>>Yeah. Hello and welcome to the Cubes Presentation of Women in Tech Global Event Celebrating International Women's Day I'm John for a host of the Cube. We had a great guest in Cuba. Alumni Veranda re vice president. Commercial sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa. EMEA at AWS Amazon Web service to great to see you. Thank you for coming in all the way across the pond and the US to Palo Alto from London. >>Thank you, John. Great to see you again. I'm super excited to be part of this particularly special event. >>Well, this is a celebration of International Women's Day. It's gonna continue throughout the rest of the year, and every day is International Women's Day. But you're actually international. Your women in Tech had a great career. We talk that reinvent. Let's step back and walk through your career. Highlights to date. What have been some of the key things in your career history that you can share? >>Uh, thanks, John. It's always nice to reflect on this, you know? Look, I the way I would classify my career. First of all, it's very it's been very international. I was born and raised in India I went to study in the US It was always a dream to go do that. I did my masters in Boston University. I then worked in the U S. For a good 17 years across A number of tech, uh, tech companies in particular, started my career at McKinsey in the very early days and then moved on to work for E M. C. You'll you'll probably remember them, John. Very well, of course, There now, Del um And then I moved over to Europe. So I've spent the last 18 years here in Europe. Um, and that's been across a couple of different things. I I always classify. Half my career has been strategy, transformation, consulting, and the other half of my career is doing the real job of actually running operations. And I've been, you know, 12 15 years in the tech and telecom sector had the excitement of running Schneider Electric's business in the UK Denniston and Private Equity went back to McKinsey Boomerang, and then a W s called me, and how could I possibly refuse that? So it's been really exciting, I think the one big take away when I reflect on my career is. I've always had this Northstar about leading a business someday, and then I've sort of through my career master set of skills to be able to do that. And I think that's probably what you see. Very eclectic, very mobile, very international and cross industry. Uh, in particular. >>I love the strategy and operations comment because they're both fun, but they're different ones. Very execution, tactical operating. The business strategy is kind of figuring out the future of the 20 mile stare. You know, playing that chess match, so to speak, all great skills and impressive. But I have to ask you, what got you in the tech sector? Why technology? >>Well, so you know, in some ways I kind of fell into it, John, right? Because when I was growing up, my father was always in the tech space, so he had a business and fax machines and he was a reseller of cannon. If you remember Cannon, um, and microfilm equipment and I grew up around him, and he was a real entrepreneur. I mean, always super visionary about new things that were coming out. And so as I followed him around, I said, I kind of wanna be him. And it's a little bit about that sort of role model right early in your career. And then when I moved to the U. S. To study again, it wasn't like I thought I was gonna go to attack. I mean, I wasn't an engineer, you know. I grew up in India with economics degree. That's when women went into We didn't necessarily go into science. But when I joined McKinsey in the early days, I ended up working with, you know, the big companies of the days. You know, the IBMs, the E M. C. Is the Microsoft the oracles, etcetera. So I just then began to love, love the innovation, always being on the sort of bleeding edge. Um, and I guess it was a little bit just fascinating for me not being an engineer to learn how technology had all these applications in terms of how businesses advanced. So I guess, Yeah, that's kind of why I still think it around with it. It's interesting >>how you mentioned how you at that time you pipeline into economics, which is math. Of course. Uh, math is needed for economics, but also the big picture and This is one of the conversation we're having, Uh, this year, the breaking down the barriers for women in tech. Now there's more jobs you don't You don't need to have one pathway into into science or, you know, we're talking stem versus steam arts are super important, being creative. So the barriers to get in are being removed. I mean, if you think about the surface area for technology. So I got to ask you, what barriers do you think Stop girls and young women the most in considering a career in Tech? >>I've got to start with role models, John. Right? Because I think a number of us grew up, by the way, being the only not having the allies in the business, right? All of us, all the all the managers and hiring people are males rather than females. And the fact of the matter is, we didn't have this sort of he for she movement. And I think that's the biggest barrier is not having enough role models and positive role models in the business. I can tell you that research shows that actually, when you have female role models, you tend to hire more and actually what employees say is they feel more supportive when they have actually female managers. So I think there are lots of goodness, but we just need to accelerate how many role models we have. I think the other things I will say to you as well is, if you look at just the curriculum and the ability to get women into stem, right, I mean, we need to have colleges, universities, schools also encouraging women into stem. And you've probably heard about our programme. You know, it's something we do to encourage girls into stem. I think it's really important that teachers and others are actually encouraging girls to do math, for example, right? It's not just about science. Math is great. Logic is great, by the way. Philosophy is great. I just love what you said. I think increasingly, the EQ and EQ parts have to come together, and I think that's what women excel at. Um, so I think that's another very, very big carrier, and then the only other thing I will say is we're gonna watch the language we use, like when I think about job descriptions, they tend to be very male oriented languages we look at CVS now, if you haven't been a female in tech for a long time, your CV isn't going to show a lot of tech, is it? So for recruiters out there, look for competencies. Look for capabilities. You mentioned strategy and arts earlier. We have this leadership principles, As you know, John, really well, think big and dive deep, right? That strategy and operations. And so I think we we need to recruit for that. And we need to recruit for culture. And we need to recruit for people with ambition, an aspiration and not always Just look at 20 years of experience because you're not gonna find it. So I think those are some of the big barriers. Um, that I that I at least think, is stopping women from getting into town. But the biggest one is not enough women at the top hiring