>>Mm. >>Okay. Hello, and welcome to the Cubes Coverage of the International Women in Tech Showcase featuring National Women's Day. I'm John for a host of the Cube. We have a great guest here of any theory a PJ head of aerospace and satellite for A W S A P J s Asia Pacific in Japan. Great to have you on many thanks for joining us. Talk about Space and International Women's Day. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks, John. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. >>So obviously, aerospace space satellite is an area that's growing. It's changing. AWS has made a lot of strides closure, and I had a conversation last year about this. Remember when Andy Jassy told me about this initiative to 2.5 years or so ago? It was like, Wow, that makes a lot of sense Ground station, etcetera. So it just makes a lot of sense, a lot of heavy lifting, as they say in the satellite aerospace business. So you're leading the charge over there in a p J. And you're leading women in space and beyond. Tell us what's the Storey? How did you get there? What's going on. >>Thanks, John. Uh, yes. So I need the Asia Pacific business for Clint, um, as part of Amazon Web services, you know, that we have in industry business vertical that's dedicated to looking after our space and space customers. Uh, my journey began really? Three or four years ago when I started with a W s. I was based out of Australia. Uh, and Australia had a space agency that was being literally being born. Um, and I had the great privilege of meeting the country's chief scientist. At that point. That was Dr Alan Finkel. Uh, and we're having a conversation. It was really actually an education conference. And it was focused on youth and inspiring the next generation of students. Uh, and we hit upon space. Um, and we had this conversation, and at that stage, we didn't have a dedicated industry business vertical at A W s well supported space customers as much as we did many other customers in the sector, innovative customers. And after the conversation with Dr Finkel, um, he offered to introduce me, uh, to Megan Clark, who was back back then the first CEO of the Australian Space Agency. So that's literally how my journey into space started. We had a conversation. We worked out how we could possibly support the Australian Space Agency's remit and roadmap as they started growing the industry. Uh, and then a whole industry whole vertical was set up, clinic came on board. I have now a global team of experts around me. Um, you know, they've pretty much got experience from everything creating building a satellite, launching a satellite, working out how to down link process all those amazing imagery that we see because, you know, um, contrary to what a lot of people think, Uh, space is not just technology for a galaxy far, far away. It is very much tackling complex issues on earth. Um, and transforming lives with information. Um, you know, arranges for everything from wildfire detection to saving lives. Um, smart, smart agriculture for for farmers. So the time of different things that we're doing, Um, and as part of the Asia Pacific sector, uh, my task here is really just to grow the ecosystem. Women are an important part of that. We've got some stellar women out here in region, both within the AWS team, but also in our customer and partner sectors. So it's a really interesting space to be. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of opportunities and there's an incredible amount of growth so specific, exciting space to be >>Well, I gotta say I'm super inspired by that. One of the things that we've been talking about the Cuban I was talking to my co host for many, many years has been the democratisation of digital transformation. Cloud computing and cloud scale has democratised and change and level the playing field for many. And now space, which was it's a very complex area is being I want kind of democratised. It's easier to get access. You can launch a satellite for very low cost compared to what it was before getting access to some of the technology and with open source and with software, you now have more space computing things going on that's not out of reach. So for the people watching, share your thoughts on on that dynamic and also how people can get involved because there are real world problems to solve that can be solved now. That might have been out of reach, but now it's cloud. Can you share your thoughts. >>That's right. So you're right, John. Satellites orbiting There's more and more satellites being launched every day. The sensors are becoming more sophisticated. So we're collecting huge amounts of data. Um, one of our customers to cut lab tell us that we're collecting today three million square kilometres a day. That's gonna increase to about three billion over the next five years. So we're already reaching a point where it's impossible to store, analyse and make sense of such massive amounts of data without cloud computing. So we have services which play a very critical role. You know, technologies like artificial intelligence machine learning. Help us help these customers build up products and solutions, which then allows us to generate intelligence that's serving a lot of other sectors. So it could be agriculture. It could be disaster response and recovery. Um, it could be military intelligence. I'll give you an example of something that's very relevant, and that's happening in the last couple of weeks. So we have some amazing customers. We have Max our technologies. They use a W S to store their 100 petabytes imagery library, and they have daily collection, so they're using our ground station to gather insight about a lot of changing conditions on Earth. Usually Earth observation. That's, you know, tracking water pollution, water levels of air pollution. But they're also just tracking, um, intelligence of things like military build up in certain areas. Capella space is another one of our customers who do that. So over the last couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, uh, we've been watching, uh, images that have been collected by these commercial satellites, and they've been chronicling the build up, for instance, of Russian forces on Ukraine's borders and the ongoing invasion. They're providing intelligence that was previously only available from government sources. So when you talk about the democratisation of space, high resolution satellite images are becoming more and more ridiculous. Um, I saw the other day there was, uh, Anderson Cooper, CNN and then behind him, a screenshot from Capella, which is satellite imagery, which is very visible, high resolution transparency, which gives, um, respected journalists and media organisations regular contact with intelligence, direct intelligence which can help support media storytelling and help with the general public understanding of the crisis like what's happening in Ukraine. And >>I think on that point is, people can relate to it. And if you think about other things with computer vision, technology is getting so much stronger. Also, there's also metadata involved. So one of the things that's coming out of this Ukraine situation not only is tracking movements with the satellites in real time, but also misinformation and disinformation. Um, that's another big area because you can, uh, it's not just the pictures, it's what they mean. So it's well beyond just satellite >>well, beyond just satellite. Yeah, and you know, not to focus on just a crisis that's happening at the moment. There's 100 other use cases which were helping with customers around the globe. I want to give you a couple of other examples because I really want people to be inspired by what we're doing with space technology. So right here in Singapore, I have a company called Hero Factory. Um, now they use AI based on Earth observation. They have an analytics platform that basically help authorities around the region make key decisions to drive sustainable practises. So change detection for shipping Singapore is, you know, it's lots of traffic. And so if there's oil spills, that can be detected and remedy from space. Um, crop productivity, fruit picking, um, even just crop cover around urban areas. You know, climate change is an increasing and another increasing, uh, challenges global challenge that we need to tackle and space space technology actually makes it possible 15 50% of what they call e CVS. Essential climate variables can only be measured from space. So we have companies like satellite through, uh, one of our UK customers who are measuring, um, uh, carbon emissions. And so the you know, the range of opportunities that are out there, like you said previously untouched. We've just opened up doors for all sorts of innovations to become possible. >>It totally is intoxicating. Some of the fun things you can discuss with not only the future but solving today's problems. So it's definitely next level kind of things happening with space and space talent. So this is where you start to get into the conversation like I know some people in these major technical instance here in the US as sophomore second year is getting job offers. So there's a There's a there's a space race for talent if you will, um and women talent in particular is there on the table to So how How can you share that discussion? Because inspiration is one thing. But then people want to know what to do to get in. So how do you, um how do you handle the recruiting and motivating and or working with organisations to just pipeline interest? Because space is one of the things you get addicted to. >>Yeah. So I'm a huge advocate for science, technology, engineering, math. We you know, we highlights them as a pathway into space into technology. And I truly believe the next generation of talent will contribute to the grand challenges of our time. Whether that climate change or sustainability, Um, it's gonna come from them. I think I think that now we at Amazon Web services. We have several programmes that we're working on to engage kids and especially girls to be equipped with the latest cloud skills. So one of the programmes that we're delivering this year across Singapore Australia uh, we're partnering with an organisation called the Institute for Space Science, Exploration and Technology and we're launching a programme called Mission Discovery. It's basically students get together with an astronaut, NASA researcher, technology experts and they get an opportunity to work with these amazing characters, too. Create and design their own project and then the winning project will be launched will be taken up to the International space station. So it's a combination of technology skills, problem solving, confidence building. It's a it's a whole range and that's you know, we that's for kids from 14 to about 18. But actually it, in fact, because the pipeline build is so important not just for Amazon Web services but for industry sector for the growth of the overall industry sector. Uh, there's several programmes that were involved in and they range from sophomore is like you said all the way to to high school college a number of different programmes. So in Singapore, specifically, we have something called cloud Ready with Amazon Web services. It's a very holistic clouds killing programme that's curated for students from primary school, high school fresh graduates and then even earlier careers. So we're really determined to work together closely and it the lines really well with the Singapore government's economic national agenda, um so that that's one way and and then we have a tonne of other programmes specifically designed for women. So last year we launched a programme called She Does It's a Free online training learning programme, and the idea is really to inspire professional women to consider a career in the technology industry and show them pathways, support them through that learning process, bring them on board, help drive a community spirit. And, you know, we have a lot of affinity groups within Amazon, whether that's women in tech or a lot of affinity groups catering for a very specific niches. And all of those we find, uh, really working well to encourage that pipeline development that you talk about and bring me people that I can work with to develop and build these amazing solutions. >>Well, you've got so much passion. And by the way, if you have, if you're interested in a track on women in space, would be happy to to support that on our site, send us storeys, we'll we'll get We'll get them documented so super important to get the voices out there. Um and we really believe in it. So we love that. I have to ask you as the head of a PJ for a W S uh aerospace and satellite. You've you've seen You've been on a bunch of missions in the space programmes of the technologies. Are you seeing how that's trajectory coming to today and now you mentioned new generation. What problems do you see that need to be solved for this next generation? What opportunities are out there that are new? Because you've got the lens of the past? You're managing a big part of this new growing emerging business for us. But you clearly see the future. And you know, the younger generation is going to solve these problems and take the opportunities. What? What are they? >>Yes, Sometimes I think we're leaving a lot, uh, to solve. And then other times, I think, Well, we started some of those conversations. We started those discussions and it's a combination of policy technology. We do a lot of business coaching, so it's not just it's not just about the technology. We do think about the broader picture. Um, technology is transferring. We know that technology is transforming economies. We know that the future is digital and that diverse backgrounds, perspective, skills and experiences, particularly those of women minority, the youth must be part of the design creation and the management of the future roadmaps. Um, in terms of how do I see this going? Well, it's been sort of we've had under representation of women and perhaps youth. We we just haven't taken that into consideration for for a long time now. Now that gap is slowly becoming. It's getting closer and closer to being closed. Overall, we're still underrepresented. But I take heart from the fact that if we look at an agency like the US Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre, that's a relatively young space agency in your A. I think they've got about three or 400 people working for them at this point in time, and the average age of that cohort John, is 28. Some 40% of its engineers and scientists are women. Um, this year, NASA is looking to recruit more female astronauts. Um, they're looking to recruit more people with disabilities. So in terms of changing in terms of solving those problems, whatever those problems are, we started the I guess we started the right representation mix, so it doesn't matter. Bring it on, you know, whether it is climate change or this ongoing crisis, productive. Um, global crisis around the world is going to require a lot more than just a single shot answer. And I think having diversity and having that representation, we know that it makes a difference to innovation outputs. We know that it makes a difference to productivity, growth, profit. But it's also just the right thing to do for so long. We haven't got it right, and I think if we can get this right, we will be able to solve the majority of some of the biggest things that we're looking at today. >>And the diversity of problems in the diversity of talent are two different things. But they come together because you're right. It's not about technology. It's about all fields of study sociology. It could be political science. Obviously you mentioned from the situation we have now. It could be cybersecurity. Space is highly contested. We dated long chat about that on the Last Cube interview with AWS. There's all these new new problems and so problem solving skills. You don't need to have a pedigree from Ivy League school to get into space. This is a great opportunity for anyone who can solve problems because their new No one's seen them before. >>That's exactly right. And you know, every time we go out, we have sessions with students or we're at universities. We tell them, Raise your voices. Don't be afraid to use your voice. It doesn't matter what you're studying. If you think you have something of value to say, say it. You know, by pushing your own limits, you push other people's limits, and you may just introduce something that simply hasn't been part of before. So your voice is important, and we do a lot of lot of coaching encouraging, getting people just to >>talk. >>And that in itself is a great start. I think >>you're in a very complex sector, your senior leader at AWS Amazon Web services in a really fun, exciting area, aerospace and satellite. And for the young people watching out there or who may see this video, what advice would you have for the young people who are trying to navigate through the complexities of now? Third year covid. You know, seeing all the global changes, um, seeing that massive technology acceleration with digital transformation, digitisation it's here, digital world we're in. >>It could >>be confusing. It could be weird. And so how would you talk to that person and say, Hey, it's gonna be okay? And what advice would you give? >>It is absolutely going to be okay. Look, from what I know, the next general are far more fluent in digital than I am. I mean, they speak nerd. They were born speaking nerd, so I don't have any. I can't possibly tell them what to do as far as technology is concerned because they're so gung ho about it. But I would advise them to spend time with people, explore new perspectives, understand what the other is trying to do or achieve, and investing times in a time in new relationships, people with different backgrounds and experience, they almost always have something to teach you. I mean, I am constantly learning Space tech is, um it's so complicated. Um, I can't possibly learn everything I have to buy myself just by researching and studying. I am totally reliant on my community of experts to help me learn. So my advice to the next generation kids is always always in this time in relationships. And the second thing is, don't be disheartened, You know, Um this has happened for millennia. Yes, we go up, then we come down. But there's always hope. You know, there there is always that we shape the future that we want. So there's no failure. We just have to learn to be resilient. Um, yeah, it's all a learning experience. So stay positive and chin up, because we can. We can do it. >>That's awesome. You know, when you mentioned the Ukraine in the Russian situation, you know, one of the things they did they cut the Internet off and all telecommunications and Elon Musk launched a star linked and gives them access, sending them terminals again. Just another illustration. That space can help. Um, and these in any situation, whether it's conflict or peace and so Well, I have you here, I have to ask you, what is the most important? Uh uh, storeys that are being talked about or not being talked about are both that people should pay attention to. And they look at the future of what aerospace satellite these emerging technologies can do for the world. What's your How would you kind of what are the most important things to pay attention to that either known or maybe not being talked about. >>They have been talked about John, but I'd love to see more prominent. I'd love to see more conversations about stirring the amazing work that's being done in our research communities. The research communities, you know, they work in a vast area of areas and using satellite imagery, for instance, to look at climate change across the world is efforts that are going into understanding how we tackle such a global issue. But the commercialisation that comes from the research community that's pretty slow. And and the reason it's loads because one is academics, academics churning out research papers. The linkage back into industry and industry is very, um, I guess we're always looking for how fast can it be done? And what sort of marginal profit am I gonna make for it? So there's not a lot of patients there for research that has to mature, generate outputs that you get that have a meaningful value for both sides. So, um, supporting our research communities to output some of these essential pieces of research that can Dr Impact for society as a whole, Um, maybe for industry to partner even more, I mean, and we and we do that all the time. But even more focus even more. Focus on. And I'll give you a small example last last year and it culminated this earlier this month, we signed an agreement with the ministry of With the Space Office in Singapore. Uh, so it's an MOU between AWS and the Singapore government, and we are determined to help them aligned to their national agenda around space around building an ecosystem. How do we support their space builders? What can we do to create more training pathways? What credits can we give? How do we use open datasets to support Singaporeans issues? And that could be claimed? That could be kind of change. It could be, um, productivity. Farming could be a whole range of things, but there's a lot that's happening that is not highlighted because it's not sexy specific, right? It's not the Mars mission, and it's not the next lunar mission, But these things are just as important. They're just focused more on earth rather than out there. >>Yeah, and I just said everyone speaking nerd these days are born with it, the next generations here, A lot of use cases. A lot of exciting areas. You get the big headlines, you know, the space launches, but also a lot of great research. As you mentioned, that's, uh, that people are doing amazing work, and it's now available open source. Cloud computing. All this is bringing to bear great conversation. Great inspiration. Great chatting with you. Love your enthusiasm for for the opportunity. And thanks for sharing your storey. Appreciate it. >>It's a pleasure to be with you, John. Thank you for the opportunity. Okay. >>Thanks, Manny. The women in tech showcase here, the Cube is presenting International Women's Day celebration. I'm John Ferrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Mm mm.

>> 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.

