(tech music) >> Live, from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our live coverage here in Bahrain for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of AWS Summit here in the Middle East in the region. Our first time here, lots of observations, lots of learnings, and also great people we're meeting. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Our next guest is Mohammed Ali Al Qaed, who is the Chief Executive of the Information E-Government Authority, also known as IGA. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, thank you for hosting me. >> Saw you last night at dinner. We were talking about all the opportunities. So the first question I have to ask you is, as you guys are bringing in the digital transformation, which is happening, you now have Amazon here with the region, how is that changing things? >> Of course, always we try to innovate, and the technology, if you don't innovate, if you don't make sure that you are ready for the changes coming, it is very difficult. When we announced our first strategy in 2007, we delivered it in 2010 becoming the leader in the region, delivering 200 services over four channels. But as you mentioned, usually in the technology, the longest cycle is the infrastructure and servers and configurations, buying things and configuring. And with the leadership vision of transforming the country the vision 2030, transformations happening in the judicial system and to the commercial legislations and to the customs and to health and education, the pace of change required and the ambition is very much, much higher. And particularly, when you develop something and you were successful. So our leaders say, we are a bit slow. We need to fast things up. So then we looked into the Amazon and the cloud. How it can help us. And usually, in Bahrain, we don't have the luxury of trial and error. Trying things and if it works, you know, try multiple things. So we have to study it well. This is why we looked into the cloud, what it can bring to the country, the agility, the time to market. And when we put the strategy forward, it was a comprehensive one. The leaders decided to go cloud-first policy. Everybody should move. Because that's the way forward, that's the way that the Kingdom can deliver its vision-- >> And the cloud-first decision, when was that made? >> That was last year. And, when it was made, it's not a piece of strategy. You have to look at it in a comprehensive way. >> Yeah. >> You have to look into your laws, legislations, compliance, >> Yeah. >> audits, architectures, unit policies, skills sets available, the procurement process, the tendering process, and you have to review all of that-- >> Yeah. >> and make sure that there is no show blockers or barriers for the implementation. Otherwise, it will take a long time. >> Yeah. (chuckles) >> This is why, in a year's time, we managed to migrate huge workloads to the cloud. >> We were talking last night about how hard it is just to figure out the future, never mind provisioning all the gear you got to do, and the training, and so this cloud-first is very interesting. But I also want to just tell you that we talked about, also, how hard it is. So when I say, oh, go cloud-first, it's so easy! Right? No, it isn't. There's a lot of work involved. >> Yes. >> Take us through some of the things that you guys have done, your learnings prior to cloud-first. And the key learnings now that cloud-first has been under your belt for over a year. >> Of course, always with the governments, the biggest challenge will happen about the security. How I am going to move losing the control, putting my processing and storage outside the government. How I'm going to protect it, somebody else is there. That's the biggest challenge. That's number one. Number two, people doesn't understand, they think it's processing. So okay, I have my processing power, I will save some money, that's not much. >> Yeah. >> But they don't think about the ultimate goal. About the time to market. >> Yeah. >> When you have a new vision, when you have a new service to be delivered, you cannot wait for 18, 24 months for the infrastructure-- >> Yeah. >> Getting there, idle for a couple of years until you know the full utilization of them. So this is why the ultimate goal is much, much bigger. >> Yeah. >> And the thing about the issue, of somebody else, looking into-- >> So speed is critical. >> Yeah. >> And you guys have speed under your belt. You did a Formula One racetrack in what, 14 months I heard, very fast construction. The Amazon region is going up in record time. Is this a cultural thing? Just go fast? People like speed? The need for speed? >> We like that, you know the Formula One, of course that's just part of our DNA. Our leaders always push the citizens. And that's the Bahraini culture. >> Yeah, the other thing, too, about the application, now to get back to our serious conversation, to have innovation, you need to have software development go on in a way that's not the 24-month, oh we built it, and you don't know if you tested it or not. But you got to built the dev-ops model infrastructure as code. How far along are you on the infrastructure as code? Because the developer side is going to be very great. >> [Mohammed Ali Al Qaed] Yeah. >> Amazon's proven that developers love it, easy to get going, lower cost to test, agility, time to market, time to value. The setup for you guys is a little bit different. You've got infrastructure as code-- >> Yeah. >> You're not a startup. But you want to act like one, but what are you going to do for the infrastructure? >> Of course, the infrastructure in terms of processing, that's easy because it's been migrated, most of it's been migrated, our ports, our channels, our mobile channels. >> The networks, you have 5G, do you have 5G here yet? >> We are already experimenting, ready for it. The frequency's already freed up for the telco's to utilize them. It's already there for the 5G. Of course, fiber is everywhere, all the government entities are connected to the fiber. High speed, we have 100-meg, we have a gig, we have 10 gig, we have all kinds of speed available. >> No problem for bandwidth in the country. >> I don't think so. We don't have an issue about the bandwidth. And the processing power, once moved, then the optimization, which already happened. But as you mentioned, coming to the development, we started already, developing into the serverless, using the lamdas, using born-in-the-cloud concepts, that was not there once we started. But now we are already educating and training our employees. >> What's the reaction to it? >> The reaction is excellent. I give an example today about the fingerprint authentication. That's a basic service, but it requires a huge demand return from all the telco's, all transactions happen in telco's, private hospitals, the banking are coming. >> Yeah. >> Any authentication happens, it has to happen in a second. >> Yeah. >> So that requires a huge, massive infrastructure. Once we built it, at the beginning, for only a few customers-- >> Yeah. >> we invested about 250,000 dinar at that time. Now, I think, it's being moved completely to serverless-- >> Yeah. >> Concept, a new development. >> Yeah. >> So... >> A simple idea, hard to implement in the old way, but the new way, you got to wire API's around, sling API's, and connect devices, telco's, environments quickly. So this brings up the integration, this is the benefit of the cloud. >> [Mohammed Ali Al Qaed] Exactly. >> The glue layer is, what, microservices? Is it API's? How are you making that lambda function...? >> You know, that API's, and, just, you call the service and it gets you online and you go back to the storage. I mean, a basic thing. >> Yeah. >> Initially, you know, you need a testing environment, a development environment, a lot of infrastructure, and then you have to secure all of that, secure your data. >> Yeah. >> Now, it's a fraction of that cost and much faster to go to market. >> I'm a huge believer in the services model, and this is why microservices is a big deal right now in clouds, if you look at all the cloud-native conversations, it's containers, we're using it, no problem, very good to use containers. They're great. Kubernetes, now, orchestration. But deal with state and stateless applications is now the new challenge because there are so many new services that are spinning up. Soon, you're going to be like, ordering McDonald's, you know, I'll have a microservice over here, so this is the world we're moving to. This is the services. >> Exactly. And we would like to build a center of excellence, you know? Because we get into this journey, we looked into all our legislations and the ecosystem, trained our employees, their skillset is very important, with the program, with Tamkeen. We looked into the training strategy, all the portfolio training, making sure that our Bahrainees have the ability to develop, to operate, databases and all aspects, even the planning of it. Then institutes, partners, to be ready to train the private sector and everybody. >> You know, Mohammed, I'm really impressed with the entrepreneurial people that I've met. They've got a good mojo to them, because they're kind of cocky, which I love about them, but they're not arrogant. They're like, they're smart, and I so I got a... I see a good community there. The question for you is, as you move to cloud-native, how is that transition? The young kids get it. I mean, it's no