right. In the sense that, um, you know, Oscar has been under development for three years and, and, and stack armor, we've been supporting some components at NIST, but to the point where, uh, once we eliminate the, the traditional paper, you know, word doc XL PDF, um, and get to a point where everything is tied together. But one there's one important aspect to this is that it's all in boundary. So the authorization boundary is that invisible red line. We draw around everything in scope for an audit. And so that, by the way, is another critical component. The Splunk servers are in boundary. The exact servers are in boundary, which is a huge, huge element to this. >>Yeah. Good. Great. To see the spunk partnership, adding value here with telos, good, your cybersecurity expertise, pulling it all together. It's a great solution. >>It is, and great partners to work with, right? And I know that we will have additional solutions and product offerings in the future. >>Martin treadmill, Bethann. Thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of the show. As we wind down day two of cube live coverage in-person event, AWS public sector summit in Washington, DC. This is the cube. We right back after this short break,

(high intensity music) >> Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit live in Washington, D.C. Two days of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Finally, great to be in-person. We had a remote interviews. We have a hybrid event going on. We're streaming everything all over the place. Next guest is Matt Mandrgoc, who's the Head of Public Sector at Zoom. The company that everyone loves and have happy meetings, happening events. Great to see you. >> Thank you for having me today. >> So, I'll say Zoom is in the center of all the action pandemic. Everyone knows what's going on with Zoom. Household name. Company's exceptionally well on the performance side, what's going on in Public Sector? >> It's exciting. You know, over the last 18 months, we've just exploded across all the marketplace, both in federal state, local government and education. And what's exciting is we've just scratched the surface for our customers. So, if you look at what we've done in getting in front of inaugural events, courts, legislation, all kinds of other types of meetings and webinars, getting the message out around the pandemic. It's exciting to know that we have that opportunity to make a difference. Now, part of this whole thing around Public Sector, since we just scratched the surface, what's exciting is how do we start to look forward to the next 12, 24, 36 months in helping our customers? How do we really add value in accelerating that mission value for them? >> You know, Matt, it's interesting. There's two things that happened during the pandemic that I point to and I talk about all the time. The internet didn't break. So, all those service providers that had the pipes, good job, packets from moving around, And Zoom, you guys really saved society and educate, so many use this. Education, government, meetings, courtrooms, I never thought about the speeding tickets. People have to go free Zoom. All this stuff's happening. Now, you've got a partnership with AWS. What's the next level? I'm assuming more immersion, more connections, more integration. What's the next? What's the plan? >> Great question. So, our next step is we looked at this relationship and we were going to customers and go in there, we go in there and then they go in there. There's wasn't any synergy. So, what we decided to do is come together. So, think about this, Zoom and AWS going into our public sector customers, bringing solutions and helping them evolve, innovate, and transform. As they're evolving through this people-centric hybrid network or workplace journey that they're going through. And then the best part about this is these ecosystem of partners that help both of us, and be a part of that process as well. >> Not to toot your own horn, but we just had a remote interview on Zoom connected to our gear here. Here with a guest sitting right here, just now, that's the kind of impact. How is that transformed some of the government agencies, like military for instance? >> Great question. So, we had, one of the things that the, even back in April 2020, the Air force was recognized by military.com for recruiting and how they use to keep their numbers up, to get in front of recruits. And think about this, if I'm a recruiter, I can't drive three hours to go see somebody, find out if they can join or not and come back. Now they could use Zoom, something that people were comfortable with. Ease of use, simple, ingrained in the fabric of people's lives. Now they could have that, keeping their numbers up and being recognized by a two star general for what they did around the recruiting and keeping the numbers up. >> All right. So I'll ask you cause I know you have a federal background with one. You know the industry pretty well, over the years you've stunned. You've seen the old way now, the new way, what's it like at Zoom? Because you guys exploded onto the scene. Been around for a while, but once you hit the tipping point, it was a rocket ship plus the pandemic. Now you come into federal. You've got FedRAMP issues, what do you do? How do you get through all that? >> We were excited about the fact that we're really catapulted us. We were at FedRAMP Impact Level 2, Moderate back in April of 2019. So, what set the groundwork? So when the pandemic occurred, we were able to explode forward, help our customers. Now, we've even looked past that and go, "What do we do next?" DOD Impact Level 4. We have an authorization to operate with conditions from the Department of the Air Force. And it was set as we go through our provisional process with DISA. The exciting part is, our customers can use this. Now, they have a set of conditions. Those conditions are basically guidelines of how to use and set up an IL-4 call. >> So, just Impact Level 4 is just below top secret if I understand that correct, right? >> So, Impact Level 4 allows our customers and the DOD to use it for a CUI, which is Controlled Unclassified Information or FOUO, For Official Use only conversations. >> Got it. And there's six levels, right? >> Yes. >> Five, six is like the ultimate, like- >> yes. >> super top secret, secret. >> Yes. >> Okay, cool. All right. So four is good? >> It's very good. >> So this is interesting, in 2019, you've mentioned that stuff. That kind of highlights the whole Cloud way before the pandemic. The winners and losers tend to see who was winning and who's losing. And I think a lot of agencies realize the ones that were in the cloud early before the pandemic and the ones that didn't get there fast enough are really lagging behind. What's your reaction to that? >> Well, you're absolutely right. And the interesting thing about the pandemic, what it brought forth is a horrible event, but what it brought forth was transformation that customers had to go through. So think of it this way. If a customer, you know, they were at all this equipment sitting on staff, on site and they had to go home. And all of a sudden when they went home, legacy systems could not transform and allow them to evolve into this work from home environment. So, what it brought forth of these systems that were just not capable of being able to scale. And all of a sudden, as they went forward, they were able to go ahead and us. For us, it was easy because ease of use, scalability, innovation, extensibility and security, allowed us to really jump right in there. And as people I mentioned earlier, it became ingrained in the fabric of people's lives. So, the ease of use for everybody made it easy for them to move home. >> Yeah. And that's a big impact. All right. Let me ask about the Amazon Marketplace, AWS Marketplace. News there? Share. >> Yeah. We're excited we announced over the last two days, we've announced our relationship with AWS, and the AWS Marketplace via Kairosoft. So, Kairosoft is a world-class public sector distributor. The great relationship we have there that help us really accelerate this relationship was Amazon already had that AWS Marketplace distributor. We had Kairosoft as our main distributor for all Public Sector, solar suburb. So, the relationship already there and with the integration with Tackle.io, allowed us to really accelerate this relationship and be able to transact for our customers. And you think about the transaction, now our customers can start to leverage AWS contracts and accelerate the pieces that they have across there. >> Talk about the Tackle.io piece, how does that fit in? Cause you've got Kairosoft, Distributor, Zoom, what's Tackle do? They integrate? >> Tackle was just the integration piece allowed us to get these transactions going for back and forth. So, the transaction you think about, a customer will buy through AWS contract. They'll get transacted through the AWS Marketplace at Kairosoft, and it come to Zoom from there. Tackle.io was just the integration piece allowed that to happen. >> Yeah. And just a plug for Tackle.io. Those guys are start-up that's growing really fast. They make it easy. The Marketplace is not that easy. (laughs) Dave McCain would argue with me, but yeah, it's can be unwieldy, but they manage it and make it easier. >> Matt: Well, if you think about typically, if you had direct integration, it would take you many months to get through that process and a lot of times. This helped us, with the Marketplace being at Kairosoft, and Tackle.io, allowed us to really accelerate this relationship. >> I mean, that's a consumption model in the future. I mean, you're looking at, from a Zoom standpoint, you look at the marketplace, that's just more distribution. That's a selling vehicle for you, right? >> Exactly. But it's also, you think, but it's selling people for us. But you think about it from the customer side. If they have a contract already in place and they have consumption, you know, minimums they have to hit and they can be a part of the solution set now that we come together. It really becomes that, "Hey yeah, it's easy to use as a great way." But now we're giving, as we mentioned earlier, an acceleration point for our customers to drive that innovation and quickly procure it. >> Now, you've been around the block on Public Sector. You've seen the waves of innovation over the years. Now, it's kind of like the perfect storm. Multiple waves colliding into a big wave with cloud and with the new normal that's coming. From telemedicine to education, to military, to top secret, to distribution via marketplaces cloud scale, where there's now a new stack emerging, horizontal and vertical. What is your take on that as a industry participant? You're like, "We're putting perspective." Like how big is this compared to what was once other waves? >> Well, you know, what the pandemic brought forth was, as Max mentioned earlier today in his keynote, it really accelerated transformation of people how to do it, which would may take three to five years. Took weeks and months. Now we have the opportunity to go forward and really push this and say, "How do we transform while this pandemic happened?" People are now, the governments are, in education are now looking at transformation on how they accelerate this for the next five to seven years. Because the decisions are making, the money they're settling, and the investments they're making are transforming how they're going to do that. And they realize they cannot do it the way they did it before. >> Well, congratulations in all the success that Zoom, for you and your teammates. Eric, over there as CEO and Collin, and the rest of the team, Ross Mayfield, amongst others. We love you guys. I think you're great company. You really made a dent in the universe in a positive way. I'm looking forward to seeing what's on the roadmap. IOT devices, edge, what's happening? >> Actually, it's great timing of that because we just had our Zoomtopia. So we announced a number of different innovative things that we've done out there, white boarding and such. That really is going to come forward. So I would encourage everybody to go to the Zoom website, look at some of the videos we had from Zoomtopia. Talked about some of the actual, really cool innovative things that we've done. >> John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, almost imagined was the camera technology, the collaboration technology, things are going to be a little bit different. It's not going to be what people think it's going to be. It might look different. What's your view on that? >> I think it's going to look different than it was a year ago. I think it's going to look different than two years from now. And so, with innovation, we look at, we have hundreds of different innovative things that occurred out there. So we look at, you know, virtual classrooms, things that they have out there to change the environment, to make that feel like it's a real life experience. And that's what makes the difference on us. >> You know, I watched companies like Facebook saying, they're going to drop 50 million into metaverse for the next two years. They're throwing engineers at it. But all it points down to is a better user experience. That's the goal, right? To make that user experience immersive, clean, elegant, simple but effective. >> Yeah. It's intuitive. It's the number one thing I hear form every single person. They want something easy to use when the send them home, they want to be able to turn it on for it to work. And we had one department, one agency has sent people home. They found the productivity was doing so well that they actually have decided to hire people in different parts of the country. It's very specialized group around, it moved the D.C. area. Now it's changed the whole scope of how you bring people in with these different skillsets, how not having a move to an area. We'll be able to leverage them at a remote location, but really embrace that expertise. >> Matt, thank you for coming on theCUBE, Matt Mandrgoc, Head of Public Sector. U.S. Public Sector for Zoom. A name you're going to keep hearing about more and more. It's not going away. Establish themselves as the leader in collaboration, certainly video meetings, conferences, events. Thanks for coming on. >> Matt: Thanks for having me on theCUBE. >> Okay. Well, more coverage from a live personal in-person event with remote Zoom's coming in as hybrid. It's theCUBE coverage of AWS Summit 2021, here in Washington, DC. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

>> Welcome back to theCUBE's covering of AWS Public Sector Summit. In-person here in Washington, DC. I'm John Furrier, your host, great to be back face to face. We've got a great, special guest Clint Crosier, who is the Director of AWS' Aerospace & Satellite. Major General of The Air Force/Space Force. Retired. Great to see you in person again. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. I appreciate that. >> First of all, props to you for doing a great job at Amazon, bringing all your knowledge from Space Force and Air Force into the cloud. >> Thank you. >> So that's great, historical context. >> It's been valuable and it's provided a whole lot of insight into what we're building with the AWS space team, for sure. >> So number one question I get a lot is: We want more space content. What's the coolest thing going on in space? Is there a really a satellite behind the moon there, hidden there somewhere? What's the coolest thing going on in space? >> Well, the coolest thing that's going on in space, I think is you're seeing the rapid growth of the space industry, I mean, to me. I've been in the space industry for 34 years now, and there have been periods where we projected lots of growth and activity and it just didn't really come about, especially in the 80's and the 90's. But what we're seeing today is that growth is taking place. Whether it's the numbers of satellites that are being launched around the globe every year, there's some 3,000 objects on orbit today. Estimates are that there'll be 30,000 objects at the end of the decade, or the number of new companies, or the number of global spinning. It is just happening right now, and it's really exciting. >> So, when people say or hear space, there's a lot of economic changes in terms of the cost structures of how to get things deployed into space. That brings up the question of: Is space an opportunity? Is it a threat vector? What about congestion and security? >> Yeah, well three great things, absolutely an opportunity. We're seeing the rapid growth of the space industry, and we're seeing more commercialization than ever before. In my whole career, The Air Force or, NASA, or the NRO would sort of, hold things and do them themselves Today, you're seeing commercial contracts going out from the National Reconnaissance Office, NASA, from The Air Force, from the Space Force. So lots of opportunity for commercial companies. Security. Absolutely, priority number one should be security is baked into everything we do at AWS. And our customers, our Government classified customers tell us the reason they came to AWS is our security is top notch and certified for all their workloads. And as you well know, we have from unclassified all the way up to top secret capabilities on the AWS cloud. So just powerful opportunities for our customers. >> Yeah. And a lot of competitors will throw foot on that. I know, I've reported on some of that and not a lot of people have that same credential. >> Sure. >> Compared to the competition. >> Sure. >> Now I have to ask you, now that you have the top secret, all these clouds that are very tailorable, flexible with space: How are you helping customers with this Aerospace Division? Is it is a commercial? In the public sector together? What's the... >> All of the above. >> Take us through the value proposition. >> Yeah, happy to do this. So what we recognized over the last two years or so we, at AWS, recognized all this rapid growth that we're talking about within the space industry. Every sector from launch to on-orbit activities, to space exploration, all of it. And so AWS saw that and we looked at ourselves and said: "Do we have the right organization and expertise in place really to help our customers lean into that?" And the answer was: we decided to build a team that had deep experience in space, and that was the team that we grew because our thesis was: If you have a deep experience in space, a deep experience in cloud, you bring those two together and it's a powerful contribution. And so we've assembled a team with more than 500 years of collective hands-on experience, flying satellites, launching rockets. And when we sit down with our customers to innovate on their behalf, we're able to come up with some incredible solutions and I'm happy to talk about those. >> I'd love to, but tell you what, first of all, there's a lot of space nerds out there. I love space. I love space geeking out on the technology, but take us through the year you had, you've had a pretty incredible year with some results. You have that brain trust there. I know you're hiring. I know that people want to work for you. I'm sure the resumes are flying in, a lot of action. >> There is. >> What are the highlights from this year? >> So the highlights I think is, we've built a team that the industry is telling us was needed. Again, there was no organization that really served the space cloud industry. And so we're kind of building this industry within the industry, the space cloud industry. And so number one, just establishing that team and leaning into that industry has been valuable. The other thing that we're real proud of is we built a global team, because space is a global enterprise. We have teams in Europe and in Asia and South America here in the U.S., so we built a global team. One of the things that we did right up front, we weren't even six months old, when we envisioned the idea of doing the AWS Space Accelerator. And some of the folks told me: "Clint, six months under your belt, maybe you ought to get your feet under you." And I said: "No, no. We move fast to support our customers." And so we made a call for any space startup that wanted to come on board with AWS and go through our four week Space Accelerator. We partnered with Sarah from Capital. And the idea was: if you're a small company that wants to grow and build and learn how you can use the cloud to gain competitive advantage, come with us. And so John, I would have been happy if we had 50 companies applied, we had 194 companies across 44 countries that applied to our accelerator. We had to down select a 10, but that was a tremendous accomplishment, two of those are speaking this afternoon, where they met each other at our accelerator and now have formed a partnership: Ursa Space and HawkEye 360 on how they build on the cloud together. Fascinating. >> Well, I love that story. First of all, I love the military mindset. No, we're not going to wait. >> Move it out. >> It's not take that hill, it's take that planet. >> Our customers won't wait, innovation, doesn't wait, the future doesn't wait. We have to move out. >> So, this brings up the entrepreneurship angle. We got there a little early, but I want to talk about it because it's super important. There's an entrepreneurial culture happening right now in the space community >> There is. At large, and it's getting bigger and wider. >> Bigger every day. >> What is that? What if someone says: "Hey, what's going on with entrepreneurship in this space? What are the key dynamics? What's the power dynamics?" It's not money, there's money out there, but like what's the structural thing happening? >> The key dynamic, I think, is we're seeing that we can unlock things that we could never do before. And one of our goals is: the more space data we can make more accessible to more people around the world. It unlocks things we couldn't do. We're working with space companies who are using space data to track endangered whales off the coast of California. We're working with companies that are using space data to measure thermal and greenhouse emissions for climate change and climate management. We're working with one company, Edgybees, who has a small satellite constellation, and they're using it to build satellite based, augmented reality, to provide it to first responders as they go into a disaster response area. And they get a 3D-view of what they're going into. None of those workloads were possible five years ago. And the cloud and cloud-based technologies are really what opens those kinds of workloads up. >> What kind of higher level services do you see emerging from space cloud? Because you know, obviously you have to have some infrastructure. >> Absolutely. Got to put some stuff into space. That's a supply chain, reliability, also threat. I mean, I can have a satellite attack, another satellite, or I'm just making that up, but I'm sure there's other scenarios that the generals are thinking about. >> So space security and cyberspace security is critical. And as I said, it's built into everything we do in all of our platforms, so you're absolutely right about that, but when we think about the entrepreneurship, you know, what we're seeing is, and I'll give you a good example of why the industry is growing so fast and why cloud. So one company we work with, LeoLabs. So Leo identified the growth in the LEO: Low Earth Orbit segment. 3,000 objects on orbit today, 30,000 tomorrow. Who's going to do the space traffic management for 30,000 objects in space that are all in the same orbital regime? And so LeoLabs built a process to do space traffic management, collision avoidance. They were running it on premises. It took them eight hours to do a single run for a single satellite conjunction. We got them to help understand how to use the cloud. They moved all that to AWS. Now that same run they do in 10 seconds. Eight hours to 10 seconds. Those are the kind of workloads as space proliferates in and we grow, that we just can't execute without cloud and cloud-based technologies. >> It's interesting, you know, the cloud has that same kind of line: move your workloads to the cloud and then refactor. >> Yeah. So space workloads are coming to the cloud. >> They are. >> Just changing the culture. So I have to ask you, I know there's a lot of young people out there looking for careers and interests. I mean, Cal poly is going into the high school now offering classes. >> Yeah So high school, there's so much interest in space and technology. What is the cultural mindset to be successful? Andy Jassy last year, reading and talk about the mindset of the builder and the enterprise CXO: "Get off your butt and start building" There's a space ethos going on. What is the mindset? Would you share your view on it? >> The mindset is innovation and moving fast, right? We, we lived, most of my career, in the time where we had an unlimited amount of money and unlimited amount of time. And so we were really slow and deliberate about how we built things. The future won't wait, whether it's commercial application, or military application, we have to move fast. And so the culture is: the faster we can move, The more we'll succeed, and there's no way to move faster than when you're building on the AWS cloud. Ground station is a good example. You know, the proposition of the cloud is: Don't invest your limited resources in your own infrastructure that doesn't differentiate your capability. And so we did that same thing with ground station. And we've said to companies: "Don't spend millions of dollars on developing your own ground station infrastructure, pay by the minute to use AWS's and focus your limited resources back in your product, which differentiate your space mission." and that's just been power. >> How is that going from customer perspective? >> Great. It's going great. We continue to grow. We added another location recently. And just in the last week we announced a licensed accelerator. One of the things our customers told us is it takes too long to work with global governments to get licensed, to operate around the world. And we know that's been the case. So we put together a team that leaned in to solve that problem, and we just announced the licensed accelerator, where we will work with companies to walk them through that process, and we can shave an 18 month process into a three or four month process. And that's been... we've gotten great response on that from our company. >> I've always said: >> I remember when you were hired and the whole space thing was happening. I remember saying to myself: "Man, if democratization can bring, come to space" >> And we're seeing that happening >> You guys started it and you guys, props to your team. >> Making space available to more and more people, and they'll dazzle us with the innovative ways we use space. 