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

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly >>Oven. Welcome back to the Space and Cyber Security Symposium. 2020 I'm John for your host with the Cuban silicon angle, along with Cal Poly, representing a great session here on industry success in developing space and cybersecurity. Resource is Got a great lineup. Brigadier General Steve Hotel, whose are also known as Bucky, is Call Sign director of Space Portfolio Defense Innovation Unit. Preston Miller, chief information security officer at JPL, NASA and Major General retired Clint Crozier, director of aerospace and satellite solutions at Amazon Web services, also known as a W s. Gentlemen, thank you for for joining me today. So the purpose of this session is to spend the next hour talking about the future of workforce talent. Um, skills needed and we're gonna dig into it. And Spaces is an exciting intersection of so many awesome disciplines. It's not just get a degree, go into a track ladder up and get promoted. Do those things. It's much different now. Love to get your perspectives, each of you will have an opening statement and we will start with the Brigadier General Steve Hotel. Right? >>Thank you very much. The Defense Innovation Unit was created in 2015 by then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. To accomplish three things. One is to accelerate the adoption of commercial technology into the Department of Defense so that we can transform and keep our most relevant capabilities relevant. And also to build what we call now called the national Security Innovation Base, which is inclusive all the traditional defense companies, plus the commercial companies that may not necessarily work with focus exclusively on defense but could contribute to our national security and interesting ways. Um, this is such an exciting time Azul here from our other speakers about space on and I can't, uh I'm really excited to be here today to be able to share a little bit of our insight on the subject. >>Thank you very much. Precedent. Miller, Chief information security officer, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA, Your opening statement. >>Hey, thank you for having me. I would like to start off by providing just a little bit of context of what brings us. Brings us together to talk about this exciting topic for space workforce. Had we've seen In recent years there's been there's been a trend towards expanding our space exploration and the space systems that offer the great things that we see in today's world like GPS. Um, but a lot of that has come with some Asian infrastructure and technology, and what we're seeing as we go towards our next generation expects of inspiration is that we now want to ensure that were secured on all levels. And there's an acknowledgement that our space systems are just a susceptible to cyber attacks as our terrestrial assistance. We've seen a recent space, uh, policy Directive five come out from our administration, that that details exactly how we should be looking at the cyber principle for our space systems, and we want to prevent. We want to prevent a few things as a result of that of these principles. Spoofing and jamming of our space systems are not authorized commands being sent to those space systems, lots of positive control of our space vehicles on lots of mission data. We also acknowledge that there's a couple of frameworks we wanna adopt across the board of our space systems levers and things like our nice miss cybersecurity frameworks. eso what has been a challenge in the past adopted somebody Cyber principles in space systems, where there simply has been a skill gap in a knowledge gap. We hire our space engineers to do a few things. Very well designed space systems, the ploy space systems and engineer space systems, often cybersecurity is seen as a after thought and certainly hasn't been a line item and in any budget for our spaces in racing. Uh, in the past in recent years, the dynamic started to change. We're now now integrating cyber principles at the onset of development of these life cycle of space. Systems were also taking a hard look of how we train the next generation of engineers to be both adequate. Space engineers, space system engineers and a cyber engineers, as a result to Mrs success on DWI, also are taking a hard look at What do we mean when we talk about holistic risk management for our space assistance, Traditionally risk management and missing insurance for space systems? I've really revolved around quality control, but now, in recent years we've started to adopt principles that takes cyber risk into account, So this is a really exciting topic for me. It's something that I'm fortunate to work with and live with every day. I'm really excited to get into this discussion with my other panel members. Thank you. >>You Preston. Great insight there. Looking forward. Thio chatting further. Um, Clint Closure with a W. S now heading up. A director of aerospace and satellite Solutions, formerly Major General, Your opening statement. >>Thanks, John. I really appreciate that introduction and really appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. And thanks to Cal Poly for putting it together, you know, I can't help, but as I think to Cal Poly there on the central California coast, San Luis Obispo, California I can't help but to think back in this park quickly. I spent two years of my life as a launch squadron commander at Vandenberg Air Force Base, about an hour south of Cal Poly launching rockets, putting satellites in orbit for the national intelligence community and so some really fond memories of the Central California coast. I couldn't agree more with the theme of our symposium this week. The space and cyber security we've all come to know over the last decade. How critical spaces to the world, whether it's for national security intelligence, whether it's whether communications, maritime, agriculture, development or a whole host of other things, economic and financial transactions. But I would make the case that I think most of your listeners would agree we won't have space without cybersecurity. In other words, if we can't guaranteed cybersecurity, all those benefits that we get from space may not be there. Preston in a moment ago that all the threats that have come across in the terrestrial world, whether it be hacking or malware or ransomware or are simple network attacks, we're seeing all those migrate to space to. And so it's a really important issue that we have to pay attention to. I also want to applaud Cow Pauling. They've got some really important initiatives. The conference here, in our particular panel, is about developing the next generation of space and cyber workers, and and Cal Poly has two important programs. One is the digital transformation hub, and the other is space data solutions, both of which, I'm happy to say, are in partnership with a W. S. But these were important programs where Cal Poly looks to try to develop the next generation of space and cyber leaders. And I would encourage you if you're interested in that toe. Look up the program because that could be very valuable is well, I'm relatively new to the AWS team and I'm really happy Thio team, as John you said recently retired from the U. S. Air Force and standing up the U. S. Space force. But the reason that I mentioned that as the director of the aerospace and satellite team is again it's in perfect harmony with the theme today. You know, we've recognized that space is critically important and that cyber security is critically important and that's been a W s vision as well. In fact, a W s understands how important the space domain is and coupled with the fact that AWS is well known that at a W s security is job zero and stolen a couple of those to fax A. W. S was looking to put together a team the aerospace and satellite team that focus solely and exclusively every single day on technical innovation in space and more security for the space domain through the cloud and our offerings there. So we're really excited to reimagine agree, envision what space networks and architectures could look like when they're born on the cloud. So that's important. You know, talk about workforce here in just a moment, but but I'll give you just a quick sneak. We at AWS have also recognized the gap in the projected workforce, as Preston mentioned, Um, depending on the projection that you look at, you know, most projections tell us that the demand for highly trained cyber cyber security cloud practitioners in the future outweighs what we think is going to be the supply. And so a ws has leaned into that in a number of ways that we're gonna talk about the next segment. I know. But with our workforce transformation, where we've tried to train free of charge not just a W s workers but more importantly, our customers workers. It s a W s we obsessed over the customer. And so we've provided free training toe over 7000 people this year alone toe bring their cloud security and cyber security skills up to where they will be able to fully leverage into the new workforce. So we're really happy about that too? I'm glad Preston raised SPD five space policy Directive five. I think it's gonna have a fundamental impact on the space and cyber industry. Uh, now full disclosure with that said, You know, I'm kind of a big fan of space policy directives, ESPN, Or was the space policy directive that directed to stand up of the U. S. Space Force and I spent the last 18 months of my life as the lead planner and architect for standing up the U. S. Space force. But with that said, I think when we look back a decade from now, we're going to see that s p d five will have as much of an impact in a positive way as I think SPD for on the stand up of the space Force have already done so. So I'll leave it there, but really look forward to the dialogue and discussion. >>Thank you, gentlemen. Clint, I just wanna say thank you for all your hard work and the team and the people who were involved in standing up Space force. Um, it is totally new. It's a game changer. It's modern, is needed. And there's benefits on potential challenges and opportunities that are gonna be there, so thank you very much for doing that. I personally am excited. I know a lot of people are excited for what the space force is today and what it could become. Thank you very much. >>Yeah, Thanks. >>Okay, So >>with >>that, let me give just jump in because, you know, as you're talking about space force and cybersecurity and you spend your time at Vanderburgh launching stuff into space, that's very technical. Is operation okay? I mean, it's complex in and of itself, but if you think about like, what's going on beyond in space is a lot of commercial aspect. So I'm thinking, you know, launching stuff into space on one side of my brain and the other side of brain, I'm thinking like air travel. You know, all the logistics and the rules of the road and air traffic control and all the communications and all the technology and policy and, you >>know, landing. >>So, Major General Clint, what's your take on this? Because this is not easy. It's not just one thing that speaks to the diversity of workforce needs. What's your reaction to that? >>Yeah. I mean, your observation is right on. We're seeing a real boom in the space and aerospace industry. For all the good reasons we talked about, we're recognizing all the value space from again economic prosperity to exploration to being ableto, you know, improve agriculture and in weather and all those sorts of things that we understand from space. So what I'm really excited about is we're seeing this this blossom of space companies that we sort of referred to his new space. You know, it used to be that really only large governments like the United States and a handful of others could operate in the space domain today and largely infused because of the technological innovation that have come with Cyber and Cyrus Space and even the cloud we're seeing more and more companies, capabilities, countries, all that have the ability, you know. Even a well funded university today can put a cube sat in orbit, and Cal Poly is working on some of those too, by the way, and so it's really expanded the number of people that benefits the activity in space and again, that's why it's so critically important because we become more and more reliant and we will become more and more reliant on those capabilities that we have to protect him. It's fundamental that we do. So, >>Bucky, I want you to weigh in on this because actually, you you've flown. Uh, I got a call sign which I love interviewing people. Anyone who's a call sign is cool in my book. So, Bucky, I want you to react to that because that's outside of the technology, you know, flying in space. There's >>no >>rule. I mean, is there like a rules? I mean, what's the rules of the road? I mean, state of the right. I mean, what I mean, what what's going? What's gonna have toe happen? Okay, just logistically. >>Well, this is very important because, uh and I've I've had access thio information space derived information for most of my flying career. But the amount of information that we need operate effectively in the 21st century is much greater than Thanet has been in the past. Let me describe the environment s so you can appreciate a little bit more what our challenges are. Where, from a space perspective, we're going to see a new exponential increase in the number of systems that could be satellites. Uh, users and applications, right? And so eso we're going we're growing rapidly into an environment where it's no longer practical to just simply evolved or operate on a perimeter security model. We and with this and as I was brought up previously, we're gonna try to bring in MAWR commercial capabilities. There is a tremendous benefit with increasing the diversity of sources of information. We use it right now. The military relies very heavily on commercial SAT com. We have our military capabilities, but the commercial capabilities give us capacity that we need and we can. We can vary that over time. The same will be true for remote sensing for other broadband communications capabilities on doing other interesting effects. Also, in the modern era, we doom or operations with our friends and allies, our regional partners all around the world, in order to really improve our interoperability and have rapid exchange of information, commercial information, sources and capabilities provides the best means of doing that. So that so that the imperative is very important and what all this describes if you want to put one word on it. ISS, we're involving into ah hybrid space architectures where it's gonna be imperative that we protect the integrity of information and the cyber security of the network for the things most important to us from a national security standpoint. But we have to have the rules that that allows us to freely exchange information rapidly and in a way that that we can guarantee that the right users are getting the right information at the right. >>We're gonna come back to that on the skill set and opportunities for people driving. That's just looking. There's so much opportunity. Preston, I want you to react to this. I interviewed General Keith Alexander last year. He formerly ran Cyber Command. Um, now he's building Cyber Security Technologies, and his whole thesis is you have to share. So the question is, how do you share and lock stuff down at the same time when you have ah, multi sided marketplace in space? You know, suppliers, users, systems. This is a huge security challenge. What's your reaction to this? Because we're intersecting all these things space and cybersecurity. It's just not easy. What's your reaction? >>Absolutely, Absolutely. And what I would say in response to that first would be that security really needs to be baked into the onset of how we develop and implement and deploy our space systems. Um, there's there's always going to be the need to collect and share data across multiple entities, particularly when we're changing scientific data with our mission partners. Eso with that necessitates that we have a security view from the onset, right? We have a system spaces, and they're designed to share information across the world. How do we make sure that those, uh, those other those communication channels so secure, free from interception free from disruption? So they're really done? That necessitates of our space leaders in our cyber leaders to be joining the hip about how to secure our space systems, and the communications there in Clinton brought up a really good point of. And then I'm gonna elaborate on a little bit, just toe invite a little bit more context and talk about some the complexities and challenges we face with this advent of new space and and all of our great commercial partners coming into therefore way, that's going to present a very significant supply chain risk management problems that we have to get our hands around as well. But we have these manufacturers developing these highly specialized components for the space instruments, Um, that as it stands right now, it's very little oversight And how those things air produced, manufactured, put into the space systems communication channels that they use ports protocols that they use to communicate. And that's gonna be a significant challenge for us to get get our hands around. So again, cybersecurity being brought in. And the very onset of these development thes thes decisions in these life cycles was certainly put us in a best better position to secure that data in our in our space missions. >>Yeah, E just pick up on that. You don't mind? Preston made such a really good point there. But you have to bake security in up front, and you know there's a challenge and there's an opportunity, you know, with a lot of our systems today. It was built in a pre cyber security environment, especially our government systems that were built, you know, in many cases 10 years ago, 15 years ago are still on orbit today, and we're thankful that they are. But as we look at this new environment and we understand the threats, if we bake cybersecurity in upfront weaken balance that open application versus the risk a long as we do it up front. And you know, that's one of the reasons that our company developed what we call govcloud, which is a secure cloud, that we use thio to manage data that our customers who want to do work with the federal government or other governments or the national security apparatus. They can operate in that space with the built in and baked in cybersecurity protocols. We have a secret region that both can handle secret and top secret information for the same reasons. But when you bake security into the upfront applications, that really allows you to balance that risk between making it available and accessible in sort of an open architecture way. But being sure that it's protected through things like ITAR certifications and fed ramp, uh, another ice T certifications that we have in place. So that's just a really important point. >>Let's stay high level for a man. You mentioned a little bit of those those govcloud, which made me think about you know, the tactical edge in the military analogy, but also with space similar theater. It's just another theater and you want to stand stuff up. Whether it's communications and have facilities, you gotta do it rapidly, and you gotta do it in a very agile, secure, I high availability secure way. So it's not the old waterfall planning. You gotta be fast is different. Cloud does things different? How do you talk to the young people out there, whether it's apparent with with kids in elementary and middle school to high school, college grad level or someone in the workforce? Because there are no previous jobs, that kind of map to the needs out there because you're talking about new skills, you could be an archaeologist and be the best cyber security guru on the planet. You don't have to have that. There's no degree for what, what we're talking about here. This >>is >>the big confusion around education. I mean, you gotta you like math and you could code you can Anything who wants to comment on that? Because I think this >>is the core issue. I'll say there are more and more programs growing around that educational need, and I could talk about a few things we're doing to, but I just wanna make an observation about what you just said about the need. And how do you get kids involved and interested? Interestingly, I think it's already happening, right. The good news. We're already developing that affinity. My four year old granddaughter can walk over, pick up my iPad, turn it on. Somehow she knows my account information, gets into my account, pulls up in application, starts playing a game. All before I really even realized she had my iPad. I mean, when when kids grow up on the cloud and in technology, it creates that natural proficiency. I think what we have to do is take that natural interest and give them the skill set the tools and capabilities that go with it so that we're managing, you know, the the interest with the technical skills. >>And also, like a fast I mean, just the the hackers are getting educated. Justus fast. Steve. I mean e mean Bucky. What do you do here? You CIt's the classic. Just keep chasing skills. I mean, there are new skills. What are some of those skills? >>Why would I amplify eloquent? Just said, First of all, the, uh, you know, cyber is one of those technology areas where commercial side not not the government is really kind of leading away and does a significant amount of research and development. Ah, billions of dollars are spent every year Thio to evolve new capabilities. And a lot of those companies are, you know, operated and and in some cases, led by folks in their early twenties. So the S O. This is definitely an era and a generation that is really poised in position. Well, uh, Thio take on this challenge. There's some unique aspects to space. Once we deploy a system, uh, it will be able to give me hard to service it, and we're developing capabilities now so that we could go up and and do system upgrades. But that's not a normal thing in space that just because the the technical means isn't there yet. So having software to find capabilities, I's gonna be really paramount being able to dio unique things. The cloud is huge. The cloud is centric to this or architectural, and it's kind of funny because d o d we joke because we just discovered the cloud, you know, a couple years ago. But the club has been around for a while and, uh, and it's going to give us scalability on and the growth potential for doing amazing things with a big Data Analytics. But as Preston said, it's all for not if if we can't trust the data that we receive. And so one of the concepts for future architectures is to evolve into a zero trust model where we trust nothing. We verify and authenticate everyone. And, uh, and that's that's probably a good, uh, point of departure as we look forward into our cybersecurity for space systems into the future. >>Block everyone. Preston. Your reaction to all this gaps, skills, What's needed. I mean it Z everyone's trying to squint through this >>absolutely. And I wanna want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the space agencies and organizations that are responsible for deploying these spaces into submission. So what is gonna take in this new era on, and what do we need from the workforce to be responsive to the challenges that we're seeing? First thing that comes to mind is creating a culture of security throughout aerospace right and ensuring that Azzawi mentioned before security isn't an afterthought. It's sort of baked into our models that we deploy and our rhetoric as well, right? And because again we hire our spaces in years to do it very highly. Specialized thing for a highly specialized, uh, it's topic. Our effort, if we start to incorporate rhetorically the importance of cybersecurity two missing success and missing assurance that's going to lend itself toe having more, more prepared on more capable system engineers that will be able to respond to the threats accordingly. Traditionally, what we see in organizational models it's that there's a cyber security team that's responsible for the for the whole kit kaboodle across the entire infrastructure, from enterprise systems to specialize, specialize, space systems and then a small pocket of spaces, years that that that are really there to perform their tasks on space systems. We really need to bridge that gap. We need to think about cybersecurity holistically, the skills that are necessary for your enterprise. I t security teams need to be the same skills that we need to look for for our system engineers on the flight side. So organizationally we need we need to address that issue and approach it, um todo responsive to the challenges we see our our space systems, >>new space, new culture, new skills. One of the things I want to bring up is looking for success formulas. You know, one of the things we've been seeing in the past 10 years of doing the Cube, which is, you know, we've been called the ESPN of Tech is that there's been kind of like a game ification. I want to. I don't wanna say sports because sports is different, but you're seeing robotics clubs pop up in some schools. It's like a varsity sport you're seeing, you know, twitch and you've got gamers out there, so you're seeing fun built into it. I think Cal Poly's got some challenges going on there, and then scholarships air behind it. So it's almost as if, you know, rather than going to a private sports training to get that scholarship, that never happens. There's so many more scholarship opportunities for are not scholarship, but just job opportunities and even scholarships we've covered as part of this conference. Uh, it's a whole new world of culture. It's much different than when I grew up, which was you know, you got math, science and English. You did >>it >>and you went into your track. Anyone want to comment on this new culture? Because I do believe that there is some new patterns emerging and some best practices anyone share any? >>Yeah, I do, because as you talked about robotics clubs and that sort of things, but those were great and I'm glad those air happening. And that's generating the interest, right? The whole gaming culture generating interest Robotic generates a lot of interest. Space right has captured the American in the world attention as well, with some recent NASA activities and all for the right reasons. But it's again, it's about taking that interested in providing the right skills along the way. So I'll tell you a couple of things. We're doing it a w s that we found success with. The first one is a program called A W s Academy. And this is where we have developed a cloud, uh, program a cloud certification. This is ah, cloud curriculum, if you will, and it's free and it's ready to teach. Our experts have developed this and we're ready to report it to a two year and four year colleges that they can use is part of the curriculum free of charge. And so we're seeing some real value there. And in fact, the governor's in Utah and Arizona recently adopted this program for their two year schools statewide again, where it's already to teach curriculum built by some of the best experts in the industry s so that we can try to get that skills to the people that are interested. We have another program called A W s educate, and this is for students to. But the idea behind this is we have 12 cracks and you can get up to 50 hours of free training that lead to A W s certification, that sort of thing. And then what's really interesting about that is all of our partners around the world that have tied into this program we manage what we call it ws educate Job board. And so if you have completed this educate program now, you can go to that job board and be linked directly with companies that want people with those skills we just helped you get. And it's a perfect match in a perfect marriage there. That one other piece real quickly that we're proud of is the aws Uh restart program. And that's where people who are unemployed, underemployed or transitioning can can go online. Self paced. We have over 500 courses they can take to try to develop