problem. >> Yeah. >> Where's the progress on the skillset gap? I've heard that conversation. I just don't see it being a problem if the young kids are eating up the cloud stuff like it's nobody's business. >> Yeah. >> Then I don't see a problem. What's your take on this skills gap thing? I mean, the guys I met, and the entrepreneurs, they're like, they want more action. >> Exactly. The point is the current employees that we have already. Hundreds of government employees that have been trained in a different environment with different technologies. I get a couple of questions from some of the professionals in the market, private sector and government sector: how we can benefit out of that? How we can help? We are experts in the field, but cloud for us is a new thing. So as you mentioned, for them it might be a bit more difficult. So what we did, and the IGA, we created a taskforce of the most brilliant team, and told them okay, you have to migrate the workloads, train, we'll give you the training, and you have to migrate. >> Go. >> Next, you have now to optimize. Give the task of migration to somebody else, a new team, and the old team, they have to optimize. Third, now you have to work on, bore on the cloud, develop on the cloud, create the environment of the cloud, a new concept. So that's how we take-- >> So you're spreading the work around through hands-on training? >> Of course. You train, and then you get them into the action, hands, on, and so on, one by one. But, eventually, the university's already working on training their students. So we want to make sure that part of the curriculum, the cloud is there for the new generations to take it from day one. >> You know, you guys are a learning culture, my observation, first time here, very impressed. Very friendly, which is always cool. But, it's a multilingual culture. So, if you add source code to the new lingua, coding is going to be critical. Are you guys getting at the younger generation really when they're young? How young are you going in terms of the new language, software... Thoughts on that? Where do you see that going? >> Starting from school-- >> Elementary school? >> From elementary school, trying to get them in to coding. Universities as well. >> So you are teaching kids to code? >> Of course. And you know, any citizen they can get any certifications free of charge, according to the agreement with Tamkeen Labor Fund. They are willing to train any Bahrainian on any certifications, professional certifications, free of charge. >> That's great. >> To be ready for the next, and making Bahrainians-- >> So there's no excuses. >> Of course. >> There it is. >> We want to give Bahrainians a choice for employment. >> Yeah. >> You know? If that's the future, we have to make them ready for the future. >> That's great. And the cloud's going to give you all that energy. Talk about the relationship with Amazon a bit, Amazon Web Services. Obviously, Teresa Carlson, really behind this, the whole team. I talk about the whole company, I see them getting behind this and partnering with you guys. They're not just coming in here and being Amazon. There's a real co-development ethos. Talk about the relationship you have with... >> Amazon is impressive. I mean, the way that we work, in a partnership way, everybody should think about the long-term, not the short-term part of the partnership. That they should help the economy, the Bahrainis for employment, making sure that the economy will benefit out of this move to Bahrain. And as well, we have to help with the registrations, with the regulations, with any infrastructure connectivity to the international links. Whatever they need, we try to help them because we believe that eventually it will create the ecosystem for the market. >> I know they open up a lot of doors for you guys, and then for us as well. They attracted us to come and cover the territory here, so we're super excited. And I'm so glad we came because I learned a lot. >> Thank you. >> It's been fantastic. Okay, your big idea... Final question. What's your big idea that's going to come out of the cloud? It doesn't have to be the complete... Your idea, in your personal opinion, what is going to happen five years down the road? What is it going to look like? What will this new magic look like? What's the outcome? >> I think it will be a major restructure and reform in the government. So most of the people working into the routine work of buying and configuring, buying and configuring, they can be more focused into the real problem about the innovation, trying to bring solutions to the problems and issues in the country. Trying to develop software that will help the economy to foster, and to look at what is required, what is the vision of the leaders, try to implement those. So most of the people think business. Before, it was isolation. The technical people only, they had their territory, their environment looking at the wires and hardware and configurations, and somebody else looking into the development and a third group of people who are looking strategically, analytics, and how to utilize it. So, I think what we'll have, we'll merge those people, thinking only about the solutions, and how to analyze and how to come with new solutions out of those analytics. >> And that model has been consolidated, those silos have been broken down. With the cloud, it brings it all together. Developers are now on the front lines. >> Of course. And those-- >> And they're driving the business. >> They're driving the business. >> Mohammed, great to have you on, great to see you. Thanks for sharing your insight. And congratulations. Looking forward to tracking all the great coverage. Amazing opportunity here for everyone in the country, and also for Amazon and for us. Great to meet new people. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. You can reach me on Twitter @Furrier, F-U-R-R-I-E-R, or just search, I'm open. All my channels are open, Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, you name it. Say hello, reach out. Stay with us, more all-day coverage after this short break. (tech music)

>> From "theCUBE" studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from "theCUBE" in ETR. This is breaking analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Chief Information Security Officer's site trust, is the number one value attribute, they can deliver to their organizations. And when it comes to security, identity is the new attack surface. As such identity and access management, continue to be the top priority among technology decision makers. It also happens to be one of the most challenging and complicated areas of the cybersecurity landscape. Okta, a leader in the identity space has announced its intent to converge privileged access and Identity Governance in an effort to simplify the landscape and re-imagine identity. Our research shows that interest in this type of consolidation is very high, but organizations believe technical debt, compatibility issues, expense and lack of talent are barriers to reaching cyber nirvana, with their evolving Zero-Trust networks. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE insights, powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we'll explore the complex and evolving world of identity access and privileged account management, with an assessment of Okta's market expansion aspirations and fresh data from ETR, and input from my colleague Eric Bradley. Let's start by exploring identity and why it's fundamental to digital transformations. Look the pandemic accelerated digital and digital raises the stakes in cybersecurity. We've covered this extensively, but today we're going to drill into identity, which is one of the hardest nuts to crack in security. If hackers can steal someone's identity, they can penetrate networks. If that someone has privileged access to databases, financial information, HR systems, transaction systems, the backup corpus, well. You get the point. There are many bespoke tools to support a comprehensive identity access management and privilege access system. Single sign-on, identity aggregation, de-duplication of identities, identity creation, the governance of those identities, group management. Many of these tools are open source. So you have lots of vendors, lots of different systems, and often many dashboards. Practitioners tell us that it's the paper cuts that kill them, patches that aren't applied, open ports, orphan profiles that aren't disabled. They'd love to have a single dashboard, but it's often not practical for large organizations because of the bespoke nature of the tooling and the skills required to manage them. Now, adding to this complexity, many organizations have different identity systems for privileged accounts, the general employee population and customer identity. For example, around 50 percent of ETR respondents in a recent survey use different systems for workforce identity and consumer identity. Now this is often done because the consumer identity is a totally different journey. The consumer is out in the wild and takes an unknown, nonlinear path and then enters the known space inside a brand's domain. The employee identity journey is known throughout. You go onboarding, to increasing responsibilities and more access to off-boarding. Privileged access may even have different attributes, does usually like no email and, or no shared credentials. And we haven't even touched on the other identity consumers in the ecosystem like selling partners, suppliers, machines, etcetera. Like I said, it's complicated and meeting the needs of auditors is stressful and expensive for CSOs. Open chest wounds, such as sloppy histories of privileged access approvals, obvious role conflicts, missing data, inconsistent application of policy and the list goes on. The expense of securing digital operations goes well beyond the software and hardware acquisition costs. So there's a real need and often desire, to converge these systems. But technical debt makes it difficult. Companies have spent a lot of time, effort and money on their identity systems and they can't just rip and replace. So they often build by integrating piece parts or they add on to their Quasi-integrated monolithic systems. And then there's the whole Zero-Trust concept. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but folks are asking if I have Zero-Trust, does it eliminate the need for identity? And what does that mean for my architecture, going forward. So, let's take a snapshot of some of the key players in identity and PAM, Privileged Access Management. This is an X-Y graph that we always like to show. It shows the net score or spending velocity, spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share or presence in the ETR dataset on the horizontal axis. It's not like revenue market share. It's just, it's mentioned market share if you will. So it's really presence in the dataset. Now, note the chart insert, the table, which shows the actual data for Net Score and Shared In, which informs the position of the dot. The red dotted line there, it indicates an elevated level. Anything over 40 percent that mark, we consider the strongest spending velocity. Now within this subset of vendors that we've chosen, where we've tried to identify some, most of them are pure plays, in this identity space. You can see there are six above that 40 percent mark including Zscaler, which tops the charts, Okta, which has been at or near the top for several quarters. There's an argument by the way, to be made that Okta and Zscaler are on a collision course as Okta expands it's TAM, but let's just park that thought for a moment. You can see Microsoft with a highly elevated spending score and a massive presence on the horizontal axis, CyberArk and SailPoint, which Okta is now aiming to disrupt and Auth zero, which Okta officially acquired in may of this year, more on that later now. Now, below that 40 percent mark you can see Cisco, which is largely acquired companies in order to build its security portfolio. For example, Duo which focuses on access and multi-factor authentication. Now, word of caution, Cisco and Microsoft in particular are overstated because, this includes their entire portfolio of security products, whereas the others are more closely aligned as pure plays in identity and privileged access. ThycotyicCentrify is pretty close to that 40 percent mark and came about as a result of the two companies merging in April of this year. More evidence of consolidation in this space, BeyondTrust is close to the red line as well, which is really interesting because this is a company whose roots go back to the VAX VMS days, which many of you don't even know what a VAX VMS is in the mid 1980s. It was the mini computer standard and the company has evolved to provide more modern PAM solutions. Ping Identity is also notable in that, it essentially emerged after the dot com bust in the early 2000s as an identity solution provider for single sign-on, SSO and multifactor authentication, MFA solutions. In IPO'd in the second half of 2019, just prior to the pandemic. It's got a $2 billion market cap-down from its highs of around $3 billion earlier this year and last summer. And like many of the remote work stocks, they bounced around, as the reopening trade and lofty valuations have weighed on many of these names, including Okta and SailPoint. Although CyberArk, actually acted well after its August 12th earnings call as its revenue growth about doubled year on year. So hot space and a big theme this year is around Okta's acquisition of Auth zero and its announcement at Oktane 2021, where it entered the PAM market and announced its thrust to converge its platform around PAM and Identity Governance and administration. Now I spoke earlier this week with Diya Jolly, who's the Chief Product Officer at Okta and I'll share some of her thoughts later in this segment. But first let's look at some of the ETR data from a recent drill down study that our friends over there conducted. This data is from a drill down that was conducted early this summer, asking organizations how important it is to have a single dashboard for access management, Identity Governance and privileged access. This goes directly to Okta strategy that it announced this year at it's Oktane user conference. Basically 80 percent of the respondents want this. So this is no surprise. Now let's stay on this theme of convergence. ETR asks security pros if they thought convergence between access management and Identity Governance would occur within the next three years. And as you can see, 89% believe this is going to happen. They either strongly agree, agree, or somewhat agree. I mean, it's almost as though the CSOs are willing this to occur. And this seemingly bodes well for Okta, which in April announced its intent to converge PAM and IGA. Okta's Diya jolly stressed to me that this move was in response to customer demand. And this chart confirms that, but there's a deeper analysis worth exploring. Traditional tools of identity, single sign-on SSO and multi-factor authentication MFA, they're being commoditized. And the most obvious example of this is OAuth or Open Authorization. You know, log in with Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Amazon, Facebook. Now Okta currently has around a $35 billion market cap as of today, off from its highs, which were well over 40 billion earlier this year. Okta stated, previously stated, total addressable market was around 55 billion. So CEO, Todd McKinnon had to initiate a TAM expansion play, which is the job of any CEO, right? Now, this move does that. It increases the company's TAM by probably around $20 to $30 billion in our view. Moreover, the number one criticism of Okta is, "Your price is too high." That's a good problem to have I say. Regardless, Okta has to think about adding more value to its customers and prospects, and this move both expands its TAM and supports its longer-term vision to enable a secure user-controlled ubiquitous, digital identity, supporting federated users and data within a centralized system. Now, the other thing Jolly stressed to me is that Okta is heavily focused on the user experience, making it simple and consumer grade easy. At Oktane 21, she gave a keynote laying out the company's vision. It was a compelling presentation designed to show how complex the problem is and how Okta plans to simplify the experience for end users, service providers, brands, and the overall technical community across the ecosystem. But look, there are a lot of challenges, the company faces to pull this off. So let's dig into that a little bit. Zero-Trust has been the buzz word and it's a direction, the industry is moving towards, although there are skeptics. Zero-Trust today is aspirational. It essentially says you don't trust any user or device. And the system can ensure the right people or machines, have the proper level of access to the resources they need all the time, with a fantastic user experience. So you can see why I call this nirvana earlier. In previous breaking analysis segments, we've laid out a map for protecting your digital identity, your passwords, your crypto wallets, how to create Air Gaps. It's a bloody mess. So ETR asked security pros if they thought a hybrid of access management and Zero-Trust network could replace their PAM systems, because if you can achieve Zero-Trust in a world with no shared credentials and real-time access, a direction which Diya jolly clearly told me Okta is headed, then in theory, you can eliminate the need for Privileged Access Management. Another way of looking at this is, you do for every user what you do for PAM users. And that's how you achieve Zero-Trust. But you can see from this picture that there's more uncertainty here with nearly 50 percent of the sample, not in agreement that this is achievable. Practitioners in Eric Bradley's round tables tell us that you'll still need the PAM system to do things, like session auditing and credential checkouts and other things. But much of the PAM functionality could be handled by this Zero-Trust environment we believe. ETR then asks the security pros, how difficult it would be to replace their PAM systems. And this is where it gets interesting. You can see by this picture. The enthusiasm wanes quite a bit when the practitioners have to think about the challenges associated with replacing Privileged Access Management Systems with a new hybrid. Only 20 percent of the respondents see this as, something that is easy to do, likely because they are smaller and don't have a ton of technical debt. So the question and the obvious question is why? What are the difficulties and challenges of replacing these systems? Here's a diagram that shows the blockers. 53 percent say gaps in capabilities. 