>>Yeah. Welcome back to a W s reinvent 20 twenty-one. This is the live. In addition, the last year, of course, it was virtual. This is probably the most important hybrid event of the year. Over 20,000 people. We have two sets here at the Cube. My name is David. I'm really excited to have Caroline see more on the vice president of product marketing at Serato, which is now an H p e company. And Daniel, who is the director of worldwide partner Essays at A W s. Folks, welcome to the good to see you. >>Yeah, great to be here. So, >>Caroline, you got some news. Why don't we start their hard news? We always like to start with that. >>First of all, I think I just like to talk a little bit about the acquisition because it has been acquired by H. P. And in September, we announced, um, disaster recovery as a service is part of the Green Lake platform. And so that's really exciting. Both from, uh, customers as well is also H B customers. But the innovation continues here at a W s reinvent, we are announcing a new solution 02 in cloud, which is a disaster recovery for Amazon. Easy to, um, and if I think about the value that it brings to the customers, it's delivering orchestrated disaster. Recovery is delivering that simplicity at scale and scale is very important aspect because it will deliver that from tends to thousands of work clothes and as well, it's helping organizations to drive more operational efficiencies around their processes. So that's sort of a nutshell of the news. The cloud for a W s >>great. Thank you for that. So I wanna ask you, obviously, in lock down, people look to the cloud. Uh, and you know, data protection used to be just back up, and then people realize that recovery is important, but it used to be a bolt on an afterthought. You sort of launch the application of the service. And so we got to protect this thing and whatever and throw it on there that that's unacceptable. Today, if you're not going to run your digital business with a bolt on, So what? Our customers telling you in terms of what they want to see from their data protection portfolios and how are you seeing the ecosystem and a W s helping them to integrate that >>absolutely well to your point, the pandemic has absolutely accelerated a lot of businesses movement into the cloud. So companies that hadn't formerly thought about using cloud technologies are now doing that. And for them, in order to have a very simple and easy and scalable data protection solution, is critical for them to feel comfortable into moving into a W s. And so that's what we're seeing from a lot of customers. Um, and of course, back to your point about recovery with the challenges around ransomware, Um, that is definitely an area where a lot of companies have just done their back up. But they're also testing it and making sure that it's something that they know that they can rely on, um, as they moved there, workloads into the club. >>And speaking of ransomware, I mean, it's just front and center. Anybody can be a ransomware. Today they go in the dark web by ransomware service. They put a stick into a server and then bad things happen. Hopefully that that individual ends up in handcuffs, but not always so when we've seen Ransom's getting paid $40 million ransom's multi-million dollar. And we all know about the fact that our front and center So what are you seeing in terms of the customer base? How How h b n z two helping and where does a W s fit? Maybe you could start off Caroline. >>Great question, because I think from the perspective, we look at it from the need for recovery. Uh, strategy as part of your overarching, um, security and prevention is is one aspect that you always need two prevention. But to us, it's a matter of not if you're going to be attacked. It's when and when that gets through your firewall. And so you need to be able to have a recovery strategy in place that allows you to recover in minutes to set to within seconds of when that when an attack actually happens. And, um, I can give a case in, for example, for there's a company 10 Carter Protective fabric, textiles manufacturing company, MULTI-MILLION business. And they suffered to to a tax crypto attack first time, and they were using more traditional, um, back up to take. And it took him two weeks to recover having been attacked, and they suffered significant data loss, and then they deployed photo photo. Um, unfortunately, a little while later, they were attacked a second time with more sophisticated case of So it continues. Um, but this time the recovery was very different. What happened was that they were able to recover within minutes and they had seconds of data loss. And that is because of r c d p technology C D. P. Being continuous data protection. And that is with our replication and a unique journaling capability that allows you to, uh, set up the different checkpoint. So you have thousands of recovery points and you can recover to a specific recovery point with within seconds of that attack. Very, very powerful. >>I wanna ask you a question and what Caroline was just talking about with the classic metrics in this business r P O R T r P o recovery point objective. Always say, how much data do you want to lose? And people say none. Okay, how much? What kind of budget do you have? So that's always been the trade-off, although, as you mentioned, it's getting a little bit more cost-effective and then recovery time objective. How long does it take you to get back up. Absolutely. So so. Those are some of the concepts that you were talking about. I wanna ask you, Daniel, it feels like an Caroline. You feel like data protection is now becoming. It's certainly a tight adjacent to overall security. It's not security per se sick of it, so but it's but it's becoming. The lines are blurring. How do you see that you have a shared responsibility model? Where does this whole topic fit in? >>Well, I think lots of companies are really finding a lot of value in their data, right. Whereas, you know, perhaps years ago it was less. It was easy to hang on to it, to actually make it valuable to do metrics and analytics on it to do machine learning, perhaps on it. And so, by having, um, products