10 years ago, we couldn't have envisioned those things I told you about earlier. Now, we're opening up all sorts of workloads and John, real quick, one of the reasons is, in the past, you had to have a specific forte or expertise in working with space data, 'cause it was so unique and formatted and in pipeline systems. We're making that democratized. So it's just like any other data, like apps on your phone. If you can build apps for your phone and manage data, we want to make it that easy to operate with space data, and that's going to change the way the industry operates. >> And that's fundamentally, that's great innovation because you're enabling that. That's why I have to ask you on that note Of the innovation trends that you see or activities: What excites you the most? >> So a lot of things, but I'll give you two examples very quickly: One is high-performance compute. We're seeing more and more companies really lean in to understanding how fast they can go on AWS. I told you about LeoLabs, eight hours to 10 seconds. But that high-performance computes going to be a game changer. The other thing is: oh, and real quick, I want to tell you, Descartes Labs. So Descartes Labs came to us and said: "We want to compete in the Annual Global Top 500 supercomputer challenge" And so we worked with them for a couple of weeks. We built a workload on the AWS standard platform. We came in number 40 in the globe for the Top 500 super computer lists, just by building some workloads on our standard platform. That's powerful, high-performance compute. But the second example I wanted to give you is: digital modeling, digital simulation, digital engineering. Boom Aerospace is a company, Boom, that we work with. Boom decided to build their entire supersonic commercial, supersonic aircraft, digital engineering on the AWS cloud. In the last three years, John, they've executed 6,000 years of high-performance compute in the last three years. How do you do 6,000 years in compute in three years? You spin up thousands of AWS servers simultaneously, let them do your digital management, digital analysis, digital design, bring back a million different perturbations of a wing structure and then pick the one that's best and then come back tomorrow and run it again. That's powerful. >> And that was not even possible, years ago. >> Not at that speed, no, not at that speed. And that's what it's really opening up in terms of innovation. >> So now you've done it so much in your career, okay? Now you're here with Amazon. Looking back on this past year or so, What's the learnings for you? >> The learning is, truly how valuable cloud can be to the space industry, I'll admit to you most people in the space industry and especially in the government space industry. If you ask us a year ago, two years ago: "Hey, what do you think about cloud?" We would have said: "Well, you know, I hear people talk about the cloud. There's probably some value. We should probably look at that" And I was in the same boat, but now that I've dug deeply into the cloud and understand the value of artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced data analytics, a ground station infrastructure, all those things, I'm more excited than ever before about what the space industry can benefit from cloud computing, and so bringing that, customer by customer is just a really fulfilling way to continue to be part of the space industry. Even though I retired from government service. >> Is there a... I'm just curious because you brought it up. Is there a lot of people coming in from the old, the space industry from public sector? Are they coming into commercial? >> Absolutely. >> Commercial rising up and there's, I mean, I know there's a lot of public/private partnerships, What's the current situation? >> Yeah, lots of partnerships, but we're seeing an interesting trend. You know, it used to be that NASA led the way in science and technology, or the military led the way in science and technology, and they still do in some areas. And then the commercial industry would follow along. We're seeing that's reversed. There's so much growth in the commercial industry. So much money, venture capital being poured in and so many innovative solutions being built, for instance, on the cloud that now the commercial industry is leading technology and building new technology trends that the military and the DOD and their government are trying to take advantage of. And that's why you're seeing all these commercial contracts being led from Air Force, Space Force, NASA, and NRO. To take advantage of that commercialization. >> You like your job. >> I love my job. (laughing) -I can tell, >> I love my job. >> I mean, it is a cool job. I kind of want to work for you. >> So John, space is cool. That's our tagline: space is cool. >> Space is cool. Space equals ratings in the digital TV realm, it is really, super exciting a lot of young people are interested, I mean, robotics clubs in high schools are now varsity sports, eSports, all blend together. >> Space, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics. It's all becoming a singular sector today and it's open to more people than ever before, for the reasons we talked about. >> Big wave and you guys are building the surf boards, everyone a ride it, congratulations. Great to see you in person. >> Thank you. Again, thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate that. >> Thanks for having us. >> Clint Crosier is the Director of AWS Aerospace & Satellite. Legend in the industry. Now at AWS. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Live in Washington, DC. This is day two of two days of coverage. I'm John Furr, your host. We're in person face-to-face event it's kicking off day two. Dave Levy's here, Vice President of US government Nonprofit and healthcare businesses for AWS Public Sector. Dave, great to see you again, welcome back. >> Dave: Great to see you, John. >> So, great time last time we were in person, 2019, looks like the event, the last year was virtual, what's new? >> Well, first of all, I think it's just exciting. I mean, I'm excited to be back and in-person and so much has happened in our personal lives in our communities and so I'm really glad that we can all be together and it's been great so far. >> I was talking yesterday with some folks and I saw people doing some networking. I heard someone, "Hey, I'm want to hire someone." So, the face-to-face is back, we're also streaming. Max Peterson told me they're pushing it everywhere on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, everywhere, Twitch, so free content, but still a lot of registrations here in person, good stuff. >> Yeah, great registrations. We're thrilled with the support from partners and customers. And also too, like you said, the connections that people are making, so it does feel good that things are flowing and people are having conversations and- >> Well, you got healthcare, nonprofits, US government, healthcare has been a big focus so far in this show. A lot of action, local governments, governments and healthcare seem to be like pandemic enabled to change. What's the update? What's the highlights so far for you? >> Well, I think the highlights are in those areas that, what we've been able to help our customers with is the ability to respond and that's what Cloud is all about and their ability to react and to respond to things that they don't necessarily know is going to happen and the big thing that none of us knew was going to happen was the pandemic. And so that ability and agility and preparedness to respond has really been great to see from a lot of those customers. >> You know, Max Peterson had the CIO from the Air Force up on stage and she's known for her comments about data and data's our data, the US Air Force and so data's big part of it. They are having a transformation and the how's that project going? What's the update there? What's your impression on that? >> Yeah, well, it was great to see the Air Force on stage and great to see Laura up there and we're really proud to support the DOD and the Air Force. And the Air Force has a lot to be proud of in their transformation journey and what they're doing with Cloud One is pretty substantial and amazing transformation for them. And then they've got 35 applications running on AWS. And so we think their progress is really good and they're thinking the right way in terms of their software factories and other types of projects. >> What's interesting is it's watching like who's adopting, it's like you look at like the pandemic has really opened up the view of the projects, which ones are doing well. And how do I say this politely? The projects that were being blocked or hidden, or the KPIs camouflaging the value were exposed because I mean, once that pulled back the curtain, people realized, "Oh my God, we're stuck," Or "we're inadequate, we are antiquated. We need to change," because now the pressure to deliver shifted to digital. I mean, this literally exposed the good, bad, and the ugly. >> It did and some were more prepared than others. There are great examples. We worked with the SBA to help expand the portal for the payroll protection program to get more lenders access faster. And that was a great project. They were able to respond really quickly and we were able to support them in that. Others, not so much. I think it you're right, it did expose that there's an opportunity. There's an opportunity to accelerate some of the things that they were doing already in terms of digital transformation. >> How about the GovCloud and the federal customers that you have, what's the traction point? How has that going? Is there a new generation here? >> GovCloud has been a great success. GovCloud it's our- >> John: 10-year anniversary. >> It's our 10-year anniversary, so we're thrilled to celebrate that. I can't believe it's 2011. >> EC2 is 15. Is that 315? I guess 15, too is SQS, the original building blocks. >> So, we've got a lot of great success through GovCloud and GovCloud was really something that was born out of what customers wanted, primarily federal customers. But we've also seen over the last few years, real adoption from regulated industry, real adoption from partners that are going into GovCloud that really want to take advantage of the security and compliance that federal customers need and the larger defense industrial base organizations need. So, GovCloud's been a fabulous success and expect I expect a lot of growth going forward. >> Yeah, is there a cultural shift in the federal government now? I can imagine some countries have been exploring this. I did talk briefly about it with Ms. Shannon Kellogg and John Wood, about how, if you're under the age of 40 and you work in the federal government, you got to be like, "Why aren't we doing this?" Like there seems to be like a cultural shift, younger generation coming in and be like, looking at the old way and be like, "Why are we still doing that?" >> Well, I think look bipartisan support for digital transformation, for making sure that we have the competitive edge for generations and generations to come in the US both in business and in defense and national security, I think is an imperative. I mean nobody I've talked to disagrees that we need to do this. And I think that younger workforce coming in behind I'm jealous of the 40-year olds, I wish I was under 40, but none of workforce really sees the obstacles that maybe previous generation saw these emerging technologies are becoming, the basic unit of computer's getting smaller, the cost to do these things is coming way down and I think that younger workforce says, "Why aren't we doing this?" >> Yeah and I think the Air Force projects are interesting too because that shows us not just about the CIA or the DOD that you have, they're leaning into production workloads, and the mission critical workloads too, the DOD is also now continuing to adopt. What else are you guys doing with the DOD? >> Well, we're partnering with GDIT on milCloud and that's going to give DOD mission owners access to a whole suite of AWS services. So, we're really excited about that. And those are available now. We're the only Cloud provider that's making that accessible to them on milCloud. And so this is going to open up the opportunity for them to start doing that mission work that you described. A good example of that are programs like ABMS, Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System. It's part of their effort around JADC2 and a great set of capabilities that they're delivering there. We're happy to have participated. We did some testing and some show intel, if you will at Ramstein Air Force Base and we're really proud to support that effort and we're excited about what the Air Force is doing. >> You know, I've always been impressed with the DOD when the tactical edge concept came out, that was very impressive because they're really using the data properly and I know Amazon has been doing well in this area because you've got things like Outpost, Wavelength, Snowball products. How's that edge piece developing? Do you see that becoming more critical now? >> It's absolutely critical. It's not becoming critical, it is critical and I think if you look at what the DOD and all of their partners are trying to accomplish, it's really moving all of that data around from the very edge in theater, back home to where it needs to be analyzed, doing it fast, doing it secure, being able to deliver on their missions and that's what this is all about. So, we see huge, huge opportunities to really innovate around the edge. >> Yeah, the data equation really is fascinating to me. Just when you think about things like words, highly available versus high availability means something 'cause you're going to want real time, not just on available data, you got to have it real time so the pressure around these projects are high. And so technically, you've got to have low latency on all this stuff. >> That's true, that's true. You've got to either have near real time or real-time availability and in many cases there's high stakes. So, the ability the DOD to pull this off is really, really important and we're a big supporter of that. >> Dave, I want to get your perspective because you've been in the industry, you've seen that the ways, we talked before cameras about the '90s and data centers and stuff. 10 years of GovCloud, look at public sector, just to look at the 10 years, interesting evolution. I mean, you couldn't give Cloud a wait 15 years ago. They weren't moving, glacier speed of adoption, now, massive adoption, uptakes there, the transformations are happening, migrations are huge, healthcare, which is like silo the data, HIPAA compliance lock everything down, everything's opening up. This is causing a lot of change. What's your reaction to that? >> Well, my reaction to that is I think customers are starting to connect what their outcomes are, whether it's a business outcome or a mission outcome or both to what Cloud can actually do. And I think that's freeing them up to make decisions about enabling Cloud in their environment, enabling experimentation, because that's what you want. You don't know what you're going to be faced with. We don't know what the threats are. We don't know if there's going to be another major pandemic. We hope there's not, but we don't know and if you set goals around your outcomes for mission and tie those, Cloud becomes such an enabler for that. And I see customers embracing that. Customers across the spectrum, nonprofit, healthcare providers, everybody, Homeland Security, VA, they're all thinking about, "What are the mission outcomes we're trying to drive?" >> Yeah, what's interesting too on that is that, just to point out is that the applications now aren't as complex to build relatively to the speed. In other words, you can get the time to value. So, the pandemic showed people that if you were in the Cloud and had that agility or optionality to be agile, you could write software 'cause software is the key in this, and not let's do the waterfall, 12-weeks assessment, 10-month rollout. Now people are doing it in 10 days, new applications. >> Sure, sure. Well, I tell customers a lot, "Think about McDonald's during the pandemic and think about customers like that who had to react to a new environment of delivery and your fast food fresh and how quickly companies like that are able to roll out capabilities." And I don't know that federal customers will be able to do it in a week or two weeks, but it's certainly possible. And it certainly will shorten that lead time that they have now in their software development. >> Well, great to see you, Dave. Is there any customers you want to highlight and you want to talk about, get a plug in for? >> Yeah, a lot of great customers here representing today and we're really appreciative also just want to say it was really great to see Max on stage for his first summit and think it was great to see Laura and others as well too. We've got some great customers coming here, The Veteran's affairs is going to be here as well as the Navy presenting on a lot of their capabilities today. So, I'm really excited about that. >> Yeah, a lot of action and education, healthcare, really blooming, really changing and modernizing. Big-wave migration, modernization, all kinds of the big wave. >> Yeah, it is. Yeah, big things coming and some of these systems are ready, so these systems are 40 and 50 years old and we're here to help these customers deliver on the agility and the extensibility of these systems to really serve citizens. >> What's your outlook for next year? What are you seeing next year so happening? How do you see everything unfolding? So you mentioned the pandemic, we're still in it, Delta Virus, who knows what's going to happen next, the world stage is changing, the global economy, space. >> I see customers really leaning in and starting to see the benefits of moving their data to the Cloud, number one, and then also to getting the insights using AI and ML to really drive the insights that they need to make the decisions on that data and I see more and more customers doing that. I did a panel this week, moderated a panel with some great customers around that and getting started is probably the biggest thing that I see and we're going to have more and more customers getting started. >> Yeah, getting into the Cloud. Congratulations to milCloud by the way, too. That was a good call out. All right, thanks for coming, I appreciate it. >> John: Yeah, thanks, Sean. >> Okay, keep coverage here. The Public Sector Summit, live in Washington, D.C. in-person event also hybrid we're streaming out. We're doing remote interviews and Amazon is streaming all the keynotes and key sessions for the digital folks out there. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here, remote in Washington, DC, not in Palo Alto, but we're all around the world with theCUBE as we are virtual. We're here recapping the Citrix Launchpad: Cloud (accelerating IT modernization) announcements with CUBE alumni Kevin Jackson, Kevin L. Jackson, CEO of GC Global Net. Kevin, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> No, thank you very much, John. It's always a pleasure to be on theCUBE. >> It's great to have. You always have great insights. But here, we're recapping the event, Citrix Launchpad: Cloud (accelerator IT modernization). And again, we're seeing this theme constantly now, IT modernization, application modernization. People are now seeing clearly what the pandemic has shown us all that there's a lot of projects that need to be up-leveled or kill. There's a lot of things happening and going on. What's your take of what you heard? >> Well, you know, from a general point of view, organizations can no longer put off this digitalization and the modernization of their IT. Many of these projects have been on a shelf waiting for the right time or, you know, the budget to get right. But when the pandemic hit, everyone found themselves in the virtual world. And one of the most difficult things was how do you make decisions in the virtual world when you can't physically be with someone? How do you have a meeting when you can't shake someone's hand? And they all sort of, you know, stared at each other and virtually, of course, to try to figure this out. And they dusted off all of the technologies they had on the shelf that they were, you know, they were told to use years ago, but just didn't feel that it was right. And now it became necessary. It became the way of life. And the thing that really jumped at me yesterday, well, jumped at me with Launchpad, the Launchpad of the cloud is that Citrix honed in on the key issues with this virtual world. I mean, delivering applications, knowing what the internet state is so that you could select the right sources for information and data. And making security holistic. So you didn't have to, it was no longer sort of this bolted on thing. So, I mean, we are in the virtual world to stay. >> You know, good call out there. Honing in was a good way to put it. One quote I heard from Tim (Minahan) was, you know, he said one thing that's become painfully evident is a lot of companies are going through the pandemic and they're experiencing the criticality of the application experience. And he says, "Application experience is the new currency." Okay, so the pandemic, we all kind of know what's going on there. It's highlighting all the needs. But this idea of an application experience is the new currency is a very interesting comment because, I mean, you nailed it. Everyone's working from home. The whole work is shifting. And the applications, they kind of weren't designed to be this way 100%. >> Right, right. You know, the thing about the old IT was that you would build something and you would deploy it and you would use it for a period of time. You know, a year, two years, three years, and then there would be an upgrade. You would upgrade your hardware, you would upgrade your applications, and then you go through the process again, you know? What was it referred to as, it wasn't modernization, but it was refresh. You know, you would refresh everything. Well today, refresh occurs every day. Sometimes two or three times a day. And you don't even know it's occurring. Especially in the application world, right? I think I was looking at something about Chrome, and I think we're at like Chrome 95. It's like Chrome is updated constantly as a regular course of business. So you have to deploy this, understand when it's going to be deployed, and the customers and users, you can't stop their work. So this whole application delivery and security aspect is completely different than before. That's why this, you know, this intent driven solution that Citrix has come up with is so revolutionary. I mean, by being able to know the real business needs and requirements, and then translating them to real policies that can be enforced, you can really, I guess, project the needs, requirement of the organization anywhere in the world immediately with the applications and with this security platform. >> I want to get your reactions to something because that's right on point there, because when we look at the security piece and the applications you see, okay, your mind goes okay, old IT, new IT. Now with cloud, with the pandemic showing that cloud scale matters, a couple themes have come from that used to be inside the ropes concepts. Virtualization, virtual, and automation. Those two concepts are going mainstream because now automation with data and virtual, virtual work, virtual CUBE, I mean, we're doing virtual interviews. Virtualization is coming here. So building on those things. New things are happening around those two concepts. Automation is becoming much more programmable, much more real time, not just repetitive tasks. Virtual is not just doing virtual work from home. It's integrating that virtual experience into other applications. This requires a whole new organizational structure mindset. What's your thoughts on that? >> Well, one of the things is the whole concept of automation. It used to be a nice to have. Something that you could do maybe to improve your particular process, not all of the processes. And then it became the only way of reacting to reality. Humans, it was no longer possible for humans to recognize a need to change and then execute on that change within the allotted time. So that's why automation became a critical element of every business process. And then it expanded that this automated process needed to be connect and interact with that automated process and the age of the API. And then the organization grew from only relying on itself to relying on its ecosystem. Now an organization had to automate their communications, their integration, the transfer of data and information. So automation is key to business and globalization creates that requirement, or magnifies that requirement. >> One of the things we heard in the event was, obviously Citrix has the experience with virtual apps, virtual desktop, all that stuff, we know that. But as the cloud grows in, they're making a direct statement around Citrix is going to add value on top of the cloud services. Because that's the reality of the hybrid, and now soon to be multi-cloud workflows or architectures. How do you see that evolve? Is that something that's being driven by the cloud or the app experience or both? What's your take on that focus of Citrix taking their concepts and leadership to add value on top of the cloud? >> To be honest, I don't like referring to the cloud. It gives an impression that there's only a single cloud and it's the same no matter what. That couldn't be further from the truth. A typical organization will consume services from three to five cloud service providers. And these providers aren't working with each other. Their services are unique, independent. And it's up to the enterprise to determine which applications and how those applications are presented to their employees. So it's the enterprise that's responsible for the employee experience. Integrating data from one cloud service provider to another cloud service provider within this automated business process or multiple business processes. So I see Citrix is really helping the enterprise to continually monitor performance from these independent cloud service provider and to optimize that experience. You know, the things like, where is the application being consumed for? What is the latency today on the internet? What type of throughput do I need from cloud service provider A versus cloud service provider B? All of this is continually changing. So the it's the enterprise that needs to constantly monitor the performance degradation and look at outages and all of that. So I think, you know, Citrix is on point by understanding that there's no single cloud. Hybrid and multi-cloud is the cloud. It's the real world. >> You know, that's a great call. And I think it's naive for enterprises to think that, you know, Microsoft is sitting there saying hmm, let's figure out a way to really work well with AWS. And vice versa, right? I mean, and you got Google, right? They all have their own specialties. I mean, Amazon web service has got great compliance action going on there. Much back stronger than Microsoft. Microsoft's got much deeper legacy and integration to their base, and Google's doing great with developers. So they're all kind of picking their lanes, but they all exist. So the question in the enterprise is what? Do I, how do I deal with that? And again, this is an opportunity for Citrix, right? So this kind of comes down to the single pane of glass (indistinct) always talks about, or how do I manage this new environment that I need to operate in? Because I will want to take advantage of some of the Google goodness and the Azure and the AWS. But now I got my own on premises. Bare metals