26 percent say there's no clear ROI. IE too expensive and 11 percent interestingly said, they want to stay with best of breed solutions. Presumably handling much of the integration of the bespoke capabilities on their own. Now speaking with our Eric Bradley, he shared that there's concern about "rip and replace" and the ability to justify that internally. There's also a significant buildup in technical debt, as we talked about earlier. One CSO on an Eric Bradley ETR insights panel explained that the big challenge Okta will face here, is the inertia of entrenched systems from the likes of SailPoint, Thycotic and others. Specifically, these companies have more mature stacks and have built in connectors to legacy systems over many years and processes are wired to these systems and would be very difficult to change with skill sets aligned as well. One practitioner told us that he went with SailPoint almost exclusively because of their ability to interface with SAP. Further, he said that he believed, Okta would be great at connecting to other cloud API enabled systems. There's a large market of legacy systems for which Okta would have to build custom integrations and that would be expensive and would require a lot of engineering. Another practitioner said, "We're not implementing Okta, but we strongly considered it." The reason they didn't go with was the company had a lot of on-prem legacy apps and so they went with Microsoft Identity Manager, but that didn't meet the grade because the user experience was subpar. So they're still searching for a solution that can be good at both cloud and on-prem. Now, a third CSO said, quote, " I've spent a lot of money, writing custom connectors to SailPoint", and he's stressed a lot of money, he said that several times. "So, who was going to write those custom connectors for me? Will Okta do it for free? I just don't see that happening", end quote. Further, this individual said, quote, "It's just not going to be an easy switch. And to be clear, SailPoint is not our PAM solution. That's why we're looking at CyberArk." So the complexity that, unquote. So the complexity and fragmentation continues. And personally I see this as a positive trend for Okta, if it can converge these capabilities. Now I pressed Okta's Diya Jolly on these challenges and the difficulties of replacing them over to our stacks of the competitors. She fully admitted, this was a real issue But her answer was that Okta is betting on the future of microservices and cloud disruption. Her premise is that Okta's platform is better suited for this new application environment, and they're essentially betting on organizations modernizing their application portfolios and Okta believes that it will be ultimately a tailwind for the company. Now let's look at the age old question of best of breed versus incumbent slash integrated suite. ETR and it's drilled down study ask customers, when thinking about identity and access management solutions, do you prefer best of breed and incumbent that you're already using or the most cost efficient solution? The respondents were asked to force rank one, two and three, and you can see, incumbent just edged out best in breed with a 2.2 score versus a 2.1, with the most cost-effective choice at 1.7. Now, overall, I would say, this is good news for Okta. Yes, they faced the issues that we brought up earlier but as digital transformations lead to modernizing much of the application portfolio with container and microservices, Okta will be in a position, assuming it continues to innovate, to pick up much of this business. And to the point earlier, where the CSO told us they're going to use both SailPoint and CyberArk. When ETR asked practitioners which vendors are in the best position to benefit from Zero-Trust, the Zero-Trust trend, the answers were not surprisingly all over the place. Lots of Okta came up. Zscaler came up a lot too, hmm. There's that collision course. But plenty of SailPoint, Palo Alto, Microsoft, Netskope, Dichotic, Centrify, Cisco, all over the map. So now let's look specifically at how practitioners are thinking about Okta's latest announcements. This chart shows the results of the question. Are you planning to evaluate Okta's recently announced Identity Governance and PAM offerings? 45 to nearly 50 percent of the respondents either were already using or plan to evaluate, with just around 40 percent saying they had no plans to evaluate. So again, this is positive news for Okta in our view. The huge portion of the market is going to take a look at what Okta's doing. Combined with the underlying trends that we shared earlier related to the need for convergence, this is good news for the company. Now, even if the blockers are too severe to overcome, Okta will be on the radar and is on the radar as you can see from this data. And as with the Microsoft MIM example, the company will be seen as increasingly strategic, Okta that is, and could get another bite at the apple. Moreover, Okta's acquisition of Auth zero is strategically important. One of the other things Jolly told me is they see initiative starting both from devs and then hand it over to IT to implement, and then the reverse where IT may be the starting point and then go to devs to productize the effort. The Auth zero acquisition gives Okta plays in both games, because as we've reported earlier, Okta wasn't strong with the devs, Auth zero that was their wheelhouse. Now Okta has both. Now on the one hand, when you talk to practitioners, they're excited about the joint capabilities and the gaps that Auth zero fills. On the other hand, it takes out one of Okta's main competitors and customers like competition. So I guess I look at it this way. Many enterprises will spend more money to save time. And that's where Okta has traditionally been strong. Premium pricing but there's clear value, in that it's easier, less resources required, skillsets are scarce. So boom, good fit. Other enterprises look at the price tag of an Okta and, they actually have internal development capabilities. So they prefer to spend engineering time to save money. That's where Auth zero has seen its momentum. Now Todd McKinnon and company, they can have it both ways because of that acquisition. If the price of Okta classic is too high, here's a lower cost solution with Auth zero that can save you money if you have the developer talent and the time. It's a compelling advantage, that's unique. Okay, let's wrap. The road to Zero-Trust networks is long and arduous. The goal is to understand, support and enable access for different roles, safely and securely, across an ecosystem of consumers, employees, partners, suppliers, all the consumers, (laughs softly) of your touch points to your security system. You've got to simplify the user experience. Today's kluge of password, password management, security exposures, just not going to cut it in the digital future. Supporting users in a decentralized, no-moat world, the queen has left her castle, as I often say is compulsory. But you must have federated governance. And there's always going to be room for specialists in this space. Especially for industry specific solutions for instance, within healthcare, education, government, etcetera. Hybrids are the reality for companies that have any on-prem legacy apps. Now Okta has put itself in a leadership position, but it's not alone. Complexity and fragmentation will likely remain. This is a highly competitive market with lots of barriers to entry, which is both good and bad for Okta. On the one hand, unseating incumbents will not be easy. On the other hand, Okta is both scaling and growing rapidly, revenues are growing almost 50% per annum and with it's convergence agenda and Auth zero, it can build a nice moat to its business and keep others out. Okay, that's it for now. Remember, these episodes are all available as podcasts, wherever you listen, just search braking analysis podcast, and please subscribe. Thanks to my colleague, Eric Bradley, and our friends over at ETR. Check out ETR website at "etr.plus" for all the data and all the survey action. We also publish a full report every week on "wikibon.com" and "siliconangle.com". So make sure you check that out and browse the breaking analysis collection. There are nearly a hundred of these episodes on a variety of topics, all available free of charge. Get in touch with me. You can email me at "david.vellante@siliconangle.com" or "@dvellante" on Twitter. Comment on our LinkedIn posts. This is Dave Vellante for "theCUBE" insights powered by ETR. Have a great week everybody. Stay safe, be well And we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From Bahrain, it's the Cube. Covering AWS Public Sector, Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Everyone welcome to the Cube here in Bahrain, for AWS in the Middle East, Manama Summit. I'm John for the Cube coverage. It's cloud computing, new Amazon region, a lot of innovation. But two great guests we have, Huda Ahmed Mohsen, who's the Chief of Information Technology and the Ministry of Information and Authority. Welcome to the Cube. And Sameera Mohammed Al Atawi. You are the Information and Communication Technology Director at the American University in Bahrain. Thank you for coming on. >> Thank you so much for having me here. >> Great to have you on. The ministries are mandated to move to the cloud, Huda, so we know what's coming for you, 2020. The goal is cloud first in Bahrain. We covered this last year. How's that going? On plan? >> It is on plan and is in the process. We start in November 2017. We start our journey with the clouds. We start