those initial skills and get into the industry. And that's been very popular, too, So that those air a couple of things we're really trying to lean into >>anyone else want to react. Thio that question patterns success, best practices, new culture. >>I'd like Thio. The the wonderful thing about what you just touched on is problem solving, right, And there's some very, very good methodologies that are being taught in the universities and through programs like Hacking for Defense, which is sponsored by the National Security Innovation Network, a component of the I you where I work but the But whether you're using a lien methodologies or design school principals or any other method, the thing that's wonderful right now and not just, uh, where I work at the U. The Space force is doing this is well, but we're putting the problem out there for innovators to tackle, And so, rather than be prescriptive of the solutions that we want to procure, we want we want the best minds at all levels to be able to work on the problem. Uh, look at how they can leverage other commercial solutions infrastructure partnerships, uh, Thio to come up with a solution that we can that we can rapidly employ and scale. And if it's a dual use solution or whether it's, uh, civil military or or commercial, uh, in any of the other government solutions. Uh, that's really the best win for for the nation, because that commercial capability again allows us to scale globally and share those best practices with all of our friends and allies. People who share our values >>win win to this commercial. There's a business model potential financial benefits as well. Societal impact Preston. I want to come to you, JPL, NASA. I mean, you work in one of the most awesome places and you know, to me, you know, if you said to me, Hey, John, come working JP like I'm not smart enough to go there like I mean, like, it's a pretty It's intimidating, it might seem >>share folks out there, >>they can get there. I mean, it's you can get there if you have the right skills. I mean I'm just making that up. But, I mean, it is known to be super smart And is it attainable? So share your thoughts on this new culture because you could get the skills to get there. What's your take on all this >>s a bucket. Just missing something that really resonated with me, right? It's do it your love office. So if you put on the front engineer, the first thing you're gonna try to do is pick it apart. Be innovative, be creative and ways to solve that issue. And it has been really encouraging to me to see the ground welcome support an engagement that we've seen across our system. Engineers in space. I love space partners. A tackling the problem of cyber. Now that they know the West at risk on some of these cyber security threats that that they're facing with our space systems, they definitely want to be involved. They want to take the lead. They want to figure things out. They wanna be innovative and creative in that problem solving eso jpl We're doing a few things. Thio Raise the awareness Onda create a culture of security. Andi also create cyber advocates, cybersecurity advocates across our space engineers. We host events like hacked the lad, for example, and forgive me. Take a pause to think about the worst case scenarios that could that could result from that. But it certainly invites a culture of creative problem solving. Um, this is something that that kids really enjoy that are system engineers really enjoyed being a part off. Um, it's something that's new refreshing to them. Eso we were doing things like hosting a monthly cybersecurity advocacy group. When we talk about some of the cyber landscape of our space systems and invite our engineers into the conversation, we do outweighs programs specifically designed to to capture, um, our young folks, uh, young engineers to deceive. They would be interested and show them what this type of security has to offer by ways of data Analytic, since the engineering and those have been really, really successful identifying and bringing in new talent to address the skill gaps. >>Steve, I want to ask you about the d. O. D. You mentioned some of the commercial things. How are you guys engaging the commercial to solve the space issue? Because, um, the normalization in the economy with GPS just seeing spaces impacts everybody's lives. We we know that, um, it's been talked about. And and there's many, many examples. How are you guys the D o. D. From a security standpoint and or just from an advancement innovation standpoint, engaging with commercials, commercial entities and commercial folks? >>Well, I'll throw. I'll throw a, uh, I'll throw ah, compliment to Clint because he did such an outstanding job. The space forces already oriented, uh, towards ah, commercial where it's appropriate and extending the arms. Leveraging the half works on the Space Enterprise Consortium and other tools that allow for the entrepreneurs in the space force Thio work with their counterparts in a commercial community. And you see this with the, uh, you know, leveraging space X away to, uh, small companies who are doing extraordinary things to help build space situational awareness and, uh, s So it's it's the people who make this all happen. And what we do at at the D. O. D level, uh, work at the Office of Secretary defense level is we wanna make sure that they have the right tools to be able to do that in a way that allows these commercial companies to work with in this case of a space force or with cyber command and ways that doesn't redefine that. The nature of the company we want we want We want commercial companies to have, ah, great experience working with d o d. And we want d o d toe have the similar experience working, working with a commercial community, and and we actually work interagency projects to So you're going to see, uh, General Raymond, uh, hey, just recently signed an agreement with the NASA Esa, you're gonna see interagency collaborations on space that will include commercial capabilities as well. So when we speak as one government were not. You know, we're one voice, and that's gonna be tremendous, because if you're a commercial company on you can you can develop a capability that solves problems across the entire space enterprise on the government side. How great is that, Right. That's a scaling. Your solution, gentlemen. Let >>me pick you back on that, if you don't mind. I'm really excited about that. I mentioned new space, and Bucky talked about that too. You know, I've been flying satellites for 30 years, and there was a time where you know the U. S. Government national security. We wouldn't let anybody else look at him. Touch him. Plug into, um, anything else, right. And that probably worked at the time. >>But >>the world has changed. And more >>importantly, >>um, there is commercial technology and capability available today, and there's no way the U. S government or national security that national Intel community can afford economically >>to >>fund all that investment solely anymore. We don't have the manpower to do it anymore. So we have this perfect marriage of a burgeoning industry that has capabilities and it has re sources. And it has trained manpower. And we are seeing whether it's US Space Force, whether it's the intelligence community, whether it's NASA, we're seeing that opened up to commercial providers more than I've ever seen in my career. And I can tell you the customers I work with every day in a W s. We're building an entire ecosystem now that they understand how they can plug in and participate in that, and we're just seeing growth. But more importantly, we're seeing advanced capability at cheaper cost because of that hybrid model. So that really is exciting. >>Preston. You know you mentioned earlier supply chain. I don't think I think you didn't use the word supply chain. Maybe you did. But you know about the components. Um, you start opening things up and and your what you said baking it in to the beginning, which is well known. Uh, premise. It's complicated. So take me through again, Like how this all gonna work securely because And what's needed for skill sets because, you know, you're gonna open. You got open source software, which again, that's open. We live in a free society in the United States of America, so we can't lock everything down. You got components that are gonna be built anywhere all around the world from vendors that aren't just a certified >>or maybe >>certified. Um, it's pretty crazy. So just weigh in on this key point because I think Clint has it right. And but that's gonna be solved. What's your view on this? >>Absolutely. And I think it really, really start a top, right? And if you look back, you know, across, um in this country, particularly, you take the financial industry, for example, when when that was a burgeoning industry, what had to happen to ensure that across the board. Um, you know, your your finances were protected these way. Implemented regulations from the top, right? Yeah. And same thing with our health care industry. We implemented regulations, and I believe that's the same approach we're gonna need to take with our space systems in our space >>industry >>without being too directive or prescriptive. Instance she ating a core set of principles across the board for our manufacturers of space instruments for deployment and development of space systems on for how space data and scientific data is passed back and forth. Eso really? We're gonna need to take this. Ah, holistic approach. Thio, how we address this issue with cyber security is not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very challenging, but we need to set the guard rails for exactly what goes into our space systems, how they operate and how they communicate. >>Alright, so let's tie this back to the theme, um, Steve and Clint, because this is all about workforce gaps, opportunities. Um, Steve, you mentioned software defined. You can't do break fix in space. You can't just send a technician up in the space to fix a component. You gotta be software defined. We're talking about holistic approach, about commercial talk about business model technology with software and policy. We need people to think through, like you know. What the hell are you gonna do here, right? Do you just noticed road at the side of the road to drive on? There's no rules of engagement. So what I'm seeing is certainly software Check. If you wanna have a job for the next millennial software policy who solves two problems, what does freedom looked like in space Congestion Contention and then, obviously, business model. Can you guys comment on these three areas? Do you agree? And what specific person might be studying in grad school or undergraduate or in high school saying, Hey, I'm not a techie, but they can contribute your thoughts. I'll >>start off with, uh, speak on on behalf of the government today. I would just say that as policy goes, we need to definitely make sure that we're looking towards the future. Ah, lot of our policy was established in the past under different conditions, and, uh, and if there's anything that you cannot say today is that space is the same as it was even 10 years ago. So the so It's really important that our policy evolves and recognizes that that technology is going to enable not just a new ways of doing things, but also force us to maybe change or or get rid of obsolete policies that will inhibit our ability to innovate and grow and maintain peace with with a rapid, evolving threat. The for the for the audience today, Uh, you know, you want some job assurance, cybersecurity and space it's gonna be It's gonna be an unbelievable, uh, next, uh, few decades and I couldn't think of a more exciting for people to get into because, you know, spaces Ah, harsh environment. We're gonna have a hard time just dud being able differentiate, you know, anomalies that occur just because of the environment versus something that's being hacked. And so JPL has been doing this for years on they have Cem Cem great approaches, but but this is this is gonna be important if you put humans on the moon and you're going to sustain them there. Those life support systems are gonna be using, you know, state of the art computer technology, and which means, is also vulnerable. And so eso the consequences of us not being prepared? Uh, not just from our national security standpoint, but from our space exploration and our commercial, uh, economic growth in space over the long term all gonna be hinged on this cyber security environment. >>Clint, your thoughts on this too ill to get. >>Yeah. So I certainly agree with Bucky. But you said something a moment ago that Bucky was talking about as well. But that's the idea that you know in space, you can't just reach out and touch the satellite and do maintenance on the satellite the way you can't a car or a tank or a plane or a ship or something like that. And that is true. However, right, comma, I want to point out. You know, the satellite servicing industry is starting to develop where they're looking at robotic techniques in Cape abilities to go up in services satellite on orbit. And that's very promising off course. You got to think through the security policy that goes with that, of course. But the other thing that's really exciting is with artificial intelligence and machine learning and edge computing and database analytics and all those things that right on the cloud. You may not even need to send a robotic vehicle to a satellite, right? If you can upload and download software defined, fill in the blank right, maybe even fundamentally changing the mission package or the persona, if you will, of the satellite or the spacecraft. And that's really exciting to, ah, lot >>of >>security policy that you've gotta work through. But again, the cloud just opens up so many opportunities to continue to push the boundaries. You know, on the AWS team, the aerospace and satellite team, which is, you know, the new team that I'm leading. Now our motto is to the stars through the cloud. And there are just so many exciting opportunities right for for all those capabilities that I just mentioned to the stars through the cloud >>President, your thoughts on this? >>Yes, eso won >>a >>little bit of time talking about some of the business model implications and some of the challenges that exists there. Um, in my experience, we're still working through a bit of a language barrier of how we define risk management for our space systems. Traditionally traditionally risk management models is it is very clear what poses a risk to a flight mission. Our space mission, our space system. Um, and we're still finding ways to communicate cyber risk in the same terms that are system engineers are space engineers have traditionally understood. Um, this is a bit of a qualitative versus quantitative, a language barrier. But however adopting a risk management model that includes cybersecurity, a za way to express wish risk to miss the success, I think I think it would be a very good thing is something that that we have been focused on the J. P o as we Aziz, we look at the 34 years beyond. How do >>we >>risk that gap and not only skills but communication of cyber risk and the way that our space engineers and our project engineers and a space system managers understand >>Clinton, like Thio talk about space Force because this is the most popular new thing. It's only a couple of nine months in roughly not even a year, uh, already changing involving based on some of the reporting we've done even here at this symposium and on the Internet. Um, you know, when I was growing up, you know, I wasn't there when JFK said, you know, we're gonna get to the moon. I was born in the sixties, so, you know, when I was graduating my degree, you know, Draper Labs, Lincoln Lab, JPL, their pipeline and people wasn't like a surge of job openings. Um, so this kind of this new space new space race, you know, Kennedy also said that Torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. So in a way that's happening right now with space force. A new generation is here is a digital generation. It's multi disciplinary generation. Could you take a minute and share, uh, for for our audience? And here at this symposium, um, the mission of Space Force and where you see it going because this truly is different. And I think anyone who's young e I mean, you know, if this was happening when I was in college would be like dropping everything. I'm in there, I think, cause there's so many areas thio jump into, um, it's >>intellectually challenging. >>It's intoxicating in some level. So can you share your thoughts? >>Yeah. Happy to do that. Of course. I I need to remind everybody that as a week ago I'm formally retired. So I'm not an official spokesman for US forces. But with that, you know, it said I did spend the last 18 months planning for it, designing and standing it up. And I'll tell you what's really exciting is you know, the commander of, uh, US Base Force General J. Raymond, who's the right leader at the right time. No question in my >>mind. But >>he said, I want to stand up the Space Force as the first fully digital service in the United States. Right? So he is trying >>to bake >>cloud baked cybersecurity, baked digital transformational processes and everything we did. And that was a guidance he gave us every day, every day. When we rolled in. He said, Remember, guys, I don't wanna be the same. I don't wanna be stale. I want new thinking, new capabilities and I want it all to be digital on. That's one of the reasons When we brought the first wave of people into the space force, we brought in space operations, right. People like me that flew satellites and launch rockets, we brought in cyber space experts, and we brought in intelligence experts. Those were the first three waves of people because of that, you know, perfect synergy between space and cyber and intel all wrapped in >>it. >>And so that was really, really smart. The other thing I'll say just about, you know, Kennedy's work. We're going to get to the moon. So here we are. Now we're going back to the Moon Project Artemus that NASA is working next man first woman on the moon by 2024 is the plan and >>then >>with designs to put a permanent presence on the moon and then lean off to march. So there was a lot to get excited about. I will tell you, as we were taking applications and looking at rounding out filling out the village in the U. S. Space Force, we were overwhelmed with the number of people that wanted, and that was a really, really good things. So they're off to a good start, and they're just gonna accomplishment major things. I know for sure. >>Preston, your thoughts on this new generation people out there were like I could get into this. This is a path. What's your what's your opinion on this? And what's your >>E could, uh, you so bold as to say >>that >>I feel like I'm a part of that new generation eso I grew up very much into space. Uh, looking at, um, listen to my, uh, folks I looked up to like Carl Sagan. Like like Neil Tyson. DeGrasse on did really feeling affinity for what What this country has done is for is a space program are focused on space exploration on bond. Through that, I got into our security, as it means from the military. And I just because I feel so fortunate that I could merge both of those worlds because of because of the generational, um, tailoring that we do thio promote space exploration and also the advent of cybersecurity expertise that is needed in this country. I feel like that. We are We are seeing a conversions of this too. I see a lot of young people really getting into space exploration. I see a lot of young people as well. Um uh, gravitating toward cybersecurity as a as a course of study. And to see those two worlds colliding and converse is something that's very near and dear to me. And again, I I feel like I'm a byproduct of that conversion, which is which, Really, Bothwell for space security in the future, >>we'll your great leader and inspiration. Certainly. Senior person as well. Congratulations, Steve. You know, young people motivational. I mean, get going. Get off the sidelines. Jump in Water is fine, Right? Come on in. What's your view on motivating the young workforce out there and anyone thinking about applying their skills on bringing something to the table? >>Well, look at the options today. You have civil space President represents you have military space. Uh, you have commercial space on and even, you know, in academia, the research, the potential as a as an aspiring cyber professional. All of you should be thinking about when we when we When? When we first invented the orbit, which eventually became the Internet, Uh, on Lee, we were, uh if all we had the insight to think Well, geez, you know whether the security implications 2030 years from now of this thing scaling on growing and I think was really good about today's era. Especially as Clint said, because we were building this space infrastructure with a cyber professionals at ground zero on dso the So the opportunity there is to look out into the future and say we're not just trying to secure independent her systems today and assure the free for all of of information for commerce. You know, the GPS signal, Uh, is Justus much in need of protection as anything else tied to our economy, But the would have fantastic mission. And you could do that. Uh, here on the ground. You could do it, uh, at a great companies like Amazon Web services. But you can also one of these states. Perhaps we go and be part of that contingency that goes and does the, uh, the se's oh job that that president has on the moon or on Mars and, uh, space will space will get boring within a generation or two because they'll just be seen as one continuum of everything we have here on Earth. And, uh, and that would be after our time. But in the meantime, is a very exciting place to be. And I know if I was in in my twenties, I wanna be, uh, jumping in with both feet into it. >>Yeah, great stuff. I mean, I think space is gonna be around for a long long time. It's super exciting and cybersecurity making it secure. And there's so many areas defeating on. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your awesome insight. Great panel. Um, great inspiration. Every one of you guys. Thank you very much for for sharing for the space and cybersecurity symposium. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. >>Thanks, John. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, >>I'm >>John for your host for the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering space and cybersecurity. Symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. Yeah, Lauren, Welcome to the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 put on by Cal Poly and hosted with Silicon Angle acute here in Palo Alto, California for a virtual conference. Couldn't happen in person this year. I'm John for a year. Host the intersection of space and cybersecurity. I'll see critical topics, great conversations. We got a great guest here to talk about the addressing the cybersecurity workforce gap, and we have a great guest, a feature speaker. Stewart Knox, the undersecretary with California's Labor and Workforce Development Office. Stewart Thanks for joining us today. >>Thank you so much, John. Appreciate your time today and listening to a little bit of our quandaries with making sure that we have the security that's necessary for the state of California and making sure that we have the work force that is necessary for cybersecurity in space. >>Great, I'd love to get started. I got a couple questions for you, but first take a few minutes for an opening statement to set the stage. >>Sure, realizing that in California we lead the nation in much of cybersecurity based on Department of Defense contractors within the Santa California leading the nation with over $160 billion within the industry just here in California alone and having over 800,000 bus workers. Full time employment in the state of California is paramount for us to make sure that we face, um, defense manufacturers approximate 700,000 jobs that are necessary to be filled. There's over 37,000 vacancies that we know of in California, just alone in cybersecurity. And so we look forward to making sure that California Workforce Development Agency is leading the charge to make sure that we have equity in those jobs and that we are also leading in a way that brings good jobs to California and to the people of California, a good education system that is developed in a way that those skills are necessarily met for the for the employers here in California and the nation, >>One of the exciting things about California is obviously look at Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard in the garage, storied history space. It's been a space state. Many people recognize California. You mentioned defense contractors. It's well rooted with with history, um, just breakthroughs bases, technology companies in California. And now you've got technology. This is the cybersecurity angle. Um, take >>them into >>Gets more commentary to that because that's really notable. And as the workforce changes, these two worlds are coming together, and sometimes they're in the same place. Sometimes they're not. This is super exciting and a new dynamic that's driving opportunities. Could you share, um, some color commentary on that dynamic? >>Absolutely. And you're so correct. I think in California we lead the nation in the way that we developed programs that are companies lead in the nation in so many ways around, uh, cyberspace cybersecurity, Uh, in so many different areas for which in the Silicon Valley is just, uh, such a leader in those companies are good qualified companies to do so. Obviously, one of the places we play a role is to make sure that those companies have a skilled workforce. Andi, also that the security of those, uh, systems are in place for our defense contractors onda For the theater companies, those those outlying entities that are providing such key resource is to those companies are also leading on the cutting edge for the future. Also again realizing that we need to expand our training on skills to make sure that those California companies continue to lead is just, um, a great initiative. And I think through apprenticeship training programs on By looking at our community college systems, I think that we will continue to lead the nation as we move forward. >>You know, we've had many conversations here in this symposium, virtually certainly around. The everyday life of consumer is impacted by space. You know, we get our car service Uber lyft. We have maps. We have all this technology that was born out of defense contracts and r and D that really changed generations and create a lot of great societal value. Okay, now, with space kind of on the next generation is easier to get stuff into space. The security of the systems is now gonna be not only paramount for quality of life, but defending that and the skills are needed in cybersecurity to defend that. And the gap is there. What >>can we >>do to highlight the opportunities for career paths? It used to be the day when you get a mechanical engineering degree or aerospace and you graduated. You go get a job. Not anymore. There's a variety of of of paths career wise. What can we do to highlight this career path? >>Absolutely correct. And I think it starts, you know, k through 12 system on. I know a lot of the work that you know, with this bow and other entities we're doing currently, uh, this is where we need to bring our youth into an age where they're teaching us right as we become older on the uses of technology. But it's also teaching, um, where the levels of those education can take them k through 12. But it's also looking at how the community college system links to that, and then the university system links above and beyond. But it's also engage in our employers. You know, One of the key components, obviously, is the employers player role for which we can start to develop strategies that best meet their needs quickly. I think that's one of the comments we hear the most labor agency is how we don't provide a change as fast as we should, especially in technology. You know, we buy computers today, and they're outdated. Tomorrow it's the same