>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston,
connecting with thought leaders all around the world,
this is theCUBE Conversation.
>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to theCUBE
from our Boston area studios.
We've been doing a series of CXO leadership discussions,
talking about how everyone's dealing
with the global pandemic.
Happy to welcome in the program a first time guest,
Katie Bullard, she is the president of A Cloud Guru,
of course A Cloud Guru, online learning company
we've had on theCUBE many times over the years,
Katie thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you so much Stu for having me,
I really appreciate it.
>> All right, so Katie, I remember I saw the...
I think the announcement was the end of 2019.
You came onto A Cloud Guru at the beginning of the year,
you're based at the headquarters in Austin you know,
online you know, learning is huge topic, cloud of course,
you know, one of those mega wave that we've been walking
a long time and then you know, out nowhere global pandemic,
you know, is striking us.
So you know, bring us inside you know, obviously,
you know, taking a new role in a new organization
as its own challenges.
Normally it's like, "Okay, what am I going to do
"for the first 90 days and make that plan?"
Tell us you know, how you reacted and how the company
has reacted with the COVID-19?
>> Did you get a chance to look at my 90-day plan Stu?
(laughing)
Because it was exactly where it was.
Now well, let me take you back.
I'll take you back to kind of why I chose to come to ACG
'cause I think it informs actually what's happening
right now as well.
When I was looking for the next opportunity.
What I look for is I look for two things primarily
in a company, one is a product that's in a market
that's growing really, really fast, and a product
that has raving customer fans.
And obviously ACG really you know, checked
both of those boxes, you think about this is PRINCO.
But if you think about the cloud computing market growing,
you know 50, 60% a year.
And the number one challenge for people who are both moving
to the cloud or moving to a multi cloud strategy
was having enough skilled workers.
To do that effectively, there really wasn't a better
intersection of two you know, two value propositions
and what ACG offered, which was serving the cloud computing
market, and skilling up workers in that market.
Fast forward to February you know, it's interesting,
I actually went out to Australia offices in mid February
as this was starting to heat up, came back just in time,
I think, to not go into quarantine.
But we very quickly saw the impact.
And you know, this isn't easy for anybody in any situation.
But what we are hearing from our customers
and from the market is that that move to the cloud
is even more important.
Now, I think the latest stat I saw
from the 2020 cloud report
said 65% of companies are planning a cloud migration,
95% of companies are employing a multi-cloud strategy.
So that is accelerating and then of course,
we're all sitting at home right now.
And you're getting me in my dining room.
And we have the both learn online versus in person.
There's no longer in person training.
There's no longer events for us to go to live.
So we're doing that online.
We also are seeing that you know, the way that we use
our time is changing.
So, we're not spending hours anymore, muting.
We have a lot of customers who are saying let's use
that time instead of meeting to learn, improve ourselves
improve our skills.
So, you know, everything is very unpredictable
in this environment.
But we do feel like at ACG, our fundamental mission
is to help customers get through this, to give them
the skills that they need.
So that hopefully, as everybody emerges from this later
this year, they're better positioned to take advantage
of the opportunities in front of them.
Yeah, I know you hit a lot of topics you know, so much
right now you know, remote learning remote work force,
you know, a big discussion.
The developer world has been looking at that
for a long time.
And you know, when I see you know, the elementary
and high school children as well as you know, colleges,
and how they're handling this learning, I was like,
well come on the Kroonenburg brothers you know,
build something in you know, two or three weeks,
in their mother's basement, Amazon and Serverless.
And they've trained millions of people now.
>> You know the story, yeah.
>> Some of this things you know, could absolutely translate
but it's challenging.
So, I'm curious, just you know, when you're working
with the team, is there anything you're doing next
to some of the broader audience you know, lessons
that can be learned?
This, as I said you know, highly scalable
you know, large scale and you know you have nowhere near
the budget of you know, these municipalities and colleges,
yet you do reach you know, a very broad audience
with some very important skill.
>> Yeah so I mean if I think about the actual product itself,
and why it worked so well previously right,
why the Kroonenburg brothers brought to market something
that was so beloved, but more importantly,
why I think it's working so well now is that
there was a recognition that we learn these days
in bite sized chunks, right?
Most of us don't have four hours a day or three days a week
just to sit, leave our job and go learn something.
And so from the very beginning, their concept was,
let's break every single lesson up
into these 20 minute chunks.
So whether you know, I'm on my commute in the previous world
or whether I'm using some time that I used to spend
on the road learning something new, I can do it
in very digestible forms, and in a way
that's really engaging to me.
So, I think that model that they've employed from day one
is even more valuable.
Now, in today's environment, I think the other thing
is that there was a recognition that we all have different
learning styles, right.
We all learn a little bit differently.
And so whether it's learning in 20 minute chunks,
whether it's learning through video and PowerPoint,
or whether it's learning hands on testing things,
breaking things, building things, the platform has evolved
in a way to enable people no matter where they are
in that learning journey, whether they're novice,
it's just getting started and wanting to learn
kind of the you know, the PowerPoint basics,
like me when I first came on board, right of the cloud,
or a seasoned architect who's trying to get in
and build new applications.