women. >>I think people want to see themselves, or at least an aspirational version of what they could be. And I think that's only gonna get better. Lots changed. A lot has happened over the years, but now, with technology in everyone's life, covid pulled forward a lot of realities. You know, the current situation in Europe where you're you are now has pulled forward a lot of realities around community, cyber, digital, our lives. And I think this opens up new positions, clearly cybersecurity. And I'm sure the job boards in every company is hiring people that didn't exist years ago, but also this new problems to solve. So the younger generation coming up, um, is gonna work on these problems, and they need to have role models. So what's your reaction to that? You know, new problems are opportunities their new so usually solved by probably the next generation. Uh, they need mentors. All this kind of works together. What's your reaction? >>Yeah, and, you know, let me pick up on something we're doing that I think is really important. I think you have to address age on the pipeline problem, you know, because they're just is a pipeline problem, you know, at the end of the day, And by that, what I mean is, we need to have more and more people with the and I'm not gonna use the word engineering or science. I'm going to use the word digital skills, right? And I think what we've we've committed to doing, John, you know, I'm very proud of this is we said we're gonna train 29 people 29 million people around this world on digital skills for free by 2025. Right, That's gonna help us get that pipeline going. The other thing we do is something called Restart where we actually do 12 weeks of training for the under, employed and under served right and underrepresented communities. And that means in 12 weeks we can get someone. And you know, this case I talk to you about this before I love it. Fast food operator to cloud, right? I mean, that's that's what I call changing the game on pipeline. But But here's the other stand. Even if the pipeline is good and we often see that the pipeline can be as much as 50% at the very early career women, by the time you get into the C suite, you're not a 50 anymore. You're less than 20%. So the other big thing John there, and this comes back to the types of roles you have an opportunities you create. We've got to pull women through the pipeline. We've really got to encourage that there are sponsors and not just mentors. I think women are sorry to say this over mentored and under sponsored. We need more people say I'm gonna open the door for you and create the opportunity I had that advantage. I hit people through my career. By the way, they were all men, right? Who actually stood out there and bang on the door and said, Okay, Tunisia is gonna go do this. And my first break I remember was having done strategy all my life when the CEO come into the room and you said, You're gonna better locks and you're gonna go run the P and L in Benelux and I almost fainted because I thought, Oh, my God, I've never run a PNR before But it's that type of risk taking that's going to be critical. And I think we've got to train our leaders and our managers to have those conversations be the sponsors, get that unconscious bias training. We all have it. Every single one of us has it. I think those are the combinations of things that are going to actually help open the door and make a see that Actually, it's not just about coding. It's actually about sales. It's about marketing. It's about product management. It's about strategy. It's about sales operations. It's about really, really thinking differently about your customers, right? And that's the thing that I think is attractive about technology. And you know what? Maybe that leads you to eventually become a coder. Or maybe not. Maybe you enter from coding, but those are all the range is available to you in technology, which is not good at advertising, >>that there's more applications than ever before. But I love your comment about over mentoring and under sponsored. Can you quickly just define the difference between those two support elements sponsoring versus, uh, mentoring sponsoring >>So mentors And by the way they can range from my son is my mentor, you know, is a great reverse mentor. By the way, I really encourage you to have the reverse mentoring going. So many mentors are people from all walks of your life, right? And you should have, you know, half a dozen of those. At least I think right who are going to be able to help you deal with situations, help coach you give you feedback respond to concerns You're having find ways for you to navigate all the stuff you need, by the way. Right? And feedback the gift we need that sponsors. It's not about the feedback. Necessarily. It's people who literally will create opportunities for you. Mentors don't necessarily do that. Sponsors will say you You know what? We got the phone. Call John and say, John, I've got the perfect person for you. You need to go speak to her. That's the big difference. John and a couple of sponsors. It's not about many, >>and that's where the change happens. I love that comment. Good call. I'm glad I could double down on that. Now that you have the environment, pipeline and working, you have the people themselves in the environment getting better sponsors and mentors, hopefully working more and more together. But once they're in the environment, they still got to be part of it. So as girls and young women and to the working sector for tech, what advice would you give them? Because now they're in the game there in the arena. So what advice would you give them? Because the environments they are now >>yeah, yeah. I mean, Gosh, John, it's you know, you've lived your career in this space. It's an exciting place to be right. Um, it's a growth opportunity. And I think that's a really important point because the more you enter sectors where there's a lot of growth and I would say hyper right growth, that's just gonna open the doors to so many more things. If you're in a place where it's all about cost cutting and restructuring, do you know what? It's super hard to really compete and have fun, right? And as we say, make history. So it's an exciting place. Today's world transformation equals digital transformation, right? So tech is the place to be, because tech is about transformation, Right? So coming in here, the one advice I would give you is Just do it because believe me, there's so much you can do, like take the risk, find someone is going to give you that entree point and get in the door right? And look, you know what's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you don't like it. Fine. There's lots of other things than to go to. So my advice is, you know, don't take the mm. The really bad tips I've received in my career, right? Don't let people tell you you can't do it. You're not good enough. You don't have the experience, right? It's a male's world. You're a woman. It's all about you and not about EQ. Because that's just rubbish, Frankly, right. The top tip I was ever given was actually to take the risk and go for it. And that was my father. And then all these other sponsors I've had around the way. So that's that's the one thing I would say. The other thing I will say to you is the reason I advise it and the reason you should go for it. It's purposeful. Technology is changing our lives, you know, And we will all live to be no longer. 