grow. You're seeing more bare metal deals going down now because the cloud operations has come on premises. >> Yeah, and in fact, that's hybrid IT, right? I always see that there are an enterprise, when enterprise thinks about modernizing or digitally transforming a business process, you have three options, right? You could put it in your own data center. In fact, building a data center and optimizing a data center for a particular process is the cheapest and most efficient way of executing a business process. But it's only way cheaper and efficient if that process is also stable and consistent. I'll say, but some are like that. But you can also do a managed service provider. But that is a distinctly different approach. And the third option is a cloud service provider. So this is a hybrid IT environment. It's not just cloud. It's sort of, you know, it's not smart to think everything's going to go into the cloud. >> It's distributed computing. We see (indistinct). >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, in today's paperless world, don't you still use a pen and paper and pencil? Yes. The right tool for the right job. So it's hybrid IT. Cloud is not always a perfect thing. And that's something that I believe Citrix has looked at. That interface between the enterprise and all of these choices when it comes to delivering applications, delivering the data, integrating that data, and making it secure. >> And I think that's a winning positioning to have this app experience, the currency narrative, because that ultimately is an outcome that you need to win on. And with the cloud and the cloud scale that goes on with all the multiple services now available, the company's business model is app driven, right? That's their application. So I love that, and I love that narrative. Also like this idea of app delivering security. It's kind of in the weeds a little bit, but it highlights this hybrid IT concept you were saying. So I got to ask you as the expert in the industry in this area, you know, as you have intent, what do they call it? Intent driven solution for app delivering security. Self healing, continuous optimization, et cetera, et cetera. The KPIs are changing, right? So I want to get your thoughts on that. Because now, as IT shifts to be much faster, whether it's security teams or IT teams to service that DevOps speed, shifting left everyone talks about, what's the KPIs that are changing? What is the new KPIs that the managers and people can work through as a north star or just tactically? What's your thoughts? >> Well, actually, every KPI has to relate to either the customer experience or the employee experience, and sometimes even more important, your business partner experience. That's the integration of these business processes. And one of the most important aspects that people really don't think about is the API, the application programming interface. You know, you think about software applications and you think about hardware, but how is this hardware deployed? How do you deploy and expand the number of servers based upon more usage from your customer? It's via the API. You manage the customer experience via APIs. You manage your ability to interact with your business partners through the API, their experience. You manage how efficient and effective your employees are through their experience with the IT and the applications through the API. So it's all about that, you know, that experience. Everybody yells customer experience, but it's also your employee experience and your partner experience. So that depends upon this integrated holistic approach to applications and the API security. The web app, the management of bots, and the protection of your APIs. >> Yeah, that really nailed it. I think the position is good. You know, if you can get faster app delivery, keep the security in line, and not bolt it on after the fact and reduce costs, that's a winning formula. And obviously, stitching together the service layer of app and software for all the cloud services is really key. I got to ask you though, Kevin, since you and I have riffed on theCUBE about this before, more importantly now than ever with the pandemic, look at the work edge. People working at home and what's causing the office spaces changing. The entire network architecture. I mean, I was talking to a big enterprise that said, oh yeah, we had, you know, the network for the commercial and the network for dial up now 100% provisioned for everyone at home. The radical change to the structural interface has completely changed the game. What is your view on this? I mean, give us your, where does it go? What happens next? >> So it's not what's next, it's where we are right now. And you need to be able to be, work from anywhere at any time across multiple devices. And on top of that, you have to be able to adapt to constant change in both the devices, the applications, the environment, and a business model. I did a interview with Citrix, actually, from an RV in the middle of a park, right? And it's like, we did video, we did it live. I think it was through LinkedIn live. But I mean, you need to be able to do anything from anywhere. And the enterprise needs to support that business imperative. So I think that's key. It's it's not the future, it's the today. >> I mean, the final question I have for you is, okay, is the frog in the boiling water? At what point does the CIO and the IT leaders, I mean, their minds are probably blown. I can only imagine. The conversations I've been having, it's been, you know, be agile, do it in the cloud, do it at speed, fix the security, programmable infrastructure. What? How fast can I run? This is the management challenge. How are people dealing with this when you talk to them? >> First of all, the IT professional needs to focus on the business needs, the business requirements, the business key performance indicators, not technology, and a business ROI. The CIO has to be right there in the C sweep of understanding what's needed by the business. And there also has to be an expert in being able to translate these business KPIs into IT requirements, all right? And understanding that all of this is going to be within a realm of constant change. So the CIO, the CTO, and the IT professional needs to realize their key deliverable is business performance. >> Kevin, great insight. Loved having you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time highlighting and recapping the Citrix Launchpad: Cloud announcements. Accelerating IT modernization can't go fast enough. People, they want to go faster. >> Faster, faster, yes. >> So great stuff. Thanks for coming, I appreciate it. >> Thank you, John. I really enjoyed it. >> Okay, it's theCUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Woman: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector awards for the award of best migration solution. I'm your host Natalie Erlich and now we're joined by very special guests. We have Omer Enaam, application modernization leader at Deloitte Consulting and Bart Mason, technology lead for the Office of Recovery Services at the Utah Department of Human Services. Welcome, gentlemen. Good to have you on the show. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Well, terrific. I'd love to hear more about your migration from mainframe to AWS. Bart. Let's start with you. >> The state of Utah has a mainframe system and we have our child support application that was first developed in 1996 on the mainframe written in COBOL. The application served us well through the 24 years that we had it running on the mainframe. The issue was that the mainframe, it was getting difficult to find people who knew how to program in COBOL. But the biggest problems were any type of modernization. We were pretty much stuck to using what are called green screens, and there was no real easy way to do any type of modernization. And a lot of our applications that were public-facing or employee-facing, a lot of those web applications had to be written in a separate system and set up to connect and talk to the mainframe system. So it was a system that served us well but it was time to try and figure out what are we going to do about this? Because the mainframe was expensive and it was old technology that didn't let us advance to where we wanted to go in the future. So roughly about 2016, we started to investigate what are the possible ways that we can migrate our child support application off the mainframe. And we went through discussion such as a complete rewrite where we would start from the very beginning and rewrite our child support application. The child support application is a case management and an accounting system. And if we would have done a total rewrite we were told it would be upwards of $200 million to do a complete rewrite. We started looking at other possibilities and came across one possibility, and that is to do a migration off of the mainframe into the cloud. It would be a pre-session where we could do a lift and shift and basically take the code, change it into Java, and put it into the cloud running in EC2 instances. So it was an, we called it an intermediate step to modernization because it would get us one step to where we need to do, or where we need to go. And for modernization, it helps us to, since the program that it was, or the language it was migrated to was Java it made it so that we could do modernization. And we decided that if we did a lift and shift from the mainframe to AWS, that we could modernize at our own pace, we could modernize screen by screen or function by function. So it gave us the ability to control roll-outs and getting our application to where we needed to be. >> Terrific. And Omer, I'd love it if you could weigh in as well. What were, what was the support that you provided towards this migration? >> Yeah, of course. So as Bart pointed out, the state was looking for a approach that had high chance of success, high probability of user adoption with minimal impact to the organization. At the same time, have the ability to for the state to maintain and modernize at their own pace. So we work with Bart and explain to him a few options. And one of the options was using a automated coding data conversion approach where we take legacy programming languages like COBOL and convert them into Java. Just like translating the code from one language to another. And in the process, we guarantee that your your new system will work exactly. It will be functionally equal of what you do currently. And at the same time, it minimizes the risk. And it also allows the state to have no issues with their business continuity and additional training for their staff. So in a nutshell, we brought in a solution demonstrated to Bart and team and they bought into that, the idea that this is exactly what they want to do as a first step. And as we speak, we are working with the state to help them take that system in the cloud to the next level. Now we have unlocked the potential of digital transformation. Bart can build mobile apps in front of that application. That the state can. There are new analytics capabilities for that their employees can be more productive in providing services to the citizen. They can implement native capabilities from AWS to implement a process automation, implement some artificial intelligence-based tools to optimize the processes and make life easy and better for the employees, at the same time more importantly, serve the citizens in a better way. >> Mhm. And Bart I'd love it If you could share some further details on some of the considerations that you had such as risk and whether it could be used later in the future. >> The biggest thing, the biggest risk to us was that if we, as we migrated off the mainframe, there's a risk that we have to recertify our system with the Office of Child Support Enforcement in Washington, DC. When we build a system, the child support system, we're required to have them come in and do a assessment of our application and certify that it is an application that can be used for child support. If we would have done a rebuild from scratch, the risk would be that first a rebuild, from what we've seen can take anywhere from five to 10 years. I've already touched on how expensive it is, but it takes up to five or what we've seen, up to 10 years to do a complete rewrite. And the risk for us was that if we did a complete rewrite, we would still be on the mainframe for quite a long time. And we would have to have our system recertified with OCSE. And that can take anywhere from five to 10 years for a recertification too, so the risk was that if we did anything with the complete rewrites it would be several, several years going through rewrites and recertifications to get our system up and running in AWS. And the other problem would be that taking that amount of time would also, it would bring us probably not up to date with the current technologies as we did our rewrite because we'd be focused on rewriting that application and not taking advantages of services and applications that come up and can help us with our rewrites. So one of the biggest risks was that we'd have to do recertification with OCSE, With the migration, coming off the migration because it is a one for one migration where it went from COBOL to Java, we did not have to do a recertification. This allowed us to move the application as is and it functioned the exact same way that recertification was not a problem for us. OCSE said that, told us that it was not a risk or an issue that we'd have to take on. So the biggest risk was recertification for us but with the migration and moving into the cloud we went through their security processes and we came out without any big issues coming out of that. >> Fantastic. Thank you. Omer. I'd love to go to you now. What are some of the unique benefits of working with AWS? >> Sure. I think the biggest benefit is there, the extensive services that are available and having the the proven platform where you cut down your operational costs drastically. So comparing the mainframe costs with the Amazon cloud costs. Clearly the state has benefited a lot from the from a savings standpoint, infrastructure savings standpoint, and at the same time now, as I said, the the system is in the cloud, running on open architecture in the Java programming language, The AWS cloud provides us several capabilities natively which allows the state to use, to digitally transform the experience for the citizens and employees by implementing modern DevOps practices for for managing the, operating the system providing new capabilities to workers and supervisors for analytics to business process automation, having better call center integration capabilities and so forth. So there are endless opportunities. And the state is in the process of executing on a prioritized list Just before the pandemic hit, we worked with the state to lay out the future for their system and for their organization in the form of a one day innovation lab, where major stakeholders from the state gathered with Deloitte and we worked through a prioritization process and determined how we can take this system to the next level and really digitally transform the system and in the process, provide new services and better services to state employees and the citizens. >> Yeah. Terrific insight there. Now Bart, I'd like to shift it to you, asking the same question. What are your thoughts on working with AWS? Why choose them for this? >> We always have been looking at moving a lot of our applications into the cloud. We've been looking at that for several years. The advantages of moving to AWS is, from my point of view, and state's point of view, is that AWS provides a lot of services and it provides the capability for us to do a lot more for our applications. So for example, when we were on the mainframe, one of the biggest problems that we had was disaster recovery. We had a disaster recovery site in the Southern end of our states with another mainframe that we would sync up with our application. The problem was that we have over a hundred data connections. We connect to banks, external entities, internal entities. We have different types of connections. We have to do printing. We have to print checks and several things. Disaster recovery on the mainframe was something that we were never really capable of doing. We could get our application up and running but it just sat on the mainframe. We had no data connections, all that was extremely difficult and extremely expensive to do for disaster recovery on a mainframe and on alternate sites. Moving to AWS, one of the biggest things for us was that disaster recovery requirement. Because now that we're in AWS, it makes it more easier for us to spin up servers once servers go down, restore servers when they go down. We have all of our data connections in one location, and as systems become unrecoverable or have issues, it's easy for us to spin up another one or several in their place, or even our data connection, because they're all located in one place and we're using them all of the time. So disaster recovery was one of the big key components for us. The other component was that, as we modernize our application, we're looking at what AWS services are out there to help us with modernization. We're looking at services such as AWS Batch to replace our batch system. We're looking at databases to replace the current database that we're using. We're looking at using containers to containerize our applications and our ORSIS application, and also microservices. So moving off the mainframe was the first step and putting it all into servers on an EC2 instance. But then we look and say, okay, how can we do this and make this more modern and run better and more efficient? And then we started looking at all the AWS services that are out there, that run outside of an EC2 instance, for example. And we see that there's an endless possibility, and endless capabilities that we have at our fingertips to say, okay, we're off the mainframe less modernize by moving to Batch or let's start looking at containers and things like that to help us with our applications. So disaster recovery and the available services that we can move to to help us with our applications, what we look at. >> Well, thank you both so much for your insights, Bart Mason, Utah Department of Human Services as well as Omer Enaam, Deloitte Consulting and LLP. I'm your host for theCUBE. Thanks so much for watching. (outro music)

>>Okay. We're back here at the cube. We're in the middle of all the action at mobile world. Cause we're in cloud city, uh, physically in onset here, we got the virtual space. People are watching remotely. We do a remote interviews, but now we're in person with. Who's the transformational leader, head of innovation in his previous Zane telecom, 50 million customers, big projects. You've seen it all, you know, you know all about the operators and you know about innovation. Those are two great topics that we're going to talk about. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So we were talking about on the open, uh, with Chloe this morning about the difference between building and operating and operators. Technically it's in the definition of running large networks, but now the change is here. You've got cloud scale, you've got edge developing with 5g, open, ran for standardization and off the shelf equipment that will give more infrastructure surface area, which will bring more innovation. A lot of change, a lot of build-out. This is a mindset change you want to it's like war time, peace time. It's not a mature market. It's a growing turbulent opportunity and the trillions of dollars at stake. And, um, >>I, I believe that we as humans on anything that we do so much of our learning comes from doing, and whatever you do is what you learn. So what have we, as an operator's been doing, we have been buying things. So our learning has been on procurement, how to do a business casing, how to get approvals, but not necessarily how to really introduce something new to our customers. And what has, what has said to us as an industry is that all the innovation and there's been a lot of innovation on communication space has been done either by the handset people or has been done by the internet people, but not so much as some operators. So I think that's really something that you have to have to change, but you have to change what you learn. You have to change how you actually do it. >>It's interesting. You know, I'm very pro telecom, but people think I'm, I'm not because I tend to criticize and pontificate around the change. But if you look at the telecon, it's been a bunch of dumb pipes and that's been a good thing and it's been reliable. We've had great connectivity growth. The internet was stable during the pandemic. It literally saved people's lives and change things that we survived and it worked great. But now when you have applications and infrastructure as code, new opportunities are going to be forcing that change quicker. So it's not so much, it needs to radically change. It just needs to get more versatile, more >>Get on the >>Program. So if you look what has happened on other industries, WhatsApp, how the internet payers do it, how does apple do it? How does Google do it? How does Facebook do it? They are using these new technologies. They are using cloud first approaches. They are building huge scale and they able to innovate. So the way I'm looking at it, that you guys are an operator you need to get on the program. And it's not, it's not the question. Should I do it? Should I not do it? Question is how do you do it? It's not the question when you should do it, you should do it. Now, the question is, how do you do it? How do you get started? I think, no, I think >>You're exactly right. It's in the here and now we're going to have a exclusive Google news conference later in the day, but you've mentioned the cloud players. If you look at the success of say Android, Android is a great use case that I think might be something that you can look at to the telecom industry and say, Hmm, how open source software changed the handset business? I think there's kind of a movement here in the telco space. And this ecosystem where you hear open, you got the Linux foundation participated with the software group for Iran. You got other things happening with open gardens, not walled gardens. Interesting. What's your take on how the, the innovation from the software side might come in here because you want to preserve the legacy operational stability, but bringing in new >>For you to be able to do a new, you need to have those software skills, because that's how the new things happen. You have to build them, you have to program them. But then the, then the issue is that your organization, most likely something good for this. So you don't have the designers. You don't have the software engineers, you don't have, uh, how to do customer experience, how to do, how to do the planning. You don't have it. So then the, then the challenge is how are you going to do that? And I'm a big saver off of operators starting to build some of the internal teams, have them separate teams and have them start to trial on these things. Give don't be so hard on yourself, allow yourself to try and try. Some things, allow yourself to fail. Don't make them huge programs because then the failure becomes a huge issue also. And then once you learn, once you know how to do it, then scale it up. But yes, these new skills software, you have to do it. And open is very well. >>You know, we were talking yesterday about this new world where feature creep used to be a bad thing. But now with cloud scale, you can develop rapid features quickly and get data and then abandon those things quickly. The time to do that is now part of the development process. So as software changes, you're starting to see the human resources configurations, where teams are formed differently. What's your take on this? Because end to end workloads can have multiple layers on an SRE, an operator, a developer, and a UX person, all on one team. I >>Agree. And I think that, and this is not something we have to invent as a telecom industry. Let's just go look at what the software guys are doing, right? So for decades, over the better part of a decade, there have been having HR teams. They're having the actual, working more working on sprains. All the tools already exist. All it's, it's all available for us. So all we have to do is just look at how they are doing that and start to use some of those practices and on our business. And by the way, we have been trying, this is not very good at it because we tend to kind of take it to the previous way of doing patients. And then we get ourselves into trouble. You know, >>It's the classic old playbook. We're good at procuring things. We know how to get that email, checking the list, done cost efficiency, drive more revenue chip away at it, moved the ball down the field slowly. Now the new playbook is agility, software economics, software playbook. So I have to ask you on, on that piece of it, how do you think the operators are psychologically right now? Are they, are they have a frog in boiling water? Do they know what's happening? Are they open to it? Or they just need more repetition? What's the psychology of the, with the progress and the progress bar of the operators relative to the trends. >>I think they might be a little bit desperate, right? So also telecom people. I like to think they're relatively smart people. They are not dummies. They know what they are doing, but th there's 30 years of history, maybe more and there's large organizations, maybe thousands of people who are, who are, who they have to work with. So somehow you have to have to figure out how do you get these new skills? And, and we're getting older. Also. I was in 1995, working for telecom. TSM standard loans. We were young at that point. I'm not young anymore. >>So this is your whole experience. I appreciate that. Well, >>I mean, old is good because now if you look at, I mean, I would, again, not to bring up ageism, but um, young, young guns, they never really loaded a Linux operating system before they never really wired splice cable. Um, and also there's also the systems thinking. And I think one of the things that's coming out of this show, that's clear to us here at the cube is if you're a systems thinker you tend to do well because the edge Springs distributed computing to the table. So, you know, I think this experience collision with the young talent. Yeah. >>And I had a, a program where I actively wanted to bring new talent into the organization. We didn't want to hire it. As people have five to 10 years of working experience. Now let's give us some guys fresh out of the college. It's fine. We have plenty of telecom knowledge. We can teach them no issues, but we need some of the newer more, more open-minded approaches to what we can do. It's >>Funny, mark Zuckerberg said once years ago, it's a young man's game, a young person's game. And we were all like, yeah, screw you. But the point was is that now he looked at all the best players. Amazon has Gosling over there. A lot of these pioneers in the computing industry and the telecom industry are now leaders on the new architecture because there's an architectural change over, but it's not a rip and replace. It's a net abstraction. So it's not like it's going away. So the skills are there. So how do you talk about that? Because this is the big, an untold story, this new arc and architectural shift or tweak, uh, >>On architecture side. I think we, as an operators, we are really focused on building the networks and our networks started site. It's all about standard, uh, days. And it's all about buying buying boxes. And unfortunately, a lot of our leaders are then coming, growing up on that thinking. So then they trying to do the same thing on software side and it just doesn't work. So software is a totally different animal. So I think you need to really have a different mindset, different way of looking at that. When you start to get on the software side of business and how do you do your architectures? You need to have this flexibility. TSMA is a standard that evolves in a 10 year cycle. Your software architecture can evolve and 10, 10 year cycle. It has to move faster than that >>While you've used it to our ears. You're definitely come back on the cube. We're going to have you back because this is the most important story in this industry is the software paradigm. Um, and our minutes that we have left, why have you here, what do you think of the show? Mobile world Congress, uh, speeds and feeds radios boxes. Now you got chips software. What does this show turning into? What is this about? >>I think it's amazing to start to see this year. What, because of the COVID a lot of the old players are not here. So suddenly that space has been filled more of a newer company. It's different kinds of things. And I think that's really important for this conference. I think it's really important for the industry and it's really good for all of us. It's nice to see something, something new, something, something else, >>Another team of >>Edge brings up education, health care, societal change, cyber defenses, peace and challenges >>With that. Also security and how to control. And yeah, I >>Mean, a lot of people were watching people participating so well. Great to have you on great expertise and congratulations on your new role as a transformation leader in Washington, DC. And again, Nate, we need you there. So did you get up there on the hill and help educate some of those, uh, leaders that need to write the new laws? Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Okay. We are here in the cube. We're breaking down all the action here at the middle of cloud city. I'm John from the cube. David lump is on assignment. I'm gonna send it back to the studio, Adam.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everybody to VeeamON 2021 you're watching theCUBE. My name is Dave Villante. You know in 2020 cyber adversaries they seize the opportunity to really up their game and target workers from home and digital supply chains. It's become increasingly clear to observers that we're entering a new era of cyber threats where infiltrating companies via so-called Island Hopping and stealthily living off the land meaning they're using your own tools and infrastructure to steal your data. So they're not signaling with new tools that they're in there. It's becoming the norm for sophisticated hacks. Moreover, these well-funded and really sophisticated criminals and nation States are aggressively retaliating against incident responses. In other words, when you go to fix the problem they're not leaving the premises they're rather they're tightening the vice on victims by holding your data ransom and threatening to release previously ex filtrated and brand damaging information to the public. What a climate in which we live today. And with me to talk about these concerning trends and what you can do about it as Gil Vega, the CISO of Veeam Gil great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you, Dave. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah. So, you know, you're hearing my intro. It's probably understating the threat. You are a Veeam's first CISO. So how do you see the landscape right now? >> That's right. Yeah. And I've been with the company for just over a year now, but my background is in financial services and spent a lot of time managing cybersecurity programs at the classified level in Washington DC. So I've gleaned a lot of scar tissue from lots of sophisticated attacks and responses. But today I think what we're seeing is really a one-upmanship by a sophisticated potentially nation state sponsored adversaries, this idea of imprisoning your data and charging you to release it is it's quite frightening. And as we've seen in the news recently it can have devastating impacts not only for the economy, but for businesses. Look at the gas lines in the Northeast right now because of the quality of a pipeline, a ransomware attack. I just, the government just released an executive order this morning, that hopes to address some of the some of the nation's unpreparedness for these sophisticated attacks. And I think it's time. And I think everyone's excited about the opportunity to really apply a whole of government approach, to helping critical infrastructure to helping and partnering with private sector and imposing some risks, frankly, on some of the folks that are engaged in attacking our country. >> A number of years ago, I often tell this story. I had the pleasure of interviewing Robert Gates the former Defense Secretary. And it was a while ago we were talking about cyber and he sits on a number of boards. And we were talking about how it's a board level issue. And, and we're talking about cyber crime and the like and nation States. And I said, well, wait, cyber warfare, even. And I said, "But don't we have the best cyber tech. I mean, can't we go on the offense?" And he goes, "Yeah, we do. And we can, but we have more to lose." And to your point about critical infrastructure, it's not just like, okay, we have the most powerful weapons. It's really we have the most valuable infrastructure and a lot to lose. So it's really a tricky game. And this notion of having to be stealthy in your incident response is relatively new. Isn't it? >> It is. It is. And you know, there are, you mentioned that and I was surprised you mentioned because a lot of people really don't talk about it as you're going into your response your adversaries are watching or watching your every move. You have to assume in these days of perpetual state of compromise in your environments, which means that your adversaries have access to your environment to the point that they're watching your incident responders communicate with one another and they're countering your moves. So it's sort of a perverse spin on the old mutually assured destruction paradigm that you mentioned the United States has the world's largest economy. And quite frankly the world's most vulnerable, critical infrastructure. And I would concur with Director Gates or Secretary Gates rather it is assessment that we've got to be awfully careful and measured in our approach to imposing risks. I think the government has worked for many years on defining red lines. And I think this latest attack on the colonial pipeline affecting the economy and people's lives and potentially putting people's lives at risk is towing also the close to that red line. And I'm interested to see where this goes. I'm interested to see if this triggers even a, you know a new phase of cyber warfare, retaliation, you know proactive defense by the National Security Community of the United States government. Be interesting to see how this plays out. >> Yeah, you're absolutely right though. You've got this sort of asymmetric dynamic now which is unique for the United States as soon as strongest defense in the world. And I wanted to get it to ransomware a bit. And specifically this notion of ransomware as a service it's really concerning where criminals can actually outsource the hack as a service and the bad guys will set up, you know, on the dark web they'll have, you know, help desks and phone lines. They'll do the negotiations. I mean, this is a really concerning trend. And obviously Veeam plays a role here. I'm wondering as a, as a SecOps pro what should we be doing about this? >> Yeah, you mentioned ransomware as a service, whereas RWS it's an incredibly pernicious problem perpetrated by sophisticated folks who may or may not have nation state support or alliances. I think at a minimum certain governments are looking the other way as it relates to these criminal activities. But with ransomware as a service, you're essentially having very sophisticated folks create very complex ransomware code and distributed to people who are willing to pay for it. And oftentimes take a part of the ransom as their payment. The, issue with obviously ransomware is you know the age old question, are you going to pay a ransom or are you not going to pay a ransom? The FBI says, don't do it. It only encourages additional attacks. The Treasury Department put out some guidance earlier earlier in the year, advising companies that they could be subject to civil or criminal penalties. If they pay a ransom and the ransom goes to a sanction density. So there's danger on all sides. >> Wow okay. But so, and then the other thing is this infiltrating via digital supply chains I call it Island Hopping and the like, we saw that with the solar winds hack and the scary part is, you know different malware is coming in and self forming and creating different signatures. Not only is it very difficult to detect, but remediating, you know, one, you know combined self formed malware it doesn't necessarily take care of the others. And so, you know, you've got this sort of organic virus, like thing, you know, create mutating and that's something that's certainly relatively new to me in terms of its prevalence your thoughts on that and how to do it. >> Yeah, exactly right. You know, the advent of the polymorphic code that changes the implementation of advanced artificial intelligence and some of this malware is making our job increasingly difficult which is why I believe firmly. You've got to focus on the fundamentals and I think the best answers for protecting against sophisticated polymorphic code is,are found in the NIST cybersecurity framework. And I encourage everyone to really take a close look at implementing that cybersecurity framework across their environments, much like we've done here, here at Veeam implementing technologies around Zero Trust again assuming a perpetual state of compromise and not trusting any transaction in your environment is the key to combating this kind of attack. >> Well, and you know, as you mentioned, Zero Trust Zero Trust used to be a buzzword. Now it's like become a mandate. And you know, it's funny. I mean, in a way I feel like the crypto guys I know there's a lot of fraud in crypto, but but anybody who's ever traded crypto it's like getting into Fort Knox. I mean, you got to know your customer and you've got to do a little transaction. I mean, it's really quite sophisticated in terms of the how they are applying cybersecurity and you know, most even your bank isn't that intense. And so those kinds of practices, even though they're a bit of a pain in the neck, I mean it's worth the extra effort. I wonder if you could talk about some of the best practices that you're seeing how you're advising your clients in your ecosystem and the role that Veeam can play in helping here. >> Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned so many recommendations and I think the thing to remember here so we don't overwhelm our small and medium sized businesses that have limited resources in this area is to remind them that it's a journey, right? It's not a destination that they can continually improve and focus on the fundamentals. As I mentioned, things like multi-factor authentication you know, a higher level topic might be micro-segmentation breaking up your environment into manageable components that you can monitor a real time. Real time monitoring is one of the key components to implementing Zero Trust architecture and knowing exactly what good looks like in your environment in a situation where you've got real-time monitoring you can detect the anomalies, the things that shouldn't be happening in your environment and to spin up your response teams, to focus and better understand what that is. I've always been a proponent of identity and access management controls and a key focus. We've heard it in this industry for 25 years is enforcing the concept of least privilege, making sure that your privileged users have access to the things they need and only the things that they need. And then of course, data immutability making sure that your data is stored in backups that verifiably has not been changed. And I think this is where Veeam comes into the equation where our products provide a lot of these very easily configured ransomware protections around data and your ability to the ability to instantly back up things like Office 365 emails, you know support for AWS and Azure. Your data can be quickly restored in the event that an attacker is able to in prison that with encryption and ransom demands. >> Well, and so you've certainly seen in the CISOs that I've talked to that they've had to obviously shift their priorities, thanks to the force march to digital, thanks to COVID, but Identity access management, end point security cloud security kind of overnight, you know, Zero Trust. We talked about that and you could see that in some of these, you know, high flying security stocks, Okta Zscaler, CrowdStrike, they exploded. And so what's in these many of these changes seem to be permanent sort of you're I guess, deeper down in the stack if you will, but you, you compliment these toolings with obviously the data protection approach the ransomware, the cloud data protection, air gaps, immutability. Maybe you could talk about how you fit in with the broader, you know, spate of tools. I mean, your, my eyes bleed when you look at all the security companies that are out there. >> Yeah for sure. You know, I'm just going to take it right back to the NIST cybersecurity framework and the five domains that you really need to focus on. Identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover, you know and until recently security practitioners and companies have really focused on on the protect, identify and protect, right and defend rather where they're focused on building, you know, moats and castles and making sure that they've got this, you know hard exterior to defend against attacks. I think there's been a shift over the past couple of years where companies have recognized that the focus needs to be on and respond and recover activities, right? Assuming that people are going to breach or near breach, your entities is a safe way to think about this and building up capabilities to detect those breaches and respond effectively to those breaches are what's key in implementing a successful cybersecurity program where Veeam fits into this since with our suite of products that that can help you through the recovery process, right? That last domain of the NIST cybersecurity framework it'll allow you to instantaneously. As I mentioned before, restore data in the event of a catastrophic breach. And I think it provides companies with the assurances that while they're protecting and building those Zero Trust components into their environments to protect against these pernicious and well-resourced adversaries there's the opportunity for them to recover very quickly using the VM suite of tools? >> Well, I see, I think there's an interesting dynamic here. You're pointing out Gil. There's not no longer is it that, you know, build a moat the Queen's leaving her castle. I always say, you know there is no hardened perimeter anymore. And so you've seen, you know, the shift obviously from hardware based firewalls and you I mentioned those other companies that are doing great but to me, it's all about these layers and response is a big in recovery is a huge part of that. So I'm seeing increasingly companies like Veeam is a critical part of that, that security cyber data protection, you know, ecosystem. I mean, to me it's just as important as the frontline pieces of even identity. And so you see those markets exploding. I think it's, there's a latent value that's building in companies like Veeam that are a key part of those that data protection layer you think about you know, defense strategies. It's not just you, the frontline it's maybe it's airstrikes, maybe it's, you know, C etcetera. And I see that this market is actually a huge opportunity for for organizations like yours. >> I think you're right. And I think the proof is in, you know in the pudding, in terms of how this company has grown and what we've delivered in version 11 of our suite, including, you know features like continuous data protection, we talked about that reliable ransomware protection support for AWS S3 Glacier and Azure archive the expanded incident recovery, and then support for disaster recovery and backup as a service. You know, what I found most interesting in my year here at Veeam is just how much our administrators the administrators in our company and our customers companies that are managing backups absolutely love our products that ease of use the instant backup capabilities and the support they receive from Veeam. It's almost cultish in terms of how our customers are using these products to defend themselves in today's pretty intense cyber threat environment. >> Well, and you talked about the NIST framework, and again big part of that is recovery, because we talked about earlier about, do you pay the ransom or not? Well, to the extent that I can actually recover from having all my data encrypted then I've got obviously a lot more leverage and in many ways, I mean, let's face it. We all know that it's not a matter of if it's, when you get infiltrated. And so to the extent that I can actually have systems that allow me to recover, I'm now in a much much stronger position in many respects, you know and CISOs again, will tell you this that's where we're shifting our investments >> Right. And you've got to do all of them. It's not just there's no silver bullet, but but that seems to me to be just a a misunderstood and undervalued part of the equation. And I think there's tremendous upside there for companies like yours. >> I think you're right. I think what I'll just add to that is the power of immutability, right? Just verifiably ensuring that your data has not changed because oftentimes you'll have attackers in these low and slow live off the land types of attacks change your data and affect its integrity with the Veeam suite of tools. You're able to provide for immutable or unchanged verifiable data and your backup strategy which is really the first step to recovery after a significant event. >> And that's key because a lot of times the hackers would go right after the backup Corpus you know, they'll sometimes start there is that all the data, you know, but if you can make that immutable and again, it, you know there's best practices there too, because, you know if you're not paying the cloud service for that immutability, if you stop paying then you lose that. So you have to be very careful about, you know how you know, who has access to that and you know what the policies are there, but again, you know you can put in, you know so a lot of this, as you know, is people in process. It's not just tech, so I'll give you the last word. I know you got to jump, but really appreciate.. >> Yeah, sure. >> You know, the only, the only thing that we didn't mention is user awareness and education. I think that is sort of the umbrella key focus principle for any successful cybersecurity program making sure your people understand, you know how to deal with phishing emails. You know, ransomware is a huge threat of our time at 90% of ransomware malware is delivered by phishing. So prepare your workforce to deal with phishing emails. And I think you'll save yourself quite a few headaches. >> It's great advice. I'm glad you mentioned that because because bad user behavior or maybe uninformed user behaviors is the more fair way to say it. It will trump good security every time. Gil, thanks so much for coming to the CUBE and and keep fighting the fight. Best of luck going forward. >> Great. Thank you, Dave. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Villante for the CUBEs continuous coverage VeeamON 2021, the virtual edition. We will be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCube. With digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS worldwide public sector. >> Hello and welcome to theCube virtual, and our coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 with special coverage of public sector. We are theCube virtual and I'm your host, Justin Warren, and today I'm joined by two people. We have Jim Richberg the CISO for Public Sector from Fortinet who comes to us from Washington DC. Jim, welcome. >> Thank you. Thank you, Justin. >> And we also have Kenny Holmes. Who's the head of worldwide Public Sector Go-to-market from Fortinet as well. And he comes to us from Chicago in Illinois. Kenny, thanks. >> Yes, thank you. Thank you, Justin. >> Gentlemen, welcome to theCube. Now this year has been pretty dramatic and for a lot of us as I'm sure you're very well aware and it's been a bit of an accelerator for people's interest in public cloud in particular for the public sector. So what have you seen, Kenny? Sorry, Jim, we'll start with you around the federal government's interest in cloud. What have you noticed in their adoption of public cloud and AWS in this year? >> So, we used to joke in the federal government in my 34 years, they'll never let a good crisis go to waste. That you can make an upside out of any situation. And as you noted, Justin this has been a dramatic accelerator to federal government's adoption of cloud. Three quarters of the agencies were already moving in the direction of the cloud and planning to spend roughly $8 billion on it this year. And that was pre COVID. And the pace certainly picked up. We had the guidance that came out of DHS, the interim guidance that facilitated abilities to let these now as of mid-March remote teleworkers connect directly to the cloud without having to connect back through their agency infrastructure. So they issued very quick guidance to say, look you got to get the job done. You got to get it done in the cloud. So they did that as a way to accelerate it in the short term. And then they put out the guidance later this year for a trusted internet connection access which had a use case that was built around again facilitating the ability to say you can connect directly to the cloud with security in that direct line stack. You no longer have to haul your data back to the enterprise edge, to the data center on-premise to then go straight out to the cloud. So the federal government said we will give you the ability to move in the direction of cloud and the agencies have been using this at scale. And that's why roughly half of the federal workforce is now working from home. And many of them are using cloud-based applications and services. So the dramatic impact on the federal government. >> Yeah, we've seen it here in Nate in my home of Australia. The federal government is very keen on that but there's other levels of government as I'm sure we're all aware. Particularly as state and even local governments. So Kenny, maybe you could give us a bit of a flavor for how does local and that more regional government have they been doing it basically the same as federal government or is there something unique to the way that they've had to adapt? >> Well, state and local governments are certainly facing the really the perfect storm of the rising demand and declining resources. The pandemic has certainly driven, a lower tax base and lower revenues. And as a result of that, we've seen adjustments in budgets, et cetera but we're also in a position uniquely where it's also driving digital innovation at the same time. So we're seeing the two of those and they don't necessarily have kind of diabolically opposed if you think about it. So, the two of those are coming together but so they're doing more with less and they're using digital transformation to get there where in the commercial world a lot of folks who've been doing digital transformation for a long time. Now, government is being more forced into doing it. And they're really embracing that from our perspective. So we've seen traditionally security be at the top of their demands from a CIO perspective and their most important initiatives. The now we're seeing digital transformation and more specifically we're seeing cloud, right be a key part of that. So, they've done things initially, obviously moving email and some of those things but today we're seeing an increasing amount of workloads that we're seeing them, move from maybe a previous provider, over to AWS et cetera. So, those are some of the things that we're seeing from our state and local perspective >> To build on Kenny's point. I think the key differentiator Justin, between the federal and the state and local experience has been the resources, the federal government with COVID. The federal government runs a deficit. We've seen the deficit balloon, federal spending is up 17 to 20%, not what it's passed out of the stimulus money but simply what government is spending at the federal level. So we are using cloud at the federal level to do more as Kenny noted, state governments and local governments because they're funded exclusively by taxes they can't run a deficit. They have had to say we need to spend smarter because we can't spend more. We can't even spend as much and oh my goodness we have to deliver more digital services at the same time. So for them it has been a matter of having to eke greater efficiencies out of every dollar which has pointed them in the direction of AWS and the cloud in a different sense. And the federal government that said there's greater efficiencies because we need our remote telework people to get the job done, state government, it's the perfect storm. And if they don't do this they're literally going to have to curtail vital services. >> Yeah and as we've seen the security challenge pretty much is the same everywhere. I mean, there's some variations in exactly one sort of threat you might have as a federal government compared to local but broadly speaking, the malware and ransomware and things of that nature is pretty much just a miasma that we have to wade through. So what does, Fortinet helping with these customers, particularly as they move to as you mentioned, they're moving a lot of things into AWS. So what is Fortinet's role there in helping customers make better use of public cloud? >> So I think one of the things that Fortinet really has brought to this equation is they really are a very broad based cybersecurity provider. The biggest problem that organizations typically have, of course, you know in the cloud, it's misconfiguration by the customer. It's not AWS that's making the mistake 99% plus of the time it's misconfiguration by the customer. So having the ability to say if you know how to do your security in an on-premise environment, and you've got controls, capabilities and settings that you're comfortable with you can migrate those intact if