such as the product, you know, they're now able to hang on to that data and make sure that they have it in perpetuity so that they can do what they need to do on it. So, yes, we're seeing, you know, companies that were traditionally storage cos thinking about security, security cos thinking about data, so yes, all of those lines are being blurred for sure. And I think that, you know, as far as the short security model we think of the you know, we think of our partners and ourselves, obviously as extensions. And we're really looking to have the best customer experience that we can >>can I think every company security company, Obviously you impact enterprise care a lot about security A W s. I don't know any company because I don't really care about security. That's that's not my swim land out of business. If you If you had that attitude now. So from from your standpoint, where does it fit inside of you know, you're you're thinking, How are you guys thinking about security and data protection? Back up and recovery? Is it all just coming together or they still kind of separate entities? >>No, you're absolutely right. It is coming together, and what we're seeing is we're having a lot more conversations with ISO's, um so the more the security offices of organizations and I think what's happening is that's where the budget is to. And so you're saying they're sort of the working together on the I T and also the Office of Security to um so we're having more conversations there, and we see that, as I mentioned before, the recovery strategy is a key element of our focus. And what we can do is part of the overarching strategy of an organization. >>So what? How should we think about the cloud? Is it another layer of protection? Um, is it a replacement for tape? Maybe not, but we need as much protection as possible. So how should we think about the cloud in the context of data protection? >>Well, the cloud, Yeah, absolutely. Um can provide an alternative to tape or, um disc, for example, of this year. We also added support for a mutability preserved for A W S. With so we are ensuring in the fact that you know you can be changed so that that's absolutely critical. >>So that's a a right once read only technology. That's a service that you tap. So your integrating zero was integrating with that capability. So that's another layer of protection. That's another layer of protection. And then, of course, you know there's there's gaps, is another part of the strategy. So let's talk strategy for a minute. What's the I know it's not one size fits all, but what are you seeing as best practice strategies for customers to protect themselves against traditional just human error? Cyber attacks? What's the what's the sort of prevailing approach? How should we think about that? >>Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. Those the, you know, the filed elections, the database corruptions, and so our solutions, that is, our continuous data protection. It absolutely is, um, the ability to be able to get that granular level of recovery, which you can do with backups. I'm not saying that backup isn't part of your overall strategy, but if you're actually trying to recover quickly and within seconds to whether it's an attack to whether it's a file deleted, a database corruption, you need that continuous data protection. And that's something that you need to us that we've been delivering since the day that um was formed. So >>that's your secret sauce is it is a very granular ability to dial down based on your r p o. That's requirements based on the application requirements, uh, and then bring in the cloud for things like mutability. Maybe gapping. Maybe Last resort is still the last resort. I don't know. Maybe >>there. So, um, you know, a w s to be a target for disaster recovery. So all back up. >>You talk about that? >>Yeah. So, with what we have enabled is first of all, if you want to, um, my great, your work clothes to a W s. And we're seeing an awful lot of that. We provide that capability. So the mobility aspect, if you are looking at instead of an on premises disaster recovery site, you can use a W S D R site. Um, And if you want to back up to a W s and use, um, cost efficient storage, we support that with cloud tearing and mutability. And as I say today, we're announcing cloud for a W s, which is once you've got your work clothes in a W s. We can protect them now in, um, in a W s itself. So the full spectrum. And then earlier this year, we announced for communities for US work clothes, So we're really trying to ensure that we can protect any A W s workload wherever it is. >>So I look around here pretty impressive given that we're in the second year of a pandemic here, pretty packed floor. But the ecosystem is just exploding. That's gonna make you feel good. Cos like choosing to partner with a W s leaning in writing to your cloud-native fooling. Maybe give us the update on how you see this partnership. >>Well, I mean, just to Caroline's earlier point, you can see how Xero is continuing to innovate, right? And that's really key. So, um, having a cloud-native solution and then also having a solution that works for us. We're seeing a lot of companies thinking about containers thinking about server lists. And so, you know, the best partnerships that we have are the ones in which they're innovating with us continuously. And I've known about since I started in 2014. So they've been around for a long time, and they're continuing, um, to do that. And they are working closely with us to do P O. C. D. S. And and to help our customers really get what they need, um, in the data protection space and continuing to innovate, which is >>your customers, they want that they need that your your deep into data protection. Yes. You're scale of cloud But you're not going to have the the capabilities of Stack. So that one plus one hopefully is greater than to How do you where can we find out more information about you know, the new solutions? What's the what's the call to >>action culture as well? A couple of things. We've, uh we just We just launched deserted for a W s hands-on lab. And what that does is allow in your own time in your own