moving our load smoothly. We're planners. Face a lot of challenge in the beginning, of course, as all of the ministries. Then with help the IGA with our governments, we move smoothly. I think now we reach a good position that we can reach our vision in Salah. >> Well, it's great that the government in Bahrain has a mandate for all the ministries to move to the cloud. I have to ask you, share with the folks watching, why the move to the cloud? What was the big reason why the cloud first was in place? >> See, technology's moving fast now, and the speed and security and the availability is very important to us as a ministry, especially for ministry information. That's why we decide, and as a government, vision, of course, we did decide to move to the cloud. >> A lot of integration from the old way to the new way. What are some of your observations between the two? >> Of course, a lot of changing, a lot of difference, because if you need to just establish any projects in an a normal way, how much time you will have spent, and how much resources you will have spent? And a cloud, you can just imagine. It is with a click. >> Sameera, you're in a new role. Talk about your new role where you were before. This is not new to you, the cloud. You've had your toe in the water before. You've been playing around with the cloud. Now with the American University in Bahrain, full steam ahead, a lot of pressure, lot of need, desire? >> I think, yes, it is not new for me. I'm in the IT field like know for ages. I wouldn't say the years. But then, yes, it's not new, but in Bahrain polytechnic we are having the same journey, like migrating to the cloud. It's a new challenge in the American University of Bahrain. It's a new startup, entrepreneur university. But then the interesting thing that I have joined them like three weeks ago and now the IT is up and running within two weeks. So with the help of the cloud and AWS, our servers now all up and running. By the way, this is our first day in school. So our students there just taking their formal classes as per today. So this is a very proud moment. >> And the servers are on the cloud, powering everything? >> Yes, we have more data on the cloud at the moment, and we have also 5365, and we have our ERPC Stem, as well. It's all in the cloud. So within two weeks, that's an amazing story to be told. >> Versus the old way was months, years? >> Well, actually, it's for every institution there are some challenges and there are some pros and cons, but I think the most beautiful thing about Bahrain polytechnic that everybody was working as a team and we understand each others issues. So regardless the time, there always been a support and faith and trust in IT just to deliver the organization mission and vision. This is the same with the American University of Bahrain. There is a huge trust and faith in IT that they will derive the trust formation, or the change to the future. Ironically, the future's here. >> Yeah, and the cloud region is beautiful out here. The impact academic is something that we're going to be watching closely, because the training is coming too. We're seeing that in the announcements here around a cloud computing degree, more skill development. But I have to ask you from a business standpoint in the academic area, what's the main use cases for cloud? Is it the curriculum? Is it the operations? What is some of the key cloud areas you're innovating on? >> Very interesting question. I think we have like a blend of use cases. We have the operational use cases, and we have the academic use cases as well. I mean, the most important for us is in the university is the academic. Now how we can empower our students to face the challenges of the future and the market demand. So we are sensing a lot of interest about the artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, and this morning when I was just scrolling down the menu of AWS, I've been seeing this a lot. So how we can imbed this technology or the reading material like an AWS educate in our courses and material, versus the operational use cases, how we can deliver the business objective in an entire mode and in a most efficient way. You know, like in university, we have so much critical time that we don't afford losing IT, like exams, posting grades, even for our students graduation projects. It's become easier and easier for the business, however with the aid of IT. >> And the agility is very important because the expectation from the students is high. >> It's way high. I mean, the expectation and the use is already there. So, not like before, not like my age, you know, like students, they get to introduce technology when they got to the university. Now all of our students, they already know and use the technology before they join. >> Huda, talk about the ministry, because you guys on the government side, very progressive, doing new things. You got Amazon's region here, which is going to create a revitalization. You're in the middle of it. What are some of your observations on the things that are going on that are new for you guys that are a positive? >> Seeing now a cloud maybe as a ministries and as a government project, the most new thing that we get that the new environment. This is totally new environment. You know if you just have any new thing or any new environment, you have resistance from everyone, because it's a new thing. >> People fear change. >> Yes. >> They don't want to change. >> Of course. Even sometimes the change is good, but this is the mentality of people to resist a change. As a government because we have one vision, which is all the ministries working within this vision. We really plan it well, I think. And we do it well. As you see now in Bahrain, the time that they establish the cloud until now, you can see how many projects in the process, how many project already done. >> You know, cultural change, we cover this. We go to hundreds of events. We cover all around the world, mostly in the United States, but culture's number one. People always want to push back against change. However, the benefits that you were pointing out, Sameera, are undeniable. Two weeks, talk about standing up critical infrastructure for whether it's curriculum or for services for citizens. It's hard to debate, to justify the old way. It's pretty hard. (chuckles) Maybe some political in there, but, I mean, ultimately, the proof is there. That has to be factored in. How do you guys do that? Do you just show people the data? Look what we did. Is that how you get things through? Is it more cultural? >> I think we just discuss in a panel about even let's talk about only the part of the financially thing. Before I was in IT, if you want to just make anything, and data sent out on any projects, how much time you will have spent to bring the devices, to bring the servers, to connect it, to do it. How much time you will have spent, even in the financially procedures, as a government, of course? Now it is, if you have any problem or any projects, you just by click finish it and done. >> I'm very impressed with Iran, second year the Cube's been here. The things we've talked about last year have been executed. They're executing. The region's up and running. The cryptocurreny is in place. We covered that just now. We're going to hear about some curriculum for degrees. But last year, you mentioned the panel. You guys were just on the AWS We Power Tech. Last year, Teresa Cross hosted a big breakfast, and I was lucky enough to attend that. I actually got kicked out of my seat, because with so many women that wanted to sit down, I happily gave up my seat for that. It was a packed house. Women in tech is very real and growing. You guys were just on a great panel talking about this. What was going on in the panel? What was the key topic? >> Well, actually, the key topic is celebrating women in IT. And I think women now they are flourishing in the IT field. We're showing lots of power and strength. Also I think women in nature, we are dealing with problem solving like in a natural way, as well as team buildings. So it comes with our genes. On top of that, the technical power and the technical thinking and the experience in the IT field, of course it adds a lot of confidence when we are presenting our plans. And we see that society is welcoming the woman workforce in IT field more and more every day. So I think this is something that we should celebrate and we should put a lot of highlight on it. Knowing that the value of woman is really growing. >> You were just talking about the time change, how things are faster. Things are getting done much faster, so things are accelerating, and combined with more job openings, more roles are opening. It's not just coding. It's creative, design thinking. So you're seeing a surface area of opportunities. Huda, you're seeing this as well in the government. This is a bigger field now. Your thoughts on how you see the panel. >> Yes, but maybe Sameera will have more experience in this area. >> On the skill gaps question that comes up a lot, there's so many job openings coming. There's a region here, there's entrepreneurs and startups. What are some of the new skills that folks are trying to learn? What do you guys think? >> Well, actually on that, coming from an educational field, we know that cloud computing is like number one set of skills that is on demand for the coming few years. But again, knowing that, it will be as essential as we should not think about