87 I think 100 right? And so you have the opportunity to change the course of the world by coming to technology. The vaccine deployment John was a great example, right? Without cloud, we couldn't have launch these vaccines as fast as we did. Right? Um, so I think there's a tonne of purpose. You've got to get in and then you've got to find. As I said, those sponsors, you've got to find those mentors. You've got to not worry about vertical opportunities and getting promoted. You gotta worry about horizontal opportunities, right? And doing the things that I needed to get the skills that you require, right? I also say one thing. Um, don't Don't let people tell you not to speak up, not to express your opinion. Do all of the above be authentic, Be authentic style. You will see more role models. Many, many more role models are gonna come out in tech that are going to be female role models. And actually, the men are really stepping up to the role models. And so we will be better together. And here's the big thing. We need you. We can do this without women. There's no possible way that we will be able to deliver on the absolute incredible transformation we have ahead of us without you. >>Inclusion, Diversity equity. These are force multipliers for companies. If applied properly, it's competitive advantage. And so breaking the bias. The theme this year is super super important. It sounds like common sense, but the reality is you break the bias It's not just women as men, as all of us. What can we do? Better to bring that force multiplier capabilities and competitive advantage of inclusion, diversity, equity to business. >>So the first thing I would say and my doctor used to always tell me this if it hurts, don't do it right. I would say to you just do it. Get diverse teams in place because if you have diverse teams, you have diversity of thought. You don't have to worry as much about bias because, you know, you've got the people around the table who actually represent the world. We also do something really cool. We have something called biassed busters. And so in meetings we have bias borders. People are going to, like, raise their hand and say, I'm not sure that that was really meant the way it was supposed to be, So I think that's just a nice little mechanism that we have here, Um, in a W s that helps. The other thing I would say to you is being your authentic self. You can't be a man and mentioned be women, and you're not gonna replicate somebody else because you're never gonna succeed if you do that, you know? So I would say be your authentic self all of the time, You know, we know. We know that women are sometimes labelled as aggressive when they're really not. Don't worry about it. It's not personal. I think the main thing you have to do is and I advise women all the time Is calibrate the feedback you're getting okay? Don't catastrophizing it right. Calibrate it. Taken in, you don't have to react to every feedback in the world, right? And make sure that you're also conscious of your own biases, right? So I think those are my Those are my two cents John for what they were for breaking device. I love the thing. >>Be yourself, You know, Don't take it too personal. Have some fun. That's life. That's a life lesson. Um, Final question, while I got you here, you're a great inspiration, and you're a great role model. You're running a very big business for Amazon web services. Europe, Middle East and Africa is a huge territory. It's its own thing. It's It's like you're bigger than some companies out there. Your role in your organisation. What's the hot area out there you were talking before camera. That's emerging areas that you're focused on. People are watching this young women, young ladies around the world. We're gonna look at this and say, What wave should I jump on? What's the hot things happening in in Europe? Middle Eastern Africa? >>I think the three things I would mention and I'm sure there's I'm sure, John, as we've spoken to my peers across the other gos, right, there are some similarities. The very, very hot thing right now is sustainability. Um, and you know, people are really building sustainability into their strategy. It's no longer sort of just an E S G goal in itself. It's actually very much part of changing the way they do business. So I think that's the hard part. And that's why again, I think it's a phenomenal place to be. I think the other big thing that we're absolutely talking about a lot is, and you know, this is getting even more complicated right now is just around security and cyber security and where that's going and how can we be really thinking about how we address some of these concerns that are coming out and I think there's There's something. There's a lot to be said about the way we build our infrastructure in terms of that context. So I think that's the second one. I think the third one is. People are really looking at technology to change the way businesses operate. So how does HR operate? How do you improve your employee value proposition? How do you do marketing in the next generation? How do you do finance in the next generation? So across the business is no longer the place of I t. It really is about changing the way we are as businesses and all of us becoming tech companies at the core. So the big thing there, John, is data data at the heart of everything we do data not because it's there in front of you, but data because you can actually make decisions on the back of it. So those are the things, Um, I seem to come across a lot more than anything else. >>It's always great to talk to you, your senior leader at AWS, um, inspirational to many. And thank you for taking the time to speak with us here on this great event. Women in text. Global Celebration of International Women's Day. Thank you so much for your time. >>Thank you, John. Always great to talk to you. >>We will definitely be keeping in touch More storeys to be had and we're gonna bring it to you. This is the cubes continuing presentation of women in tech. A global event celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>> From Seattle Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're actually on the waterfront in Seattle at the AWS Imagine nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the AWS Imagine education event. This is really about nonprofits and solving big, big problems. So Dave Levy and team have you know dedicated to some of these big problems. And one of the big problems in the world is human trafficking, and problems that people are encountering and all kinds of nasty situations all over the world. And we're really excited to have someone who's tackling that problem, and really trying to bring a voice to those people that wouldn't otherwise have a voice. And she's Hend Alhinnawai, she's the CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. Hend, good to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, impressions on this