environment to be able to try with a W S as a target and back up. Um, so we've just launched that and that enables you to see how it works with a W S. We also have for communities, um, lab as well, so you can see how it works with a K s. Uh, coming soon, we're going to have to in cloud lab that you can actually see how to protect your workload in the cloud in a W s. So those are the really the best ways to be able to Well, for a call to action is try. The lab really is >>awesome. Guys, thanks so much for coming to the Cube. Very important topic and keep up the good work. >>Thank you. Thank you. Very well. So >>we're seeing the evolution of data protection rethinking data protection in 2020. No longer is it a Bolton cloud modernization with deep stacks. Fine granularity for your r p o. But also quick recovery protection from Ransomware. It's a whole new world, and we're here to cover it. My name is David. You're watching the Cube, the leader in high tech coverage. We'll be right back. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Mm, yeah.

[Music] from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data-driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante top security pros indicate that the solar winds hack on top of the pandemic have further heightened a change in how they think about security not only musciso secure an increasingly distributed workforce and network infrastructure but they now must be wary of software code coming from reputable vendors including the very patches designed to protect them against cyber attacks hello everyone and welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we'll summarize cso sentiments from a recent etr venn session and provide our quarterly update of the cyber security sector now in an upcoming episode we'll be inviting eric bradley of etr to provide deeper analysis and insights on these trends but we wanted to give you a preliminary preview of what's happening in the sector as we start off 2021. now the solar winds attack was like nothing we've ever seen before it's been covered quite widely in the press but in case you don't know the details solarwinds is a company that provides software to monitor many aspects of largely on-prem infrastructure including things like network performance log files configuration data storage servers and the like now as with all software companies solarwinds sends out regular updates and patches hackers were able to infiltrate the update and trojanize the software meaning when customers installed the updates the malware just went along for the ride now the reason this is so insidious is that often hackers they're going to target installations that haven't installed patches or updates and identified vulnerabilities in the infrastructure that haven't been addressed doors that are open that haven't been closed if you will now here the very code designed to protect against the breach actually facilitated that breach now according to experts this was quite a sophisticated attack that most believe was perpetrated by the russian hacker group cozy bear an advanced persistent threat or apt as classified by the u.s government now it's suspected that somehow they fished their way into a github repo and stole username and password access to allow them to penetrate the supply chain of software that's delivered over the internet but public information on this attack it's still spotty people are still learning now what is known is that the attackers have been lurking since march of last year and they exfiltrated lots of information from the u.s government and many other high-profile companies now here's what the csos and the etr van had to say about it let me just read some of the quotes the impact of this breach is profound it really turned a lot of heads and conventions about cyber security i don't think this threat has been exaggerated in the media we're now in a situation where we have to monitor the monitors this attack didn't have any signatures of a previous attack so you got down to the code level 80 to 90 of that code is being downloaded from the internet it's bringing devops security processes and making us rethink how to reinvent security and i'll add my business friend val berkovici said to me on twitter last year that he thinks the government hack is going to have permanent implications on how organizations approach cyber security it seems these cisos agree now the one question is what can be done about this and when you talk to security pros they'll definitely tell you they're rethinking security practices but look there's only so much you can do here's a tag cloud summarizing some of what we hear in the cube community and in the venn from etr practitioners you hear a lot about xero trust many csos are really leaning into identity access management and pam and mandates around two-factor authentication we've talked a lot about firms like octa sale point cyber arc software and microsoft is coming up more and more in this conversation especially as octa is seen as setting a price umbrella there's definitely some frustration amongst csos about octa's pricing strategies and auth 0 which does authentication as a service that's hitting our radar as well now of course endpoint security is something we've talked a lot about as the work from home trend hit during the pandemic it's become much much more important and you can see in the growth of crowdstrike and as you see in a moment we're getting some traction with vmware and carbon black in the survey data and of course titanium is another company that we've talked about csos look they're not just going to rip out what they have so companies like cisco especially with umbrella and duo they come up in the conversation as does palo alto networks we've said many times palo alto is seen as a thought leader csos like them they also like fortinet especially those that may be more cost cost conscious we see that a lot in mid-market and so on with analytics micro-segmentation cloud security with z-scaler and even rpa to automate certain tasks uipath has come up in the conversation more and more in a security context so you look at this tag cloud and there's no one