with the technology that's in those computers is that those students are going to be the leaders within that to really develop how those structures are in place. S O. K. Through 12 is probably primary place to start, but also continuing. That passed the K 12 system and I bring up the employers and I bring them up in a way, because many times when we've had conversations with employers around what their skills needs were and how do we develop those better? One of the pieces that of that that I think is really should be recognized that many times they recognized that they wanted a four year degree, potentially or five year, six year degree. But then, when we really looked at the skill sets, someone coming out of the community college system could meet those skill sets. And I think we need to have those conversations to make sure not that they shouldn't be continue their education. They absolutely should. Uh, but how do we get those skill sets built into this into 12 plus the two year plus the four year person? >>You know, I love the democratization of these new skills because again. There's no pattern matching because they weren't around before, right? So you gotta look at the exposure to your point K through 12 exposure. But then there's an exploration piece of whether it's community, college or whatever progression. And sometimes it's nonlinear, right? I mean, people are learning different ways, combining the exposure and the exploration. That's a big topic. Can you share your view on this because this now opens up mawr doors for people choice. You got new avenues. You got online clock and get a cloud computing degree now from Amazon and walk in and help. I could be, you know, security clearance, possibly in in college. So you know you get exposure. Is there certain things you see? Is it early on middle school? And then I'll see the exploration Those air two important concepts. Can you unpack that a little bit exposure and exploration of skills? >>Absolutely. And I think this takes place, you know, not only in in the K 12 because somebody takes place in our community colleges and universities is that that connection with those employers is such a key component that if there's a way we could build in internships where experiences what we call on the job training programs apprenticeship training pre apprenticeship training programs into a design where those students at all levels are getting an exposure to the opportunities within the Space and Cybersecurity Avenue. I think that right there alone will start to solve a problem of having 37 plus 1000 openings at any one time in California. Also, I get that there's there's a burden on employers. Thio do that, and I think that's a piece that we have to acknowledge. And I think that's where education to play a larger role That's a place we had. Labor, Workforce, Development Agency, player role With our apprenticeship training programs are pre apprenticeship training programs. I could go on all day of all of our training programs that we have within the state of California. Many of the list of your partners on this endeavor are partners with Employment Training Panel, which I used to be the director of the Brown administration of um, That program alone does incumbent worker training on DSO. That also is an exposure place where ah worker, maybe, you know, you know, use the old adage of sweeping the floors one day and potentially, you know, running a large portion of the business, you know, within years. But it's that exposure that that employee gets through training programs on band. Acknowledging those skill sets and where their opportunities are, is what's valid and important. I think that's where our students we need to play a larger role in the K 12. That's a really thio Get that pushed out there. >>It's funny here in California you're the robotics clubs in high school or like a varsity sport. You're seeing kids exposed early on with programming. But you know, this whole topic of cybersecurity in space intersection around workforce and the gaps and skills is not just for the young. Certainly the young generations gotta be exposed to the what the careers could be and what the possible jobs and societal impact and contributions what they could be. But also it's people who are already out there. You know, you have retraining re Skilling is plays an important role. I know you guys do a lot of thinking on this is the under secretary. You have to look at this because you know you don't wanna have a label old and antiquated um systems. And then a lot of them are, and they're evolving and they're being modernized by digital transformation. So what does the role of retraining and skill development these programs play? Can you share what you guys are working on in your vision for that? >>Absolutely. That's a great question. And I think that is where we play a large role, obviously in California and with Kobe, 19 is we're faced with today that we've never seen before, at least in my 27 years of running program. Similar Thio, of course, in economic development, we're having such a large number of people displaced currently that it's unprecedented with unemployment rates to where we are. We're really looking at How do we take? And we're also going to see industries not return to the level for which they stood at one point in time. Uh, you know, entertainment industries, restaurants, all the alike, uh, really looking at how do we move people from those jobs that were middle skill jobs, topper skilled jobs? But the pay points maybe weren't great, potentially, and there's an opportunity for us to skill people into jobs that are there today. It may take training, obviously, but we have dollars to do that generally, especially within our K 12 and are que 14 systems and our universities. But we really wanna look at where those skill sets are are at currently. And we want to take people from that point in time where they said today, and try to give them that exposure to your point. Earlier question is, how do we get them exposed to a system for which there are job means that pay well with benefit packages with companies that care about their employees? Because that's what our goal is. >>You know. You know, I don't know if you have some visibility on this or ah opinion, but one observation that I've had and talking to whether it's a commercial or public sector is that with co vid uh, there have been a lot of awareness of the situation. We're adequately prepared. There's, um, readiness. But as everyone kind of deals with it, they're also starting to think about what to do. Post covert as we come out of it, Ah, growth strategy for a company or someone's career, um, people starting to have that on the top of their minds So I have to ask you, Is there anything that you see that they say? Okay, certain areas, maybe not doubling down on other areas. We're gonna double down on because we've seen some best practices on a trajectory of value for coming out of co vid with, you know, well, armed skills or certain things because you because that's what a lot of people are thinking right now. It's probably cyber is I mean, how many jobs are open? So you got well, that that's kind of maybe not something double down on here are areas we see that are working. Can you share your current visibility to that dynamic? >>Absolutely. Another great question. One of the key components that we look at Labor Workforce Development Agency. And so look at industries and growth modes and ones that are in decline boats. Now Kobe has changed that greatly. We were in a growth rate for last 78 years. We saw almost every industry might miss a few. You know that we're all in growth in one way or enough, obviously, that has changed. Our landscape is completely different than we saw 67 months ago. So today we're looking at cybersecurity, obviously with 30 plus 1000 jobs cos we're looking at Defense Department contractor is obviously with federal government contracts. We were looking at the supply chains within those we're looking at. Health care, which has always been one, obviously are large one of our large entities that has has grown over the years. But it's also changed with covered 19. We're looking at the way protective equipment is manufactured in the way that that will continue to grow over time. We're looking at the service industry. I mean, it will come back, but it won't come back the way we've seen it, probably in the past, but where the opportunities that we develop programs that we're making sure that the skill sets of those folks are transferrable to other industries with one of the issues that we face constant labor and were forced moment programs is understanding that over the period of time, especially in today's world again, with technology that people skill sets way, don't see is my Parents Day that you worked at a job for 45 years and you retired out of one job. Potentially, that is, that's been gone for 25 years, but now, at the pace for which we're seeing systems change. This is going to continue to amp up. I will stay youth of today. My 12 year old nephew is in the room next door to me on a classroom right now online. And so you know, there. It's a totally different atmosphere, and he's, you know, enjoying actually being in helping learning from on all online system. I would not have been able to learn that way, but I think we do see through the K Through 12 system where we're moving, um, people's interest will change, and I think that they will start to see things in a different way than we have in the past. They were forced systems. We are an old system been around since the thirties. Some even will say prior to the thirties came out of the Great Depression in some ways, and that system we have to change the way we develop our programs are should not be constant, and it should be an evolving system. >>It's interesting a lot of the conversation between the private and public partnerships and industry. You're seeing an agile mind set where it's a growth mindset. It's also reality based mindset and certainly space kind of forces. This conversation with cyber security of being faster, faster, more relevant, more modern. You mentioned some of those points, and with co vid impact the workforce development, it's certainly going to put a lot of pressure on faster learning. And then you mentioned online learning. This has become a big thing. It's not just putting education online per se. There's new touch points. You know you got APS, you got digital. This digital transformation is also accelerating. How do you guys view the workforce development? Because it's going to be open. It's gonna be evolving. There's new data coming in, and maybe kids don't want to stare at a video conference. Is there some game aspect to it? Is there how do you integrate thes new things that are coming really fast? And it's happening kind of in real time in front of our eyes. So I love to get your thoughts on how you guys see that, because it will certainly impact their ability to compete for jobs and or to itself learn. >>I think one of the key components of California's our innovation right and So I think one of the things that we pride ourselves in California is around that, um that said, that is the piece that I think the Silicon Valley and there's many areas in California that that have done the same, um, or trying to do the same, at least in their economy, is to build in innovation. And I think that's part of the K through 12 system with our with our our state universities and our UCS is to be able to bridge that. I think that you we see that within universities, um, that really instill an innovative approach to teaching but also instill innovation within their students. I'm not sure there yet with our fully with our K 12 system. And I think that's a place that either our community colleges could be a bridge, too, as well. Eso that's one component of workforce development I think that we look at as being a key. A key piece you brought up something that's really interesting to me is when you talk about agile on day, one of the things that even in state government on this, is gonna be shocking to you. But we have not been an agile system, Aziz. Well, I think one of the things that the Newsome administration Governor Newsom's administration has brought is. And when I talk about agile systems, I actually mean agile systems. We've gone from Kobol Systems, which are old and clunky, still operating. But at the same time, we're looking at upgrading all of our systems in a way that even our technology in the state of California should be matching the technology that our great state has within our our state. So, um, there in lies. It's also challenges of finding the qualified staff that we need in the state of California for all of our systems and servers and everything that we have. Um, currently. So you know, not only are we looking at external users, users of labor, workforce development, but we're looking at internal users that the way we redevelop our systems so that we are more agile in two different ways. >>You just got me. I triggered with COBOL. I programmed in the eighties with COBOL is only one credit lab in college. Never touched it again. Thank God. But this. But this >>is the >>benefit of cloud computing. I think this is at the heart, and this is the undertone of the conference and symposium is cloud computing. You can you can actually leverage existing resource is whether there legacy systems because they are running. They're doing a great job, and they do a certain work load extremely well. Doesn't make sense to replace what does a job, but you can integrate it in this. What cloud does this is Opening up? Can mawr more and more capabilities and workloads? This is kind of the space industry is pointing to when they say we need people that can code. And that could solve data problems. Not just a computer scientist, but a large range of people. Creative, um, data, science, everything. How does California's workforce solve the needs of America's space industry? This is because it's a space state. How do you see that? Let your workforce meeting those needs. >>Yeah, I think I think it's an investment. Obviously, it's an investment on our part. It's an investment with our college partners. It's an investment from our K 12 system to make sure that that we are allocating dollars in a way through meeting the demand of industry Onda, we do look at industry specific around there needs. Obviously, there's a large one. We wanna be very receptive and work with our employers and our employee groups to make sure that we need that demand. I think it's putting our money where our mouth is and and designing and working with employer groups to make sure that the training meets their needs. Um, it's also working with our employer groups to make sure that the employees are taken care of. That equity is built within the systems, Um, that we keep people employed in California on their able to afford a home, and they're able to afford a life here in California. But it's also again, and I brought up the innovation component. I think it's building an innovation within systems for which they are employers but are also our incoming employees are incumbent workers. And you brought this up earlier. People that already employed and people that are unemployed currently with the skill set that might match up, is how do we bridge those folks into employment that they maybe have not thought about. We have a whole career network of systems out throughout the city, California with the Americans job Centers of California on day will be working, and they already are working with a lot of dislocated workers on day. One of the key components of that is to really look at how do we, um, take what their current skills that might be and then expose them to a system for which we have 37 plus 1000 job openings to Andi? How do we actually get those books employed? It's paying for potentially through those that local Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, funding for Americans job centers, um, to pay for some on the job, training it Z to be able to pay for work experiences. It's to be able to pay for internships for students, um, to get that opportunity with our employers and also partner with our employers that they're paying obviously a percentage of that, too. >>You know, one of the things I've observed over my, um, career 54 times around the sun is you know, in the old days when I was in college in school, you had career people have longer jobs, as you mentioned. Not like that anymore. But also I knew someone I'm gonna be in line to get that job, maybe nepotism or things of that nature. Now the jobs have no historical thing or someone worked longer in a job and has more seniority. Ah, >>lot of these >>jobs. Stewart don't HAVA requirements like no one's done them before. So the ability for someone who, um, is jumping in either from any college, there's no riel. It's all level set. It's like complete upside down script here. It's not like, Oh, I went to school. Therefore I get the job you could be Anyone could walk into these careers because the jobs air so new. So it's not where you came from or what school you went to or your nationality or gender. The jobs have been democratized. They're not discriminating against people with skills. So this opens up mawr. How >>do you >>see that? Because this really is an opportunity for this next generation to be more diverse and to be mawr contributed because diversity brings expertise and different perspectives. Your thoughts on that? >>Absolutely. And that was one of the things we welcome. Obviously we want to make sure that that everybody is treated equally and that the employers view everyone as employer employer of choice but an employee of choices. Well, we've also been looking at, as I mentioned before on the COVITZ situation, looking at ways that books that are maybe any stuck in jobs that are don't have a huge career pathway or they don't have a pathway out of poverty. I mean, we have a lot of working for people in the state of California, Um, that may now do to cope and lost their employment. Uh, this, you know, Let's let's turn back to the old, you know? Let's try, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. How do we take those folks and get them employed into jobs that do have a good career pathway? And it's not about just who you knew or who you might have an in with to get that job. It is based on skills, I think, though that said there we need to have a better way to actually match those jobs up with those employers. And I think those are the long, ongoing conversations with those employer groups to make sure that one that they see those skill sets is valid and important. Um, they're helping design this crew sets with us, eh? So that they do match up and that were quickly matching up those close skills. That so that we're not training people for yesterday skills. >>I think the employer angles super important, but also the educators as well. One of the things that was asked in another question by the gas they they said. She said The real question to ask is, how early do you start exposing the next generation? You mentioned K through 12. Do you have any data or insight into or intuition or best practice of where that insertion point is without exposure? Point is, is that middle school is a elementary, obviously high school. Once you're in high school, you got your training. Wheels are off, you're off to the races. But is there a best practice? What's your thoughts? Stewart On exposure level to these kinds of new cyber and technical careers? >>Sure, absolutely. I I would say kindergarten. We San Bernardino has a program that they've been running for a little bit of time, and they're exposing students K through 12 but really starting in kindergarten. One is the exposure Thio. What a job Looks like Andi actually have. I've gone down to that local area and I've had three opportunity to see you know, second graders in a health care facility, Basically that they have on campus, built in on dear going from one workstation as a second grader, Uh, looking at what those skills would be and what that job would entail from a nurse to a Dr Teoh physician's assistant in really looking at what that is. Um you know, obviously they're not getting the training that the doctor gets, but they are getting the exposure of what that would be. Andi, I think that is amazing. And I think it's the right place to start. Um, it was really interesting because I left. This was pre covet, but I jumped on the plane to come back up north. I was thinking to myself, How do we get this to all school district in California, where we see that opportunity, um, to expose jobs and skill sets to kids throughout the system and develop the skill set so that they do understand that they have an opportunity. >>We're here at Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. We have educators. We have, um, students. We have industry and employers and government together. What's your advice to them all watching and listening about the future of work. Let's work force. What can people do? What do you think you're enabling? What can maybe the private sector help with And what are you trying to do? Can you share your thoughts on that? Because we have a range from the dorm room to the boardroom here at this event. Love to get your thoughts on the workforce development view of this. >>Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the mix. I mean, I think it's going to take industry to lead A in a lot of ways, in terms of understanding what their needs are and what their needs are today and what they will be tomorrow. I think it takes education, toe listen, and to understand and labor and workforce development also listen and understand what those needs will look like. And then how do we move systems? How do we move systems quickly? How do we move systems in a way that meets those needs? How do we, uh, put money into systems where the most need is, but also looking at trends? What is that trend going to look like in two years? What does that train gonna look like in five years. But that's again listening to those employers. Um, it's also the music community based organizations. I think, obviously some of our best students are also linked to CBS. And one way or another, it may be for services. It maybe for, uh, faith based. It may be anything, but I think we also need to bring in the CBS is Well, ah, lot of outreach goes through those systems in conjunction with, but I think that's the key component is to make sure that our employers are heard on. But they sit at the table like you said to the boardroom of understanding, and I think bringing students into that so that they get a true understanding of what that looks like a well, um, is a key piece of this. >>So one of the things I want to bring up with you is maybe a bit more about the research side of it. But, um, John Markoff, who was a former New York Times reporter with author of the book What the Dormouse, said It was a book about the counter culture of the sixties and the computer revolution, and really there was about how government defense spending drove the computer revolution that we now saw with Apple and PC, and then the rest is history in California has really participated. Stanford, uh, Berkeley and the University of California School system and all the education community colleges around it. That moment, the enablement. And now you're seeing space kind of bringing that that are a lot of research coming in and you eat a lot of billionaires putting money in. You got employers playing a role. You have this new focus space systems, cybersecurity, defending and making it open and and not congested and peaceful is going to enable quickly new inflection points for opportunities. E want to get your thoughts on that? Because California is participate in drove these revolutions that created massive value This next wave seems to be coming upon us. >>Yeah, absolutely. And again, Nazis covered again as too much of ah starting point to this. But I think that is also an opportunity to actually, because I think one of the things that we were seeing seven months ago was a skill shortage, and we still see the skills shortage, obviously. But I think a key piece to that is we saw people shortage. Not only was it skills shortage, but we didn't have enough people really to fill positions in addition to and I think that people also felt they were already paying the bills and they were making ends meet and they didn't have the opportunities. Thio get additional skills This again is where we're looking at. You know that our world has changed. It changed in the sixties based on what you're you're just expressing in terms of California leading the way. Let's like California lead the way again in developing a system from which labor, workforce development with our universities are, you know, are amazing universities and community college system and structure of how do we get students back into school? You know, a lot of graduates may already have a degree, but how do they now take a skill so that they already have and develop that further with the idea that they those jobs have changed? Whales have a lot of folks that don't have a degree, and that's okay. But how do we make that connection to a system that may have failed? Ah, lot of our people over the years, um, and our students who didn't make it through the school system. How do we develop in adult training school? How do we develop contract education through our community college system with our employer sets that we developed cohorts within those systems of of workers that have amazing talents and abilities to start to fill these needs? And I think that's the key components of hearing Agency, Labor, Workforce Development Agency. We work with our community. Colleges are UCS in our state universities t develop and figure that piece out, and I think it is our opportunity for the future. >>That's such a great point. I want to call that out This whole opportunity to retrain people that are out there because these air new jobs, I think that's a huge opportunity, and and I hope you keep building and investing in those programs. That's that's really worth calling out. Thank you for doing that. And, yeah, it's a great opportunity. Thes jobs they pay well to cyber security is a good job, and you don't really need to have that classical degree. You can learn pretty quickly if you're smart. So again, great call out there question for you on geography, Um, mentioned co vid we're talking about Covic. Virtualization were virtual with this conference. We couldn't be in person. People are learning virtually, but people are starting to relocate virtually. And so one observation that I have is the space state that California is there space clusters of areas where space people hang out or space spaces and whatnot. Then you got, like, the tech community cybersecurity market. You know, Silicon Valley is a talented in these hubs, and sometimes cyber is not always in the same hubs of space. Maybe Silicon Valley has some space here, Um, and some cyber. But that's not generally the case. This is an opportunity potentially to intersect. What's your thoughts on this? Because this is This is something that we're seeing where your space has historical, you know, geography ease. Now, with borderless communication, the work boat is not so much. You have to move the space area. You know what I'm saying? So okay. What's your thoughts on this? How do you guys look at this? Is on your radar On how you're viewing this this dynamic? >>It's absolute on our radar, Like you said, you know, here we are talking virtually on and, you know, 75% of all of our staff currently in some of our department that 80% of our staff are now virtual. Um you know, seven months ago, uh, we were not were government again being slow move, we quickly transitioned. Obviously, Thio being able to have a tele work capacity. We know employers move probably even quickly, more quickly than we did, but we see that as an opportunity for our rural areas. Are Central Valley are north state um, inland Empire that you're absolutely correct. I mean, if you didn't move to a city or to a location for which these jobs were really housed, um, you didn't have an opportunity like you do