event? >> Wonderful event bringing together technologists, people in nonprofits, really creating synergies for people to collaborate and talk to each other and network and learn how they can advance their organizations. >> Such important work. >> Yes. >> So give us kind of the background on what you're up to, what Humanitarian Tracker's all about. >> So Humanitarian Tracker's a nonprofit forum. It was created to connect and empower citizens using innovation and technology, but specifically for humanitarian events. We were among the first to combine crowdsourced reports with data mining and artificial intelligence and apply them to humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human rights violations, disease outbreak. All the way to tracking the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Really giving a holistic view of what's happening. >> It's interesting, you know, it's probably like the middle eastern spring, I can't remember the exact term that people use, where it was kind of the first use of regular people using their mobile phones to kind of grab a ground swell of action. You're not looking at the politics specifically, you're looking more at humanitarian disasters. But pretty amazing kind of what a connected phone represents to anyone anywhere in the world now to communicate what's happening to them. To share that story. We really didn't have anything like that before. To get that personal event on the ground. >> No it's really a new way of consuming, creating and consuming information. So the cell phone has really given people on the ground a chance to tell their own story. But it's not enough. If you have an event that happens to you. Something happens to you. And you record it, it stops there. But the unique thing with Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and tell them what's happening to and around them. >> Right, but it's not just about the individual. And what you guys are doing is using cutting edge technology, obviously you're here as part of the AWS event. In terms of machine-learning and big data to grab a large number of these reported events and distill it into more of an overarching view of what is actually happening on the ground. How did you do that, where did you get that vision, how are you executing that? >> Well, we're all about empowering the citizen. And in our line of work we deal with a lot of data, a lot of information, most of it is unstructured, most of it is crowdsourced. So we use machine-learning to help us extract important details. Information on time. Event location, what is happening. And at the same time we really cared that this reporter, stays anonymous for their own safety. We, privacy and security is utmost importance to us. So that's always our focus. So in that space, we de-identify them. We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest, or could lead to someone identifying that it was them that reported. >> And how do you get this information to the people that are suffering this activity ground? How do they know about you, how do they know that you are anonymizing their information so there's not going to be repercussions if they report. You know, how do, kind of I guess your go-to-market, to steal a business terms, in making sure that people know this tool's available for help? >> It depends on the situation. For example in the conflict situation, we rolled it out, and we kept it low key for awhile. Because we didn't want government attacks, we didn't want people to be arrested, or to be tried. So we rolled it out. And it was word of mouth that spreads. And people started submitting supports. Actually the first project we did with conflict, we weren't sure if we were going to get one report, zero reports. The first week we got nothing. And then slowly as people learned about it they started submitting their reports. And we see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice. So you submit a report to us, we then take it. We verify it. We make it public. And that, we welcome, we encourage, we want people to consume it. Whether you're a student, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a government, whether you work in a nonprofit, the UN. It's been used to address human rights violations, it's been used to identify humanitarian hotspots. The data's phenomenal, and what you get from it. It's not just collecting data. We're not just about collecting the data. We want to make sure it's meaningful, and we want to derive insights. So we want to know what is the data actually telling us? >> Right, right. So just to be clear for people that don't know, so you're making that data available, you're cleansing the data, you're running some AI on it to try to get a bigger picture, and anyone with a login, any kind of journalist can now access that data in support of whatever issue or topic or story they're chasing? >> That's it Jeff. >> That's phenomenal. And just kind of size and scope. You've been at this I think you said since 2011. You know kind of how many active, activities, crisis, I don't know, what the definition is of a bucket of these problems. Are you tracking historically at a given point in time? Give us some kind of basic sizing type of dimensions. >> It really ranges, because it could, when we were tracking conflict for example, we were really focused on one area, and the surrounding countries. Because you had refugee population, you had displacement, you had all sorts of issues. But it could be anywhere from five projects, it just depends. And we want to make sure that each project we're taking on we're giving it our full attention, full scope. And I like to run the organization like a two-team pizza team. And so I don't take on more than I could handle. >> Right, right. So then how did it morph from the conflict to the Global Sustainability Goal? So we've worked with Western Digital, they're doing a lot of work, ASP's doing a lot of work on kind of these global sustainability goals. How did you get involved in that, and how did the two kind of dovetail together? >> So the elasticity of the cloud has helped our operation scale tremendously. And in 2016 we were selected as a top 10 global innovation, that could be applied to the Sustainable Development Goals, and-- >> So they found you, the UN find you, or did you get nominated? How did that happen? >> We were nominated, and from over 1,000 solutions we were chosen. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. And we were showcased at the Solutions Summit which is hosted at the United Nations. And just based on that experience of meeting people that were doing really cool things in their respective communities, we launched the Global Action Mosaic. Because we wanted to create one place where people that are doing projects in their communities could submit it, and have it showcased. And the goals are not only to crowdsource the SGD's, but to also be a part of the effort to track what's happening. Who's doing what where, make it easy for people to search say, Jeff you decided to get involved in a project with education. You can go onto our Global Action Mosaic, search projects on education in your community or in other parts of the world and then get involved in it. So it's really creating a centralized place where people can get information on the global goals. >> Awesome. So that's pretty much the Global Action Mosaic. It's pretty much focused on the UN global goals versus your core efforts around the Humanitarian Tracker. >> Yes. >> That's great. So we're here at AWS. Have you always been on AWS? Is this something new? How does being on kind of the AWS infrastructure help you do your mission better? >> We are, we've been partners in running AWS since we actually started. >> Since the beginning. >> Yes we have Yusheheedi as one of our partners, development partners, AWS. And because one of the core, one of the most important things to us is privacy and security, we want to make sure that whatever data is being handled and received is stored securely. >> Right, right. >> And that information transmitted, handled is also being done so in a secure way. Like I mentioned, the elasticity of the cloud has helped us scale our mission tremendously. It's affordable, we've been able to us it, we've learned their machine-learning stock to de-identify some of the data that comes in. So we're firm believers that AWS is essential to how we run our operation. >> Because do the individual conflicts kind of grow and shrink over time? Do you see it's really a collection of kind of firing up hotspots and then turning down versus one long, sustained, relatively flat, from kind of a utilization and capacity point of view? >> Yeah, no it definitely, it flares up and you'll have like a year, months, weeks sometimes where it's just focused on one area. But one of the things we focus on, it's not just. So what is the data actually telling us? So say you're focusing on point A. But just down the street in location B there is a dire humanitarian emergency that needs to be addressed. The crowdsourced reports, combined with the data mining and the AI, helps us identify those hotspots. So everybody could be focused here, but there could be an emergency down the street that needs to be addressed as well. It just depends. >> And do you have your own data scientists or do you, do other people take your data and run it through their own processes to try to find some of these insights? >> We have both. >> You have both. >> Yeah. >> So what's been the biggest surprise when you anonymize and aggregate the data around some of these hotspots? Is there a particular pattern that you see over and over? Is there some insight, that now that you've seen so much of it, from kind of the (muffled speaking) that you can share and reflect on? >> I think it' very unique to each project to do. But there is one thing that I strongly support, that I don't see enough of, and that's the sharing of data within the organizations. And so, for example just getting to that culture where sharing your data between organizations is encouraged and actually done. Could help create a, create a pool of knowledge. So, for example we worked with 13 different organizations that were all tackling humanitarian events. The same one, in Syria. And the 13 did not share data and did not talk to each other. And so we found that for example, they were all focused on one area. When just a few miles down, there was a need that wasn't being addressed. But because they don't share information, they had no idea. >> Right. >> It was only when we were able to take a look at it, kind of from the, from an overarching view, looking all their data, we were able to say you know, it would be helpful, it would actually, you could save on resources, and less time, and less effort, and you guys are tackling a small funding pool to begin with. If you shared information and tackled different things, instead of focusing on one area, because you don't know what the other guys doing. >> And were they using crowdsource data, is there source data, or were they just trying to collect their own from the field? >> They were collecting their own. >> So I assume that the depth, and the richness, and the broadness of data is nothing like you're collecting. >> Well you get a different kind of, you get different kind of information when the individuals actually telling you what's happening versus you asking a very direct question like, "Are you healthy? Yes or No?". Whereas you give them the chance, they might tell you that they haven't eaten, and their diabetic and you know, give you other pieces of information. Where they're living, are they refugees? Are they healthy? Are they not healthy? Do they go to school? Do their kids go to school? How many kids they have? Are they a female-run household? All this information could help guide development in the proper way. >> Right, right. All right. So give you the final word, how should people get involved if they want to help? >> You can go to humanitariantracker.org if you want to volunteer with us. And if you're doing a project that is related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, I would like you to go to globalactionmosaic.org, and map it there, and be part of our community. >> So Hend, thank you for taking a few minutes to share your story, and for all the good work that you're doing out there. >> Thank you Jeff it was a pleasure. >> All right, she's Hend, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine nonprofit. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (techno music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo, Live Europe, Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> All right, welcome back to the Cubes. Live coverage in Barcelona for Sisqo Live twenty nineteen. John for Rico's Cube with David Lantz. Our next guest is Wendy Marches, the President of Cisco, E. M. R. Europe, Middle East in Africa and Russia. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> So one of the things themes this year certainly is cloud data center coming together. But the other backdrop is besides security and all of the things going on with data is the global landscape. So Cisco, see, North American Windows were going on their school live? What's happening in Europe? Actually, GPR has been hot in the past year. What's new? What's the scene like here? >> You know, I think that certainly the scene is one of huge excitement, you know, from our customers across the whole region of Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia. It's an incredibly diverse region. But you know, if you look at the different countries, the different markets one thing that absolutely is a constant theme that we hear is the desire and the appetite to gain the benefit from transformation. You know, in the digital transformation and what that value can be and realizing that. And if we look for ours, you know within within Cisco and the positioning around realizing the secure intelligent platform is absolutely resonating, you know, so things like multi cloud and realizing that reinventing the network, the security challenge and dealing with that, how you address it with the multi domain architecture approach so our customers are really engaged in the conversation, want to learn more, but most importantly, want help with how. Show me how to do it. >> You guys must be leading the conversation