answer as is often the case case with cyber security lots of tools lots of disciplines and a very capable adversary who has learned to as they say live off the land using your own infrastructure and tooling against you now the common narrative is that security is a top priority with cios and csos and budgets are going to be up so let's take a look at that well kind of here's a chart that shows the net scores or spending momentum for various sectors of the etr tech taxonomy and we've highlighted the information security segment yes it's up relative to the october survey but it really doesn't stand out i mean everything's up as we've reported coming off a down year in tech spending minus four percent last year and we're forecasting a plus six to seven percent increase this year really depending on on the pace of their recovery but the point is cyber is one of many budget organizations and organizations they're simply not going to open up a blank check to the cso now part of the reason is they're heavily invested in cyber this graphic shows several sectors in context and we've highlighted security in the red box the vertical axis that shows spending velocity and the horizontal axis is market share or presence in the data set and you can see the security it's got a big presence it's pervasive of course but it lags some of the top sectors in terms of spending velocity because look organizations they've got lots of priorities and as you'll see in a moment this space like most mature markets has some companies with off the charts spending patterns and others that lag so let's dig into that a little bit here you see that same xy graphic and we've plotted a number of security players so there's a couple of points here that we want to make first microsoft as usual is off the charts to the right and amazingly has a net score of 48 percent so highly elevated octa continues to lead this pack in net score as it has the last several surveys it's got a net score of 61.5 percent up from last quarter survey octa crowdstrike cyberark fortinet proof point and splunk are all up nicely from last quarter's survey we also really want to highlight carbon black the company's net score last quarter was 23.9 percent with 134 mentions in this quarter its net score shot up to nearly 38 so a very meaningful and noticeable move for vmware's 2.1 billion dollar acquisition that it made in the summer of 2019. so a number of companies that have momentum which stems from a rebound in tech spending but also a shift in security spend that we've highlighted and you can see a couple of legacy security firms that are also there in the chart losing momentum we've highlighted fireeye and rsa okay so now let's dig deeper into the data and the vendor performance here's a view of the data that we first showed you in 2019 it shows the net score and the shared n which identifies the number of mentions within the sector and it's an indicator of presence in the marketplace the leftmost chart is sorted by netscore and the right-hand chart is sorted by shared n so to make this chart you had to have at least an n of 50 in the survey again you can see octa sale and sale point lead in net score and microsoft has the biggest presence in the right hand side along with cisco and palo alto and something we started two years ago was if a vendor shows up in the top 10 for both net score and shared n we anointed them with four stars so these are the four star companies microsoft palo alto octa and crowdstrike which crouch by the way it fell off but it's back on and i think that was probably a survey anomaly because based on the company's financials there has been no loss of momentum for crowdstrike and we give two stars to those companies that make the top 20 in both categories so cisco because of umbrella and duo splunk proofpoint fortinet z z-scaler cyborg and carbon black vmware carbon black is new to the two-star list due to its rapid rise in net score that we just talked about now just a quick aside on carbon black at vmworld 2019 pat gelsinger told john furrier and me that he felt like he got a great deal picking up carbon black for 2.1 billion dollars now his logic was in part based on the valuation of crowdstrike at the time which is of course carbon black competitor crowdstrike as you can see on this chart had a valuation that was at nine times higher than that of carbon black and you can see from the trailing 12-month revenue that crowdstrike was a significantly larger company by more than 100 million dollars in revenue so the real story though was the company's growth crowdstrike at the time was growing much much faster than carbon black at more than a hundred percent compared to carbon blacks 22 roughly now in vmware's recent earnings call they said that carbon black had good bookings performance so who knows exactly what that means but if it were more than 22 my guess is that vmware vmware would have been more effusive in its commentary so let's assume that since the acquisition carbon black growth has been flattish you know maybe down maybe up but probably flat so vmware they're figuring out how to integrate the company and we think that as it does that it's going to use its channel of distribution and global presence to really drive carbon black sales now nonetheless we would still peg carbon black's valuation of having increased pretty substantially since the time of the acquisition perhaps in the three to five billion range we don't know for sure so but a nice pickup in our view for vmware and it'll likely grow from here based on the etr data then that's very encouraging for carbon black now let's look at how the valuations in this sector have changed since before covid here's an updated view of our valuation matrix since just before the pandemic hit in the u.s as you can see the s p is up 16 from that time frame the nas composite up 43 percent wow now look at the others only splunk really hasn't seen a huge uptick in valuation but the others have either risen noticeably like proof point cyber arc sail point they bounced up like palo alto or fortinet or exploded like crowd chat octa and z scalar you combine all these and you're talking about 114 