it. It just will be transforming as a very catalyst. The way that we're thinking of electricity. At the beginning it was a big deal. Later on, it just there, and it has to be there for us to move as a society, for us to move as an economy. Then we're moving to the real things as, for example, blockchains and we're talking about artificial intelligence. And the technology itself is just not as important unless it has some feed in the economy development or in the society change. So I think this is how we can see that happening. >> So overall, you both think that cloud computing is going to revitalize the area? >> Definitely. >> Of course. >> Definitely, in a big way. I mean, the market, the first skill set is looked at in the IT field and is how many training, how many certificates have you taken in cloud computing? On top of that, robotics, big data, but the most important thing, how to make the technology benefit the citizens. In our case, the students, how we can deliver our classes in a better way. How we can transform the business of university from on campus to study from anywhere. Though we have a very amazing campus in American University of Bahrain. >> Looking forward to covering you guys. Final question for you guys. What's next? What do you guys have coming up in this next year? A lot of activities? What are the goals? What are some of the things you're trying to accomplish? >> Our next thing that we are planning to complete on this cloud project, to shift all our environment to the cloud to success in this, and to implement it in a good way that we can really use it in a good way, because you know, sometimes you will see the cloud and do lose it, but you cannot use it and really benefit way that you can get all the benefit from it. So it show our religion now and our next step to use it inventory. >> I think for us and the American University of Bahrain, we had yesterday an amazing meeting with Teresa, and having our CEO, Dr. Susan in the meeting as well. And I think there is a lot of great anticipation of what we can do together. So something that is put on the table that we want to sort of strengthen this relationship in terms of integrating our courses with AWS, as well as looking forward for new opportunities like training and certificate in the field and so forth. >> This is super exciting, benefits the citizens, students, new educational opportunities, new jobs, new services, whole new oasis. >> I think this is all, it's all about... >> The cloud oasis. This is the Cube coverage. We are here in Bahrain for AWS Summit here. I'm John Furrier, be back with more after this short break.

>> Live from San Francisco. It's the Cube covering artists. A conference twenty nineteen Brought to You by Four Scout >> Welcome back, everybody, Geoffrey. Here with the cue, we're in North America and the newly refinished Mosconi Center Downtown San Francisco in the force Cow boo. Happy to be here first time and we have our next guest. She's Charlotte Wiley, chief of staff from Symantec. Great to meet you. >> Nice to meet you, teacher. Thanks for having >> absolutely so impressions of the show. This is a crazy show. Forty dollars, people. Aren't many shows like this >> it issue just a little overwhelming. It's my second year here, and it's no less overwhelming. Second year here. It's, uh it's just prolific. Everything that say the session, the keynotes all day, all the networking, the basis. Amazing. >> So I'm curious how your perception has changed. I >> was looking at your background, Your hearing a financial institution before your own kind of the purchaser side of the house. >> Now you're over on >> this side of the house. How's that kind of change your perception when you walk this crazy floor, I imagine before you're like, Yeah, how am I going to digest all this? >> Well, no one wants to be my friend anymore, which is interesting. So, um, you know, working on the vendor side of the defense is the dark side. It's It's a very different experience. When I came here a couple years go to bank. Everyone wants to talk to you. Or is this time? Is this a healthy, competitive nature going on between all the vendors, which is great. You want to see that? Yeah. It sze got the same enthusiasm. Same vase on the floor, which is wonderful. >> So semantics. Been a leader in the space for a very, very long time. One of the original, you know, kind of original security companies back in the day when we're just trying to protect that. You know, I guess our Web browser right from from some malicious activity. Wow. The world has changed. And one of the big new components now is his internet of things. In this tie of it with ot operations technology. You know something you've spent some time on a wonderful get your take on how that's increasing the threat surface, you know, increasing the complexity. And yet there's still a lot of value there if you can bring those systems together. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think that Kate thing is this. You know, this simplicity here is, uh What? What you don't know, You can see. And what you can't see you can't monitor on DH. That's the key thing to remember when you think about t n OT so with Coyote specifically, if you, uh you've definitely got a nice routine, you network somewhere everyone has. But if you can't see that thing, it is incredibly vulnerable Throat vector for any organization. So really, it's it's a point of egress for any doubt of ex filtration. And if you've got someone compromised in the network already on your way, see it as being a very opportune ingress point to getting a lateral move. Right. So they are incredibly, inherently vulnerable. Right? These things are they're usually hard coded, authenticated. They are. They have massive under. Police often remain unpatched. When you cannot see, you don't know, Right? So some of the dirty side of the fence, right? The same problem exists. They typically were not built to connect to the Internet. Right. So this is something very new that we're trying to tackle right. And one of the key things I think about is that it's probably a little bit few tile to make these OT and I and I. A device is inherently secure. You think about in twenty twenty. We're going to see like twenty five billion devices proliferating our globe, which is incredible. So how do we how do we make it more school? Let's back off from becoming inherently secure. Let's up on the visibility. If you visualize you, Khun Segment, and you can enforce. And then you can take control of what has access to your network, right? A >> lot of interesting conversations about this today, obviously or in the force cow boo. But I think one of the people earlier said they had fifty percent more devices on the network than they anticipated. And it turns out his remote offices and people are plugging things in. Another little factoid is that maybe that hit no s on that device is actually windows in tea. Is it a tea? A little box. And nobody even knew because you knew that's an embedded in team. But then on the other side, we had a lease on, and she was talking about great example on security cameras and just that a lot of these newer devices that you can connect have a plethora of services packaged in on the assumption that you might use them. So rather than have not too many, they put them all in. But you don't necessarily need to turn all those things on. So again, you're just opening up this huge kind of exposure. >> Huge explosion. That's it. I think it's a really good conversation to have with your stakeholders about talking about the target breach. So when people start to understand that that really originated from a hate tax system, right compromise haystack system. So when you're talking about T initialization, that's a really good years case to say. Look, this is a huge bridge that was compromised from because we didn't They didn't have visibility over the anxiety. >> It's funny if you each Max keep coming up, over and over and over there. Obviously the biggest threat that way have I'm jacket to see if I could see like a movie with me. Nasty HBC think come until that munching up the company. But it's funny. Different topic. Shifting gears completely, really, about kind of diversity, diversity of opinion, diversity of perspective, diversity of thought and how that's a really important and effective tool use in trying to accomplish missions. In this really crazy, complex task, you can't abs single point of view, single point of reference, kind of a single pain that you think about. I know that's something that you've been in a lot of time on, >> so my role it's semantic because Chief of staff, I own the diversity agenda for the global security office. And it's bean aerial laser focus on me for the past twelve months, which is our industry has a systemic problem around attracting and retaining talent from diverse backgrounds. Right? We're gonna tackle it head on on We don't really successfully in semantics. Oh, wait. Give this fabulous mandate through to our leadership who got on board with laser focus around, making sure that we get a diverse slate of candidates when we bring in new people and that that translated incredibly well. So we saw a rise of interview to conversion. Foreign ft for females in six months off forty percent >> fourteen or forty four zero for zero. >> So just by making it part of the interviewing experience. Having a diverse slate of candidates, making sure that we're really giving a