they work for you into your cloud environment. So the fact that we are soup to nuts, that we have things at the edge and offer that same suite of capabilities in AWS allows us to be able to tell, help the users if they've configured it right, not have to go back and start from scratch and say, well, now that I'm in AWS I need to reconfigure other than as you have to do it because it's a different platform, but if you've got the policies in place that are managing security managing risk well for your enterprise carry them forward to a different environment. >> I think Kenny is that a particular opportunity there for local government? As you mentioned that restrained resources means that it's much more difficult for them to correctly configure their environments but also to make this level of change, they have a lot of other responsibilities it's difficult to become cybersecurity experts. Is that where you see Fortinet helping a great deal in more local government. >> Yes it is one of the key areas. The best way you can think of it is the ability to do what Jim was saying in a single pane of glass. And the fact that we can do that. That's something you don't hear a lot about anymore, but Fortinet actually is one of the largest security providers in the world. Has it single pane of glass across, being able to manage your on-prem infrastructure being able to manage whether if someone's migrating away from another cloud over to AWS and being able to look at these holistically it's just a fantastic way for them to be efficient as well as around training and certifications and helping our customers to be able to take advantage of the products without additional costs or other things that I've been throwing down the gauntlet for other providers to say, hey, security shouldn't be something else that they have to invest. They're going to invest in your technology. You should provide them with the training, provide them with security awareness, sobriety with certifications around your product that should be table stakes. >> And we do see a lot of that structure of how to do this and provide that training tends to be the same regardless of where you are. Is that something that we see say to getting defined at federal government level with some of the standards and then that then sort of trickles down into more local government. Kenny, is that something that you see happening at all? Or are we seeing things defined at local government that are actually going back the other way? >> Yeah, well, compliance runs across both. I mean, there's probably more compliance on the federal side that Jim could speak to but there's certainly compliance is always a major factor. And it can't be that just we need to do one-off solutions for a particular compliance issue. It needs to be holistic as we're talking about it. If I have to pick solutions based on what and where they're protecting. And now I have to think about the compliance for those as well. That's yet another thing to think about, I don't see our customers thinking that way. They don't have the skillsets to continue to evolve that way. That's an expanded, use of what they're doing and they just don't have those resources. So they have to be able to do more with less we've talking about, and to be able to take a platform like the fabric that Fortinet it offers it really offers that to them. >> At the federal level I'm not even sure that I would characterize it as compliance and regulatory things that state local government have to do, but the National Institute of Standards and Technology NIST tends to promulgate what are considered best practices. Then your cybersecurity framework has basically been adopted globally modified by certain places. And I did too in different ways, but when NIST comes up with something like zero trust architecture, new standards are understood, the 800 Series. I'm surprised people in local government where we'll talk about 800-53 or 800-207, just like we fed geeks too. So it's really setting best practices and standards that are different from compliance but to build on Kenny's point about resources where I think Kenny has flown the other way from local government up has been in the direction of saying state and local government had been the Canary in the coal mine on saying, you have to migrate to the cloud as a way of doing more with less. So the federal government has been turning the printing press, turning the crank faster and faster that will change, and this is one where can say you're spending smarter by moving in the direction of AWS and in accelerating that growth into the cloud, because my prediction as a former intelligence analyst is probably this time next year, a lot of federal agencies will be having the discussion about how to live in a much tightened budgetary environment because we went through something called sequestration 10 years ago that made for very tight zero sum budgeting. That's going to be a coming attraction and that's going to push federal government even more, so with the saying, I got to get the data off of Graham. I've got to continue to telework, Hey, and look we can follow the best practices of state and local government in this case. >> Well, it certainly sounds like we'll be able to learn from each other and adapt it. It's not going away. We're certainly going to have cybersecurity issues for the foreseeable future, but it sounds like there's a lot of work happening and there is room for happiness about how things are generally going. So, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here and please thank you to my guest Jim Richberg and Kenny Holmes from Fortinet. You've been watching theCube virtual and our coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 with special coverage of the public sector. Make sure you check out all the rest of our coverage on your desktop laptop or phone wherever you might be. I've been your host, Justin Warren. I look forward to seeing you again soon. (soft upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is The Cube Conversation. >> Everyone welcome to this special live stream here in The Cube Studios. I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got a great panel discussion here for one hour, sponsored by Lumina PR, not sponsored but organized by Lumina PR. An authentic conversation around professionals in the news media, and communication professionals, how they can work together. As we know, pitching stories to national media takes place in the backdrop in today's market, which is on full display. The Coronavirus, racial unrest in our country and a lot of new tech challenges from companies, their role in society with their technology and of course, an election all make for important stories to be developed and reported. And we got a great panel here and the purpose is to bridge the two worlds. People trying to get news out for their companies in a way that's relevant and important for audiences. I've got a great panelists here, Gerard Baker Editor at Large with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Savitz, Associate Editor with Barron's and Brenna Goth who's a Southwest Staff Correspondent with Bloomberg Publications. Thanks for joining me today, guys, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> So we're going to break this down, we got about an hour, we're going to probably do about 40 minutes. I'd love to get your thoughts in this power panel. And you guys are on the front lines decades of experience, seeing these waves of media evolve. And now more than ever, you can't believe what's happening. You're seeing the funding of journalism really challenging at an all time high. You have stories that are super important to audiences and society really changing and we need this more than ever to have more important stories to be told. So this is really a challenge. And so I want to get your thoughts on this first segment. The challenge is around collecting the data, doing the analysis, getting the stories out, prioritizing stories in this time. So I'd love to get your thoughts. We'll start with you, Brenna, what's your thoughts on this as you're out there in Arizona. Coronavirus on the worst is one of the states there. What are your challenges? >> I would say for me, one of the challenges of the past couple months is just the the sheer influx of different types of stories we've had and the amount of news coming out. So I think one of the challenging things is a lot of times we'll get into a bit of a routine covering one story. So early on maybe the Coronavirus, and then something else will come up. So I personally have been covering some of the Coronavirus news here in Arizona and in the Southwest, as well as some of the protests we've seen with the Black Lives Matter movement. And prioritizing that is pretty difficult. And so one thing that I I've been doing is I've noticed that a lot of my routine projects or things I've been working on earlier in the year are off the table, and I'll get back to them when I have time. But for now, I feel like I'm a little bit more on breaking news almost every day in a way that I wasn't before. >> Gerard, I want to get your thoughts on this. Wall Street Journal has been since I could remember when the web hit the scene early on very digital savvy. Reporting, it's obviously, awesome as well. As you have people in sheltering in place, both journalists and the people themselves and the companies, there's an important part of the digital component. How do you see that as an opportunity and a challenge at the same time because you want to get data out there, you want to be collecting and reporting those stories? How do you see that opportunity, given the challenge that people can't meet face to face? >> First of all, thank you very much for having me. I think as we've all discovered in all fields of endeavor in the last three months, it's been quite a revelation, how much we can do without using without access to the traditional office environment. I think one of the things that Coronavirus, this crisis will have done we all agree I think is that it will have fundamentally changed the way people work. There'll be a lot more people quite a bit more working from home. They'll be a lot more remote working. Generally, there'll be a lot less travel. So on the one hand, it's been eye opening. actually how relatively easy, I use that word carefully. But how we've managed, and I think it's true of all news organizations, how we've managed surprisingly well, I think, without actually being at work. At the Wall Street Journal, we have a big office, obviously in midtown Manhattan, as well as dozens of bureaus around the world. Nobody has really been in that office since the middle of March. And yet we've put out a complete Wall Street Journal product, everything from the print edition, obviously, through every aspect of digital media, the website, all of the apps, video, everything, audio, podcasts. We've been able to do pretty well everything that we could do when we were all working in the office. So I think that will be an important lesson and that will clearly induce some change, some long term changes, I think about the way we work. That said, I'd point to two particular challenges that I think we have not properly overcome. Or if you like that we have, the two impediments, that the crisis has produced for us. One is, as you said, the absence of face to face activity, the hive process, which I think is really important. I think that a lot of the best ideas, a lot of the best, the best stories are developed through conversations between people in an office which don't necessarily we can't necessarily replicate through the online experience through this kind of event or through the Zoom meetings that we've all been doing. I think that has inhibited to some extent, some of the more creative activity that we could have done. I think the second larger problem which we all must face with this is that being essentially locked up in our homes for more than three months, which most of us has been I think accentuates a problem that is already that has been a problem in journalism for a long time, which is that journalists tend to cluster in the major metropolitan areas. I think, a couple of years ago, I read a study which said, I think that more than three quarters of journalists work for major news organizations, print, digital TV, radio, whatever, live and work in one of four major metropolises in the US. That's the New York area, the Washington DC area, the San Francisco area and the LA area. And that tends to create a very narrow worldview, unfortunately, because not enough people either come from those areas, but from outside those areas or spend enough time talking to people from outside those areas. And I think the Coronavirus has accentuated that. And I think in terms of coverage, I'm here in New York. I've been in New York continuously for three and a half months now which is quite unusual, I usually travel a lot. And so my reporting, I write columns now, mainly, but obviously I talk to people too. But the reporting, the editing that we're doing here is inevitably influenced by the experience that we've had in New York, which has obviously been, frankly, devastating. New York has been devastated by Coronavirus in a way that no where else in the country has. And I think to some extent, that does, perhaps have undue influence on the coverage. We're all locked up. We're all mindful of our own health. We're all mindful of people that we know who've gone to hospital or have been very, very sick or where we are, we are heavily influenced by our own immediate environment. And I think that has been a problem if we had been, imagine if the journalists in the country, instead of being clustered in New York and LA and San Francisco had been sort of spread over Texas and Missouri and Florida, things like that. I think you'd have a very different overall accounting of this story over the last three months. So I think it's just, it's accentuated that phenomenon in journalism, which I think we're mindful of, and which we all need to do a better job of addressing. >> It's really interesting. And I want to come back to that point around, who you're collaborating with to get this, now we have virtual ground truth, I guess, how you collaborate. But decision making around stories is, you need an open mind. And if you have this, I guess, I'll call it groupthink or clustering is interesting, now we have digital and we have virtual, it opens up the aperture but we still have the groupthink. But I want to get Eric's take first on his work environment, 'cause I know you've lived on both sides of New York and San Francisco area, as well as you've worked out in the field for agencies, as well on the other side, on the storytelling side. How has this current news environment, journalism environment impacted your view and challenges and your opportunities that you're going after the news? >> Well, so there's there's a few elements here. So one, Barron's Of course, covers the world, looks at the world through a financial lens. We cover the stock market every day. The stock market is not the center of story, but it is an important element of what's been unfolding over the last few months and the markets have been incredibly volatile, we change the way that we approach the markets. Because everything, the big stories are macro stories, huge swings in stock prices, huge swings in the price of oil, dramatic moves in almost every financial security that you can imagine. And so there's a little bit of a struggle for us as we try and shift our daily coverage to be a little more focused on the macro stories as we're still trying to tell what's happening with individual stocks and companies, but these bigger stories have changed our approach. So even if you look at say the covers of our magazine over the last few months, typically, we would do a cover on a company or an investor, that sort of thing. And now they're all big, thematic stories, because the world has changed. And world is changing how it looks at the financial markets. I think one thing that that Gerard touched on is the inability to really leave your house. I'm sitting in my little home office here, where I've been working since March, and my inability to get out and talk to people in person to have some, some interface with the companies and people that I cover, makes it tougher. You get story ideas from those interactions. I think Gerard said some of it comes from your interactions with your colleagues. But some of that also just comes from your ability to interact with sources and that is really tougher to do. It's more formalistic if you do it online. It's just not the same to be on a Zoom call as to be sitting in a Starbucks with somebody and talking about what's going on. I think the other elements of this is that there's, we have a lot of attempts, trying new things trying to reach our readers. We'll do video sessions, we'll do all sorts of other things. And it's one more layer on top of everything else is that there's a lot of demands on the time for the people who are working in journalism right now. I would say one other thing I'll touch on, John, which is, you mentioned, I did use, I worked for public communications for a while, and I do feel their pain because the ability to do any normal PR pitching for new products, new services, the kinds of things that PR people do every day is really tough. It's just really hard to get anybody's attention for those things right now. And the world is focused on these very large problems. >> Well, we'll unpack the PR comms opportunities in the next section. But I want to to just come back to this topic teased out from Gerard and Brenna when you guys were getting out as well. This virtual ground truth, ultimately, at the end of the day, you got to get the stories, you got to report them, they got to be distributed. Obviously, the Wall Street Journal is operating well, by the way, I love the Q&A video chats and what they got going on over there. So the format's are evolving and doing a good job, people are running their business. But as journalists and reporters out there, you got to get the truth and the ground truth comes from interaction. So as you have an aperture with digital, there's also groupthink on, say, Twitter and these channels. So getting in touch with the audience to have those stories. How are you collecting the data? How are you reporting? Has anything changed or shifted that you can point to because ultimately, it's virtual. You still got to get the ground truth, you still got to get the stories. Any thoughts on this point? >> I think in a way what we're seeing is in writ large actually is a problem again, another problem that I think digital journalism or the digital product digital content, if you like, actually presents for us today, which is that it's often said, I think rightly, that one of the, as successful as a lot of digital journalism has been and thank you for what you said about the Wall Street Journal. And we have done a tremendous job and by the way, one of the things that's been a striking feature of this crisis has been the rapid growth in subscriptions that we've had at the Journal. I know other news organizations have too. But we've benefited particularly from a hunger for the quality news. And we've put on an enormous number subscriptions in the last three months. So we've been very fortunate in that respect. But one of the challenges that people always say, one of the one of the drawbacks that people always draw attention to about digital content is that there's a lack of, for want of a better words, serendipity about the experience. When you used to read a newspaper, print newspapers, when may be some of us are old enough to remember, we'd get a newspaper, we'd open it up, we'd look at the front page, we look inside, we'd look at what other sections they were. And we would find things, very large number of things that we weren't particularly, we weren't looking for, we weren't expecting to, we're looking for a story about such. With the digital experience, as we know, that's a much it's a much less serendipitous experience. So you tend to a lot of search, you're looking, you find things that you tend to be looking for, and you find fewer things that, you follow particular people on social media that you have a particular interest in, you follow particular topics and have RSS feeds or whatever else you're doing. And you follow things that, you tend to find things that you were looking for. You don't find many things you weren't. What I think that the virus, the being locked up at home, again, has had a similar effect. That we, again, some of the best stories that I think anybody comes across in life, but news organizations are able to do are those stories that you know that you come across when you might have been looking for something else. You might have been working on a story about a particular company with a particular view to doing one thing and you came across somebody else. And he or she may have told you something actually really quite different and quite interesting and it took you in a different direction. That is easier to do when you're talking to people face to face, when you're actually there, when you're calling, when you're tasked with looking at a topic in the realm. When you are again, sitting at home with your phone on your computer, you tend to be more narrowly so you tend to sort of operate in lanes. And I think that we haven't had the breadth probably of journalism that I think you would get. So that's a very important you talk about data. The data that we have is obviously, we've got access broadly to the same data that we would have, the same electronically delivered data that we would have if we'd been sitting in our office. The data that I think in some ways is more interesting is the non electronically delivered data that is again, the casual conversation, the observation that you might get from being in a particular place or being with someone. The stimuli that arise from being physically in a place that you just aren't getting. And I think that is an important driver of a lot of stories. And we're missing that. >> Well, Gerard, I just want to ask real quick before I go to Brenna on her her take on this. You mentioned the serendipity and taking the stories in certain directions from the interactions. But also there's trust involved. As you build that relationship, there's trust between the parties, and that takes you down that road. How do you develop trust as you are online now? Is there a methodology or technique? Because you want to get the stories out fast, it's a speed game. But there's also the development side of it where a trust equation needs to build. What's your thoughts on that piece? Because that's where the real deeper stories come from. >> So I wasn't sure if you're asking me or Gerard. >> Gerard if he wants can answer that is the trust piece. >> I'll let the others speak to that too. Yeah, it is probably harder to... Again, most probably most people, most stories, most investigative stories, most scoops, most exclusives tend to come from people you already trust, right? So you've developed a trust with them, and they've developed a trust with you. Perhaps more importantly, they know you're going to treat the story fairly and properly. And that tends to develop over time. And I don't think that's been particularly impaired by this process. You don't need to have a physical proximity with someone in order to be able to develop that trust. My sources, I generally speak to them on the phone 99% of the time anyway, and you can still do that from home. So I don't think that's quite... Obviously, again, there are many more benefits from being able to actually physically interact with someone. But I think the level of, trust takes a long time to develop, let's be honest, too, as well. And I think you develop that trust both by developing good sources. and again, as I said, with the sources understanding that you're going to do the story well. >> Brenna, speed game is out there, you got to get stories fast. How do you balance speed and getting the stories and doing some digging into it? What's your thoughts on all this? >> I would say, every week is looking different for me these days. A lot of times there are government announcements coming out, or there are numbers coming out or something that really does require a really quick story. And so what I've been trying to do is get those stories out as quick as possible with maybe sources I already have, or really just the facts on the ground I can get quickly. And then I think in these days, too, there is a ton of room for following up on things. And some news event will come out but it sparks another idea. And that's the time to that when I'm hearing from PR people or I'm hearing from people who care about the issue, right after that first event is really useful for me to hear who else is thinking about these things and maybe ways I can go beyond the first story for something that more in depth and adds more context and provides more value to our readers. >> Awesome. Well, guys, great commentary and insight there on the current situation. The next section is with the role of PR, because it's changing. I've heard the term earned media is a term that's been kicked around. Now we're all virtual, and we're all connected. The media is all virtual. It's all earned at this point. And that's not just a journalistic thing, there's storytelling. There's new voices emerging. You got these newsletter services, audiences are moving very quickly around trying to figure out what's real. So comms folks are trying to get out there and do their job and tell a story. And sometimes that story doesn't meet the cadence of say, news and/or reporting. So let's talk about that. Eric, you brought this up. You have been on both sides. You said you feel for the folks out there who are trying to do their job. How is the job changing? And what can they do now? >> The news cycle is so ferocious at the moment that it's very difficult to insert your weigh in on something that doesn't touch on the virus or the economy or social unrest or the volatility of the financial markets. So I think there's certain kinds of things that are probably best saved for another moment in time, If you're trying to launch new products or trying to announce new services, or those things are just tougher to do right now. I think that the most interesting questions right now are, If I'm a comms person, how can I make myself and my clients a resource to media who are trying to tell stories about these things, do it in a timely way, not overreach, not try insert myself into a story that really isn't a good fit? Now, every time one of these things happen, we got inboxes full of pitches for things that are only tangentially relevant and are probably not really that helpful, either to the reporter generally or to the client of the firm that is trying to pitch an idea. But I will say on the on this at the same time that I rely on my connections to people in corporate comms every single day to make connections with companies that I cover and need to talk to. And it's a moment when almost more than ever, I need immediacy of response, accurate information access to the right people at the companies who I'm trying to cover. But it does mean you need to