within Cisco as your team in Europe, Miller's nephew in Russia. Because the complexity around compliance and data has been front and center Now for twenty four months now hitting mainstream global landscape, this >> is really >> impacting the architecture. We look at the how intent based NETWORKINGS developing policy based fill in the blank two. Connecting to multiple clouds so kind of complex. A whole new architecture. Reimagining networking. How are you guys seeing them? Trends now is it's still at the tipping point is it's still early. What's your? What's your assessment of the role of data as it gets more complex, more compliant, driven? >> So I think that it's certainly if you look for organizations, the power of being able to understand the importance of your data where it resides, being able to demonstrate that having the integrity and the quality of that data is extremely important as well. So there's a heightened awareness in the market for organizations, global organizations who conduct business in a mere, you know, of course, and we are one of those as well. So a knowledge and understanding and appreciation ofthe compliance regulation. It's only going to become Mohr intense, you know, as we go for. So for organizations to really have robust and rigorous processes around, all of that on technology could be an enabler in the process as well. What >> are the >> unique aspects? Wendy Inn in the region, you obviously have visibility. And on what goes on in North America, what's different in Europe, especially in the context of cloud multi cloud? Obviously GPR, although it's a framework now for for for everybody get on the world. But what's unique in the region? >> So I think the uniqueness is, you know, if you look from a multi cloud standpoint, for example, where you know organizations are, have been, I would say depending on some of the countries and markets a little bit more hesitant around a movement to cloud. And now there is a movement. But it's more one of, well, what is appropriate for me. And how do I ensure I can embrace multi cloud in a way that makes sense for my business. So, rather than a full move to public, there has been a selected, you know, based on application of workload environments and also understanding the security, back to compliance. And also the regulation impacts have some of those movements as well. And of course, that depends upon the vertical or the industry in which those organizations are operating. So for those who are highly regulated, like health care, you're the pharmaceutical sector. There's a deep inspect that goes on there as well, so I think there's a further requirement for due diligence around some of those topics as well. >> Well, in the you know, the Snowden backlash had some paranoia for sure, with everybody saw going to go to two or three clouds. And that's clearly not been the case. Yeah, you have no many dozens and hundreds of service providers that air that air specialists obviously in the region. So we heard today about a million end to end architecture, which is a a bold and ambitious vision. You have a technical background as well. I wonder if you could just describe sort of how that's all going toe transpire. How do you take the customers on their journey? What are they asking you for help with? And where do you see it going? >> Yeah. So if you look at, you know from David this morning, David, get clear on what he talks about. So really, you know, for those different domains, there are competencies, you know, if you think so. There's the data center. There is the edge. There was security world, the collaboration world. So the reality of it is, though, that as a cousin, enterprise or any organization indeed consumes those things. They want to be able to work across all of those areas. And they want the innovation to work in a seamless manner. Is that the end of the day? The problem to solve. To simplify for me, Anita automate reduced complexity. I wanna roll and deploy policy and a consistent in cohesive way. So in order to make that happen, you have to have these environments able to talk to each other, but more importantly, pushed that policy in a cohesive manor across these environments. So for us, it's a journey, eh? So it's not something you could do over Nice. You have to work within your engineering teams and your ecosystem in order to bring that to life and do it in a way where the custom consider could consume it. >> I think you really nailed that. We see in the trend as well. This cross domain component with AP Eyes now but you're open are pushing data around you, moving data from point A to Point B. Sounds like networking. To me, policy is important, but the configuration the deployment, which used to be hard, is now being automated. So the question I have for you here in the definite zone means packed People are learning about programming. >> What is the >> impact of all this to developers were trying to build APS and your ecosystem. There's gotta be an opportunity there some Mike go the way of the old guard fade away and some new kinds of providers might rise up. >> Yeah, you know, this huge opportunity here, and I think it's opportunity around the requirement for new skills, new competencies, but also around you capability to bring this the life. Because if you look from a development standpoint, if you look at how you realize value with organizations and where does the money flow between some of these environments is interesting and the ecosystem itself. You know, Francisco, what What I believe makes us even more powerful is bringing to life on them and accelerating with the ecosystem, because at the end of the day, the customer will buy an ecosystem style environment. So for us to be able to work with all of those parties as we have over many years and there will be new players, the I s. P community, the developer community that we work with that will be really powerful >> forces with system growing significantly, ecosystem grow >> Absolutely, absolutely awesome. Example. Just lookit here because of the organizations that are here. >> I think the development trends clearly intersecting with networking as more programmable right? >> Yeah. >> That's the big takeaway for us. You can program the network. You have infrastructure as code. That's the devil. Promise that now here. Question we're looking at is okay. What's it going to be? The impact of value creation. So from a customer, what does it mean to me? So so, as we look at that, I sent the thing about the Cisco original business model enabling technology. How would you answer that Question of what's being enabled today. What's the big half a customer's? What are you guys enabling for your partners in your >> S o? I think a big part of it is we see now a lot of the conversation there's around What is is the use case. So it's not just a I've got some cool stuff. Show me the cost ofthe that work is how do I apply that into my environment to derive value and that value, maybe around efficiency and maybe a brand provisioning in a more rapid manner, automating in a more realized manner. Lots of different instances where organizations they don't see the benefit associated with that, but also