today. I think that's a piece that we really need to work with our education partners on of to be able to see how much this has changed. Labor agency absolutely recognizes this. We are investing funding in the Central Valley. We're investing funding in the North State and empire to really look a youth populations of how the new capacity that we have today is gonna be utilized for the future for employers. But we also have to engage our universities around. This is well, but mostly are employers. I know that they're already very well aware. I know that a lot of our large employers with, um, Silicon Valley have already done their doing almost 100% tele work policies. Um, but the affordability toe live in rural areas in California. Also, it enables us to have, ah, way thio make products more affordable is, well, potentially in the future. But we want to keep California businesses healthy and whole in California. Of course, on that's another way we can We can expand and keep California home to our 40 plus million people, >>most to a great, great work. And congratulations for doing such a great job. Keep it up. I gotta ask about the governor. I've been following his career since he's been office. A za political figure. Um, he's progressive. He's cutting edge. He likes toe rock the boat a little bit here and there, but he's also pragmatic. Um, you're starting to see government workers starting to get more of a tech vibe. Um um just curious from your perspective. How does the governor look at? I mean, the old, almost the old guard. But like you know, used to be. You become a lawyer, become a lawmaker Now a tech savvy lawmaker is a premium candidates, a premium person in government, you know, knowing what COBOL is. A start. I mean, these are the things. As we transform and evolve our society, we need thinkers who can figure out which side the streets, self driving cars go on. I mean, who does that? I mean, it's a whole another generation off thinking. How does the Governor how do you see this developing? Because this is the challenge for society. How does California lead? How do you guys talk about the leadership vision of Why California and how will you lead the future? >>Absolutely no governor that I'm aware of that I've been around for 26 27 years of workforce development has led with an innovation background, as this governor has a special around technology and the use of technology. Uh, you know, he's read a book about the use of technology when he was lieutenant governor, and I think it's really important for him that we, as his his staff are also on the leading edge of technology. I brought a badge. I'll systems. Earlier, when I was under the Brown administration, we had moved to where I was at a time employment training panel. We moved to an agile system and deported that one of the first within within the state to do that and coming off of an old legacy system that was an antique. Um, I will say it is challenging. It's challenging on a lot of levels. Mostly the skill sets that are folks have sometimes are not open to a new, agile system to an open source system is also an issue in government. But this governor, absolutely. I mean, he has established three Office of Digital Innovation, which is part of California and department technology, Um, in partnership with and that just shows how much he wants. Thio push our limits to make sure that we are meeting the needs of Californians. But it's also looking at, you know, Silicon Valley being at the heart of our state. How do we best utilize systems that already there? How do we better utilize the talent from those those folks is well, we don't always pay as well as they dio in the state. But we do have great benefit packages. Everybody does eso If anybody's looking for a job, we're always looking for technology. Folks is well on DSO I would say that this governor, absolute leads in terms of making sure that we will be on cutting edge of technology for the nation, >>you know, and, you know, talk about pay. I mean, I know it's expensive to live in some parts of California, but there's a huge young population that wants a mission driven job and serving, um, government for the governments. Awesome. Ah, final parting question for you, Stuart, is, as you look at, um, workforce. Ah, lot of people are passionate about this, and it's, you know, you you can't go anywhere without people saying, You know, we got to do education this way and that way there's an opinion everywhere you go. Cybersecurity is a little bit peaked and focused, but there are people who are paying attention to education. So I have to ask you, what creative ways can people get involved and contribute to workforce development? Whether it's stem underrepresented minorities, people are looking for new, innovative ways to contribute. What advice would you give these people who have the passion to contribute to the next cyber workforce. >>Yeah, I appreciate that question, because I think is one of the key components. But my secretary, Julie Sue, secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Agency, talks about often, and a couple of us always have these conversations around. One is getting people with that passion to work in government one or on. I brought it up community based organizations. I think I think so many times, um, that we didn't work with our CBS to the level of in government we should. This administration is very big on working with CBS and philanthropy groups to make sure that thing engagement those entities are at the highest level. So I would say, You know, students have opportunities. Thio also engage with local CBS and be that mission what their values really drives them towards Andi. That gives them a couple of things to do right. One is to look at what ways that we're helping society in one way or another through the organizations, but it also links them thio their own mission and how they could develop those skills around that. But I think the other piece to that is in a lot of these companies that you are working with and that we work with have their own foundations. So those foundations are amazing. We work with them now, especially in the new administration. More than we ever have, these foundations are really starting to help develop are strategies. My secretary works with a large number of foundations already. Andi, when we do is well in terms of strategy, really looking at, how do we develop young people's attitudes towards the future but also skills towards the future? >>Well, you got a pressure cooker of a job. I know how hard it is. I know you're working hard, appreciate you what you do and and we wish you the best of luck. Thank you for sharing this great insight on workforce development. And you guys working hard. Thank you for what you do. Appreciate it. >>Thank you so much. Thistle's >>three cube coverage and co production of the space and cybersecurity supposed in 2020 Cal Poly. I'm John for with silicon angle dot com and the Cube. Thanks for watching

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! Covering Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020. Hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello everyone. Welcome to the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, put on by Cal Poly and hosted with SiliconANGLE theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California for a virtual conference. Couldn't happen in person this year, I'm John Furrier, your host. The intersection of space and cybersecurity, obviously critical topics, great conversations. We've got a great guest here to talk about the addressing the cybersecurity workforce gap. And we have a great guest, and a feature speaker, Stewart Knox, the undersecretary with California's Labor and Workforce Development Office. Stewart, thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you so much, John. I appreciate your time today and listening to a little bit of our quandaries with making sure that we have the security that's necessary for the state of California and making sure that we have the workforce that is necessary for cybersecurity in space. >> Great. I'd love to get started. I've got a couple of questions for you, but first take a few minutes for an opening statement to set the stage. >> Sure, realizing that in California, we lead the nation in much of cybersecurity based on Department of Defense contractors within the state of California, leading the nation with over 160 billion dollars within the industry just here in California alone and having over 800,000 plus workers full time employment in the state of California is paramount for us to make sure that we face defense manufacturers, approximately 700,000 jobs that are necessary to be filled. There's over 37,000 vacancies that we know of in California, just alone in cybersecurity. And so we look forward to making sure that California Workforce Development Agency is leading the charge to make sure that we have equity in those jobs and that we are also leading in a way that brings good jobs to California and to the people of California, a good education system that is developed in a way that those skills are necessarily met for the employers here in California, and the nation. >> One of the exciting things about California is obviously look at Silicon Valley, Hewlett Packard and the garage story, history, space, it's been a space state, many people recognize California. You mentioned defense contractors. It's well rooted with history, just breakthroughs, bases, technology companies in California. And now you've got technology. This is the cybersecurity angle. Take a minute to give some more commentary to that because that's really notable, and as the workforce changes, these two worlds are coming together and sometimes they're in the same place, sometimes they're not. This is super exciting and a new dynamic that's driving opportunities. Could you share some color commentary on that dynamic? >> Absolutely. And you're so correct. I think in California, we lead the nation in the way that we develop programs, that our companies lead in the nation in so many ways around cyberspace, cybersecurity in so many different areas, for which in the Silicon Valley is just such a leader and those companies are good, qualified companies to do so. Obviously one of the places we play a role is to make sure that those companies have a skilled workforce. And also that the security of those systems are in place for our defense contractors and for the feeder companies, those outlying entities that are providing such key resources to those companies are also leading on a cutting edge for the future. Also again, realizing that we need to expand our training and skills to make sure that those California companies continue to lead, is just such a great initiative. And I think through apprenticeship training programs, and looking at our community college systems, I think that we will continue to lead the nation as we move forward. >> You know, we've had many conversations here in this symposium virtually, certainly around the everyday life of a consumer is impacted by space. You know, we get our car service, Uber, Lyft, we have maps, we have all this technology that was born out of defense contracts and R and D that really changed generations and created a lot of great societal value. Okay, now with space kind of going to the next generation, it's easier to get stuff into space. The security of the systems is now going to be not only paramount for quality of life, but defending that, and the skills are needed in cybersecurity to defend that. And the gap is there. What can we do to highlight the opportunities for career paths? It used to be the day where you get a mechanical engineering degree or aerospace and you graduate and you go get a job, not anymore. There's a variety of paths, career-wise. What can we do to highlight this career path? >> Absolutely correct. And I think it starts, you know, K through 12 system. And I know a lot of the work that (indistinct) and other entities are doing currently. This is where we need to bring our youth into an age where they're teaching us, right, as we become older, on the uses of technology, but it's also teaching where the levels of those education can take them, K through 12, but it's also looking at how the community college system links to that. And then the university system links above and beyond, but it's also engaging our employers. You know, one of the key components, obviously as the employers play a role, for which we can start to develop strategies that best meet their needs quickly. I think that's one of the comments we hear the most, at Labor Agency is how we don't provide a change as fast as we should, especially in technology. You know, we buy computers today and they're outdated tomorrow. It's the same with the technology that's in those computers is that those students are going to be the leaders within that to really develop how those structures are in place. So K through 12 is probably our primary place to start, but also continuing that past the K-12 system. And I bring up the employers and I bring them up in a way, because many times when we've had conversations with employers around what their skills needs were and how do we develop those better? One of the pieces of that, that I think really should be recognized, many times they recognize that they wanted a four year degree, potentially, or a five year or six year degree. But then when we really looked at the skillsets, someone coming out of the community college system could meet those skillsets. And I think we need to have those conversations to make sure, not that they shouldn't be continuing their education. They absolutely should. But how do we get those skillsets built into this into a K-12 plus the two year plus the four year person? >> Yeah, I love the democratization of these new skills, because again, there's no pattern matching 'cause they weren't around before, right? So you got to look at the exposure, to your point, K through 12 exposure, but then there's an exploration piece of it, whether it's community college or whatever progression, and sometimes it's nonlinear, right? I mean, people are learning different ways, combining the exposure and the exploration. That's a big topic. Can you share your view on this? Because this now opens up more doors for people, choice, you got new avenues, you got online, I can get a cloud computing degree now from Amazon and walk in and help. I can be, you know, security clearance possibly in college. So, you know, you get exposure. Is there certain things you see, is it early on? Middle school? And then obviously the exploration, those are two important concepts. Can you unpack that a little bit, exposure and exploration of skills? >> Absolutely, and I think this takes place not only in the K-12 system, but it takes place in our community colleges and our four year universities is that, that connection with those employers is such a key component, that if there's a way we could build in internships, work experiences, what we call on the job training programs, apprenticeship training, pre-apprenticeship training programs, into a design where those students at all levels are getting an exposure to the opportunities within the space and cybersecurity avenue. I think that right there alone will start to solve a problem of having 37 plus thousand openings at any one time in California. Also, I get that there's a burden on employers to do that. And I think that's a piece that we have to acknowledge, and I think that's where education can play a larger role. That's a place we at Labor Workforce Development Agency play a role with our apprenticeship training programs, our pre-apprenticeship training programs. I could go on all day of all of our training programs that we have within the state of California. Many of the list of your partners on this endeavor are partners with Employment Training Panel, which I used to be the director of the Brown administration of. That program alone does incumbent worker training. And so that also is an exposure place where a worker may be, you know, I use the old adage of sweeping the floors one day and potentially writing a large portion of the business, within years. But it's that exposure that that employee gets through training programs, and acknowledging those skill sets and where their opportunities are, is what's valid and important. I think that's where our students, we need to play a larger role than the K-12 system, really, to get that pushed out there. >> It's funny, here in California, you were the robotics clubs in high school are like a varsity sport, you're seeing kids exposed early on with programming, but it's, you know, this whole topic of cybersecurity and space intersection around workforce, and the gaps in the skills, it's not just for the young, certainly the young generation's got to be exposed to what the careers could be and what the possible jobs and societal impact and contributions, what they could be, but also it's people who are already out there. You know, you have retraining, re-skilling, this plays an important role. I know you guys do a lot of thinking on this as the undersecretary, you have to look at this because you know, you don't want to have a label "old and antiquated" systems. And a lot of them are, and they're evolving and they're being modernized by digital transformation. So what does the role of retraining and skill development for these programs play? Can you share what you guys are working on and your vision for that? >> Absolutely. That's a great question. 'Cause I think that is where we play a large role, obviously in California and with COVID-19 is we are faced with today that we've never seen before. At least in my 27 years of running programs, similar to all workforce and economic development, we are having such a large number of people displaced currently that it's unprecedented, we've got employment rates to where we are. We're really looking at how do we take, and we're also going to see industries not return to the level for which they stood at one point in time, you know, entertainment industries, restaurants, all of the alike, really looking at how do we move people from those jobs that were middle skill jobs to upper skill jobs, but the pay points maybe weren't great, potentially. And there's an opportunity for us to skill people into jobs that are there today. It may take training, obviously, but we have dollars to do that, generally, especially within our K-12 and our K-14 systems and our universities. But we really want to look at where those skillsets are at, currently. And we want to take people from that point in time where they sit today, and try to give them that exposure to your point earlier question is how do we get them exposed to a system for which there are job with means that pay well, with benefit packages, with companies that care about their employees. 'Cause that's what our goal is. >> You know, I don't know if you have some visibility on this or an opinion, but one of the observations that I've had and talk to whether it's a commercial or public sector, is that with COVID, there's been a lot of awareness of the situation. We're adequately prepared. There's some readiness, but as everyone kind of deals with it, they're also starting to think about what to do post-COVID as we come out of it, a growth strategy for a company or someone's career. People are starting to have that on the top of their minds. So I have to ask you, is there anything that you see that they say, "Okay, certain areas, maybe not doubling down on other areas, we're going to double down on because we've seen some best practices on a trajectory of value for coming out of COVID with, you know, well-armed skills or certain things." 'Cause that's what a lot of people are thinking right now. And certainly cyber is, I mean, how many jobs are open? So you got "Well that that's kind of maybe not something to double down on, here are areas we see that are working." Can you share your current visibility into that dynamic? >> Absolutely. Another great question. One of the key components that we look at at Labor Workforce Development Agency is to look at the industries in growth modes and ones that are in decline modes. Now COVID has changed that greatly. We were in a growth mode for the last seven, eight years. We saw almost every industry, minus a few, that were all in growth in one way or another, but obviously that has changed. Our landscape is completely different than we saw six, seven months ago. So today we're looking at cybersecurity, obviously with 30 plus thousand job openings, we are looking at Defense Department contractors, obviously, with federal government contracts. We are looking at the supply chains within those. We are looking at healthcare, which has always been one of obviously our large, one of our large entities that has grown over the years. But it's also changed with COVID-19. We're looking at the way protective equipment is manufactured and the way that that will continue to grow over time, we're looking at the service industry. I mean, it will come back, but it won't come back the way we've seen it probably in the past, but where are the opportunities that we develop programs that we are making sure that the skill sets of those folks are transferable to other industries. We have one of the issues that we face constantly in Labor and Workforce Development programs is understanding that over the period of time, especially in today's world, again, with technology, that people's skillsets, we don't see as in my parents' day that you worked at a job for 45 years and you retired at one job potentially. That's been gone for 25 years, but now at the pace for which we are seeing systems change, this is going to continue to amp up, and I will say, youth of today, my 12 year old nephew is in the room next door to me, in a classroom right now online. And so, you know, it's a totally different atmosphere and he's enjoying actually being at home and learning from an all online system. I would not have been able to learn that way, but I think we do see through the K through 12 system, the way we're moving, people's interests will change. And I think that they will start to see things in a different way than we have in the past. They were forced systems. We are an old system, been around since the 30s. Some even we'll say prior to the 30s, came out of the Great Depression in some ways. And that system, we have to change the way we develop our programs. It should not be constant and it should be an evolving system. >> It's interesting. A lot of the conversations between the private and public partnerships and industry, you're seeing an agile mindset where it's a growth mindset, it's also a reality-based mindset and certainly space kind of forces this conversation with cybersecurity of being faster, faster, more relevant, more modern. And you mentioned some of those points, and with COVID impact, the workforce development is certainly going to put a lot of pressure on faster learning. And then you mentioned online learning. This has become a big thing. It's not just putting education online per se. There's new touchpoints. You know, you've got apps, you've got digital. This digital transformation is also accelerating. How do you guys view the workforce development? Because it's going to be open. It's going to be evolving. There's new data coming in and maybe kids don't want to stare at a video conference. Is there some game aspect to it? Is there, how do you integrate these new things that are coming really fast, and it's happening kind of in real time in front of our eyes. So I'd love to get your thoughts on how you guys see that because it'll certainly impact their ability to compete for jobs and/or to self-learn. >> Well, I think one of the key components of California is our innovation, right? And so I think one of the things that we pride ourselves in California is around that. That said, that is the piece that I think the Silicon Valley, and then there's many areas in California that have done the same, or tried to do the same, at least in their economy is to build in innovation. And I think that's part of the K through 12 system, with our state universities and our UCs is to be able to bridge that. I think that you, we see that within universities that really instill an innovative approach to teaching, but also instill innovation within their students. I'm not sure we're there yet fully, with our K-12 system, and I think that's a place that either our community colleges could be a bridge to as well. So that's one component of workforce development I think that we look at as being a key piece. You brought up something that's really interesting to me is when you talk about agile, and one of the things that even in state government, this is going to be shocking to you, but we have not been an agile system as well. I think one of the things that the Newsom administration, Governor Newsom's administration has brought is, and when I talk about agile systems, I actually mean agile systems. We've gone from COBOL systems, which are old and clunky, still operating, but at the same time, we're looking at upgrading all of our systems in a way that even in our technology, in the state of California should be matching, the technology that our great state has within our state. So therein lies, it's also challenges of finding the qualified staff that we need in the state of California for all of our systems and servers and everything that we have currently. So, you know, not only are we looking at external users of labor workforce development, but we're looking at internal users, that the way we redevelop our systems so that we are more agile in two different ways. >> You just got me triggered with COBOL. I programmed in the 80s with COBOL, only one credit lab in college. Never touched it again, thank God. But this is the benefit of cloud computing. I think this is at the heart and this is the undertone of the conference and symposium is cloud computing, you can actually leverage existing resources, whether they're legacy systems, because they are running, they're doing a great job and they do a certain workload extremely well. Doesn't make sense to replace if it does a job. You can integrate it and that's what cloud does. This is opening up more and more capabilities and workloads. This is kind of what the space industry is pointing to when they say "We need people that can code and that can solve data problems," not just the computer scientists, but a large range of people, creative, data, science, everything. How does California's workforce solve the needs of America's space industry? This is because it's a space state. How do you see the labor workforce meeting those needs? >> Yeah, I think it's an investment. Obviously it's an investment on our part. It's an investment with our college partners. It's an investment from our K-12 system to make sure that we are allocating dollars in a way through meeting the demand of industry. And we do look at industry-specific around their needs, obviously this is a large one. We want to be very receptive, and work with our employers and our employee groups to make sure that we meet that demand. I think it's putting our money where our mouth is and designing and working with employer groups to make sure that the training meets their needs. It's also working with our employer groups to make sure that the employees are taken care of and that equity is built within the systems, that we keep people employed in California, and they're able to afford a home and they're able to afford a life here in California, but it's also again and I brought up the innovation component. I think it's building an innovation within systems for which they are employers, but are also our incoming employees and our incumbent workers. And you brought those up earlier, people that are already employed and people that are unemployed currently with a skill set that might match up is how do we bridge those folks into employment that they maybe have not thought about? We have a whole career network of systems out throughout The City of California with the America's Job Centers of California, and they will be working, and they already are working with a lot