be I think sharper or a little more pointed a little more your thinking about why am I pitching this person this story? Because the there's no time to waste. We are working 24 hours a day is what it feels like. You don't want to be wasting people's time. >> Well, you guys you guys represent big brands in media which is phenomenal. And anyone would love to have their company mentioned obviously, in a good way, that's their goal. But the word media relations means you relate to the media. If there's no media to relate to, the roles change, and there's not enough seats at the table, so to speak. So getting a clip on in the clip book that gets sent to management, look, "We're on Bloomberg." "Great, check." But is at it? So people, this is a department that needs to do more. Is there things that they can do, that isn't just chasing, getting on your franchises stories? Because it obviously would be great if we were all on Barron's Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, but they can't always get that. They still got to do more. They got to develop the relationships. >> John, one thing I would be conscious of here is that many of our publications, it's certainly true for journalists, true for us at Barron's and it's certainly true for Bloomberg. We're all multimedia publishers. We're doing lots of things. Barron's has television show on Fox. We have a video series. We have podcasts and newsletters, and daily live audio chats and all sorts of other stuff in addition to the magazine and the website. And so part of that is trying to figure out not just the right publication, but maybe there's an opportunity to do a very particular, maybe you'd be great fit for this thing, but not that thing. And having a real understanding of what are the moving parts. And then the other part, which is always the hardest part, in a way, is truly understanding not just I want to pitch to Bloomberg, but who do I want to pitch at Bloomberg. So I might have a great story for the Wall Street Journal and maybe Gerard would care but maybe it's really somebody you heard on the street who cares or somebody who's covering a particular company. So you have to navigate that, I think effectively. And even, more so now, because we're not sitting in a newsroom. I can't go yell over to somebody who's a few desks away and suggest they take a look at something. >> Do you think that the comm-- (talk over each other) Do you think the comms teams are savvy and literate in multimedia? Are they still stuck in the print ways or the group swing is they're used to what they're doing and haven't evolved? Is that something that you're seeing here? >> I think it varies. Some people will really get it. I think one of the things that that this comes back to in a sense is it's relationship driven. To Gerard's point, it's not so much about trusting people that I don't know, it's about I've been at this a long time, I know what people I know, who I trust, and they know the things I'm interested in and so that relationship is really important. It's a lot harder to try that with somebody new. And the other thing is, I think relevant here is something that we touched on earlier, which is the idiosyncratic element. The ability for me to go out and see new things is tougher. In the technology business, you could spend half your time just going to events, You could go to the conferences and trade shows and dinners and lunches and coffees all day long. And you would get a lot of good story ideas that way. And now you can't do any of that. >> There's no digital hallway. There are out there. It's called Twitter, I guess or-- >> Well, you're doing it from sitting in this very I'm still doing it from sitting in the same chair, having conversations, in some ways like that. But it's not nearly the same. >> Gerard, Brenna, what do you guys think about the comms opportunity, challenges, either whether it's directly or indirectly, things that they could do differently? Share your thoughts. Gerard, we'll start with you? >> Well, I would echo Eric's point as far as knowing who you're pitching to. And I would say that in, at least for the people I'm working with, some of our beats have changed because there are new issues to cover. Someone's taking more of a role covering virus coverage, someone's taking more of a role covering protests. And so I think knowing instead of casting a really wide net, I'm normally happy to try to direct pitches in the right direction. But I do have less time to do that now. So I think if someone can come to me and say, "I know you've been covering this, "this is how my content fits in with that." It'd grab my attention more and makes it easier for me. So I would say that that is one thing that as beats are shifting and people are taking on a little bit of new roles in our coverage, that that's something PR and marketing teams could definitely keep an eye on. >> I agree with all of that. And all everything everybody said. I'd say two very quick things. One, exactly as everybody said, really know who you are pitching to. It's partly just, it's going to be much more effective if you're pitching to the right person, the right story. But when I say that also make the extra effort to familiarize yourself with the work that that reporter or that editor has done. You cannot, I'm sorry to say, overestimate the vanity of reporters or editors or anybody. And so if you're pitching a story to a particular reporter, in a field, make sure you're familiar with what that person may have done and say to her, "I really thought you did a great job "on the reporting that you did on this." Or, "I read your really interesting piece about that," or "I listened to your podcast." It's a relatively easy thing to do that yields extraordinarily well. A, because it appeals to anybody's fantasy and we all have a little bit of that. But, B, it also suggests to the reporter or the editor or the person involved the PR person communications person pitching them, really knows this, has really done their work and has really actually takes this seriously. And instead of just calling, the number of emails I get, and I'm sure it's the same for the others too, or occasional calls out of the blue or LinkedIn messages. >> I love your work. I love your work. >> (voice cuts out) was technology. Well, I have a technology story for you. It's absolutely valueless. So that's the first thing, I would really emphasize that. The second thing I'd say is, especially on the specific relation to this crisis, this Coronavirus issue is it's a tricky balance to get right. On the one hand, make sure that what you're doing what you're pitching is not completely irrelevant right now. The last three months has not been a very good time to pitch a story about going out with a bunch of people to a crowded restaurant or whatever or something like that to do something. Clearly, we know that. At the same time, don't go to the other extreme and try and make every little thing you have seen every story you may have every product or service or idea that you're pitching don't make it the thing that suddenly is really important because of Coronavirus. I've seen too many of those too. People trying too hard to say, "In this time of crisis, "in this challenging time, what people really want to hear "about is "I don't know, "some new diaper "baby's diaper product that I'm developing or whatever." That's trying too hard. So there is something in the middle, which is, don't pitch the obviously irrelevant story that is just not going to get any attention through this process. >> So you're saying don't-- >> And at the same time, don't go too far in the other direction. And essentially, underestimate the reporter's intelligence 'cause that reporter can tell you, "I can see that you're trying too hard." >> So no shotgun approach, obviously, "Hey, I love your work." Okay, yeah. And then be sensitive to what you're working on not try to force an angle on you, if you're doing a story. Eric, I want to get your thoughts on the evolution of some of the prominent journalists that I've known and/or communication professionals that are taking roles in the big companies to be storytellers, or editors of large companies. I interviewed Andy Cunningham last year, who used to be With Cunningham Communications, and formerly of Apple, better in the tech space and NPR. She said, "Companies have to own their own story "and tell it and put it out there." I've seen journalists say on Facebook, "I'm working on a story of x." And then crowdsource a little inbound. Thoughts on this new role of corporations telling their own story, going direct to the consumers. >> I think to a certain extent, that's valuable. And in some ways, it's a little overrated. There are a lot of companies creating content on their websites, or they're creating their own podcasts or they're creating their own newsletter and those kinds of things. I'm not quite sure how much of that, what the consumption level is for some of those things. I think, to me, the more valuable element of telling your story is less about the form and function and it's more about being able to really tell people, explain to them why what they do matters and to whom it matters, understanding the audience that's going to want to hear your story. There are, to your point, there are quite a few journalists who have migrated to either corporate communications or being in house storytellers of one kind or another for large businesses. And there's certainly a need to figure out the right way to tell your story. I think in a funny way, this is a tougher moment for those things. Because the world is being driven by external events, by these huge global forces are what we're all focused on right now. And it makes it a lot tougher to try and steer your own story at this particular moment in time. And I think you do see it Gerard was talking about don't try and... You want to know what other people are doing. You do want to be aware of what others are writing about. But there's this tendency to want to say, "I saw you wrote a story about Peloton "and we too have a exercise story that you can, "something that's similar." >> (chuckles) A story similar to it. We have a dance video or something. People are trying to glam on to things and taking a few steps too far. But in terms of your original question, it's just tougher at the moment to control your story in that particular fashion, I think. >> Well, this brings up a good point. I want to get to Gerard's take on this because the Wall Street Journal obviously has been around for many, many decades. and it's institution in journalism. In the old days, if you weren't relevant enough to make the news, if you weren't the most important story that people cared about, the editors make that choice and you're on the front page or in a story editorially. And companies would say, "No, but I should be in there." And you'd say, "That's what advertising is for." And that's the way it seemed to work in the past. If you weren't relevant in the spirit of the decision making of important story or it needs to be communicated to the audience, there's ads for that. You can get a full page ad in the old days. Now with the new world, what's an ad, what's a story? You now have multiple omni-channels out there. So traditionally, you want to get the best, most important story that's about relevance. So companies might not have a relevant story and they're telling a boring story. There's no there, there, or they miss the story. How do you see this? 'Cause this is the blend, this is the gray area that I see. It's certainly a good story, depending on who you're talking to, the 10 people who like it. >> I think there's no question. We're in the news business, topicality matters. You're going to have a much better chance of getting your story, getting your product or service, whatever covered by the Wall Street Journal, Barron's or anywhere else for that matter, if it seems somehow news related, whether it's the virus or the unrest that we've been seeing, or it's to do with the economy. Clearly, you can have an effect. Newspapers, news organizations of all the three news organizations we represent don't just, are not just obviously completely obsessed with what happened this morning and what's going on right now. We are all digging into deeper stories, especially in the business field. Part of what we all do is actually try to get beyond the daily headlines. And so what's happening with the fortunes of a particular company. Obviously, they may be impacted by they're going to be impacted by the lockdown and Coronavirus. But they actually were doing some interesting things that they were developing over the long term, and we would like to look into that too. So again, there is a balance there. And I'm not going to pretend that if you have a really topical story about some new medical device or some new technology for dealing with this new world that we're all operating in, you're probably going to get more attention than you would if you don't have that. But I wouldn't also underestimate, the other thing is, as well as topicality, everybody's looking at the same time to be different, and every journalist wants to do something original and exclusive. And so they are looking for a good story that may be completely unrelated. In fact, I would also underestimate, I wouldn't underestimate either the desire of readers and viewers and listeners to actually have some deeper reported stories on subjects that are not directly in the news right now. So again, it's about striking the balance right. But I wouldn't say that, that there is not at all, I wouldn't say there is not a strong role for interesting stories that may not have anything to do what's going on with the news right now. >> Brenna, you want to add on your thoughts, you're in the front lines as well, Bloomberg, everyone wants to be on Bloomberg. There's Bloomberg radio. You guys got tons of media too, there's tons of stuff to do. How do they navigate? And how do you view the interactions with comms folks? >> It looks we're having a little bit of challenge with... Eric, your thoughts on comm professionals. The questions in the chats are everything's so fast paced, do you think it's less likely for reporters to respond to PR comms people who don't have interacted with you before? Or with people you haven't met before? >> It's an internal problem. I've seen data that talks about the ratio of comms people to reporters, and it's, I don't know, six or seven to one or something like that, and there are days when it feels like it's 70 to one. And so it is challenging to break through. And I think it's particularly challenging now because some of the tools you might have had, you might have said, "Can we grab coffee one day or something like that," trying to find ways to get in front of that person when you don't need them. It's a relationship business. I know this is a frustrating answer, but I think it's the right answer which is those relationships between media and comms people are most successful when they've been established over time. And so you're not getting... The spray and pray strategy doesn't really work. It's about, "Eric, I have a story that's perfect for you. "And here's why I think you you should talk to this guy." And if they really know me, there's a reasonable chance that I'll not only listen to them, but I'll at least take the call. You need to have that high degree of targeting. It is really hard to break through and people try everything. They try, the insincere version of the, "I read your story, it was great. "but here's another great story." Which maybe they read your story, maybe they didn't at least it was an attempt. Or, "if you like this company, you'll love that one." People try all these tricks to try and get get to you. I think the highest level of highest probability of success comes from the more information you have about not just what I covered yesterday, but what do I cover over time? What kinds of stories am I writing? What kinds of stories does the publication write? And also to keep the pitching tight, I was big believer when I was doing comms, you should be able to pitch stories in two sentences. And you'll know from that whether there's going to be connection or not, don't send me five or more pitches. Time is of the essence, keep it short and as targeted as possible. >> That's a good answer to Paul Bernardo's question in the chat, which is how do you do the pitch. Brenna, you're back. Can you hear us? No. Okay. We'll get back to her when she gets logged back in. Gerard, your thoughts on how to reach you. I've never met you before, if I'm a CEO or I'm a comms person, a company never heard of, how do I get your attention? If I can't have a coffee with you with COVID, how do I connect with you virtually? (talk over each other) >> Exactly as Eric said, it is about targeting, it's really about making sure you are. And again, it's, I hate to say this, but it's not that hard. If you are the comms person for a large or medium sized company or even a small company, and you've got a particular pitch you want to make, you're probably dealing in a particular field, a particular sector, business sector or whatever. Let's say it says not technology for change, let's say it's fast moving consumer goods or something like that. Bloomberg, Brenna is in an enormous organization with a huge number of journalist you deal and a great deal of specialism and quality with all kinds of sectors. The Wall Street Journal is a very large organization, we have 13, 1400 reporters, 13 to 1400 hundred journalist and staff, I should say. Barron's is a very large organization with especially a particularly strong field coverage, especially in certain sectors of business and finance. It's not that hard to find out A, who is the right person, actually the right person in those organizations who's been dealing with the story that you're trying to sell. Secondly, it's absolutely not hard to find out what they have written or broadcast or produced on in that general field in the course of the last, and again, as Eric says, going back not just over the last week or two, but over the last year or two, you can get a sense of their specialism and understand them. It's really not that hard. It's the work of an hour to go back and see who the right person is and to find out what they've done. And then to tailor the pitch that you're making to that person. And again, I say that partly, it's not purely about the vanity of the reporter, it's that the reporter will just be much more favorably inclined to deal with someone who clearly knows, frankly, not just what they're pitching, but what the journalist is doing and what he or she, in his or her daily activity is actually doing. Target it as narrowly as you can. And again, I would just echo what Eric and I think what Brenna was also saying earlier too that I'm really genuinely surprised at how many very broad pitches, again, I'm not directly in a relative role now. But I was the editor in chief of the Journal for almost six years. And even in that position, the number of extraordinarily broad pitches I get from people who clearly didn't really know who I was, who didn't know what I did, and in some cases, didn't even really know what Wall Street Journal was. If you can find that, if you actually believe that. It's not hard. It's not that hard to do that. And you will have so much more success, if you are identifying the organization, the people, the types of stories that they're interested in, it really is not that difficult to do. >> Okay, I really appreciate, first of all, great insight there. I want to get some questions from the crowd so if you're going to chat, there was a little bit of a chat hiccup in there. So it should be fixed. We're going to go to the chat for some questions for this distinguished panel. Talk about the new coffee. There's a good question here. Have you noticed news fatigue, or reader seeking out news other than COVID? If so, what news stories have you been seeing trending? In other words, are people sick and tired of COVID? Or is it still on the front pages? Is that relevant? And if not COVID, what stories are important, do you think? >> Well, I could take a brief stab at that. I think it's not just COVID per se, for us, the volatility of the stock market, the uncertainties in the current economic environment, the impact on on joblessness, these massive shifts of perceptions on urban lifestyles. There's a million elements of this that go beyond the core, what's happening with the virus story. I do think as a whole, all those things, and then you combine that with the social unrest and Black Lives Matter. And then on top of that, the pending election in the fall. There's just not a lot of room left for other stuff. And I think I would look at it a little bit differently. It's not finding stories that don't talk on those things, it's finding ways for coverage of other things whether it's entertainment. Obviously, there's a huge impact on the entertainment business. There's a huge impact on sports. There's obviously a huge impact on travel and retail and restaurants and even things like religious life and schooling. I have the done parents of a college, was about to be a college sophomore, prays every day that she can go back to school in the fall. There are lots of elements to this. And it's pretty hard to imagine I would say to Gerard's point earlier, people are looking for good stories, they're always looking for good stories on any, but trying to find topics that don't touch on any of these big trends, there's not a lot of reasons to look for those. >> I agree. Let me just give you an example. I think Eric's exactly right. It's hard to break through. I'll just give you an example, when you asked that question, I just went straight to my Wall Street Journal app on my phone. And of course, like every organization, you can look at stories by sections and by interest and by topic and by popularity. And what are the three most popular stories right now on the Wall Street Journal app? I can tell you the first one is how exactly do you catch COVID-19? I think that's been around since for about a month. The second story is cases accelerate across the United States. And the third story is New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, tell travelers from areas with virus rates to self isolate. So look, I think anecdotally, there is a sense of COVID fatigue. Well, we're all slightly tired of it. And certainly, we were probably all getting tired, or rather distressed by those terrible cases and when we've seen them really accelerate back in March and April and these awful stories of people getting sick and dying. I was COVID fatigued. But I just have to say all of the evidence we have from our data, in terms of as I said earlier, the interest in the story, the demand for what we're doing, the growth in subscriptions that we've had, and just as I said, little things like that, that I can point you at any one time, I can guarantee you that our among our top 10 most read stories, at least half of them will be COVID-19. >> I think it's safe to say general interest in that outcome of progression of that is super critical. And I think this brings up the tech angle, which we can get into a minute. But just stick with some of these questions I just want to just keep these questions flowing while we have a couple more minutes left here. In these very challenging times for journalism, do byline articles have more power to grab the editors attention in the pitching process? >> Well, I think I assume what the questioner is asking when he said byline articles is contributed. >> Yes. >> Contributed content. Barron's doesn't run a lot of contributing content that way in a very limited way. When I worked at Forbes, we used to run tons of it. I'm not a big believer that that's necessarily a great way to generate a lot of attention. You might get published in some publication, if you can get yourself onto the op ed page of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, more power to you. But I think in most cases-- >> It's the exception not the rule Exception not the rule so to speak, on the big one. >> Yeah. >> Well, this brings up the whole point about certainly on SiliconANGLE, our property, where I'm co founder and chief, we basically debate over and get so many pitches, "hey, I want to write for you, here's a contributed article." And it's essentially an advertisement. Come on, really, it's not really relevant. In some case we (talk over each other) analysts come in and and done that. But this brings up the question, we're seeing these newsletters like sub stack and these services really are funding direct journalism. So it's an interesting. if you're good enough to write Gerard, what's your take on this, you've seen this, you have a bit of experience in this. >> I think, fundamental problem here is that is people like the idea of doing by lines or contributed content, but often don't have enough to say. You can't just do, turn your marketing brochure into a piece of an 800 word with the content that that's going to be compelling or really attract any attention. I think there's a place for it, if you truly have something important to say, and if you really have something new to say, and it's not thinly disguised marketing material. Yeah, you can find a way to do that. I'm not sure I would over-rotate on that as an approach. >> No, I just briefly, again, I completely agree. At the Journal we just don't ever publish those pieces. As Eric says, you're always, everyone is always welcome to try and pitch to the op ed pages of the Journal. They're not generally going to I don't answer for them, I don't make those decisions. But I've never seen a marketing pitch run as an op ed effectively. I just think you have to know again, who you're aiming at. I'm sure it's true for Bloomberg, Barron's and the Journal, most other major news organizations are not really going to consider that. There might be organizations, there might be magazines, digital and print magazines. There might be certain trade publications that would consider that. Again, at the Journal and I'm sure most of the large news organizations, we have very strict rules about what we can publish. And how and who can get published. And it's essentially journal editorials, that journal news staff who can publish stories we don't really take byline, outside contribution. >> Given that your time is so valuable, guys, what's the biggest, best practice to get your attention? Eric, you mentioned keeping things tight and crisp. Are there certain techniques to get your attention? >> Well I'll mention just a couple of quick things. Email is better than most other channels, despite the volume. Patience is required as a result because of the volume. People do try and crawl over the transom, hit you up on LinkedIn, DM you on Twitter, there's a lot of things that people try and do. I think a very tightly crafted, highly personalized email with the right subject line is probably still the most effective way, unless it's somebody you actually, there are people who know me who know they have the right to pick up the phone and call me if they really think they have... That's a relationship that's built over time. The one thing on this I would add which I think came up a little bit before thinking about it is, you have to