foreign opportunities coming right really has changed playing Plainfield. >> And then the other thing, of course, is the retention, which is a big problem for attention that we're, you know, women dropping out and not coming back. >> That's and this every organization has to step up to make sure that they're waiting, but their making a workforce that is flexible, that accommodates so some of that. Some of the mental load that women have, whether it's through a child, care whether it's to do with older parents. But also when we talk about diversity, it's nothing. You know just about the gender piece, right? We're going to accommodate for other people as well underrepresented minorities. Early Korea, Different people have different socio economic backgrounds, maybe haven't come from a typical university training course, right, Something that we've focused on heavily. We've been working with a large enough profits to bring in early career guys who have not had a university background who may have had a really rough time coming out of school, getting them in, training them up through internships, bringing them up to speed over six months and converting them into FDA, which I feel is really a way tio to build a diverse workforce and get people an opportunity that didn't have it >> now was someone spearheading that before you came on border was there Was there an effort that really kind of put a dedicated resource on it when you when you took it over? >> So I took over about a year ago and I double down on the effort. We were working with Europe before that. Had a fantastic colleague was doing a lot of work with Europe on. We're just seeing fabulous results with converted nearly thirty three percent of our internships into FT. >> Thirty three and you're not in those thirty three or not coming from, you know, kind of a classic. They're not coming pig population. >> Absolutely these air IGA passionate, enthusiastic young people who have a tenacity to just pick things up because they're so grateful to be there right there, so happy to be given the opportunity. And it's some It's an untapped resource that I think a lot of people who are looking to have solved aside the security talent shortages should be looking into great that we get programs in place for a Girl Scout middle school. But let's think about alternative ways of getting new talent in. And I think that they're not for profit right way after >> such a big problem. And like you say, it's a big problem, you know, from from little girls. And, you know, all the way up to mid mid career women that air dropping out and not coming back before you even get into the boardroom. We work with a ton of organization like Athena Alliance with towards that the boardroom level all the way down to Grace Hopper. You know, this working more kind of college graduate level girls intact? I mean, there's a lot of luckily, a lot of people are trying to focus on the problem, but unfortunately, the numbers or not turning in the correct direction, they're actually turning in the wrong direction. Yeah, >> so really, that's it for me. It's about laser focus. You really got it. If you make your party your agenda making party returned right? Don't give it. The nursery had not. Don't say that you will do the things actually commit to it and get it done right. I'm not a huge fan of talk. It's Qatargas work on. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity. The people they don't step up to the great doing enough >> to to your earlier first line, right? If you're not measuring it, you know, and tracking against it, how do you know if you're being silly and what it's under served? You have to give it a little juice, right? You can't just have to expect the status quo to suddenly change, right? >> Absolutely metrics. Incredibly employed. And start with you metrics. Dashboard record where your tracking, in terms of your representation of females, underrepresented minorities. Your bets. You're early Korea. Really? What you want to see is a huge influx or the interviewing stage into the into the FT conversion. You want to see an influx in your leadership. You want more women in your leadership team because that's the way to drive a better female pipeline, right? Same goes on because I'm are minority. Same guys. Early career. >> Yeah, so important that they look up and see somebody that looks like one hundred percent C. C an opportunity to be that person, something alright. Charlotte. Well, thanks for, uh, for taking a few minutes of your day. And great Teo learned about all your What you working on? That's >> great. Thanks. Having >> alright? She Charlotte? I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube? Where are, say twenty nineteen in the force Cow booth. Thanks for watching. >> We'LL see you next time.

>> Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, we're here live in Bahrain in the Middle East. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage, here for the first time, covering Amazon Web Services, AWS' Public Sector, and the breaking news around their new region that they announced a while ago, going to be deployed here in the early 2019 time frame. An Amazon region really is the power source of digital. It has a track record of creating so much value and innovation. And I'm here with Teresa Carlson, who's the head-- she's the chief of public sectors, she's the head of Amazon Web Services' Public Sector globally, except for China but that's a different territory. Teresa Carlson, it's great to see you. >> It's so great to have you here with us, oh my goodness. >> So I got to say, you told me a few years ago we're going to really go international, we're doubling down outside North America, we're going to have regions, Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS, said the same. This is the strategy of Amazon. But the Middle East was your baby. This was something that you did spend a lot of time on, and a lot of decisions. Everyone wants to know why Bahrain? Why did you choose this region? And what do you see happening? And how's it going? >> Well, you know, it's interesting because, well I have had a lot of people say why Bahrain as the first region that you've put in the Middle East? Because it doesn't seem like the first place somebody would choose. And the thing that kept coming back to me is Jeff has always said we're willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time. And I think this is probably one of those times where people just didn't quite understand why Bahrain. Well, here's why. I met the Crown Prince, we talked about digital innovation and the economy here and he immediately got that they needed to go through a digital transformation. They are not a country that has a lot of oil. They are a smaller country and they really are a working class country that is looking for how do they have sustainment? And they've done things in the past around financial services that really got them going. They would spear head things. And I think he saw the opportunity that this could help them jump-start the economy and they could kind of be a hub for innovation. So they created the right policies around Cloud First. They created the right telecommunications policy. They were one of the first to deregulate. They had good pricing for utilities. They were friendly toward businesses. And they had a culture that we felt could fit well with us, as well as our partner community. >> Couple of observations, being the first time here, so thank you for inviting us and allowing us to cover you here. One, they're a learning culture, they speak multiple languages, why not add programming to it, software? Two, they like to move fast. They just built a track in 14 months, they're not afraid to go faster. >> They go fast. >> That's Amazon. Amazon, you guys move at a speed of a whole 'nother cadence. And then, my observation again, compared to other areas as I look around is that the percentage of the population of Bahrainians is large, is a lot of people live here, that are native, and they're talented. >> Well, one of the things you said that I think is key is that they move fast, they're used to being frugal on how they do things and they're very scrappy. And that really fits with their culture because, again, they have to do things different than some of the other minimalist countries who are-- they're not quite as rich. But they have this culture of really moving fast and they took down blockers like crazy. I mean, as we came in and were making a decision on-- >> What were some of those blockers? Like, stumbling blocks, are they more hurdles? What were they? >> They were stumbling blocks but they were-- we had to really come in and talk about why telecommunications, policies and pricing had to change because in an old-school model of Telco, there's a lot of big charges. And when you have a digital economy coming in, if you think about, you have a few transactions for a lot of money in an old-school. In a new-school world, you have millions of transactions for a little bit, 'cause you've got to be able to transact a lot, and that's why your telecommunications industry's got to be set up as well as you want it deregulated. They'd already deregulated it so they worked with us to open it up, to set the policies, and now Batelco, who is one of our major telecommunications partners here, is doing manage services on AWS, they've gotten all kinds of people trained. And it's just an example of how they look at an opportunity