billion dollar increase in market cap for these so one would think carbon black as a vmware asset has done pretty well along with these names and we would expect that the tech spending rebound this year combined with the heightened concerns over the solar winds hack and the tectonic shifts from the accelerated work from home and digital business transformations will continue to bode well for many of these names for quite some time all right let's wrap it up with some of the things we're watching in this space as we exit the pandemic and experience a new digital reality cyber threats have never been greater look each january if you look back on the prior year you'd be able to say the same thing for the last couple of decades and the reality is the budgets and spending on cyber they're asymmetric to the economic risks we just don't spend enough and probably can't spend enough to solve this problem csos they have to balance their legacy legacy install base security infrastructure with the shift to zero trust accelerated endpoint new access management challenges the ever expanding cloud and dot dot dot lack of talent remains the single biggest challenge for organizations which are stretch thin making investments in automation a trend that is not going to abate anytime soon in cyber all the cliches apply there is no silver bullet there is no rest for the weary the adversary they are well funded and extremely capable and they only have to succeed once to create a business disaster for an organization that has to succeed every day 24 hours a day so expect more of the same with no end in sight in terms of complexity fragmentation and whack-a-mole approaches to fighting cyber crime i hate to say this but it just means the fundamentals for the sector just keep getting better and better sorry okay that's it for this week remember all these episodes are available as podcasts wherever you listen so please subscribe i publish weekly on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com and don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data and the analytics i appreciate the comments on my linkedin post you can dm me at [Music] you

>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. >>Good morning cube land and welcome back to the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Stu Miniman. We are joined by Carl holes, our, he is the supervisor of infrastructure Shumaker loop and Kendrick based in Toledo, Ohio. Thank you so much for coming on the show tomorrow. So tell our viewers first of all a little bit about uh, she make her loop. So Schulich >>is a top 200 law firm in the U S we have seven locations across the country, most of the East coast and we serve as anything from litigation to environmental to legal and things like that. >>Okay. So you and you are the supervisor of infrastructure. >>Yeah, my role there is to make sure anything with plugs and switches keeps working, so. >>All right. And so Carl, tell us a little bit about, you said you've got multiple occasions once that span and to the lawyers tell you everything and how it must be. >>The lawyers definitely have a say in the way things work. We have most of the locations in Florida and the Carolinas and two in Ohio. Okay. >>Um, and you know, with the locations, you know, what are some of the business drivers that you're going on? When I talked to most companies, you know, there's the constant change. Is there M and a happening? Is it growth? What are some of the drivers of your business? >>Oh, for sure it's growth. You know, obviously as time goes on there's more and more cases, more and more legal things have to happen. Lawyers love documents, so we have to store documents, index amend, make sure that they're always available for their use. And then of course, as part of that too, there's, there's legals holds on things, you know, stuff the case that stretches over, you know, five, 10 years. We need to keep that data safe. Yeah. So I would, >>I think that the word compliance is one that you know, all too well. Exactly. Bring us in a little bit to them. Side is, so some of those, you know, what do you have to be concerned about? You know, how many petabytes exabytes of things in years >>I'll have to that. It depends on the kind of case it is and what it involves. Some, some cases, as long as you have the data in some form you're okay. Other cases the data can't change. So we have systems that might be a little older because they, it has to be as it was when we actually had the case come into us. Okay. That's challenging too. So data, when we talked to so many companies, it's, you know, how can I monetize data? How can I do that? Data has to be a slightly different role inside your organization. How, how's that thought of, >> we have to be careful obviously because conflict of interest, you know, we so have to keep data separate in some instances and internally, not everybody can see the same data because there is issues with privacy or hippo or you know, or so on and so forth that they can't see this stuff. So for us, we need to keep it safe more than monetize it. >>So as you said, the lawyers have a, have a big say in how things empower things happen. So how would you describe the approach and mindset of, of Chyulu toward technology and toward cloud-based and new kinds of, to, to store >>and keep data safe? We, our goal is to make sure things are always online. Um, so we kind of tend toward the more, the more tried and true methods of doing things, the bleeding edge doesn't always work for us. So, but we also can't afford to, to lag behind. So we need to find that balance in between somehow to keep things moving, but the same time make sure that things don't go down or offline fraternities. So protecting and backing up your data across a hybrid environment isn't easy. So Ty, and I know you, you are on a panel here at ignite about, uh, backup disasters and how to avoid them. So I'd love to have you talk a little bit about, about how you think about this and then, and how you interview vendors, vendors and decide what's the right solution for your show. >> Every different, I guess a practice inside of law firm has different