engage in retail PR, not not wholesale PR. The idea that you're going to spam a list of 100 people and think that that's really going to be a successful approach, it's not unless you're just making an announcement, and if you're issuing your earnings release, or you've announced a large acquisition or those things, fine, then I need to get the information. But simply sending around a very wide list is not a good strategy, in most cases, I would say probably for anyone. >> We got Brenna back, can you hear me? She's back, okay. >> I can hear you, I'm back. >> Well, let's go back to you, we missed you. Thanks for coming back in. We had a glitch on our end but appreciate it, bandwidth internet is for... Virtual is always a challenge to do live, but thank you. The trend we're just going through is how do I pitch to you? What's the best practice? How do I get your attention? Do bylines lines work? Actually, Bloomberg doesn't do that very often either as well as like the Journal. but your thoughts on folks out there who are really trying to figure out how to do a good job, how to get your attention, how to augment your role and responsibilities. What's your thoughts? >> I would say, going back to what we said a little bit before about really knowing who you're pitching to. If you know something that I've written recently that you can reference, that gets my attention. But I would also encourage people to try to think about different ways that they can be part of a story if they are looking to be mentioned in one of our articles. And what I mean by that is, maybe you are launching new products or you have a new initiative, but think about other ways that your companies relate to what's going on right now. So for instance, one thing that I'm really interested in is just the the changing nature of work in the office place itself. So maybe you know of something that's going on at a company, unlimited vacation for the first time or sabbaticals are being offered to working parents who have nowhere to send their children, or something that's unique about the current moment that we're living in. And I think that those make really good interviews. So it might not be us featuring your product or featuring exactly what your company does, but it still makes you part of the conversation. And I think it's still, it's probably valuable to the company as well to get that mention, and people may be looking into what you guys do. So I would say that something else we are really interested in right now is really looking at who we're quoting and the diversity of our sources. So that's something else I would put a plug in for PR people to be keeping an eye on, is if you're always putting up your same CEO who is maybe of a certain demographic, but you have other people in your company who you can give the opportunity to talk with the media. I'm really interested in making sure I'm using a diverse list of sources and I'm not just always calling the same person. So if you can identify people who maybe even aren't experienced with it, but they're willing to give it a try, I think that now's a really good moment to be able to get new voices in there. >> Rather than the speed dial person you go to for that vertical or that story, building out those sources. >> Exactly. >> Great, that's great insight, Everyone, great insights. And thank you for your time on this awesome panel. Love to do it again. This has been super informative. I love some of the engagement out there. And again, I think we can do more of these and get the word out. I'd like to end the panel on an uplifting note for young aspiring journalists coming out of school. Honestly, journalism programs are evolving. The landscape is changing. We're seeing a sea change. As younger generation comes out of college and master's programs in journalism, we need to tell the most important stories. Could you each take a minute to give your advice to folks either going in and coming out of school, what to be prepared for, how they can make an impact? Brenna, we'll start with you, Gerard and Eric. >> That's a big question. I would say one thing that has been been encouraging about everything going on right now as I have seen an increased hunger for information and an increased hunger for accurate information. So I do think it can obviously be disheartening to look at the furloughs and the layoffs and everything that is going on around the country. But at the same time, I think we have been able to see really big impacts from the people that are doing reporting on protests and police brutality and on responses to the virus. And so I think for young journalists, definitely take a look at the people who are doing work that you think is making a difference. And be inspired by that to keep pushing even though the market might be a little bit difficult for a while. >> I'd say two things. One, again, echoing what Brenna said, identify people that you follow or you admire or you think are making a real contribution in the field and maybe directly interact with them. I think all of us, whoever we are, always like to hear from young journalists and budding journalists. And again, similar advice to giving to the advice that we were giving about PR pitches. If you know what that person has been doing, and then contact them and follow them. And I know I've been contacted by a number of young journalists like that. The other thing I'd say is and this is more of a plea than a piece of advice. But I do think it will work in the long run, be prepared to go against the grain. I fear that too much journalism today is of the same piece. There is not a lot of intellectual diversity in what we're seeing There's a tendency to follow the herd. Goes back a little bit to what I was saying right at the opening about the fact that too many journalists, quite frankly, are clustered in the major metropolitan areas in this country and around the world. Have something distinctive and a bit different to say. I'm not suggesting you offer some crazy theory or a set of observations about the world but be prepared to... To me, the reason I went into journalism was because I was always a bit skeptical about whenever I saw something in any media, which especially one which seemed to have a huge amount of support and was repeated in all places, I always asked myself, "Is that really true? "Is that actually right? "Maybe there's an alternative to that." And that's going to make you stand out as a journalist, that's going to give you a distinctiveness. It's quite hard to do in some respects right now, because standing out from the crowd can get you into trouble. And I'm not suggesting that people should do that. Have a record of original storytelling, of reporting, of doing things perhaps that not, because look, candidly, there are probably right now in this country, 100,00 budding putative journalists who would like to go out and write about, report on Black Lives Matter and the reports on the problems of racial inequality in this country and the protests and all of that kind of stuff. The problem there is there are already 100,000 of those people who want to do that in addition to probably the 100,000 journalists who are already doing it. Find something else, find something different. have something distinctive to offer so that when attention moves on from these big stories, whether it's COVID or race or politics or the election or Donald Trump or whatever. Have something else to offer that is quite distinctive and where you have actually managed to carve out for yourself a real record as having an independent voice. >> Brenna and Gerard, great insight. Eric, take us home close us out. >> Sure. I'd say a couple things. So one is as a new, as a young journalist, I think first of all, having a variety of tools in your toolkit is super valuable. So be able to write long and write short, be able to do audio, blogs, podcast, video. If you can shoot photos and the more skills that you have, a following on social media. You want to have all of the tools in your toolkit because it is challenging to get a job and so you want to be able to be flexible enough to fill all those roles. And the truth is that a modern journalist is finding the need to do all of that. When I first started at Barron's many, many years ago, we did one thing, we did a weekly magazine. You'd have two weeks to write a story. It was very comfortable. And that's just not the way the world works anymore. So that's one element. And the other thing, I think Gerard is right. You really want to have a certain expertise if possible that makes you stand out. And the contradiction is, but you also want to have the flexibility to do lots of different stories. You want to get (voice cuts out) hold. But if you have some expertise, that is hard to find, that's really valuable. When Barron's hires we're always looking for people who have, can write well but also really understand the financial markets. And it can be challenging for us sometimes to find those people. And so I think there's, you need to go short and long. It's a barbell strategy. Have expertise, but also be flexible in both your approach and the things you're willing to cover. >> Great insight. Folks, thanks for the great commentary, great chats for the folks watching, really appreciate your valuable time. Be original, go against the grain, be skeptical, and just do a good job. I think there's a lot of opportunity. And I think the world's changing. Thanks for your time. And I hope the comms folks enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Appreciate it. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> I'm John Furrier here in the Cube for this Cube Talk was one hour power panel. Awesome conversation. Stay in chat if you want to ask more questions. We'll come back and look at those chats later. But thank you for watching. Have a nice day. (instrumental music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hello and welcome to the cube conversation here in the Palo Alto studio I'm John four host of the cube we are here at the quarantine crew of the cube having the conversations that matter the most now and sharing that with you got a great guest here Phil Quaid was the chief information security officer of Fortinet also the author of book digital bing-bang which I just found out he wrote talking about the difference cybersecurity and the physical worlds coming together and we're living that now with kovat 19 crisis were all sheltering in place Phil thank you for joining me on this cube conversation so I want to get in this quickly that I think the main top thing is that we're all sheltering in place anxiety is high but people are now becoming mainstream aware of what we all in the industry have been known for a long time role of data cybersecurity access to remote tools and we're seeing the work at home the remote situation really putting a lot of pressure on as I've been reporting what I call at scale problems and one of them is security right one of them is bandwidth we're starting to see you know the throttling of the packets people are now living with the reality like wow this is really a different environment but it's been kind of a disruption and has created crimes of opportunity for bad guys so this has been a real thing everyone's aware of it across the world this is something that's now aware on everyone's mind what's your take on this because you guys are fighting the battle and providing solutions and we're doing for a long time around security this highlights a lot of the things in the surface area called the world with what's your take on this carbon 19 orton s been advocating for architectures and strategies that allow you to defend anywhere from the edge through the core all the way up to the cloud boom so with you know high speed and integration and so all the sudden what we're seeing not just you know in the US but the world as well is that that edge is being extended in places that we just hadn't thought about or our CV that people just hadn't planned for before so many people or telecommunication able to move that edge securely out to people's homes and more remote locations and do so providing the right type of security of privacy if those communications that are coming out of those delicate ears I noticed you have a flag in the background and for the folks that might not know you spent a lot of time at the NSA government agency doing a lot of cutting-edge work I mean going back to you know really you know post 9/11 - now you're in the private sector with Fortinet so you don't really speak with the agency but you did live through a time of major transformation around Homeland Security looking at data again different physical thing you know terrorist attacks but it did bring rise to large-scale data to bring to those things so I wanted to kind of point out I saw the flag there nice nice touch there but now that you're in the private sector it's another transformation it's not a transition we're seeing a transformation and people want to do it fast and they don't want to have disruption this is a big problem what's your reaction to that yeah I think what you're reporting out that sometimes sometimes there's catalysts that cause major changes in the way you do things I think we're in one of those right now that we're already in the midst of an evolutionary trend towards more distributed workforces and as I mentioned earlier doing so with the right type of security privacy but I would think what I think the global camp in debt endemic is showing is that we're all going to be accelerating that that thing is like it's gonna be a lot less evolutionary and a little bit more faster that's what happens when you have major world events like this being 911 fortunate tragedies it causes people to think outside the box or accelerate what they're already doing I think wearing that in that world today yeah it pulls forward a lot of things that are usually on the planning side and it makes them reality I want to get your thoughts because not only are CEOs and their employees all thinking about the new work environment but the chief information security officer is people in your role have to be more aware as more things happening what's on the minds of CISOs around the world these days obviously the pandemics there what are you seeing what are some of the conversations what are some of the thought processes what specifically is going on in the of the chief information security officer yeah I think there's probably a there's probably two different two different things there's the there's the emotional side and there's the analytic side on the emotional side you might say that some Caesars are saying finally I get to show how cyber security can be in an abler of business right I can allow you to to to maintain business continuity by allowing your workers to work from home and trying sustain business and allow you to keep paying their salary is very very important to society there's a very important time to step up as the seaso and do what's helpful to sustain mission in on the practical side you say oh my goodness my job's gotten a whole lot harder because I can rely less and less on someone's physical controls that use some of the physical benefits you get from people coming inside the headquarters facility through locked doors and there's personal congress's and personal identification authentication you need to move those those same security strategies and policies and you need to move it out to this broad eggs it's gotten a lot bigger and a lot more distributed so I want to ask you around some of the things they're on cyber screws that have been elevated to the top of the list obviously with the disruption of working at home it's not like an earthquake or a tornado or hurricane or flood you know this backup and recovery for that you know kind of disaster recovery this has been an unmitigated disaster in the sense of it's been unfor casted I was talking to an IT guy he was saying well we provisioned rvv lands to be your VPNs to be 30% and now they need a hundred percent so that disruption is causing I was an under forecast so in cyber as you guys are always planning in and protecting has there been some things that have emerged that are now top of mind that are 100 percent mindshare base or new solutions or new challenges why keep quite done what we're referring to earlier is that yep any good see so or company executive is going to prepare for unexpected things to a certain degree you need it whether it be spare capacity or the ability to recover from something an act of God as you mentioned maybe a flood or tornado or hurricane stuff like that what's different now is that we have a disruption who which doesn't have an end date meaning there's a new temporal component that's been introduced that most companies just can't plan for right even the best of companies that let's say Ronald very large data centers they have backup plans where they have spare fuel to run backup generators to provide electricity to their data centers but the amount of fuel they have might only be limited to 30 days or so it's stored on-site we might think well that's pretty that's a lot of for thinking by storing that much fuel on site for to allow you to sort of work your way through a hurricane or other natural disaster what we have now is a is a worldwide crisis that doesn't have a 30-day window on it right we don't know if it's gonna be 30 days or 120 days or or you know even worse than that so what's different now is that it's not just a matter of surging in doing something with band-aids and twine or an extra 30 days what we need to do is as a community is to prepare solutions that can be enduring solutions you know I have some things that if the absent I might like to provide a little color what those types of solutions are but that that would be my main message that this isn't just a surge for 30 days this is a surge or being agile with no end in sight take a minute explain some of those solutions what are you seeing whatever specific examples and solutions that you can go deeper on there yeah so I talked earlier about the the edge meaning the place where users interact with machines and company data that edge is no longer at the desktop down the hallway it could be 10 miles 450 miles away to where anyone where I'm telling you I'm commuting crumb that means we need to push the data confidentiality things out between the headquarters and the edge you do that with things like a secure secured tunnel it's called VPNs you also need to make sure that the user identification authentication this much is a very very secure very authentic and with high integrity so you do that with multi-factor authentication there's other things that we like that that are very very practical that you do to support this new architecture and the good news is that they're available today in the good news at least with some companies there already had one foot in that world but as I mentioned earlier not all companies had yet embraced the idea of where you're going to have a large percentage of your workforce - until a community so they're not quite so they're there they're reacting quickly to to make sure this edge is better protected by identification and authentication and begins I want to get to some of those edge issues that now translate to kind of physical digital virtualization of of life but first I want to ask you around operational technology and IT OT IT these are kind of examples where you're seeing at scale problem with the pandemic being highlighted so cloud providers etc are all kind of impacted and bring solutions to the table you guys at Foot are doing large scale security is there anything around the automation side of it then you've seen emerge because all the people that are taking care of being a supplier in this new normal or this crisis certainly not normal has leveraged automation and data so this has been a fundamental value proposition that highlights what we call the DevOps movement in the cloud world but automation has become hugely available and a benefit to this can you share your insights into how automation is changing with cyber I think you up a nice question for me is it allowed me to talk about not only automation but convergence so it's let's hit automation first right we all even even pre-crisis we need to be better at leveraging automation to do things that machines do best allow people to do higher-order things whether it's unique analysis or something else with a with a more distributed workforce and perhaps fewer resources automation is more important ever to automatically detect bad things that are about to happen automatically mitigating them before they get or they get to bad you know in the cybersecurity world you use things like agile segmentation and you use like techniques called soar it's a type of security orchestration and you want to eat leverage those things very very highly in order to leverage automation to have machines circum amount of human services but you also brought up on my favorite topics which is ot graceful technology though OTS you know are the things that are used to control for the past almost a hundred years now things in the physical world like electric generators and pipes and valves and things like that often used in our critical infrastructures in my company fort net we provide solutions that secure both the IT world the traditional cyber domain but also the OT systems of the world today where safety and reliability are about most important so what we're seeing with the co19 crisis is that supply chains transportation research things like that a lot of things that depend on OT solutions for safety and reliability are much more forefront of mine so from a cybersecurity strategy perspective what you want to do of course is make sure your solutions in the IT space are well integrated with you solutions in the OT space to the so an adversary or a mistake in cause a working to the crack in causing destruction that convergence is interesting you know we were talking before you came on camera around the fact that all these events are being canceled but that really highlights the fact that the physical spaces are no longer available the so-called ot operational technologies of events is the plumbing the face-to-face conversations but everyone's trying to move to digital or virtual eyes that it's not as easy as just saying we did it here we do it there there is a convergence and some sort of translation this new there's a new roles there's new responsibilities new kinds of behaviors and decision making that goes on in the physical and digital worlds that have to then come together and get reimagined and so what's your take on all this because this is not so much about events but although that's kind of prime time problem zooming it is not the answer that's a streaming video how do you replicate the value of physical into the business value in digital it's not a one-to-one so it's quite possible that that we might look back on this event to cover 19 experience we might look back at it in five or ten years and say that was simply a foreshadowing of our of the importance of making sure that our physical environment is appropriate in private what I mean is that with the with the rapid introduction of Internet of Things technologies into the physical world we're going to have a whole lot of dependencies on the thing inconveniences tendencies inconveniences on things an instrument our physical space our door locks or automobiles paths our temperatures color height lots of things to instrument the physical space and so there's gonna be a whole lot of data that's generated in that cyber in a physical domain increasingly in the future and we're going to become dependent upon it well what happens if for whatever reason in the in the future that's massively disruptive so all of a sudden we have a massive disruption in the physical space just like we're experiencing now with open 19 so again that's why it makes sense now to start your planning now with making sure that your safety and reliability controls in the physical domain are up to the same level security and privacy as the things in your IT delete and it highlights what's the where the value is to and it's a transformation I was just reading an article around spatial economics around distance not being together it's interesting on those points you wrote a book about this I want to get your thoughts because in this cyber internet or digital or virtualization of physical to digital whether it's events or actual equipment is causing people to rethink architectures you mentioned a few of them what's the state of the art thinking around someone who has the plan for this again is in its complex it's not just creating a gateway or a physical abstraction layer of software between two worlds there's almost a blending or convergence here what's your what's your thoughts on what's the state of the art thinking on this area yeah the book that I number of a very esteemed colleagues contribute to what we said is that it's time to start treating cybersecurity like a science let's not pretend it's a dark art that we have to relearn every couple years and what what we said in the in the digital Big Bang is that humankind started flourishing once we admitted our ignorance in ultimately our ignorance in the physical world and discovered or invented you can right word the disciplines of physics and chemistry and once we recognize that our physical world was driven by those scientific disciplines we started flourishing right the scientific age led to lots of things whether it would be transportation health care or lots of other things to improve our quality of life well if you fast forward 14 billion years after that cosmic Big Bang which was driven by physics 50 years ago or so we had a digital Big Bang where there was a massive explosion of bits with the invention of the internet and what we argue in the book is that let's start treating cybersecurity like a science or the scientific principle is that we ought to write down and follow a Rousseau's with you so we can thrive in the in the in a digital Big Bang in the digital age and one more point if you don't mind what we what we noted is that the internet was invented to do two things one connect more people or machines than ever imagined in to do so in speeds that were never imagined so the in the Internet is is optimized around speed in connectivity so if that's the case it may be a fundamental premise of cybersecurity science is make sure that your cyber security solutions are optimized around those same two things that the cyber domains are optimized around speed in integration continue from there you can you can build on more and more complex scientific principles if you focus on those fundamental things and speed and integration yeah that's awesome great insight they're awesome I wanted to throw in while you had the internet history lesson down there also was interesting was a very decentralization concept how does that factor in your opinion to some of the security paradigms is that helped or hurt or is it create opportunities for more secure or does it give the act as an advantage yeah I love your questions is your it's a very informed question and you're in a give me good segue to answer the way you know it should be answer yeah the by definition the distributed nature