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>> Hey, welcome back everyone to the CUBE's coverage
of AWS re:Invent 2021.
It's our third day wall-to-wall coverage.
I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante here.
We're getting all the action, two sets, in-person.
It's also a virtual hybrid event,
there's a lot of great content online.
Bringing you all the fresh voices, all the knowledge,
all the news and all the action.
I've got great a guest here, Tanunja Randery,
Managing Director of AWS' Europe, Middle East,
and Africa also known as EMEA.
Welcome to the cube.
>> Dave: Welcome. >> Thank you.
>> Dave: Thanks for coming on. >> Great to be here.
Lovely to be here.
>> So Europe is really hot, Middle East, Africa...
great growth.
The VC culture in Europe specifically
has been booming this year.
A lot of great action.
We've done many Cube gigs out there talking to folks.
Entrepreneurship, cloud native growth,
and then for us as global, it's awesome.
So first question I've got to ask you is you're new to AWS,
what brought you here?
>> Yeah, I know John, thank you so much.
I've been here about three and a half months now, actually.
So what brought me here...
I have been in and around the tech world since I was a baby.
My father was an entrepreneur, I sold fax machines
and microfilm equipment in my early days.
And then my career has spanned technology in some form
or the other. I was at EMC when we bought VMware.
I was a Colt when we did a FinTech startup,
joined Schneider in my background, which is industrial tech.
So I guess I'm a bit of a tech nerd,
although I'm not an engineer, that's for sure.
The other thing is I've spent a huge part of my career
advising clients and so while I was at McKinsey
on business transformation.
And cloud keeps coming up especially post pandemic
huge, huge, huge enabler, rite of transformation.
So when I got the call from AWS I thought
here's my opportunity to finally take
what companies are wrestling with,
bring together a pioneer in cloud with our enterprise
and start-up and SMB clients,
connect those dots between business and technology
and make things happen, so real magic.
So that's what brought me here
and I guess the only other thing to say
is I'd had a lot of other culture,
accustomed by much obsession and leadership principles,
so that's why I'm here.
>> It's been a great success.
I got to ask you too now that you're new at McKinsey,
you've been seeing the front lines, all the transformation.
The pandemic has really forced everybody globally
to move faster.
Things like connect were popular in EMIA.
How is that going out?
There's the same kind of global pressure
on the digital transformation with cloud.
What are you seeing out there?
>> I've been traveling since I joined,
around 10 of the countries already.
So I've been... planes, trains, automobiles
and what you definitely see is massive acceleration.
And I think it's around reinvention of the business.
So people are adopting cloud
because it's obviously there's cost reasons,
there's M&A reasons,
there's really increasingly more about innovating.
How do I innovate my business?
How do I reinvent my business?
So you see that constantly
and whether you're an enterprise company
or you're a startup,
they're all adopting cloud in different, different ways.
I mean, I want to trod the quarter stack
because it's really interesting
and Adam mentioned this in his keynote.
5 to 15% only of workloads have moved to the cloud.
So there's a tremendous runway ahead of us,
and the three big things on people's minds
help me become a tech company.
So it doesn't matter who you are, you're retail,
whether you're life sciences or healthcare.
You've probably heard about the Roche work
that we're doing with Roche around accelerating r&d
with data or if you're shoes, Adidas
how do you accelerate again your personalized experiences?
So it doesn't matter who you are, help me
become a tech company, give me skills, digital skills
and then help me become a more sustainable company.
Those are the three big things I'm picking up.
>> So a couple of things to unpack there.
So think about IT transformation,
we still have a long way to go to your point,
whatever 10, 15% depending on which numbers you look at.
We've been talking a lot in the cube about
the next decade around business transformation,
deeper business integration
and the forced march to digital
kind of woke us up to that and accelerated that as you say.
So, as you travel around to customers in EMEA,
what are you hearing with regard to that?
I mean, many customers maybe didn't have time to plan.
Now they can sit back and take what they've learned.
What are you hearing from customers?
>> Yeah and it's a little bit different
in different places, right?
So if you start, if you look at...
our businesses for example, in France
or if you look up our businesses in Liberia or Italy,
a lot of them are now starting.
They are at least on the enterprise front.
They are now starting to adopt cloud.
So they're stepping back and thinking
about their overall strategy, right?
And then the way that they're doing it
is actually they're using data as the first trigger point.
And I think that makes it easier to migrate
'cause if you look at large enterprises
and if you think of the big processes that they've got
and all the mainframes and everything that they need to do,
if you look at it as one big block, it's too difficult
but when you think about data,
you can actually start to aggregate all of your data
into one area and then start to analyze
and unpack that. So I think what I'm seeing for sure
is in those countries, data is the first trigger.
If you go out to Israel,
well that you've got..
it's really startup nation as you know, right?
And there we've got more of the digital natives
and they want to absorb all of the innovation
that we're throwing at them.