of dislocated workers. And one of the key components of that is to really look at how do we take what their current skillset might be, and then expose them to a system for which we have 37 plus thousand job openings, too, and how do we actually get those folks employed? It's paid for potentially through that local Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funding through our America's Job Centers, to pay for some on the job training. It's to be able to pay for work experiences, it's to be able to pay for internships for students to get that opportunity with our employers and also partnering with our employers that they're paying, obviously a percentage of that too. >> You know, one of the things I've observed over my career, 54 times around the sun is, you know, in the old days, when I was in college and school, you had career, people had the longer jobs, as you mentioned it's not like that anymore. But also I knew someone I'm going to to be in line to get that job, maybe nepotism or things of that nature. Now the jobs have no historical thing or someone worked longer in a job and has more seniority. A lot of these jobs, Stewart, don't have requirements, like no one's done them before. So the ability for someone who is jumping in, either from any college, there's no real, it's all level set, it's a complete upside down script here. It's not like, "Oh, I went to school, therefore I get the job." It can be, anyone can walk into these careers because the jobs are so new. So it's not where you came from or what school you went to or your nationality or gender. The jobs have been democratized. They're not discriminating against people with skills. This opens up more. How do you see that? Because this really is an opportunity for this next generation to be more diverse and to be more contributive because diversity brings expertise and different perspectives. Your thoughts on that. >> Absolutely, and that was one of the things we welcome, obviously. We want to make sure that that everybody is treated equally and that the employers view everyone as an employer of choice, but an employee of choice as well. We've also been looking at, as I mentioned before on the COVID situation, looking at ways that folks that are maybe stuck in jobs that don't have a huge career pathway, or they don't have a pathway out of poverty. I mean, we have a lot of working poor people in the state of California that may now due to COVID lost their employment. This, you know, let's turn back to the old adage, let's turn lemons into lemonade. How do we take those folks and get them employed into jobs that do have a good career pathway? And it's not about just who you knew, or who you might have an in with to get that job. It is based on skills. I think though, that said, we need to have a better way to actually match those jobs up with those employers. And I think those are the ongoing conversations with those employer groups to make sure that, one, that they see those skill sets as valid and important. They're helping design those career sets with us so that they do match up and that we're quickly matching up those close skillsets so that we're not training people for yesterday's skills. >> I think the employer angle's super important, but also the educators as well. One of the things that was asked in another question by the guest, they said, she said, the real question to ask is, how early do you start exposing the next generation? You mentioned K through 12, do you have any data or insight into or intuition or best practice of where that insertion point is, that exposure point? Is it middle school? Is it elementary, honestly, high school, once you're in high school, you got your training wheels are off, you're off to the races, but is there a best practice? What's your thoughts, Stewart, on exposure level to these kinds of new cyber and technical careers? >> Sure, absolutely. I would say kindergarten. We, San Bernardino has a program that they've been running for a little bit of time, and they're exposing students K through 12, but really starting in kindergarten. One is the exposure to what a job looks like. And then actually I've gone down to that local area and I've had the opportunity to see, you know, second graders in a healthcare facility, basically, that they have on campus built-in. And they're going from one workstation as a second grader, looking at what those skills would be and what that job would entail from a nurse to a doctor, to a physician's assistant, and really looking at what that is. You know, obviously they're not getting the training that a doctor gets, but they are getting the exposure of what that would be. And I think that is amazing. And I think it's the right place to start. It was really interesting 'cause as I left, this was pre-COVID, but as I jumped on the plane to come back up north, I was thinking to myself, "How do we get this to all school districts in California where we see that opportunity to expose jobs and skill sets to kids throughout the system and develop those skill sets so that they do understand that they have an opportunity?" >> We are here at Cal Poly Space and Cybersecurity Symposium. We have educators, we have students, we have industry and employers and government together. What's your advice to them all watching and listening about the future of work, this workforce, what can people do? What do you think you're enabling? What can maybe the private sector help with and what are you trying to do? Can you share your thoughts on that? Because we have a range from the dorm room to the boardroom here at this event. I'd love to get your thoughts on the workforce development view of this. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the mix. I mean, I think it's going to take industry to lead, in a lot of ways in terms of understanding what their needs are and what their needs are today and what they will be tomorrow. I think it takes education to listen, and to understand, and labor and workforce development to also listen and understand what those needs will look like. And then how do we move systems? How do we move systems quickly? How do we move systems in a way that meets those needs? How do we put money into systems where the most need is, but also looking at trends? What is that trend going to look like in two years? What is that trend going to look like in five years, (indistinct), again, listening to those employers, it's also listening to the community-based organizations. I think obviously some of our best students are also linked to CBOs in one way or another. It may be for services, it may be for faith-based, it may be anything, but I think we also need to bring in the CBOs as well. A lot of outreach goes through those systems in conjunction with, but I think that's the key component is to make sure that our employers are heard and that they sit at the table, like you said, to the boardroom of understanding, and I think bringing students into that so that they get a true understanding of what that looks like as well, is a key piece of this. >> Stu, one of the things I want to bring up with you is maybe a little bit more about the research side of it, but John Markoff, who was a former New York times reporter, but author of the book, "What the Dormouse Said," it was a book about the counterculture of the 60s and the computer revolution. And really it was about how government defense spending drove the computer revolution that we now saw with Apple and PC. And then the rest is history in California, has really participated, Stanford, the Berkeley, and the University of California school system, and all the education community colleges around it. That moment, the enablement, and now you're seeing space kind of bringing that, a lot of research coming in, need a lot of billionaires putting money in, you've got employers playing a role. You have this new focus, space systems, cybersecurity defending and making it open and, not congested and peaceful, is going to enable quickly, new inflection points for opportunities. I want to get your thoughts on that because California's participated and drove those revolutions, that's created massive value. This next wave seems to be coming upon us. >> Yeah, absolutely. And again, not to use COVID again as too much of a starting point to this, but I think that is also an opportunity to actually, 'cause I think one of the things that we were seeing seven months ago was a skill shortage, and we still see the skill shortage, obviously. But I think a key piece to that is we saw a people shortage. Not only was it skill shortage, but we didn't have enough people really to fill positions in addition, too, and I think that people also felt they were already paying the bills and they were making ends meet and they didn't have the opportunities to get additional skills. This again is where we're looking at, you know, our world has changed. It changed in the 60s based on what you're just expressing in terms of California leading the way. Let's let California lead the way again in developing a system for which labor workforce development with our universities, our amazing universities and community college system structure, of how do we get students back into school? You know, a lot of graduates may already have a degree, but how do they now take a skill set that they already have and develop that further with the idea that those jobs have changed? We also have a lot of folks that don't have a degree, and that's okay, but how do we make that connection to a system that may have failed a lot of our people over the years, and our students who didn't make it through the school system, how do we develop an adult training school? How do we develop contract education through our community college system with our employer sets, that we develop cohorts within the systems of workers that have amazing talents and abilities to start to fill these needs. And I think that's the key components that here at Labor Workforce Development Agency, we work with our community colleges, our UCs and our state universities to develop and figure that piece out. And I think it is our opportunity for the future. >> That's such a great point. I want to call that out, this whole opportunity to retrain people that are out there because these are new jobs. I think that's a huge opportunity and, I hope you keep building and investing in those programs. That's really worth calling out. Thank you for doing that. And yeah, it's a great opportunity to gain these jobs. They pay well, too, cybersecurity's a good job and you don't really need to have that classical degree. You can learn pretty quickly if you're smart. So again, great call out there. A question for you on geography. You mentioned COVID, we're talking about COVID, virtualization, we're virtual with this conference. We couldn't be in person. People are learning virtually, but people are starting to relocate virtually. And so one observation that I have is the space state that California is, there's space clusters of areas where space people hang out, or space spaces and whatnot. Then you got like the tech community, the cybersecurity market, you know, Silicon Valley, you know, the talent is in these hubs. And sometimes cyber's not always in the same hubs as space. Maybe Silicon Valley has some space here, and some cyber, but that's not generally the case. This is an opportunity potentially to intersect. What's your thoughts on this? Because this is something that we're seeing, where space has historical, you know, geographies. Now with borderless communication, the work mode is not so much "You have to move to this space area." You know what I'm saying? So what's your thoughts on this? How do you guys look at, this is on your radar, and how you're viewing this dynamic. >> It's absolutely on our radar. Like you said, you know, here we are, talking virtually, and you know, 75% of all of our staff currently, in some of our departments, it's 80% of our staff, are now virtual. Seven months ago, we were not. Government, again, being slow move, we quickly transitioned, obviously, to being able to have a telework capacity. We know employers moved probably even more quickly than we did, but we see that as an opportunity for our rural areas, our Central Valley, our Northstate, Inland Empire. That you're absolutely correct. I mean, if you didn't move to a city or to a location for which these jobs were really housed, you didn't have an opportunity like you do today. I think that's a piece that we really need to work with our education partners on, to be able to see how much this has changed. Labor Agency absolutely recognizes this. We are investing funding in the Central Valley. We're investing funding in the Northstate and Inland Empire to really look at youth populations, of how the new capacity that we have today is going to be utilized for the future for employers. But we also have to engage our universities around this as well, but mostly our employers. I know that they're already very well aware. I know that a lot of our large employers within Silicon Valley have already done it. They're doing almost 100% telework policies, but the affordability to live in rural areas in California, also enables us to have a way to make products more affordable as well, potentially in the future. But we want to keep California businesses healthy and whole in California, of course. And that's another way we can expand and keep California home to our 40 plus million people. >> Well Stewart, great work and congratulations for doing such a great job. Keep it up. I got to ask you about the governor. I've been following his career since he's been in office as a political figure. He's progressive, he's cutting edge. He likes to rock the boat a little bit here and there, but he's also pragmatic. You're starting to see government workers starting to get more of a tech vibe. Just curious from your perspective, how does the governor look at, I mean, the old, I won't say "old guard," but like, you know, it used to be, you become a lawyer, you become a lawmaker. Now a tech savvy lawmaker is a premium candidate, is a premium person in government. Knowing what COBOL is, is a start. I mean, these are the things that as we transform and evolve our society, we need thinkers who can figure out which side of the streets self driving cars go on. I mean, who does that? It's a whole nother generation of thinking. How does the governor, how do you see this developing? Because this is the challenge for society. How does California lead? How do you guys talk about the leadership vision of why California and how will you lead the future? >> Absolutely. No governor that I'm aware of, and I've been around for 26, 27 years of workforce development, has led with an innovation background as this governor has, especially around technology and the use of technology. You know, he's wrote a book about the use of technology when he was lieutenant governor. And I think it's really important for him that we, as his staff are also on the leading edge of technology. I brought up agile systems earlier. When I was under the Brown administration, we had moved to where I was at the time, Employment Training Panel, we moved to an agile system and deployed that. One of the first within the state to do that and coming off of an old legacy system that was an antique. I will say it is challenging. It's challenging on a lot of levels. Mostly the skill sets that our folks have, sometimes are not open to a new agile system, to an open source system is also an issue in government. But this governor absolutely, I mean, he has established the Office of Digital Innovation, which is part of California Department of Technology, in partnership with, and that just shows how much he wants to push our limits to make sure that we are meeting the needs of Californians. But it's also looking at, you know, Silicon Valley being at the heart of our state, how do we best utilize systems that are already there? How do we better utilize the talent from those folks as well? We don't always pay as well as they do in the state, but we do have great benefit packages, everybody knows. So if anybody's looking for a job, we're always looking for technology folks as well. And so I would say that this governor absolutely leads in terms of making sure that we will be on cutting edge technology for the nation. >> And, you know, talk about pay, I mean, I know it's expensive to live in some parts of California, but there's a huge young population that wants a mission-driven job, and serving the government for the government, it's awesome. A final parting question for you, Stewart, is as you look at the workforce, a lot of people are passionate about this and it's, you know, you can't go anywhere without people saying, you know, "We've got to do education this way, and that way," there's an opinion everywhere you go. Cybersecurity, obviously a little bit peaked and focused, but there are people who are paying attention to education. So I have to ask you what creative ways can people get involved and contribute to workforce development, whether it's STEM, underrepresented minorities, people are looking for new, innovative ways to contribute. What advice would you give these people who have the passion to contribute to the next cyber workforce? >> Yeah, I appreciate that question because I think it's one of the key components that my secretary, Julie Su, secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Agency, talks about often. And a couple of us always have these conversations around one is getting people with that passion to work in government, one, or, and I brought it up community-based organizations. I think so many times that we didn't work with our CBOs to the level that in government, we should, this administration is very big on working with CBOs and philanthropy groups to make sure that the engagement of those entities are at the highest level. So I would say, students have opportunities to also engage with local CBOs and be that mission, what their values really drives them towards. And that gives them a couple of things to do, right? One is to look at ways that we're helping society in one way or another through those organizations, but it also links them to their own mission and how they can develop those skills around that. But I think the other piece to that is in a lot of these companies that you are working with and that we work with, have their own foundations. So those foundations are amazing. We work with them now, especially in the Newsom administration, more than we ever have. These foundations are really starting to help develop our strategies. My secretary works with a large number of foundations already, and we do as well in terms of strategy, really looking at how do we develop young people's attitudes towards the future, but also skills towards the future? >> Well, you got a pressure cooker of a job. I know how hard it is. I know you're working hard and appreciate what you do. And, and we wish you the best of luck, thank you for sharing this great insight on workforce development. And you guys are working hard. Thank you for what you do. Appreciate it. >> Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. >> This is theCUBE coverage and co-production of the Space and Cybersecurity Symposium 2020 with Cal Poly. I'm John Furrier with siliconangle.com and theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

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

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this a CUBE conversation. >> Hello, and welcome to this CUBE conversation, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here, in our Palo Alto, California studios, here with our quarantine crew. We're getting all the remote interviews during this time of COVID-19. We've got two great remote guests here, Rachini Moosavi who's the Executive Director of Analytical Services and Data Governance at UNC Healthcare, and Sonya Jordan, Enterprise Analytics Manager of Data Governance at UNC Health. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, I'm super excited. University of North Carolina, my daughter will be a freshman this year, and she is coming, so hopefully she won't have to visit UNC Health, but looking forward to having more visits down there, it's a great place. So, thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. Okay, so the conversation today is going to be about how data and how analytics are helping solve problems, and ultimately, in your case, serve the community, and this is a super important conversation. So, before we get started, talk about UNC Health, what's going on there, how you guys organize, how big is it, what are some of the challenges that you have? >> SO UNC Health is comprised of about 12 different entities within our hospital system. We have physician groups as well as hospitals, and we serve, we're spread throughout all of North Carolina, and so we serve the patients of North Carolina, and that is our primary focus and responsibility for our mission. As part of the offices Sonya and I are in, we are in the Enterprise Analytics and Data Sciences Office that serves all of those entities and so we are centrally located in the triangle area of North Carolina, which is pretty central to the state, and we serve all of our entities equally from our Analytics and Data Governance needs. >> John: You guys got a different customer base, obviously you've got the clinical support, and you got the business applications, you got to be agile, that's what it's all about today, you don't need to rely on IT support. How do you guys do that? What's the framework? How do you guys tackle that problem of being agile, having the data be available, and you got two different customers, you got all the compliance issues with clinical, I can only imagine all the regulations involved, and you've got the business applications. How do you handle those? >> Yeah, so for us in the roles that we are in, we are fully responsible for more of the data and analytics needs of the organization, and so we provide services that truly are balanced across our clinician group, so we have physicians, and nurses, and all of the other ancillary clinical staff that we support, as well as the operational needs as well, so revenue cycle, finance, pharmacy, any of those groups that are required in order to run a healthcare system. So, we balance our time amongst all of those and for the work that we take on and how we continuously support them is really based on governance at the end of the day. How we make decisions around what the priorities are and what needs to happen next, and requires the best insights, is really how we focus on what work we do next. As for the applications that we build, in our office, we truly only build analytical applications or products like visualizations within Tableau as well as we support data governance platforms and services and so we provide some of the tools that enable our end users to be able to interact with the information that we're providing around analytics and insights, at the end of the day. >> Sonya, what's your job? Your title is Analytics Manager of Data Governance, obviously that sounds broad but governance is obviously required in all things. What is your job, what is your day-to-day roles like? What's your focus? >> Well, my day-to-day operations is first around building a data governance program. I try to work with identifying customers who we can start partnering with so that we can start getting documentation and utilizing a lot of the programs that we currently have, such as certification, so when we talk about initiatives, this is one of the initiatives that we use to partner with our stakeholders in order to start bringing visibilities to the various assets, such as metrics, or universes that we want to certify, or dashboards, algorithm, just various lists of different types of assets that we certify that we like to partner with the customers in order for them to start documenting within the tools, so that we can bring visibility to what's available, really focusing on data literacy, helping people to understand what assets are available, not only what assets are available, but who owns them, and who own the asset, and what can they do with it, making sure that we have great documentation in order to be able to leverage literacy as well. >> So, I can only imagine with how much volume you guys are dealing from a data standpoint, and the diversity, that the data warehouse must be massive, or it must be architected in a way that it can be agile because the needs, of the diverse needs. Can you guys share your thoughts on how you guys look on the data warehouse challenge and opportunity, and what you guys are currently doing? >> Well, so- >> Yeah you go ahead, Rachini. >> Go ahead, Sonya. >> Well, last year we implemented a tool, an enterprise warehouse, basically behind a tool that we implemented, and that was an opportunity for Data Governance to really lay some foundation and really bring visibility to the work that we could provide for the enterprise. We were able to embed into probably about six or seven of the 13 initiatives, I was actually within that project, and with that we were able to develop our stewardship committee, our data governance council, and because Rachini managed Data Solutions, our data solution manager was able to really help with the architect and integration of the tools. >> Rachini, your thoughts on running the data warehouse, because you've got to have flexibility for new types of data sources. How do you look at that? >> So, as Sonya just mentioned, we upgraded our data warehouse platform just recently because of these evolving needs, and like a lot of healthcare providers out there, a lot of them are either one or the other EMRs that are top in the market. With our EMR, they provide their own data warehouse, so you have to factor almost the impact of what they bring to the table in with an addition to all of those other sources of data that you're trying to co-mingle and bring together into the same data warehouse, and so for us, it was time for us to evolve our data warehouse. We ended up deciding on trying to create a virtual data warehouse, and in doing so, with virtualization, we had to upgrade our platform, which is what created that opportunity that Sonya was mentioning. And by moving to this new platform we are now able to bring all of that into one space and it's enabled us to think about how does the community of analysts interact with the data? How do we make that available to them in a secure way? In a way that they can take advantage of reusable master data files that could be our source of truth within our data warehouse, while also being able to have the flexibility to build what they need in their own functional spaces so that they can get the wealth of information that they need out of the same source and it's available to everyone. >> Okay, so I got to ask the question, and I was trying to get the good stuff out first, but let's get at the reality of COVID-19. You got pre-COVID-19 pandemic, we're kind of in the middle of it, and people are looking at strategies to come out of it, obviously the world will be changed, higher with a lot of virtualization, virtual meetings, and virtual workforce, but the data still needs to be, the business still needs to run, but data will be changing different sources, how are you guys responding to that crisis because you're going to be leaned on heavily for more and more support? >> Yeah it's been non-stop since March (laughs). So, I'm going to tell you about the reporting aspects of it, and then I'd love to turn it over to Sonya to tell you about some of the great things that we've actually been able to do to it and enhance our data governance program by not wasting this terrible event and this opportunity that's come up. So, with COVID, when it kicked off back in March, we actually formed a war room to address the needs around reporting analytics and just insights that our executives needed, and so in doing so, we created within the first week, our first weekend actually, our first dashboard, and within the next two weeks we had about eight or nine other dashboards that were available. And we continuously add to that. Information