of the Internet means it's an inherently survivable system which is a wonderful thing to have for a critical infrastructure like that if one piece goes down the hole doesn't go down it's kind of like the power grid the u.s. the u.s. electrical power grid there's too many people who say the grid will go down well that's that's just not a practical thing it's not a reality thing the grades broken up into three major grades and there's AB ulis strategies and implementations of diversification to allow the grid to fail safely so it's not catastrophic Internet's the same thing so like my nipple like I was saying before we ought to de cyber security around a similar principle that a catastrophic failure in one partner to start cybersecurity architecture should result in cascading across your whole architecture so again we need to borrow some lessons from history and I think he bring up a good one that the internet was built on survivability so our cybersecurity strategies need to be the same one of the ways you do that so that's all great theory but one of the ways you do that of course is by making your cybersecurity solutions so that they're very well integrated they connect with each other so that you know speaking in cartoon language you know if one unit can say I'm about to fail help me out and another part of your architecture can pick up a slack and give you some more robust security in that that's what a connected the integrated cyber security architecture do for you yeah it's really fascinating insight and I think resiliency and scale are two things I think are going to be a big wave is going to be added into the transformations that going on now it's it's very interesting you know Phil great conversation I could do a whole hour with you and do a fish lead a virtual panel virtualize that our own event here keynote speech thanks so much for your insight one of things I want to get your thoughts on is something that I've been really thinking a lot lately and gathering perspectives and that is on biosecurity and I say biosecurity I'm referring to covet 19 as a virus because biology involves starting a lab or some people debate all that whether it's true or not but but that's what people work on in the biology world but it spreads virally like malware and has a similar metaphor to cybersecurity so we're seeing conversation starting to happen in Washington DC in Silicon Valley and some of my circles around if biology weapon or it's a tool like open-source software could be a tool for spreading cybersecurity Trojans or other things and techniques like malware spear phishing phishing all these things are techniques that could be deployed metaphorically to viral distribution a biohazard or bio warfare if you will will it look the same and how do you defend against the next covet 19 this is what you know average Americans are seeing the impact of the economy with the shelter in place is that what happens again and how do we prevent it and so a lot of people are thinking about this what is your thoughts because it kind of feels the same way as cybersecurity you got to see it early you got to know what's going on you got to identify it you got to respond to it time to close your contain similar concepts what's your thoughts on with BIOS we don't look with all due respect to the the the bio community let me make a quick analogy to the cyber security strategy right cyber security strategy starts with we start as an attacker so I parts of my previous career I'm an authorized had the opportunity to help develop tools that are very very precisely targeted against foreign adversaries and that's a harder job than you think I mean I think the same is true of anyone of a natural-born or a custom a buyer buyer is that not just any virus has the capability to do a lot of harm to a lot of people selling it so it's it's if that doesn't mean though you can sit back and say since it's hard it'll never happen you need to take proactive measures to look for evidence of a compromise of something whether it's a cyber cyber virus or otherwise you have to actively look for that you have to harm yourself to make sure you're not susceptible to it and once you detect one you need to make sure you have a the ability to do segmentation or quarantine very rapidly very very effectively right so in the cyber security community of course the fundamental strategy is about segmentation you keep different types of things separate that don't need to interact and then if you do have a compromise not everything is compromised and then lastly if you want to gradually say bring things back up to recover you can do some with small chunks I think it's a great analogy segmentation is a good analogy to I think what the nation is trying to do right now by warranty kneeing and gradually reopening up things in in segments in actually mention earlier that some of the other techniques are very very similar you want to have good visibility of where you're at risk and then you can automatically detect and then implement some some mitigations based on that good visibility so I agree with you that it turns out that the cyber security strategies might have a whole lot in common with biohazard I address it's interesting site reliability engineers which is a term that Google coined when they built out their large-scale cloud has become a practice that kind of mindset combined with some of the things that you're saying the cyber security mindset seemed to fit this at scale problem space and I might be an alarmist but I personally believe that we've been having a digital war for many many years now and I think that you know troops aren't landing but it's certainly digital troops and I think that we as a country and a global state and global society have to start thinking about you know these kinds of things where a virus could impact the United States shut down the economy devastating impact so I think Wars can be digital and so I may be an alarmist and a conspirators but I think that you know thinking about it and talking about it might be a good thing so appreciate your insights there Phil appreciated what one other point that might be interesting a few years back I was doing some research with the National Lab and we're looking for novel of cybersecurity analytics and we hired some folks who worked in the biology the bio the biomedical community who were studying a biome fires at the time and it was in recognition that there's a lot of commonality between those who are doing cybersecurity analytics and those reviewing bio biology or biomedical type analytics in you know there was a lot of good cross fertilization between our teams and it kind of helps you bring up one more there's one more point which is what we need to do in cybersecurity in general is have more diversity of workforces right now I don't mean just the traditional but important diversities of sex or color but diversity of experiences right some of the best people I've worked with in the cyber analytics field weren't computer science trained people and that's because they came in problems differently with a different background so one of the things that's really important to our field at large and of course the company my company fort net is to massively increase the amount of cyber security training that's available to people not just the computer scientists the world and the engineers but people in other areas as well the other degree to non-greek people and with that a you know higher level of cyber security training available to a more diverse community not only can we solve the problem of numbers we don't have enough cybersecurity people but we can actually increase our ability to defend against these things I have more greater diversity of thought experience you know that's such a great point I think I just put an exclamation point on that I get that question all the time and the skills gap is should I study computer science and like actually if you can solve problems that's a good thing but really diversity about diversity is a wonderful thing in the age of unlimited compute power because traditionally diversity whether it was protocol diversity or technical diversity or you know human you know makeup that's tend to slow things down but you get higher quality so that's a generalization but you get the point diversity does bring quality and if you're doing a data science you don't want have a blind spot I'm not have enough data so yeah I think a good diverse data set is a wonderful thing you're going to a whole nother level saying bringing diversely skill sets to the table because the problems are diverse is that what you're getting at it is it's one of our I'll say our platforms that we're talking about during the during the covered nineteen crisis which is perhaps there's perhaps we could all make ourselves a little bit better by taking some time out since we're not competing taking some time out and doing a little bit more online training where you can where you can either improve your current set of cybersecurity skills of knowledge or be introduced to them for the first time and so there's one or some wonderful Fortinet training available that can allow both the brand-new folks the field or or the the intermediate level folks with you become higher level experts it's an opportunity for all of us to get better rather than spending that extra hour on the road every day why don't we take at least you know 30 of those 60 minutes or former commute time and usually do some online soccer security treaty feel final question for you great insight great conversation as the world and your friends my friends people we don't know other members of society as they start to realize that the virtualization of life is happening just in your section it's convergence what general advice would you have for someone just from a mental model or mindset standpoint to alleviate any anxiety or change it certainly will be happening so how they can better themselves in their life was it is it thinking more about the the the experiences is it more learning how would you give advice to folks out there who are gonna come out of this post pandemic certainly it's gonna be a different world we're gonna be heightened to digital and virtual but as things become virtualized how can someone take this and make a positive outcome out of all this I I think that the future the future remains bright earlier we talked about sci-fi the integration of the cyber world in the physical world that's gonna provide great opportunities to make us more efficient gives us more free time detect bad things from happening earlier and hopefully mitigating those bad things from happening earlier so a lot of things that some people might use as scare tactics right convergence and Skynet in in robotics and things like that I believe these are things that will make our lives better not worse our responsibilities though is talking about those things making sure people understand that they're coming why they're important and make sure we're putting the right security and privacy to those things as these worlds this physical world and the soccer worlds converged I think the future is bright but we still have some work to do in terms of um making sure we're doing things at very high speeds there's no delay in the cybersecurity we put on top of these applications and make sure we have very very well integrated solutions that don't cause things to become more complex make make things easier to do certainly the winds of change in the big waves with the transformations happening I guess just summarize by saying just make it a head win I mean tailwind not a headwind make it work for you at the time not against it Phil thank you so much for your insights I really appreciate this cube conversation remote interview I'm John Ford with the cube talking about cybersecurity and the fundamentals of understanding what's going on in this new virtual world that we're living in to being virtualized as we get back to work and as things start to to evolve further back to normal the at scale problems and opportunities are there and of course the key was bringing it to you here remotely from our studio I'm John Ferrier thanks for watching [Music]

>>Live from Seattle, Washington. It's the cube covering Smartsheet engage 2019 brought to you by Smartsheet. >>Welcome back everyone to Seattle, Washington. We are here at Smartsheet engaged 2019 I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost Jeff Frick. You're watching the cube. We are here with a cube alum, a cube veteran, Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and principal analyst at constellation research at at Washington DC. Thank you so much for returning to the cube. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. So we're here to talk with you about the future of work, which is a huge topic but a fascinating one. I want you to start by giving sort of a broad brush of what you see are the biggest changes right now happening in the workplace is driven by the new, the rise of digital technologies. >>Sure. I mean while it digital is infusing everything in the workplace these days, right? And so we've had the past waves of productivity tools and then mobile devices came through and then eventually augmented reality and virtual reality are going to literally change how we perceive the workplace. And then we have just everyday trends like remote working. And now people can work from anywhere, right? It's fantastic. And that's, that's really revolutionized a lot of things. There are things in 2% of the workforce per year is becoming a remote work force. Companies like ADP have a quarter of their workforce working from home, right? Accenture, same thing. They're getting rid of office space and they, they work out of their house unless there's a client site. And because you can create a, create the experience that you want. And one of the really big trends is this is this trend towards being able to shape the employee experience the way that you want to, using the tools that you prefer. >>And some people call this shadow it, other people call it innovation, right? And so that's one of the, one of the big changes. And then we have things like the gig economy, which is allowing people to build the lifestyles they want doing any kind of work they want when they want to, when they feel like it on their own terms. And that's, that's really quite exciting too. So all these, this confluence of forces all enabled them driven by technology. But it's also leading to a lot of what we call cognitive overload workers that are not lifelong learners are feeling overwhelmed by this. And that's another big challenge. >>Well, you also get this tools proliferation, which they're just not, they're just not word and, and Excel anymore. But you've got a tab open with Salesforce, you've got a tab open with Slack, you've got Gmail open, you've got docs open and you've got Smartsheet open. You might have a JIRA open. I mean, so how is that gonna sort itself out as we just kind of keep adding new tabs of apps that we have to keep up >>and we need all this technology to do better work. I mean the, these apps provide value except that it's increased in the onboarding time for workers. It's making it hard for us to train people. In some companies it's hard to retain people because they feel like they have to go to work and there's this onslaught of technologies they have to have tabs open and get their jobs done. And they do. And so we're seeing things like, you know, we're at the Smartsheet conference where, you know, how can we centralize work a little bit better, streamline it by integrating the tools and creating more focus in on what we're doing. And that's a very big trend. So my latest digital workplace trends report, we say this, we're seeing these hubs form, you know like Slack is another work hub that's become very popular inside of organizations. >>They have over 1100 application integrations that allow people to spend their time in one place and kind of work through all these other systems from one hub. So we're dealing with this complexity, you know, starting to be able to do this now, but it's early days still a big challenge. So what's a, what are you seeing now? So what's the, what is the answer then? I mean we have you just described all of these trends that are taking place that are making, making the work modern workplace so much more complex, dealing with workers who have, they're dealing with cognitive overload leaders who want more with less. What are some of the answers? What are some of the most exciting tools that you're seeing right now? We talked already about Smartsheet and Slack. We see the new digital experience platforms are emerging and low code and no code is also becoming popular. >>I'd be able to take the pieces of the applications you want and create more streamline experiences. So the CIO of Accenture, Andrew Wilson, solve his problem right away there. They're knowledge workers are just being choked by all of these tools, but yet we need the value they provide. So he began to divide up the employee experience, the 100 top moments and then he built experiences that enabled, you know, project management and onboarding and all of these key activities to be friction-free built out of their existing applications, but streamlined to just what they needed to do. And he used this as his top priority as a digital leader is to say, we've got to take as much complexity away so we can get at the values with streamlining and simplification. And we now have tools that allow that shaping to happen very quickly. It's almost reminds me of kind of the competition for Deb's right now. >>It's the competition for employees. And then we've talked a lot about the consumerization of it in mobile devices for the customer experience, but there hasn't been as much talk about leveraging that same kind of expected behavior, right? Or expected inner engagement interaction with the apps on the actual employee engagement side, which is probably as fierce of a battle as it is to get customers. Cause I think there's a lot more than 2% customers out available. But yeah, we only get 2% unemployment in the Bay area. Now it's creating effectively negative unemployment, right? Anything under 3%. So this is the challenges. Employee experience is usually low on the priority list for CEOs. They usually have analytics and cloud and cybersecurity and all these things that they have to get done that are higher priority. Yet customer experience is, is one of those priorities. But how does an employee give a good customer experience when they have a poor experience to deliver it with? Right. We're seeing you can do with talented people, is expecting to do a great job. And then give them a bunch of hard to use tools, right. Which is what's happening. So we are now finally seeing that prioritization go up a little bit because employee experience is part of delivering great customer experience and it's how you, how you create that experience to begin with. So small >>and leaders are seeing that as a priority of retaining their top people because they understand that their workers need to feel satisfied with their work life. >>Yeah. And now we have data on a lot of these things we didn't have before and I'm sure you've seen the numbers that are, most employees are disengaged at work. The majority, right between 50 and 60% depending on whose data you're looking at. That's an enormous untapped investment that workers are not performing the way that they could if they had better employee experiences. And what's disengaging is, as I mentioned, you know, giving a talented person allows you tools or allows you experience, right and expect them to do great is right. It doesn't happen. >>How much do you think AAL or excuse me, AI and machine learning will be able to offload enough of the mundane to flip the bit on how engaged they are in their job. >>Yeah, it's, it's interesting cause there's, you know, there's two sides of the coin there. Some people like a, a job that they can just kind of phone in and it's kind of rote and they can come in, they don't have to think too hard and then they can go home to their family and some people are hired on that basis. Right. Um, because that's the challenge. AI and machine learning will absolutely automate most rote work. If you look at like Adobe sensei, I was at the Adobe conference and, and they were talking about how all of these creative types, you'll have all these mundane tasks automated for them. And I could see everybody looking at each other going, I get paid to do. >>Right, right. >>So you know, it, you'll see things like robotic process automation is working. I mean, I hear anecdotes all the time from CIO is how they had, they cut like 25% out of their call center because they handed it over to the box. Right. You know, as bill processing, that's one of the, and sorting and matching bills, the invoices, it's a manual job even in today's world until very recently. So we are seeing that happen about the most rote level and it just, but it's just going to climb up from there. >>What do you see down the road though? I mean in terms of those, in terms of those employees who are raising their saying hands saying weed, I kind of want that job. I are you, are you seeing what's going to happen to those people? Are they going to have to learn new skills? Are they, are they going to be invested in by their companies? >>Well you hope so. You know, it's interesting. We see that all the big vendors now have these big education programs. Salesforce has Trailhead. SAP just announced open SAP where they giveaway massively open online courses. And you know, Microsoft has done this with Microsoft developers network way back in the day, trying to educate people. I mean you can get re-skilled for nothing for free now if you want to do it. But this is the challenges. Even though every technological revolution in the past, and it looks like this one too has totally changed the employment picture. Uh, uh, by and large it creates more jobs than we lose. And that looks like it's going to happen here. But the people who lose the jobs aren't the ones that tend to gain the jobs, the new jobs, right? Yeah. The, it's hard to take somebody who's, who's sorting bills and say, I need you to develop a new AI algorithms because that's where the next strategic jobs are going to be directing the AI to do all these things. Right. And so I think the short term is going to be dislocation and it's happening so fast that unless society, government, and enterprises really intervene that to upskill these folks, we are going to have a challenge. >>Well, we're in this really weird time too, in between, I mean, the classic one is long haul trucking, right? Which is perfect for autonomous vehicles, you know, to carry a lot of that freight and everyone pretty much agrees that's going to happen. At the same time, there's, there's a huge shortage of available truck drivers today. Uh, like there never has been. So as these weird, and again, it's probably not the best thing for a young kid to get into, right? Because it's not, doesn't have a lot great long. >>Right? Right. >>Well, and you know, you look at Uber and their stated direction is, is they want to get rid of all these drivers, right? They want it, they want self-driving taxis. And you know, we're getting close to where that might actually happen, right? Uh, and so the unskilled labor is going to be hit by far the worst. You have to become skilled labor in, in the digital economy. Uh, and so a big part of the future of work is going to be finding ways to, to get the skills into people's hands. You know, like Facebook and other large organizations don't even require a college degree. What they want people, the people that can deliver, they can take these things and create the, you know, the, the great products of the future. And so, you know, those everyone has to become a knowledge worker. >>And, and as Laird Hamilton said on the main stage today, it's the, it's the, the formula of learning to really understand when you're starting from a point of, wow, I don't know much about that. I bet. I guess I'd better learn about it. And then learning a lot about it along the way. We all have to be able to adapt and adopt those new, >>no, absolutely. Now the, uh, uh, and so w we see up-skilling and cross skilling becoming more transdisciplinary. So business people are becoming it folks now and it folks really business people, you know, we've had this business, it divide for a long time and cracks me up. I still go to big companies in the it departments using its own building. Right. But those days are going away. And now seeing that, you know, now as it people over on the business side that live there now. Right. You know, so we're seeing this kind of, this blending where digital is infusing everything and so you have to become digitally competent. Uh, and this is where we have to make that simpler. This is going back to the, you know, the, the, the digital workplace, the average user has had the number of applications they have to learn double or triple in the last just the last five years. Right. So it's a big challenge. >>So what should kids be majoring in today? What's your, >>Oh, a game design. Know the gaming industry is bigger than the movie by a large, large margin. Right. And, and that, that's where all the experience of these immersive experiences in virtual reality and augmented reality really come from. And then you can go into business. Right. You know, >>even sociology majors can design games. >>Yeah. It's just, you know, it's just get, like you said, it's, it's the poor tweeners right. That get bumped on the old and aren't necessarily in a position to take care of the new, yeah. I'll have to take care of. And unfortunately, uh, not a lot of great record of retraining today, but maybe that's going to have to be a much more significant investment because there just aren't the people to fill those positions, period. Right? Yeah. Well, and there's these big market places now you can build the career of your dreams. You'd go to Upwork or Gigster. I mean, these are big job markets where you can go and find work and do it from anywhere using a tablet you bought for $50 off Amazon. Right, right. You know, it just that most of you aren't even aware of that. They can do that. Right, right, right. >>So it's this fast changing world. Put a few bucks away for insurance and you've put a few bucks away in your 401k and you, yeah. You know, not just living off the cash plus a little bit to cover your costs, which unfortunately a lot of their, like the Uber drivers and the Lyft drivers are anyway, you know, they're not really banking that thing for building a, a career. Well, I've crawled to those platforms and it's interesting, entrepreneurial activities, very common in places like Asia, right? Where if, you know, they come here, they build businesses right away. Right. And they're used to that. So w and we lost some of that, but I think we were gave a economy is giving a lot of that back to us. We have to relearn it again, you know? Right. >>Well Deon, thank you so much for coming on the cube. It was a pleasure having you. Absolutely. Thanks. So Jeff. Thanks Rebecca. I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. Stay tuned to more of the cubes live coverage of NJ engaged 2019.