and say we have got to innovate and make changes if we want to have a sustainment in the 21st century economy. >> And you guys are bringing a lot of goodness to the table, they're quick learners, they're smart, they've got their entrepreneurial vibe. They're not afraid to put some funds of funds together and get some professional investment going on. So that's going to level up the entrepreneurship base. The question is when will the region be ready? How's that going? It's under construction. We've been hearing it's been impacting and, frankly, bringing in to this country an agenda item of sustainability and sustainable energy. Well, why would they need sustainable energy if they've got oil? >> Well they-- (laughs) [John] - Why burn it if you can sell it? That's what the British Prime Minister-- >> Well they do and they've had a new find but I think they have to get to the new oil that they've found but they're not-- I think, what I understand, they're not banking on that, they're going to bank on a digital economy. So they know this is kind of a guaranteed way to really grow what they're doing and bringing out outside others. There's two big elements they're doing. One is they're creating policies for data that allows other countries to put their data here safely and with the right laws. That is game changing. So that's one big thing they're doing. The second thing is they have the spirit of teaching and training so they're getting other countries to come in and talk to them about what they're doing. And remember, John, they're already moving the government to the Cloud and they don't even have their Cloud here yet. So they've done all their homework and they're already moving more work loads into the Cloud that they don't feel need to be here. But they've looked at security design, compliance practices, and they're like, we're moving, we're not waiting. >> They're Cloud First. >> They're Cloud First. >> Okay, so when do you expect the construction to be ready? Ballpark, I know you can't probably give an exact date but when-- >> We expect it'll be ready by Q1 of 2019 and we're excited. It's going to be one of the most innovative regions. And by the way, I dunno if you saw, I had a big star on the map today in my presentation. We have literally, at AWS, had a big hole in the world with no region in the Middle East or Africa, and now we are going to have this region so it is exciting, and I know that the region itself is really anxious to get going. >> Well not only are you an amazing executive, I've seen you work, I've seen what you've done, checking the boxes, doing the hard work, getting down and dirty and doing hustling and scrapping, but you also made some good strategic bets. This one really is successful because I think, two things, you bring a region to the area for AWS but you guys are doing it in a way that's partnering with the government, you're actually-- as industry contributing. I think that's a case there that's going to probably be recognized down the road when people figure that out. But that's going to be a great one. But the cultural win, for you, is pretty amazing and I have to say, yesterday I went to the women breakfast that you hosted and I've never been at a women breakfast, and I've been to a lot of them because I like to be involved, where I got kicked out of a table because they need the space, so it was so crowded. Sorry guys, you're out, I got booted. I didn't leave the room, I had to just move, because they had workshops. Take a minute to explain the women breakfast you had because I think that was extraordinary and a proof point that the narrative of the region, women don't go to school, all this nonsense that's out there, take a minute to clarify this, this is a cultural shift. There might be some cultural things going on. >> Well, the women are here, #SmartIsBeautiful. They are amazing. And they are very educated and in fact, 53% of the government work force here are females at high level jobs too, they're not just low level. And I actually met with the King this week who told me that he was able-- he has the first Supreme Court Justice, that's a female, in the Middle East. And he said it was against culture but he did it because he said this woman was so amazing and she was so talented and she fit the role, she had the job description down. And he said it's gone great, so the women here are smart, they're talented, they're educated, and they actually get degrees in Computer Science. Here in Bahrain, 60% of the Computer Science students are females. Now, what is not happening, is their not always getting out and getting these jobs. And the second thing is, right now, we're still working with them to teach the right skills. A lot of skills are actually outdated tech skills and I know, John, you see this too, even in the US. You have universities that are still teaching the wrong skills for Cloud, so we are working with them at the university and the high school level that actually teach and certify on the right skills. But the women are talented, they're amazing. There are some cultural things that we're going to work together on but there's really no reason we can't have an amazing and talented workforce of women here in the Middle East. >> We had Mohammed on, who's the chief executive of the IGA, the Information e-Government Authority. He told me that any citizen can get a certification for free in this country. >> Yes! Oh my gosh, so I've never seen this. So our partner here, Tamkeen, who's like The Labour Fund, about a year and a half ago, agreed that any citizen that got a certification on AWS, it would be 100% paid for. And then we just announced today that they're actually also going to pay 100% of Bahraini companies that want to move to the Cloud. They're serious about this, they are serious. And they are being a role model and, again John, why are they doing it? They are doing it because they realize that they want to be a true digital economy and grow their businesses here and create new. They got to move faster because they're smaller. They've got to be scrappier, they got to move faster, they got to do things a little bit different. >> The other thing I want to point out, you can't really see it on the camera, but behind us you have, essentially, a mix of commercial and public sector. The show here is so, so crowded, couldn't get into the keynote speech, overflow of room was packed, this is attracting everyone from the Gulf region here. Not just public sector, but commercial businesses. This is not a one time thing, this is a-- the pent-up demand is here. What do you expect is going to happen when the region gets here built out? >> Well, if you look at all the partners around, I mean you have Trend Micro over here, and others, many of them have come because they're excited about us putting a region here. And Andy Jassy and I both have had many of our partners say when are you going to have a region in the Middle East? So we expect a lot more partners are going to come. Just like you they're going to see the value of being here. But, additionally, I don't know what we're going to do for our conference, our summit, because we've already out-grown this space and you're right, we have delegates here from Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, of course Bahrain, Kuwait, the US. So many different groups are being represented here and I think also South Africa, we have some folks from South Africa. >> Well theCUBE is here, we're making great observations and great commentary. I got to say that you're even attracting amazing talent from the US, besides theCUBE. General Keith Alexander was here. >> Yes he was. >> John Wood from Telos, and all these partners, all visionaries who see the opportunity. This is important, you're not being misunderstood by the people who know Amazon. >> No, I agree. And you made a point earlier that I think is important. Even though I'm kind of here for this conference, leading it, this is not a public sector conference, it's a AWS Summit. It has tons of commercial, tons of public sector. The thing that's a little bit different when you get to some of these countries is they are more government lead, so that is the reason it's important to have this relationship with government if you really want to, but you don't want to surprise them. And you want to work with them to help make sure that they and the country are successful. >> Well Teresa, it's been fun to observe and watch your successes continue to raise the bar here in your job. This is a whole 'nother level when you talk about really filling a hole, you see a hole, you fill it. >> Yep, find a whole, fill it (laughs). >> I heard someone say that once in a motivation speech. Oh, that was you, "You see a hole you fill it. "Oh, we got to hole in the Middle East, fill it!" You have a region here, you've got great success in Washington, DC, CIA, other governments. Congratulations, and thanks for all your support-- >> Thank you John for being here, thank you. >> Thank you, live coverage here. We are here in Bahrain in the Middle East of CUBE's first time. I'm John Furrier, your host here, covering the exclusive Amazon Web Services Summit, and covering the historic launch of the new region in the Middle East. This should change the game, this is going to be a digital hub. It's going to have impact to entrepreneurship, economics and society. We'll be covering it at theCUBE. Stay with us for more after this short break. (jubilant music)