ways of getting data. They like their programs this way or that way and they're all different. So the hard part for us is how to keep that data always available to them in different systems. So whatever we do has to encompass making sure these all, all these things work, you know, kind of as, as one. So we've used Cohesity to do backups, we've used Xero to do dr mixer always online. >>Okay. And how long have you been using those solutions? I, how did you reach the kind of those decisions? >>Those were brought in? Just as I joined the firm about a year and a half ago. Um, our vendor who we're using is very tight with Cohesity and Xero and said that might be a good idea. And the more I use them, the more I agree with that. And they're all good. >>So you're saying it's your, your CI, your channel partner channel that does, that. They're trusted, they provide your gear, advise you on the software. Because let's be honest, as time goes on, you can't know everything. So you need to somebody that you can trust to bring in and say, Hey, do it this way. Well, yeah, Carl, I mean, I don't know if you caught the day one keynote, but even those of us that watch the industry in DOE, it's, there's no way any of us could keep up at though. So that, that, that's really important. How do you make sure that you know that that's a trusted advisor? You know, what's, what's the kind of the give and take between them? >>I think a lot of that comes down to a gut feeling, right? I you, if you feel slimy when you meet somebody, you know, they don't have your best interests in mind and that's what you want. Not my best interest, but the interest of the firm and of the company. So once you have established those guidelines, you usually can trust what they're saying. And I guess every time you meet them too, you have to reevaluate is this still a good fit? >> So when you comes to backup and recovery, I'd love to hear more about this panel and how you and your colleagues came to conclusions about how here's some, here's some big ones and here's how you can avoid them. So I think for us it was just what worked and what didn't work. You know, we all, all three of us use this stuff day to day. So we found the pitfalls, we found what you should and shouldn't do. And when we share that with the, with the community, we get some good feedback on that. >>So Carl, a year and a half there, any, any specific advice that you'd share? People as to what you've learned? Say I hired pitfalls in there as you know, was it a configuration issue or something went wrong because we know the best intentions and best products out there, so you know, things can get in the way. Yeah, >>definitely. We've learned to keep support clothes. I mean, they're awesome. They know their stuff. There's some things we've had issues with that I wanted to do that it wasn't a good fit or we've ran into some bugs here and there, but they're really responsive and they'll put all the alpha specialists for you and weeks, you know, and things just end up working. >> Alright, so here at the conference, what are some of the conversations that you're having because you are in the legal industry and so not necessarily community college communicating all day with people in the high tech industry. So bring us inside a little, tell us about the conversations you're having, interesting people that you're meeting, things that are sparking your interest. >> It's neat because I've met some people through the panel I was on yesterday and they're asking questions that don't even title legal. You know, they have the same access as we do, but they are just either apply to manufacturing or applied to natural gas or whatever happens to be. Um, and then when you know, meetings from the vendors here, it's interesting too, you know, I'm an illegal mindset now and they say, Hey, what about this? And you go, Oh, that's some game changer. And you know, and all of a sudden you can apply it to your field. >>More sense. Yeah. How about this your first time attending Microsoft ignite? Give us a little bit your impressions, you know, uh, the, the, the good, the bad. And the interesting is it's really >>big. I walked through here Sunday night when when nobody was here. It's like, Oh, this isn't too bad. And then I think I walked 10 miles the first day getting places and it's usually pretty well laid out and unless there's beer or food and everybody kind of goes to it and it's hard to move around. But other than that I think it's pretty cool. So what are the kinds of things you're going to take back? As you said, you are sometimes talking to people who are in a completely different industry with you and they are saying things that spark your interest and spark new ideas. What are the kinds of things you're going to take back to shoe loop when you arrive back in total Toledo, we're trying to look at all these new buzzwords like on new, but like blockchain or AI and how they can help us do our jobs better and serve their attorneys better. Um, is there something that I haven't thought of that blockchain can, can do this >>for us and better than we're doing it now now. So Carl, one of the things we've noticed there, there's a real growth in some of the developer content here as an infrastructure person. And I'm curious your view on that, that that side of the world. >>That is not my strong suit. Obviously I came from a world where that was a big deal and I could learn some things. But as far as my background goes and learning about it, it's kinda over my head. Um, you know, I can get it behind this stuff, talk to automate processes and make things, you know better. But as far as the dev side, I'm kind of going, Hey, no, I know if I get this, but, but there is such a push here for citizens and for citizen developers and to sort of democratize this and say even you can do this, which is awesome and in a way because the more eyes have on something, the better they go. You know I can even if I don't understand something, I can ask the question, Hey, why is this work this way? You go, Oh it shouldn't work this way. >>Let's fix this and and make things better. You know. Anything more about kinda your firm's