And you've heard a lot here at re:Invent
on some of the things whether it's digital trends
or robotics or frankly even using 5g private network
we've just announced, they are adopting innovation
and really taking that in.
So it really does differ
but I think the one big message I would leave you with
is bringing industry solutions to business is critical.
So rather than just talking IT and technology,
we've got to be able to bring some of what we've done.
So for example, the Goldman Sachs financial cloud.
Bring that to the rest of financial services companies
in EMEA or if you take the work we're doing on industrials
and IOT.
So it's really about connecting what industry-use cases
with our technology.
>> It's interesting about the Goldman,
Dave and I were commenting.
I think we coined the term and the story we wrote
on Thursday last week and then pip Sunday,
Superclouds!
Because you look at the rise of Snowflake
and Databricks and Goldman Sachs.
You're going to start to see people building on AWS
and building these super clouds
because they are taking unique platform features of AWS
and then sassifying it for their needs
and then offering that as a service.
So there's kind of a whole nother tier developing
in the natural evolution of cloud.
So the partners are on fire right now
because the creativity, the market opportunities
are there to be captured.
So you seeing this opportunity recognition,
opportunity capture vibe going on.
And it's interesting.
I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see that,
because certainly the VCs are here in force.
Dave and I saw all the top Silicon Valley VCs here
and some European VCs are all here, they're all seeing this.
>> So pick up on two things you mentioned
that I think are absolutely spot on.
We're absolutely seeing with our partners
this integration on our platform is so important.
So, we talk about the power of three
which is you bring our GSI partner,
you bring in our ISV partner, you bring AWS.
You create that power of three
and you take it to our customers.
And it doesn't matter which industry we are.
Our partner ecosystem is so rich.
I think Adam mentioned we have a hundred thousand partners
around the world.
And then you integrate that with marketplace.
AWS marketplace just opens the world.
We have about 325,000 active customers on marketplace.
So sassification, integration with our platform,
bringing in the GSI's and the NSIs,
I think that's the real power
to coming back to your point on transformation.
On the second one, the unicorns, it's interesting.
UK, France, Israel, EMEA,
I spent a lot of time recently in Dubai
and you can see it happening there.
Africa, Nigeria, South Africa
I mean all across those countries
you're saying huge amount of VC funding going in
towards developers, towards startups, towards scale ups.
More and more of our startup clients by the way,
are actually going IPO.
Initially it used to be a lot of M&A
and strategic acquisitions
but they have actually bigger aspirations
and they're going IPO.
And we've seen them through
from when they were seed or pre-seed
all the way to now that they are unicorns, right?
So there's just a tremendous amount happening in EMEA
and we're fueling that.
Born in the cloud is easy, right?
In terms of what AWS brings to the table.
>> Well, I've been saying for years,
I always talked to Andy Jassy about this
'cause he's a big sports nerd.
When you bring like these stadiums to certain cities
that rejuvenates and Amazon regions are bringing
local rejuvenation around the digital economies
and what you're seeing with the startup culture
is the ecosystems around it.
And Silicon valley thrives
because you have all the service providers,
you have all the...
fear of failure goes away, there's support systems.
You start to see now with AWS as ecosystem
that same ecosystem support the robustness of it.
So, it's classic-rising-tide-floats or boats kind of vibe.
So, we don't really have our narrative get down on this
but we're seeing this ecosystem kind of play going on.
>> And actually it's a real virtuous circle
we call "Flywheel", right? Within AWS.
'Cause a startup wants to connect to an enterprise,
an enterprise wants to connect to a startup, right?
A lot of our ISV partners, by the way, were startups
now they've graduated and they're like very large.
So what we are, I see our role
and by the way this is one of the other reasons I came here
is I see our role to be able to be real facilitators
of these ecosystems, right?
And you know, we've got something that we kicked off
in EMEA which I'm really proud of
called our EMEA Startup Loft Accelerator
and we launched that at a web summit
and the idea is to bring startups into our space,
virtually and physically and help them build
and help them make those connections.
So I really do think and our enterprise clients
are asking us all the time
"Right, who do I need to involve if I'm thinking IOT?"
"Who do I need to involve
"if I want to do something with data?"
And that's what we do, super connectors.
>> John, you mentioned the Goldman deal
and I think it was Adam in his keynote
who was talking about
"Our customers are asking us to teach them
"how to essentially build a Supercloud," I mean, our words.
But so with your McKinsey background,
I would imagine there's real opportunities there
especially as you...I hear you talk about
EMEA going around to see customers.
There must be a lot of sort of non-digital businesses
that are now transforming to digital.
A lot of capital needs there
but maybe you could talk about
sort of how you see that playing out
over the next several years in your role
and AWS's role in effecting that transformation.
>> Yeah absolutely.
I mean, you're right actually
and maybe I will from my past experience
pick up on something, you know.
I was in the world of industry with Schneider, as an example
and we did business through the channel.