is so critical to our executives, to our clinicians, to be able to know how to address the evolving needs of COVID-19 and how we need to respond. We literally, and I'm not even exaggerating, at this very moment we have probably, let's see, I think it's seven different forecasts that we're trying to build all at the same time to try and help us prepare for this new recovery, this sort of ramp up efforts, so to your point, it started off as we're shutting down so that we can flatten the curve, but now as we try to also reopen at the same time while we're still meeting the needs of our COVID patients, there's this balancing act that we're trying to keep up with and so analytics is playing a critical factor in doing that. >> Sonya, your thoughts. First of all, congratulations, and action is what defines the players from the pretenders in my mind, you're seeing that play out, so congratulations for taking great action, I know you're working hard. Sonya, your thoughts, COVID, it's putting a lot of pressure? It highlights the weaknesses and strengths of what's kind of out there, what's your thoughts? >> Well, it just requires a great deal of collaboration and making sure that you're documenting metrics in a way where you're factoring true definition because at the end of the day, this information can go into a dashboard that's going to be visualized across the organization, I think what COVID has done was really enhanced the need and the understanding of why data governance is important and also it has allowed us to create a lot of standardization, where we we're standardizing a lot of processes that we currently had in correct place but just enhancing them. >> You know, not to go on a tangent, but I will, it's funny how the reality has kind of pulled back, exposed a lot of things, whether it's the remote work situation, people are VPNing, not under provision with the IT side. On the data side, everyone now understands the quality of the data. I mean, I got my kids talking progression analysis, "Oh, the curves are all wrong," I mean people are now seeing the science behind the data and they're looking at graphs all the time, you guys are in the visualization piece, this really highlights the need of data as a story, because there's an impact, and two, quality data. And if you don't have the data, the story isn't being told and then misinformation comes out of it, and this is actually playing out in real time, so it's not like it's just a use case for the most analytics but this again highlights the value of proposition of what you guys do. What's your personal thoughts on all this because this really is playing out globally. >> Yeah, it's been amazing how much information is out there. So, we have been extremely blessed at times but also burdened at times by that amount of information. So, there's the data that's going through our healthcare system that we're trying to manage and wrangle and do that data storytelling so that people can drive those insights to very effective decisions. But there's also all of this external data that we're trying to be able to leverage as well. And this is where the whole sharing of information can sometimes become really hard to try and get ahead of, we leverage the Johns Hopkins data for some time, but even that, too, can have some hiccups in terms of what's available. We try to use our State Department of Health and Human Services data and they just about updated their website and how information was being shared every other week and it was making it impossible for us to ingest that into our dashboards that we were providing, and so there's really great opportunities but also risks in some of the information that we're pulling. >> Sonya, what's your thoughts? I was just having a conversation this morning with the Chief of Analytics and Insight from NOA which is the National Oceanic Administration, about weather data and forecasting weather, and they've got this community model where they're trying to get the edges to kind of come in, this teases out a template. You guys have multiple locations. As you get more democratized in the connection points, whether it's third-party data, having a system managing that is hard, and again, this is a new trend that's emerging, this community connection points, where I think you guys might also might be a template, and your multiple locations, what's your general thoughts on that because the data's coming in, it's now connected in, whether it's first-party to the healthcare system or third-party. >> Yeah, well we have been leveraging our data governance tool to try to get that centralized location, making sure that we obtain the documentations. Due to COVID, everything is moving very fast, so it requires us to really sit down and capture the information and when you don't have enough resources in order to do that, it's easy to miss some very important information, so really trying to encourage people to understand the reason why we have data governance tools in order for them to leverage, in order to capture the documentation in a way that it can tell the story about the data, but most of all, to be able to capture it in a way so that if that person happened to leave the organization, we're not spending a lot of time trying to figure out how was this information created, how was this dashboard designed, where are the requirements, where are the specifications, where are the key elements, where does that information live, and making sure we capture that up front. >> So, guys, you guys are using Informatica, how are they helping you? Obviously, they have a system they're getting some great feedback on, how are you using Informatica, how is it going, and how has that enabled you guys to be successful? >> Yeah, so we decided on Informatica after doing a really thorough vetting of all of the other vendors in the industry that could provide us these services. We've really loved the capabilities that we've been able to provide to our customers at this point. It's evolving, I think, for us, the ability to partner with a group like Prominence, to be able to really leverage the capabilities of Informatica and then be really super, super hyper focused on providing data literacy back to our end users and making that the full intent of what we're doing within data governance has really enabled us to take the tools and make it something that's specific to UNC Health and the needs that our end users are verbalizing and provide that to them in a very positive way. >> Sonya, they talk about this master catalog, and I've talked to the CEO of Informatica and all their leaders, governance is a big part of it, and I've always said, I've always kind of had a hard time, I'm an entrepreneur, I like to innovate, move fast, break things, which is kind of not the way you work in the data world, you don't want to be breaking anything, so how do you balance governance and compliance with innovation? This has been a key topic and I know that you guys are using their enterprise data catolog. Is that helping? How does that fit in, is that part of it? >> Well, yeah, so during our COVID initiatives and building these telos dashboards, these visualizations and forecast models for executive leaders, we were able to document and EMPower you, which we rebranded Axon to EMPower, we were able to document a lot of our dashboards, which is a data set, and pretty much document attributes and show lineage from EMPower to EDC, so that users would know exactly when they start looking at the visualization not only what does this information mean, but they're also able to see what other sources that that information impacts as well as the data lineage, where did the information come from in EDC. >> So I got to ask the question to kind of wrap things up, has Informatica helped you guys out now that you're in this crisis? Obviously you've implemented before, now that you're in the middle of it, have you seen any things that jumped out at you that's been helpful, and are there areas that need to be worked on so that you guys continue to fight the good fight, come out of this thing stronger than before you came in? >> Yeah, there is a lot of new information, what we consider as "aha" moments that we've been learning about, and how EMPower, yes there's definitely a learning curve because we implemented EDC and EMPower last year doing our warehouse implementation, and so there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but based on where we were the first of the year, I can say we have evolved tremendously due to a lot of the pandemic issues that arised, and we're looking to really evolve even greater, and pilot across the entire organization so that they can start leveraging these tools for their needs. >> Rachini you got any thoughts on your end on what's worked, what you see improvements coming, anything to share? >> Yeah, so we're excited about some of the new capabilities like the marketplace for example that's available in Axon, we're looking forward to being able to take advantage of some of these great new aspects of the tool so that we can really focus more on providing those insights back to our end users. I think for us, during COVID, it's really been about how do we take advantage of the immediate needs that are surfacing. How do we build all of these dashboards in record-breaking time but also make sure that folks understand exactly what's being represented within those dashboards, and so being able to provide that through our Informatica tools and service it back to our end users, almost in a seamless way like it's built into our dashboards, has been a really critical factor for us, and feeling like we can provide that level of transparency, and so I think that's where as we evolve that we would look for more opportunities, too. How do we make it simple for people to get that immediate answers to their questions, of what does the information need without it feeling like they're going elsewhere for the information. >> Rachini, thank you so much for your insight, Sonya as well, thanks for the insight, and stay safe. Sonya, behind you, I was pointing out, that's your artwork, you painted that picture. >> Yes. >> Looks beautiful. >> Yes, I did. >> You got two jobs, you're an artist, and you're doing data governance. >> Yes, I am, and I enjoy painting, that's how I relax (laughs). >> Looks great, get that on the market soon, get that on the marketplace, let's get that going. Appreciate the time, thank you so much for the insights, and stay safe and again, congratulations on the hard work you're doing, I know there's still a lot more to do, thanks for your time, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> It's theCUBE conversation, I'm John Furrier at the Palo Alto studios, for the remote interviews with Informatica, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

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

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Mosconi North here in San Francisco. I'm student like co host David Dante. You're watching four days of live wall to wall coverage here at IBM. Think twenty nineteen. Happy to welcome back to the program first time in her new role. And she's also moved back to David, my home area of the Boston Massachusetts F area. Stephanie Sherice, who's now the vice president and general manager of Red Hat Enterprise. Lennox Business Unit. That red hat Stephanie. Thanks so much for joining. >> What's my pleasures to It's great to be back with you both. >> All right, Stephanie, be back. You know, I happen to notice quite a few IBM. Er's obviously know you. We've had you on our program and many of the IBM shows in the past. So tell us, what's it like being back at one of the Big Blue shows? >> No, it's great. It's great. As you know, I somewhat grew up at IBM might. I had seventeen years. I know so many people in the thing you miss most is in the network. So it's been it's a great opportunity to be here. Catch up with old friends, Talked to new colleagues. Great. What brought >> you to Red hat? I mean, like, you say, long career at IBM, and it was obviously prior to the acquisition, so you didn't know that was coming? What was the lore? >> So I'd say a couple of things clearly, as you know, I became a student of the Lenox Space while I was in while I was at I B M in the Power Systems unit. So fascinated for what Lennox has taught the industry about. I always say Lennox Lennox taught the world how development is meant to be done through open source in the innovation of a community. So that was a thrilling aspect for me to join. Also, I think I truly believe in the open hybrid, multi cloud strategy that Red Hat has had actually for years. Now. I think open source is all about choice and flexibility. It's what Lennox provides and moving forward their strategy around having a management portfolio, having a Cooper Netease platform all built upon being able to consume Lennox wherever and however you want it, I believe in the strategy. So it's been really exciting, and having the rail aspect is fantastic. >> So, Stephanie, you're right. You own that. Really? The core of red hats business. You know, Red Hat Enterprise Lennox, You know, we've been covering this space heavily for years, and everything that redheads doing comes back to, you know, that Lennox Colonel and there Ah, lot of people don't really understand that. The business model say it's like, Oh, well, you know, red hat cells free and, oh, that's a service model and things like that bring us inside your business and what's exciting and dynamic and happening in that space. >> It's It's such an incredible time. I couldn't ask for a better job, but I love the linen space for a couple of things. As you look at all the things that are changing in the industry today, I always say to customers, you may not know the applications. You'll run next year in three years, in five years, you may not know where you'll want to run them. What you do know it's they'll run on Lennox, right? It's the fastest growing operating system in the industry today. It's number one choice of developers. So, as you look to see, what can you do to prepare for the innovation Its pick your Lennox and Red hat has done an incredible job of making a consumable. If you look at the hundreds of thousands of packages out there, an open source, you take that you pull it into. Really, I feel what well delivers bread had. Enterprise Lennox delivers is an ecosystem. It's a trusted ecosystem. We test the team does an incredible job of testing a breadth of hardware, everything from, you know, X eighty six systems to power systems. Dizzy, too, you know, in video G, D G X. So way test all of that and then all the way up to the applications. We pull that ecosystem with us now, our goal is to be able to provide that anywhere. So you take that capability whether you do it. Bare metal, virtual machine, public cloud, private cloud. Now you move into containers. You know, everything we do in rail translates overto open shift. Whether you consume it as a private cloud and open stack or containerized in open shift, all of that ecosystem follows through. So it really is. When I look at is the bedrock of the of the entire portfolio for red hat, and we really are at Enterprise software company Today we pull in management with things like answerable and satellite. You pull all that together. Automation of the storage portfolio. It's just such an exciting time. It's a real transition from going from a no s company and building >> upon that. >> I mean truly an enterprise software company from multiple clouds. >> So I was talking about more about that because open shift gets all the buzz. Ostensibly, it was a key linchpin of the acquisition that I being made. Well, What's the connection between between rail and the rest of red hats? Portfolio. Maybe you could connect those dogs. >> That would be so, as you look at, and I'm an infrastructure person for a long time, as you know, and coming from the infrastructure up space, most was purchased from an infrastructure of you for many years. Now. It's all about how you consume the applications and the infrastructure comes in and feeds it from an application. Space containers are amazing, right? They bring that incredible flexibility started. Stop it, move it lifted, shifted Everything. Thing is, from an application perspective, it's simple. From a Lennox perspective, it's actually much more complicated, you know, in the days of bare metal or even V EMS. Quite clean cut between your systems, your operating system. You're hyper visor in your application. Once you move into containerized worlds, you've split up your Lennox. You have user space in your container. You have Cooper netease making ten times the number of calls to the colonel space that the hyper visor ever did. Much more complicated. So as you move into that space of Kou Burnett ease and containers and orchestration, you know, you really want someone who knows Lennox because the clinic space is more complicated, bringing simplicity from a container and application >> performance management, security changes >> Absolutely automation. So really is as we look at the portfolio, we have a You know, we believe strongly in the customer experience, we deploy with rail that trusted ecosystem. In order to be able to take that into a container world, we need to be able to get access into the user space into the coup. Burnett ease and into the colonel because they're so intimately twine entwined. So as we transition that open shift is the way we delivered, we build upon the same rail. Colonel, we used the user space. >> So, Stephanie, like you, I'm an infrastructure person. And, you know, my background is in, you know, the OS. And, you know, down that environment, there's been a wave of, you know, just enough operating system. How do we slice these up? I look of Cora West, which read, Had acquired was originally a We're going to slim down, you know, the colonel and make things easily. Where's the innovation still happening? Lenox And, well, you know why is still Lin It's going to be relevant going forward. You talked about, you know, containers, things like server list all threatened to say, Oh, well, you know, my application development person shouldn't have to think about it. But why is it still important? >> Yeah. So you know whether things I love about my role is with the position that red hat has in the industry with rail. And, you know, we have Ah, we have a approximately fifty thousand set of that fifty thousand customers who use rail and trust us. So as we look at how we drive innovation, I love the ability to kind of help redefine what an operating system is. And you know, certainly we bring added value did in real seven and now we have the relic beta out. So we're continuously adding things. We added in a few things about consumption base. We added app streams which separates out the ability to update your user space at a different rate in pace than your core. A court sort of based level which allows you to do faster updates in your user space. Continue on your core. Run multiple versions of your user space. It's a fantastic way to pull an innovation faster. We've also done a number of things with our capabilities around taking that first step into container ization, including tools like Build a pod man scope EOE so that within the operating system itself you conduced those based kind of capabilities for container ization. That first step. And then when you need orchestration, you can move over to open ship. So there's a ton of innovation left in the operating system. Security is core to everything we do. S o the innovation around security remains a constant were in the typical open source fashion. We've released the Beta here in November. We're gathering great feedback. We have about one hundred and forty high touch beta customers who were working hand in hand with to get feedback. And we're looking forward to bringing rally to market >> What? One of the big pieces of feedback you're getting a lot of people excited about in terms of Really. >> Certainly everyone looks to us for their security. So that's been that's been a great place for us. We had work to do on making it easier to consume as we continue to drive things with developers. And we have a new portal that's allowing sort of a single user space view those kinds of consumption. Things are very important today because, as you said, you want skills to be easily transferrable. Easily updated s o A lot of the consumption based things we've been >> working on, >> um, as well as thie tooling? >> Yeah. You talk about that skill set that's one of the biggest challenges in a multi cloud world is if I'm going to live in all these iron mint, what's the same and what's different communities is only a small piece. But Lennox is, you know something that's transferrable. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from customers in that regard? >> Yeah, I think, and that's one thing. We're working hard to try and make sure that you know, I think like when you when you buy a house, right, you can buy a house. You could buy an apartment building in Pine Office building. What doesn't change is the land underneath. You need that land to be stable, and you know you can build whatever you want on it. And that's how we view our lennox consuming anywhere you want. It's always secure. It's always stable in multiple public clouds. I think really it's the flexibility when I look at that pull open hybrid cloud space, customers aren't looking to buy a product. They're looking to establish a relationship with someone who's going to provide them what they need to do today on their mission critical applications but have the flexibility going forward to take them where they want to go. They may pick Ascent one public cloud today. They want to move it in two years and three years to a different public cloud. It's establishing that relationship to be able to consume that Lennox, preserve those skills but have the flexibility. And tomorrow >> Red has made a number of storage acquisitions recently. Obviously, the tight relationship between the operating system and the I O how do you look at that space? The opportunity, You know, the TAM talk a little bit about the storage moments >> we have so clearly we have our storage division. We've been working very closely with them to build up capabilities. Largely, you'll see it with open shift. The container ization and storage management within containers is tricky business. So as we pulled together the collaboration between our storage unit as well as our container unit, that's providing real capabilities for that ease of consumption. How do you bring the storage with the container deploys. My team has worked very closely with the management team as you pull in the management aspect with things like automation and management satellite capabilities, answerable is an amazing tool. Amazing tool. In fact, we've pulled in things like system rolls directly into the operating system so that you can set up things like networking. You. Khun, set up storage with answerable playbooks in a much simpler way. That's allowing us to get that ease of consumption. It is about, you know, David's fully about being able for us Tow leverage the portfolio. How do we allow clients to take the journey using Lennox from everything from bare metal and VM out to container ization, Pull in multiple clouds, get the storage features and functions and get the automation and management. >> So, Stephanie, you would looked at and partnered with Red had quite a bit before you had joined the company. What surprised you coming inside the company? Is there anything but being on the inside now that you look back here like, Wow, I didn't expect that or was different than what I had seen from the outside. >> You know, I think what I think, what I love and surprise me a bit was the passion of open source. You know, you look at any company from the outside and and certainly as a student from the outside, you look at the business and how the business is doing and how it's growing in his study. All of that, Well, you don't get to see from the outside is the open source passion of the developers who I get to work with every day. I mean, they just they understand the market. They do it as a hobby on the weekends. It's it's It's just unbelievable, right? I love being I'm up in Westford is, you know, with all the developers, it's great. >> So I'm gonna ask you a lot of talk about the culture, you know, between Red Hat and IBM. You you've been in both camps. Now what do you thoughts in the culture >> s O? You know, I think when I look at the culture, I love the culture at Red Hat. As you know, I've been in many places at IBM and multiple divisions and multiple units. There's a lot of autonomy between the business units at IBM from my own experience. And there's so many people I miss working with colleagues at IBM that, you know I worked in and head with, and WeII brought amazing things to mark it. So I look forward to working with them again. You know, I always look for those groups that are passionate, and there's a lot of passionate IBM is I miss working with. So I look forward to bringing that back >> seventy one to give you the final word. We know. You know Jim Whitehurst has got a president and he's doing later today. I believe Red Hat has a has a good presence there, tells Red Hat here it think. What should be people be looking >> for? Yeah, I think so. Clearly, there's a lot of buzz and excitement about what both Red Hat and IBM Khun do together for the open hybrid cloud. I come at it now from a full Lennox perspective, and I couldn't be more excited about what Lennox is going to deliver for innovation and for customers to consume an innovation as we pull in and look, look to all these discussion that will happen with Jim and Jeannie on stage today, it's it's great. We'll be able to take what Red Hat has done and scale it now with the help of IBM, so very excited about the future. All right, >> Well, Stephanie, we really appreciate your sharing. Congratulations. You're going >> to see about thanks for the time. >> So we still have, you know, about three more days left here at IBM Thinking, of course, the Cube will be at Red Hat Summit twenty nineteen, which is back in Boston, Massachusetts, for Dave A lotta arms to minimum. Thanks for watching the cue