it allows them to free up time of their people. And their teams to move into new areas as well as they move their own business models. Because, you know, it's a massive transition that's happening in the industry. Overall, it's not just were not just changing for the sake of change were changing because the market is asking us to do that >> well. And so customers have to make bets on who they're multi cloud providers, maybe, and obviously Cisco's coming out that from a position of networking strength, which is a good place to come from. But there are other there alternatives because the Bigg market headed strategic. What gives you confidence that Cisco's the right solution? What are you telling your customers in that regard? >> So you know, if I look at the, what gives me confidence is the fact that we have an openness. You know, if you look from A from a P I standpoint of developer standpoint, we've always operated in a mode of an openness so that you have an environment where anyone could write to that's people want that it's incredibly importance or not. Having a proprietary stance is very powerful, but I think also being able to work with a ecosystem that's there where you are a dependency on others, and you meet with the meat in the channel on certain solutions and innovations as well. So you empower a greater community to start to drive that acceleration with you? A swell. You know, I will. Look at the you know, we talk about reinventing the network. It's happening. It's happening now, you see, is doing it. And just how important the network is more than ever before in this transition, you know, ran a number of areas with security with policy, and it's way see it come to life now. >> Well, the old saying the network is the computer will do you no. Cisco's the network. Yeah. I gotta ask you about Brexit is someone who's based in the UK thoughts on effects that that has. I mean, obviously, sir Francisco Global Company. But your perspectives on Brexit >> s So if I look for, you know, as someone who lives in the U. K. You know, clearly we hear about brexit a loss, you know, you do in your country as well. And I would say four words. We over. You know what Cisco is? A global company were very fair. We're very familiar with working with these types of instances and situations. The UK remains for us is an incredibly important market and will continue to be on We'll, you know, we'll continue to invest from a capabilities and a skill standpoint, and I think just force now, you know, working with our teams there. I'm making sure that there's we minimize any impacts based on scenarios, you know, to our customers and apartments. The rules get through. >> Rules change. Adept. I >> could ask >> you about our The Russia piece rushes of GDP is about the size of Spain from correct, interesting that you carve that out of a distinct opportunity. How's the business going there and maybe some comments around >> you're so I can't talk directly about business performances were in quiet period. But I guess we call it out specifically because it is not part of Europe, Middle Eastern Africa, but is a very important part of our region of Vermeer. And if I look for cores of, you know, we believe that there is significant opportunity for us in that market. We have a fantastic team that were closely where there again with our customers and partners. And, you know, we believe there's, you know, absolutely opportunity for Sisko in that market >> development team there as well. Our way >> have we have capability there that works locally with all of our all of our teams and, you know, engineering Competent sale steams etcetera as well. Yeah. >> Good. Good math. >> Wendy, how are you guys organized in your territory? How do you guys maintain close to the customer in the countries? Is the country strategy had just people don't. >> It is a country strategy. So we have, you know, about one hundred twenty three countries within a mere on, we have teams that live and operate in all of those countries. That's Avery close to us from a regional perspective. So want team, you know, that really drives that scale. I'm a fantastic opportunity to go and visit those teams. You know, I spent a lot of time on the road on DH. You know, I enjoy Ascend and they do to, you know, >> is there anything you could talk to your customers that are watching here? Anyone interested, as you guys have transformed as a company, Certainly looking what Cisco is done over the past few years a complete transformation building on your base You've been through You've been agile getting nimble being Mohr use case driven Central, Central. What have you learned? What's your learnings? And what would you pay it forward in terms of advice? >> Yeah, So, you know, if I if I look at it, we're not through, we're still you know we're still on the journey and I think a big part of it is accepting and acknowledging a need for change is really important. But a big part of this change is culture. You're a friend of Ford's within Sisko, and the culture of our teams are people on having an attitude in a style of a desire, a curiosity, Onda willingness for change is really, really important. And as we talk about the transformation topic, you need both. You know, technology's incredibly important and powerful, but you need a spirit and a culture and your people in your teams you want to drive that change with you >> in their culture starts in trouble. Thank you for taking the time. >> Thank you >> for the following your progress as we take our cue. Global next couple of years. Looking forward to keeping an eye on. You guys are doing. Thanks for joining. >> Thank you. Thank you. See you >> here. Live in Barcelona. Francisco live twenty nineteen. We're back with more after this short break.

>> From the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas, it's theCube. Covering AWS Marketplace. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCube. We are at AWS Reinvent 2018. We got to get a number, I don't know how many people are here, but Vegas is packed. I think it's in six different venues tonight. We're at the ARIA at the hub with the AWS Marketplace & Service Catalog Experience, kicking everything off. We're excited to be joined by cube alumni. Last we saw him, I think it was in San Francisco Summit 2017. Carl Krupitzer, the CEO of ThingLogix. Carl, great to see you. >> Thank you it's great to be here. >> So I think you were saying before we turned the cameras on, you came early days. This whole piece here was not even as big a the room we're in. >> Right well we were part of the service launch for IoT, and that was just a few years ago, and it's exponentially bigger. Yeah. Just the expo, this is not even the expo floor right? And this is bigger than what we had originally. So excited to see it grow. >> So IoT keeps growing, growing, growing. That's all we hear about. In Industrial IoT, we did the Industrial IoT launch with GE back in better days. For them, huge opportunity. Really seeing a lot of momentum. What are some of the observations you're seeing actually out in marketplace? >> You know it's interesting. When we first started with the IoT service offering for AWS, there was