And a lot of our channel was not digitized.
You had point of sale, electrical distributors,
wholesalers, et cetera.
I think all of those businesses during the pandemic
realized that they had to go digital and online, right?
And so they started from having one fax machine in a store.
Real literally, I'm not kidding nothing else
to actually having to go online
and be able to do click and collect
and various other things.
And we were able...
with AWS, you can spin up in minutes, right?
That sort of service, right?
I love the fact that you have a credit card,
you can get onto our cloud, right?
It's about instances
Adam talked about instances which I think is great.
How do businesses transform?
And again I think it's about unpacking the problem, right?
So what we do a lot is we sit down with our customers
and we actually map a migration journey with them, right?
We look across their core infrastructure,
we look at their SAP systems, for example,
we look at what's happening in the various businesses,
their e-commerce systems,
their customer life cycle value management systems.
I think you've got to go business by business by business
use case by use case by use case
and then help our technology enable that use case
to actually digitize.
And whether it's front office or back office,
I think the advantages are pretty clear.
It's more...I think the difficulty
is not technology anymore.
The difficulty is mindset, leadership, commitment,
the operating model, the organizational model and skills.
And so what we have to do as AWS
is bring not only our technology
but our culture of innovation
and our digital innovation teams
to help our clients on their journey.
>> Well, we really appreciate you taking the time
coming on the cube.
We have a couple more minutes.
I do want to get into what's your agenda
now that you're in charge, got the landscape,
got the 20 mile stair in front of you,
clouds booming, you got some personal passion projects.
Tell us what your plans are.
>> So three or four things, right?
Three or four, really big takeaways for me
is one I came here to help make sure
our customers could leverage the power of the cloud.
So I will not feel like my job's been done
if I haven't been able to do that.
So, you know that five to 15% we talked about,
we've got to go 50, 60, 70%.
That's the goal, right?
And why not a hundred percent at some point, right?
So I think over the next few years,
that's the acceleration we need to help bring in EMEA.
America's already started to get that as you know much more
and we need to drive that into EMEA
and then eventually our APJ colleagues
are going to do the same, that's one.
I think the other is we talked about partners.
I really want to accelerate and expand our partner ecosystem.
We have actually a huge growth by the way,
in the number of partners signing up
the number of certifications they're taking.
I really, really want to double down
on our partners and actually do what they ask us for
which is join co-sell join marketing globalization.
So that's two.
I think the third big thing is what you mentioned,
industry, industry, industry.
We've got to bring real use cases and solutions
to our customers and not only talk technology,
got to connect those two dots
and we have lots of examples to bring by the way.
And then four, hire and develop the best.
We've got a new LP as you know
to strive to be at its best employer.
I want to do that in EMEA.
I want to make sure we can actually do that
we attract, we retain and we grow
and we develop our talent.
>> Diversity's been a huge theme of this event.
It's front and center in virtually every company.
>> I'm usually passionate about diversity.
I'm proud actually that when I was back at Schneider,
I launched something called the Power Women Network.
We're a network of a hundred senior women
and we meet every month.
I've also got a podcast out there,
so if anyone's listening, it's called Power Women Speak.
>> Dave: Is it still going?
>> It is, I've done 16 over the pandemic
with CEO's of... >> Our women podcast
>> Our Women Speak.
>> Our Women speak.
>> On Apple, on Spotify and everything else.
What I love about what we're doing is AWS on diversity
and you heard Adam on stage talk to this.
We've got our re-stock program where we really help
under-employed and unemployed
to get a 12 week intensive course
and get trained up on cloud skills.
And the other thing is get IT.
Helping young girls 12 to 15, get into STEM.
So not so different things on the whole
but we need to do a lot more of course on diversity
and I look forward to helping our clients
through that as well.
>> Well, we had the training VP on yesterday.
It's all free!
>> It's all free. >> It's already free.
>> We've got such a digital skills issue
but I love that we've said 29 million people
around the world, free cloud training.
>> Literally the gap there between earnings
with cloud certification, you can be making six figures.
With cloud training, it's really easy.
It's free. It's like, it's such a great thing.
>> Have you seen the YouTube video on Charlotte Wilkins?
>> John: I have not seen that one.
>> McDonald's fast food, she changed her mind.
She wanted a tech career, she now has a tech career
as a result of being part of restock.
>> John: Awesome.
>> It's a wonderful story.
>> I really appreciate, you've got a lot of energy
and I love the podcast.
I'm subscribing, I'm going to listen.
>> Thank you.
>> John: We love doing the podcast as well,
so thanks for coming on the Cube.
>> Thank you so much for having me.
>> John: Good luck on EMEA and your plans.
>> Thank you.
>> You're watching the cube,
the leader in global tech coverage.
We go to the events and extract the signal from the noise.
I'm John furrier with Dave.
A lot to hear at re-invent physical event in-person,
hybrid event as well.
Thanks for watching.
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