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>> 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,
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