(upbeat instrumental music) >> From Las Vegas it's the CUBE. Covering Open Systems, the future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to the CUBE. We are here in Las Vegas in the Cosmo hotel in the Chandelier bar. Part of Open Systems get together, kind of session of smart people gathered. All part of big week here in Vegas. Garden is having a big event, a lot of things happening. We have Martin Bosshardt who is the CEO of Open Systems who's hosting the event. Thanks for coming on the CUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for joining me. Okay so, I got to get this out there. You guys are in Switzerland headquarters. You've just established big presence in Silicon Valley. >> Right. >> And you've expanding rapidly in Silicon Valley, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Explain what you guys do, how you started, where you come from and what's the story of Open Systems? >> Well, originally we started as managed security service provider and I managed security infrastructure. We learned, especially if you are doing financial services, security infrastructure, if you try to update you need to go into those data centers. And that is harder to get in there, it's like entering North Korea. So we learned to operate that stuff remotely and that really brought us in more than 180 countries, especially with industry companies. Industry they manufacturing, they started to globalize their value chains, and that really helped us to globalize our foot print. And obviously to do that we used SD-WAN. So we definitely came from the security space, but today we are the largest SD-WAN, standardize SD-WAN platform we a fully integrated security staff. >> So how big is the company roughly people-wise? What's a... >> We are 200 plus people currently, and a 50 plus million revenue this year. >> How big, sounds like the customers are really large complex data centers with a lot of offices and facilities. Is that your makeup of your customer base right now? >> Our customer base really is, I think, I mean obviously financial services that's always if you start in Switzerland a company, the financial services is very important. But then also, industry, manufacturing is especially companies with globalized value chains are very interested in our services. Because you have serious complexity from regulatory point of view, but also from operational point of view to operate SD-WAN in a secured way. So this is really our sweet spot. >> So explain the difference between SD-WAN old way and the new way, because SD-WAN was simply connecting branch offices together, basic networking stuff. Mean its like connectivity. So today is much more complex. What's the difference between the SD-WAN environment thing, because there is a resurgence with SD-WAN. With cloud computing, with the internet, obviously with secure issues, it's a whole different ball game. Explain the difference between the old way and the new way. >> Well the old way was it just connected occasions and then you piped traffic through a VPN, right. And I think we learned a lot about what SD-WAN is really capable to do when we start to work for the NGO Space, when you use a lot of satellite traffic. It's very expensive to pipe everything through the satellites, so you need to slice the traffic into important stuff, less important stuff and then you decide what are you going to route through the satellite and what you going to route terrestric. And this is really where the whole magic of SD-WAN comes from. You certainly have to, the freedom to route traffic application based in a very different way. So, you're not bound to protocols anymore, so you really can route your Office 365 traffic different than your Facebook traffic. You can route, you can priortize. >> So you can differentiate between the traffic types first. That was a first, discovery. >> That was important for us, because we managed infrastructure and obviously you don't want to create congestion by managing infrastructure. So, it is really about, what traffic is important? What traffic is time critical? >> Yeah. >> And route, depending on the application needs, traffic differently. >> Yes, cost is always a big motivator. But for innovation. >> Cost performance. It's always cost performance, right? >> So, I get that's awesome and by the way that's how startups figure out innovations that don't have a lot of capital. They figure it out by being effective and making things work. When did the security piece click in for you guys? When you guys saw SD-WAN, when was the moment you said, "Okay we are going to do all these things to save costs and do this kind of routings and these kinds of policy based". I'm over simplifying, but you know what I'm saying. When did security become important? Was it from the beginning? Was it a discovery? Was it something that was a, you just caught the wave? Explain how you guys became so prolific in your product with security. >> We definitely, we came sort of from the security space and the SD-WAN was something we used to operate security infrastructure. So it's maybe, we looked at it a little bit different, but at the end of the day, SD-WAN creates so much opportunities for companies. And I believe the whole cloud movement is creating so many opportunities for companies to move fast, to create growth. Also, if you think IoT, it creates whole different business models for almost all enterprise organizations. >> Talk about the business model, that's important, because go ahead finish your thoughts. >> And now the question is, How can you embrace all that growth and managing the risks? And that's what's happening right now. We help customers to combine the security. >> So one of the things we were here last week for Amazon re:Invent big event for Amazon web services and they announce a non-premise product. No one thought they were ever going to do that. So I asked the CEO there why they were doing that, essentially he said, "latency kills". Certain latency is now the new problem. You learned that from the satellite situation where cost and latency are really important factors in determining how you architect things. But then you realize that the business models are shifting. So, I ask you, as you have need for security and low latency, people are looking for direct connections. They don't want to route traffic through internet. Who knows where it's going to go though, China? It's all these hidden problems. >> Yeah, and you know I agree basically. Latency kills, but I also disagree, because there are applications where latency is not an issue, like email. I mean you couldn't care less about latency in email. >> In fact don't deliver it. (laughs) >> But at the same time it's really important that a network understands not only how it routes, it also understands what it routes. And that is the power of SD-WAN, so you really can route different applications in different routes. >> Right time, right place kind of thing. >> Exactly and then it depends where it's consumed, where it's delivered and where do you route those >> Talk about your business model now, you got a U.S. Why the U.S. expansion? Is it right for growth? Is it a natural progression? What's the strategy, Why U.S. expansion? >> Actually, what we see the U.S. is moving very fast to the cloud right now and this is an opportunity for us to really support that, I would call it transformation. It's really an industry transformation is happening right now and we just in Europe maybe to bring down the cost of connectivity. That's still more of a business driver, and obviously, that's always exciting to bring down costs. But if you move to cloud, you really have to rethink your network structure and also you have to rethink your security posture. So this is just a way of opportunity. >> Martin, I got to ask you honestly, I've been kind of checking around Silicon Valley and you guys have a good vibe and good buzz. Certainly great reputation in Switzerland, great product, great work, but you are attracting kind of new talent from the Bay area, Cisco in particular. A lot of these high-powered people. Networking guys, developers. Who are you guys looking to attract into your office as you expand, I know you got a lot of openings. It's not a recruiting plug, but I mean as you look to put the team together, What are you guys looking for? What's the kind of individual? What's the culture of your company? What's the kind of things people can expect if they work there? >> I mean we are focused on, we just want to create the most amazing networks in a secured way. And I believe this is very attractive, what we've created the last couple of years. And that is also attractive for talent in Silicon Valley. But obviously, it's a competitive market. But it's all over the world, it's competitive market. And I believe, especially going to the market and understanding what the world needs. That's very powerful in Silicon Valley. The eco-system is very powerful, so for us is clear. We want to be there, we want to play a role. >> That's awesome, we look forward to doing more content. Final question for you, If you could have to nail down the core problem that you guys are trying to solve. As the world evolves, the landscape continues, the world gone global. You're seeing all kinds of needs, all kinds of intelligence. What have the top problems that your team is working on, to continue to iterate and solve, What are the big things you are trying to nail down? >> We want to make it for a customer very easy to consume a secure SD-WAN. And that sounds maybe simple, but it's not. To operate an SD-WAN in a secure way is really challenge. So most companies operate like 40, 50 different products to achieve that. >> Yeah. >> And we us it's like subscribing a service. >> Quick plug last minute, What's your product? 'Cause you have a deal with multiple vendors. Is this a SAS product, on-premise, cloud? >> It's a SAS, on prem available and it's availa6ble in all major cloud (mumbles), like Azuren and Amazon. So it's in all clouds premises working. >> You're literally Switzerland, for the cloud. (laughs) >> Yeah. >> They use that expression in the United States a lot. >> Yeah. >> We're Switzerland, we're neutral. >> Yeah, we're Switzerland, we're neutral. We're actually very neutral and also... >> But seriously, you can work with, if I'm the customer >> Right. >> I have multiple clouds, I have multiple vendors. I have a ton of security products. Can I use you guys? >> Right, yeah it's simple. I mean we are already a platform so we use many security products and orchestrate so they work together. >> What are the common things you get from customers that have been successful with you. And I don't want to say single (mumbles) lessons that is an old IT expression, but the world has to be smarter, faster, dashboard oriented, AP harden, APIs, a lot of data traversal. What's the ideal end state for your customers, when you guys are successful? >> You have to repeat that question. >> From a customer, what's the value purchase to me? Am I saving time? Am I integrating multiple devices? >> You save a lot of time, you save a lot of money. And I believe the most important thing is, we see ourself as weapon in a war for talent. It's just impossible for our customers to find the talents to really operate that stuff in a good way. And we make that much easier. So obviously, you cannot outsource security, but you can make security easy, manageable and that's where we... >> And operational, make it work. >> And operational, make it work, and that's I believe the key already. >> Well Martin, congratulations on the expansion strategy. Real quick, What's going on in Vegas for you guys here? What are you guys here talking about? What's the big story here for you guys? >> Well basically, obviously, we grow very fast so we also use this to bring together people. But then also, everybody is here right now. It's great to see winners, it's great to see partners. It's great to see competitors, so it's just important to understand the market. It's also, there are worst place in the world to be. >> Yeah. >> In Las Vegas. >> Build those relationships, thanks so much for coming on the CUBE, really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. >> I'm here with the CEO of Open Systems from John Furrier the CUBE, we are here at the Chandelier bar at the Cosmo. We are just getting started, we got a couple bunch more interviews still to come. We just had the FBI on, really importa6nt conversations around security, cybersecurity, enterprise security, and how to make SD-WAN work. We'll be right back with more. Stay with us after this short break. (techno music)

>> Live from Washington DC, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back. It's theCUBE's exclusive coverage. We're here in Washington, D.C. for live coverage of theCUBE here at Amazon Web Services, AWS Public Sector Summit. This is the re-invent for the global public sector. Technically they do a summit but it's really more of a very focused celebration and informational sessions with customers from Amazon Web Services, GovCloud, and also international, except China, different world. John Furrier, Dave Vellante here for our third year covering AWS Public Sector Summit and again our next guest is Max Peterson, the Vice President of International Sales Worldwide for public sector data, Max, good to see you, thanks for coming back. >> It's good to see you again, John, thank you. >> So, we saw you at dinner last night, great VIP Teresa Carlson dinner last night, it's a who's who in Washington, D.C., but also international global public sector. >> Absolutely. >> And so, I want to get your thoughts on this, because AWS is not just in D.C. for GovCloud, there's a global framework here. What's goin' on, what's your take on how this cloud is disrupting the digital nations, and obviously here at home in D.C.? >> Well, John, so first of all, I love your description of this as a celebration, because really that's one of the things that we do, is we celebrate customer success, and so when you look at AWS around the world, we've got customers that are delivering solutions for citizens, new solutions for healthcare, a great solution to education all around the world. In Europe, we serve all those customers from London, Ireland, Germany, Frankfurt, Paris, all open regions, and we're bringing two new regions that we've announced, in the Middle East, which is an exciting part of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa business, and then also up in the Nordics, with Sweden. >> Yeah, so I want to ask you about EMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa, it's the acronym for essentially international. Huge growth, obviously Europe is a mature set of countries, and it has its own set of issues, but in the Middle East and outside of Europe there's a huge growing middle class of digital culture. >> Yes. >> You're seeing everything from cryptocurrency booming, blockchain, you're seeing kind of the financial industries changing, obviously mobile impact, you got a new revolution going on with digital. You guys have to kind of thread the needle on that. What are you guys doing to support those regions? Obviously, you got to invest, got GDP always in the headlines >> Right. >> Recently, that's Europe's issue, and globally, but you got Europe, and you got outside of Europe. Two different growth strategies, how is AWS investing, what are some of the things you guys are doing? >> Sure, let me try and get all of those questions >> (laughs) Just start them one at a time >> That was very good, yeah. So, let's do the invest and grow piece. Digital skills are critical, and that's one of the challenges with the overall digital transformation, and, by the way, that's not just EMEA, that's all around the world, right? Including the U.S., and so we're doing a lot of things to try to address the digital skills requirement, a program that we've got called AWS Educate just yesterday announced the Cloud Academy Course. So, career colleges, technical colleges will be able to teach a two-year course specifically on cloud, right? For traditional university education, we provide this thing called AWS Educate. We, in the UK, we started a program over 18 months ago called Restart, where we focus on military leavers, spouses, and disadvantaged youth through the prince's trust, and we're training a thousand people a year on AWS cloud computing and digital skills. Taking them, in this case, out of military, or from less advantaged backgrounds and bringin' 'em into tech. And then, finally in April of this year, at our Brussels public sector summit, a celebration of customers in EMEA, we announced that we're going to be training 100,000 people across Europe, Middle East and Africa, with a combination of all of these programs, so skills is absolutely top in terms of getting people on to the cloud, right, and having them be digitally savvy, but the other part that you talked about is really the generational and cultural changes. People expect service when they touch a button on the phone. And that's not how most governments work, it's not how a lot of educational institutions work, and so we're helping them. And so, literally now, across the region, we've got governments that are delivering online citizen services at the touch of a button. Big organizations, like the UK Home Office, like the Department for Wealth and Pensions, like the Ministry of Justice. And then, I think the other thing that you asked about was GDPR. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> Am I covering all the bases? >> You're doing good Max. >> You keep it rollin'. >> You're a clipping machine, here. >> So, GDPR might be thought of as a European phenomenon, but my personal opinion is that's going to set the direction for personal data privacy around the world, and we're seeing the implementation happen in Europe, but we're seeing also customers in the Middle East, in Asia, down in Latin America going, "Hey, that's a good example." And I think you'll see people adopt it, much like people have adopted the NIST definition of cloud computing. Why re-invent it? If there's something that's good, let's adopt it and go, and Amazon understood that that was coming, although some people act like it's a surprise. >> Yeah. >> Did your e-mail box get flooded with e-mail? >> Oh, Gosh. >> God, tons Well the day >> Day before. >> Yes! >> (laughs) >> Yes, day before! Acting like this was, like a surprise. It started two years before, so Amazon actually started our planning so that when the day arrived for it to be effective, AWS services were GDPR compliant so that customers could build GDPR compliant solutions on top of the cloud. >> So, I mean generally I know there's a lot of detail there, but what does that mean, GDPR compliant? 'Cause I like having my data in the cloud with GDPR, 'cause I can push a lot of the compliance onto my cloud provider, so what does that really mean, Max? >> Yeah, well fundamentally, GDPR gives people control of their information. An example is the right to be forgotten, right? Many companies, good companies were already doing that. This makes it a requirement across the entire EU, right? And so, what it means to be compliant is that companies, governments, people need to have a data architecture. They really have to understand where their data is, what information they're collecting, and they have to make the systems follow the rules for privacy protection. >> So how does AWS specifically help me as a customer? >> Right, so our customers around Europe, in fact, around the world build their solutions on top of Amazon. The Amazon services do things that are required by GDPR like encryption, alright? And so, you're supposed to encrypt and protect private data. In Amazon, all you do is click a button, and no matter where you store it, it's encrypted and protected. So a lot of organizations struggled to implement some of these basic protections. Amazon's done it forever, and under GDPR, we've organized those so that all of our services act the same. >> Max, this brings up security questions, 'cause, you know obviously we hear a lot of people use the cloud, as an example, for getting things stood up quickly, >> Yep. >> Whether it's an application in the past, and then say a data warehouse, you got redshifts, and kinesis, and at one point was the fastest growing service, as Andy Jassy said, now that's been replaced by a bunch of other stuff. You got SageMaker around the corner, >> SageMaker's awesome. >> So you got that ability, but also data is not just a data warehouse question. It's really a central value proposition, whether you're talking about in the cloud or IOT, so data becomes the center of the value proposition. How are you guys ensuring security? What are some of the conversations, because it certainly differs on a country by country basis. You got multiple regions developing, established and developing new ones for AWS. How do you look at that? How do you talk to customers and say, "Okay, here's our strategy, and here's what we're doing to secure your data, here's how you can go faster (laughs), keep innovating, because you know they don't want to go slower, because it's complicated. To do a GDPR overhaul, for some customers, is a huge task. How do you guys make it faster, while securing the data? >> Yeah, so first of all, your observation about data, having gravity, is absolutely true. What we've struggled with, with government customers, with healthcare and commercial enterprise, is people have their data locked up in little silos. So the first thing that people are doing on the cloud, is they're taking all that and putting it into a data warehouse, a data repository. Last night we heard from NASA, and from Blue Origin about the explosion in data, and in fact, what they said, and we believe, is that you're going to start bringing your compute to the data because the amount of information that you've got, when you've got billions of sensors, IOT, billions of these devices that are sending information or receiving information, you have to have a cloud strategy to store all that information. And then secondly, you have to have a cloud compute strategy to actually make use of that information. You can't download it anymore. If you're going to operate in real time, you've got to run that machine learning, right, in real time, against the data that's coming in, and then you've got to be able to provide the information back to an application or to people that makes use of it. So you just can't do it in-house anymore. >> You mentioned the talk last night as part of the Earth and Science Program, which you guys did, which by the way, I thought was fabulous. For the folks watching, they had a special inaugural event, before this event around earth and space, Blue Origin was there, Jet Propulsion Lab, much of the NASA guys, a lot of customers. But the interesting thing he said also, was is that they look at the data as a key part, and then he called himself a CTO, Chief Toy Officer. And he goes, "you got to play with the toys before they become too old," but that was a methodology that he was talking about how they get involved in using the tooling. Tooling becomes super important. You guys have a set of services, AWS, Amazon Web Services, which essentially are tools. >> Yeah. >> Collectively tools, you know global, you end up generalizing it, but this is important because now you can mix and match. Talk about how that's changed the customer mindset and how they roll out technology because they got to play, they got to experiment, as Andy Jassy would say, but also, also put the tools into production. How is it changing the face of your customer base? >> Sure, well, one of the things that customers love, is the selection of tools, but one of the most important things we actually do with customers, is help them to solve their problems. We have a professional service organization, we have what we call Envision Engineering, which is a specialized team that goes in and develops prototypes with customers, so that they understand how they can use these different tools to actually get their work done. One quick example: in the UK, the NHS had to implement a new program for people calling in to understand health benefits. And they could've done this in a very traditional fashion, it would've taken months and months to set up the call center and get everything rolling. Fortunately, they worked with one of our partners, and they understood that they could use new speech and language processing tools like Lex, and Amazon's in-the-cloud call center tools, like Connect. In two weeks, they were able to develop the application that handled 42% of the inbound call volume entirely automated, with speech and text processing, so that the other 52% could go to live operators where they had a more complex problem. That was prototyped in two weeks, it was implemented in three more weeks, a total of five weeks from concept to operation of a call center receiving thousands and thousands of inbound calls on the cloud. >> Max, can you paint a picture of the EMEA customer base, how it sort of compares to the US, the profile? I mean, obviously here, in the United States, you got a healthy mix of customers. You got startups, you're announcing enterprises, you got IOT use cases. I imagine a lot of diversity in EMEA, but how does it compare with the US, how would you describe it? Paint a picture for us. >> Yeah sure, candidly, we see the same exact patterns all around the world. Customers are in different stages of readiness, but across Europe, we have central governments that are bringing online, mission systems to the cloud. I mentioned Home Office, I mentioned DWP, I mentioned Her Majesty Revenue and Customs, HMRC. They're bringing real mission systems to the cloud now because they laid the right foundations, right? They've got a cloud native policy, and that's what directs government, that says stop building legacy systems and start building for the future by using the cloud. Educational institutions across the board are using AWS. Science and research, like the European Space Agency is using AWS, so we see, really, just the same pattern going on. Some areas of the world are newer to the cloud, so in the Middle East, we're seeing that sort of startup phase, where startup companies are gettin' onto the cloud. Some of 'em are very big. Careem is a billion dollar startup running on AWS, right. But we're helping startups just do the basics on the cloud. In Bahrain, which is a small country in the Middle East, they realized the transformative opportunity with cloud computing, and they decided to take the lead. They worked with AWS, they produced a national cloud policy, their CIO said we will move to the cloud, and that's key. Leadership is absolutely key. And then they put in place a framework, and they very systematically identified those applications that were ready, and they moved those first. Then they tackled the ones that weren't quite ready, and they moved those. They moved 450 applications in a matter of three months, to the cloud, but it was by having a focused program, top-level leadership, the right policy, and then we provided technical resources to help them do it. >> Max, I want to get one last question before the time comes up, but I want to put you on the spot here. >> Oh good. >> In the United States, Amazon Web Services public sector has really kind of changed the game. You saw the CIA deal that you guys did years ago, the Department of Defense is all in the news, obviously it's changing the ecosystem. How is that dynamic happening in Europe? You said the patterns are the same. Take a minute to just quickly describe, what's going on in the ecosystem? What's the partner profile look like? You've got a great partner ecosystem, and there are different partners. You mentioned Bahrain, Digital Nation, changing the game. You guys seem to attract kind of a new guard, a new kind of thinking, partners. What is the ecosystem partnerships look like for you guys, internationally, and is there the same dynamic going on that's happening in the US with the CIA, and DOD leaders around changing the narrative, changing the game, with technology? >> Sure, good questions. We wouldn't be able to deliver the solutions that we deliver to customers without our partner ecosystem. And sometimes, they're small, born in the cloud partners, the same sort of phenomenon that we have in the US. The example with the National Health Service was delivered by a expert consulting partner called Arcus Global, about a hundred person strong consulting organization that just knows cloud and makes it their business. And we see those throughout Europe, Middle East, and into Africa. We have our large global partners, Capgemini, Accenture, and then I think the other thing that's really important, is the regional partners. So what's happening is we're seeing those regional partners, partners like Everee, or Dee-Ecto, or SCC. We're seeing them now realize that their customers want to be agile, they want to be innovative, they want to be fast, and it doesn't hurt that they're going to save some money. And so we're seeing them change their business model, to adopt cloud computing, and that's the tipping point. When that middle, that trusted middle of partners, starts to adopt cloud and help the customers, that's when it really swings the other direction. >> It's great growth, and new growth brings new partners, new profiles, new brands, new names, and specialty is key. Max, thanks for coming on the CUBE. Really appreciate you taking the time. International, we're riding the wave of home sector with CUBE here in the US, soon we'll see you in some international summits. >> I'm looking forward, >> Alright. >> John, Dave, it was awesome to talk to you. >> Thanks Max. >> Alright, we are here live in Washington, D.C., for Amazon Web Services, AWS, Public Sector Summit 2018, we are in Washington, I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, and also Stu Miniman is here, the whole CUBE team is here, unpacking the phenomenon that is AWS, rocking the government and digital nations around the world. We're back with more, after this short break. (upbeat techno music)