relationship with Microsoft? So many announcements here. Not, no, not sure if teams has used a in your environment. We are using Skype right now but we have way pushed to go to two teams. So that's going to be a big, big push for us in queue for this year and digging next year and then we're looking at moving to Azure at some point. Getting our stuff up there and making you know to be most effective, faster, better. How do you stay up to date with all of these new announcements and not just here at Microsoft, but even in the larger technology community. You can't stop learning. You can't stop reading. You know? You look at the like the slash dots of the world and you just keep looking at things and some things may make sense. >>Some things I'm like, Oh, that's kind of cool. I'll read it later. All of a sudden it goes, Oh, that's a big idea and we should look at this some more. But again, it's having those trusted people that you know or colleagues that say, Hey, I saw this. I saw that. Take a look at that suit. You think so? I know in your, in your off time, you are an officiant of a number of different sports. I'm curious to hear how you bring what you do as an officiant into your job at shoe loop and the similarities. The differences. In my help desk days, it was a lot easier because I could take the, the end user ratings a lot easier because I will hold nothing personal, but it's neat too. I mean, when you're an official, you have, there's a, there's a way things work. There's a, there's a set of rules you have to follow and, and it, and even anything that's technology based there, it's all logical progression of things. This is the way things work and not they blinders as much, but as much as you just follow the process, which makes this audience here. Great. Well thank you so much Carla, for having me. It was great having you on the show. Thank you guys. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage. Microsoft ignite.

>> Narrator: Live from Manhattan, It's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit, New York City, 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to Midtown. We're at the Javits Center here. (sound cuts out) 2017, along with Stu Miniman, I'm John Walls and you're watching The Cube as we continue with what's happening here. About five thousand people on the show floor and they said some twenty thousand registrants. Right Stew? That people came in and wanted to watch the keynotes live. >> It could be ten thousand that walked through before the days-- >> Right, it's hard to tell. >> Yeah. >> And right now half of them are outside looking for a cab I think. That's the way it works here. Ryan Kroonenburg is also here. He's the founder of a company called A Cloud Guru. >> Yes. >> I like Ryan already. I liked him as soon as we met him because he said, "like the beer, Kroonenburg." So you resonated with the two of us, Ryan. >> Ryan like the airline and Kroonenburg like the beer. >> We appreciate that. Alright, so you're a cloud education company. >> Yes. >> And you bill yourself or at least in the conversation as you want to be the Netflix of cloud education. That's what you're doing. Tell us a little bit about the founding of the company. It began with your brother? >> Yes, yeah. >> Just two years ago and now you've grown to some 40 employees. >> Yeah, so I used to be a solutions architect and I was desperate to get a job at AWS so I became obsessed with getting trained in AWS. And at the time, a company I worked for had a training freeze. So we couldn't go out and do in-classroom training. If I had to do that myself, I'd have to pay for it myself. And I found that there wasn't a lot of good on-line training companies two years ago. I didn't get the job with AWS and turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And so I decided to create my own course on AWS. Launched that, started going viral and that was the birth of A Cloud Guru. >> Ryan, bring is in a little inside of building the company, so you're not only teaching cloud, but you're built on cloud and not just any cloud, but using the LAN to server list from pretty early on that. >> Exactly, so we practice what we preach. You know, we are real AWS engineers. We built the entire platform serverlessly. We think we're the world's first serverless start-up. We're certainly the world's first serverless learning management system. So we don't pay for any servers whatsoever. There's no virtual/physical servers. And we're basically, purely AWS native. We do use a bunch of third party services like Xero and PayPal and things like that. But most of our platforms are AWS. >> Yeah, in the keynote this morning, Adrian Cockroft talked about Bustle, A New York based start-up that uses a lot of serverless, but you built the company before you even had funding and now you've got a little bit of funding. Can you give any insight? Do the investors looks at that and say, wow, this is a great model? >> Yeah, so we raised a decent series A. One of the founders of Warby Parker is on our board now so that's really exciting. A guy called Andy and he's helping us scale. One of the reasons we took funding was helping to scale. So our infrastructure scales automatically with AWS because it's built on Lambda and API Gateway. But we as a company are struggling to scale in like finding the right employees and all of that sort of thing, so that's where we're getting some help. >> Alright, what are you hearing from people taking your courses? What new things are they asking for? How are you expanding the scope of your offerings? >> Everyone is obviously very interested in AWS, but they also want to learn other cloud-computing platforms now, especially Azure, so we are expanding the scope of our content to do Azure as well as Guru. The other problem people are having is, AWS innovates so quickly. You know, there's like a thousand updates last year. There's 19 new updates last week. So there having trouble keeping up so we run just a weekly TV show called, AWS This Week, and we basically just tell people what's new this week. And the great thing about New York Summit is there's been like five or six announcements here so I'm going