a lot of proof of concepts going on, a lot of people kind of hacking their way through understanding what IoT is and how it could impact their business. And I think we've gotten to the point now where we're seeing more production roll-outs with very considerate business drivers behind it. >> Right. I think it's funny you're talking about doing some research for this, and you guys are really specific. I love it. It's not Greenfield projects you know? Have specific design objectives, have specific KPIs, have specific kind of ideas about what the functionality you want before you just kind of jump into IoT space with two feet. >> Right. Yeah we strongly discourage companies from just jumping in with both feet just because right? It's an expensive undertaking IoT, and it has the potential to really change your business for the better if you do it well. >> So where are you seeing the most uptake? Or maybe that surprises you the most in these early days? Kind of industry wise? >> We see a lot of creative use cases starting to come up. Kind of that secondary use of data, and one of the things that we've-- we kind of describe our customers having a life cycle of IoT right? They come in to solve a specific problem with us, which is usually a scalability, or a go to market issue. And then very quickly, they kind of get to the art of the possible. What can we do next? And we see a lot of companies really getting creative with the way they do things. From charging with-- using our FID tags in sub-Saharan Africa for water to solar power and things like that. It's interesting to see companies that didn't exist a few years ago, and couldn't have existed a few years ago, really kind of getting a lot of traction now. >> Right. It's funny we did an interview with Zebra Sports a few years ago actually now. And they're the one that's old RFID technology that put the pads in the shoulder pads for all the NFL players. They're on the refs, they're in the balls. It is such a cool way to apply on old technology to a new application and then really open up this completely different kind of consumer experience in watching sports. When you've got all this additional data about how fast are they running and what's their acceleration. And I think they had one example where they showed a guy in an interception. They had the little line tracker. Before he'd gotten all the way back in, it was a pick six. It's unbelievable now with this data. >> Our Middle Eastern group is actually doing a pilot right now for camel racing. So we're doing telemetry attached to the camels that are running around the tracks. We're getting speed and heart rate and those sorts of things. So it's everywhere right? >> I love it. Camel racing. So we're here at the AWS Marketplace Experience. So tell us a little bit about how's it working with AWS. How's the the marketplace fit within your entire kind of go to market strategy? >> Well so for us, the marketplace is really key to our go to market strategy right? I mean we're a small company and we-- our sales team is really kind of focused on helping customers solve problems and the marketplace really offers us the ability to not have to deal with a lot of the infrastructure things of servicing a customer right? They can go there, they can self sign up, they can implement the platform, our technology platform on their own and then billing is taken off of our plate. So it's not something that we have to have a bunch of resources dedicated to. >> Is there still a big services component though, that you still have to come in to help them as you say kind of define nice projects and good KPI's and kind of good places to start? Or do they often times on the marketplace purchase just go off to the races on their own? >> So it's a combination. If companies are looking to solve a specific problem with an IoT platform like Foundry, it's definitely a self implementable thing and it's becoming more and more self implementable. Foundry really deploys into a customers account using Cloud formation, and Cloud formation templates allow us to kind of create these customized solutions that can then be deployed. So it's-- we're getting a combination of both. >> Yeah, and I would imagine it's taken you into all kinds of markets that you just don't-- you just don't have the manpower to cover when you have a distribution partner at EWS. >> Yeah it's made things a lot faster for us to be able to spin up vertical solutions or specific offerings for a particular large customer. Marketplace can take care of all of the infrastructure on that. >> Alright so what are you looking for here at Reinvent 2018? You've been coming to these things for awhile. I know Andy's tweeting out, his keynote is ready to have the chicken wing contest I think, last night at midnight. Too late for me, I didn't make it. (laughs) >> For us I mean, some of the more exciting things that are out there are the emergence of server-less right? You see server-less, all of those AWS services really taking off. >> Right. >> But there's also the Sumarian, the ARVR's really kind of exploding. So for us it's really about, this is a great place for us to see the direction that AWS is heading and then make sure that our offering, and our technology is layered on top of that appropriately. >> And what are you hearing from your customers about Edge? All the talk about Edge and there's some fudd I think going about how does Edge work with Cloud and to me it's like two completely separate technology applications, but then you know what you're trying to accomplish. As kind of the buzzwords, Edge gets beyond the buzz and actually starts to be implemented, what do you kind of seeing and how's that working together with some of the services that Amazon's got? >> I mean Edge architecture's are an important component to a solution. Especially solutions that require real time data processing and decision making at the shop floor or whatever you have. AWS has taken very big strides toward creating service offerings and products down at the Edge that interface well with the Cloud. So for us, our perspective on it is that the Edge is really a reflection of the business logic and the processes and things that we define and build for a customer. Because ultimately those Edge processes have to feed the enterprise processes, which is what we really focus on right? How do we get machine data into enterprise systems? So Edge technology for us is definitely a consideration and when we build our select technology solutions, we look at Edge as a component in that architecture and we try to meet the needs of the customers specific use case when it comes to Edge. >> Right. Yeah it's not killing the Cloud. Who said that? - Right. >> So silly. >> Yeah it can't kill it. >> It's not slowing down this thing. >> Right. Alright Carl well thanks for taking a few minutes and have great Reinvent. >> Yeah thank you. - [Jeff] Hydrate. >> Thanks for your time. Definitely. - They say hydrate. Alright he's Carl, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCube. We're at AWS Marketplace inservice catalog experience. We're at the Aria in the quads. Stop on by. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time.