to be busy on Friday, filming. >> Is there any one particular area of training that you see more people drifting toward or following toward? >> I think serverless and big data are the hot topics. Big data, by that I mean AI, machine learning. That's just exploding right now. And just serverless architectures because the future of cloud is serverless. Why pay for virtual, physical machines by the hour or by the minute and have system administrators, network administrators, database administrators when all you actually want to focus on is your code and your end customers and serverless allows you to do that. >> So what's your process then? In terms of you staying on top of it, right? Because now you have to. >> Ryan: Yeah. >> I mean, you, you're it, right? You're the point of expertise. So how do you ... I guess, remain in that kind of relationship with AWS that you're the cusp? >> So, I obviously read all the blogs. Our students, We've got 300,000 students right now and our discussion forums are very very active so if they have announced something that I've missed, the students tell me, like, we'll know within a few hours. So, that's it really. It's just forever learning, but I love learning anyway so it's fun to get paid to learn. >> John: Sure. You bet. >> Ryan, how many people have gone through the training so far? Do you know how many of them get certified after they do that? And how many are kind of repeat customers? >> We've got 300,00 have gone through the training so far. We do track our pass rates. Our pass rates vary from anywhere between, normally 80 to 90%. Not everyone will pass on the first go because the exams are tough and it's also quite stressful. Sitting these exams can be quite stressful. In terms of the number of students that actually go on to get certified, that's not something we track just yet, but we're looking to change that as well. But yeah, we have a very good pass rate. >> So how does it work? I want to learn, you know, whatever. I want to dive into AI, whatever it is. I come to you, you've got something for me there right? You've got, I don't know how many hours of work I have to do, but take us through how it really works. >> Yeah so, it's video training. Online video training. So say you want to learn DynamoDB. We have a 19 hour course on that. And we go right into the very depths of DynamoDB. So you watch the videos. we'll show you what we're doing in the labs. We'll give you all the sample code if we're using code and then you can go and do it yourself. We very much believe in, the only way to learn Cloud is by getting your hands dirty. To actually go and do it yourself. So people watch the labs, do the stuff themselves and then complete the course. If it's a certification course, then at the end what they'll do is go and book the exam and hopefully, they'll pass the exam as well. >> So Ryan, you're in there looking at all this stuff, especially things like server lists. What are you looking for, for kind of the maturation? Is there anything that do you give feedback to Amazon? The community give you feedback? I have to imagine that there's some good feedback loops there? >> Yeah, I'm lucky enough to be an AWS community hero. So we get get briefed by Amazon on things that are coming out. You know, under MDA of course. We give a lot of feedback on that. No, I think serverless is the next big revolution. I hate hype and buzz words and things like that, but the thing about serverless is that, now you don't have to worry about servers. You can just focus on your code and you don't need to worry about any of the normal administration behind it and it's like ridiculously cheap. You get a million lambda implications a month for free. That's just part of Free Tier. We actually only just came off of Lambda Free Tier a couple of months ago and we've got 300,000 students. So, it's very very very cheap so its amazing. It's driving new revolution. >> What advice would you give to someone if they were looking to start a business and using serverless as a platform? >> Yeah, definitely check out AWS of course, we build our entire business off AWS. Design, try if you can, architect everything in a serverless fashion because like I keep saying, you don't have to worry about management of operating systems, virus patching, security, any of that. AWS, they take all... They take care of all of the heavy lifting for you. >> So I know you are a big fan of Lambda, but have you looked at some of the other serverless options out there? Is there any concern around, there's open source options out there. >> Ryan: Yeah. >> How do we get compatibility and not be just locked into Amazon? >> Azure Functions looks really good. See, this thing about vendor lock-in, I mean, you've got the serverless framework as well. If you build your applications on the serverless framework, you can move between platforms quite easily. That is coming so you could build it out on AWS and then move over to Azure if you wanted. The founder of serverless frameworks is a good friend of mine. So I definitely recommended checking it out. And that would be my advice. If you are going to go serverless use the serverless framework so then you don't have to worry about vendor lock in. But at the same time, Amazon, they reduce their prices all the time. So it is a good vendor to be with. >> I just think your story is great. I think that the best "no" you ever got in your life was from AWS. And now you're giving them a big "yes". >> Yeah, absolutely, I love AWS. They're such amazing people as well. They've all become my-- through my business and people I used to work with have all become really good friends of mine as well. It's been a great journey in last two years. >> You've done well for them, they've done well for you. It's a good relationship. >> Exactly. >> Ryan, thanks for being with us. >> Thank you. >> And continued success. >> Right, thanks guys. >> Good for you. You bet, Ryan Kroonenburg. The founder of A Cloud Guru. Along with his brother, Sam, making a pretty good business out of things on the AWS platform right now. Back with more here from AWS Summit, right after this. You're watching The Cube. (fast music)