So I think those things are the things
that allowed the platform to really resonate
with the developer audience for so long.
And now, as we have you know, added a platform specifically
for enterprises where previously you know,
as for individual developers, we now have both.
I think that's the other thing that is really attractive
to large enterprises is the fact that they now right
are trying to train thousands of workers at the same time
realizing again, that every single one of them
has a different learning style.
>> Yeah Katie, is as you said before there is you know,
a broad need for the skill set of cloud computing.
I'm curious, have you seen anything in kind of your customer
base, either from the enterprise side or individuals?
is there are there any skill sets that are bubbling up
right now that are of critical need or anything
that has grown and you know, we're curious, we're always
you know, there's some people like "Oh, I'm going to come out
"of this you know, whole experience and you know,
"I'll have you know, worked in my home gym and learn
"new languages and become a master baker of dour dough."
You know, me personally, I've been really busy.
So you know, I wish I had more spare time reading
and note travel has definitely reduce thing,
but it's also given up the time that normally
I was going to you know, read a book or you know,
catch up on training.
>> Yeah, the sourdough bread is definitely
not in my wheelhouse.
So we have seen some really interesting trends actually,
over the last few months.
The first one is that we've seen the percentage of our users
that are logging in on a daily basis go up about 30%.
So people are taking advantage, I think of a little bit
of extra time to accelerate their learning.
The other thing that we are seeing and I was just looking at
these stats last week is the kinds of courses and content
that are being consumed are changing.
Some of this was happening pre COVID and some of this
is happening post COVID.
So I'll split those up.
Pre COVID what we've seen over the last quarter
to two quarters actually is a pretty significant increase
in consumption across multi-cloud skills.
Azure in particular, is seeing about a three times higher
increase in consumption than the other two, large CSPs,
although they're all three, increasing rapidly.
So, as we think about like the curriculum and our structures
that we're bringing on and what we're building up know,
historically ACG, specifically a grown up in the AWS world,
but we are responding to that change very, very quickly
and then investing in know Azure, GCP and some of the other
product basic courses.
So that we had been seeing happening
over the last couple of quarters.
Most recently, what we're seeing is an increase
in what I call our beginner or fundamental courses.
I think that is a direct reflection of people
who are looking at this as an opportunity to rescale,
to set themselves up for a new career.
So you know, our introduction to AWS or introduction
to Azure fundamentals or the introduction to GCP.
Those are actually the courses that are increasing
the fastest in ranking.
And anecdotally, one of my favorite things to do
is to go on LinkedIn or Twitter each day and look at,
you know, what people are saying about ACG.
And over the last week, especially, I can't even count
the number of folks who've said, I'm using my lockdown time
for you know, learning, or I'm putting my time in quarantine
to the best use by getting trained on ACG.
And so I think that what we are seeing
there is a direct reflection of that.
>> All right yeah Katie, maybe you can give us a little bit
of the update on you know, A Cloud Guru.
There was the Linux Academy acquisition and if you can share
a little bit about this kind of the numbers
of how many people have gone through your programmed
the attract how many people actually get certifications
afterwards, which I know they need to go to the providers,
you know, pay a fee for that kind of thing.
>> Yeah, we do.
Yeah, there's only been a few things happening over here
in the last six months, right.
We had a small acquisition, and then you know,
we're dealing with this now.
So we acquired Linux Academy in December.
So actually, I came on board about the same time
that we acquired the business.
One of my favorite stories is when I first started talking
to Sam and team back in June,
ACG had about 100 employees total.
By the time I was actually accepting an offer in October,
I think it was 200 employees in total.
So in a four month span, the company had actually doubled.
We acquired Linux Academy which was of equivalent size
to ACG and so by the end of December,
we were a 400 person company, a company that had been 100
people know in the middle of 2019.
So 400 people now we are,
our biggest office is here in Austin.
We do have a large office in Melbourne, Australia,
which is where the company was originally founded
and where Sam is, we have an office in London where Ryan is,
and Linux Academy was actually headquartered right outside
of Fort Worth, Texas.
So we've got an office there in Fort Worth, as well.
So it's been amazing to see this company essentially
quadruple in size over the last six months,
everything that goes into scaling a business like that,
bringing two competitors together, integrating the business,
you know, we are in the process of integrating the products
and the content and of course, that lags right now.
So we're excited to bring that to market later this year.
All in the midst of everyone also getting used to this
very new and unprecedented environment.
>> Yeah you know, congratulations you know, that you know,
always good to see great growth.
You know, the thing I've noticed is you know ACG,
just as really goodwill in the community,
I see the orange shirts at many of the shows
you know, Ryan and Sam.
>> I feel so bad I wasn't wearing one.
>> Many the other teams, they'll definitely get back to you
about being on brand.
>> I was trying to coordinate with my background.
>> One of the other things you know, is some of my favorite
content over the last few years that we've done,
theCUBE has been the Serverless event.
So, you know any discussion about will there be certain
virtual versions to that, or are we just going to need to wait
for the physical events to return before we see them?
>> So we actually have just started a new virtual event.
calendar actually, our very first one was yesterday,
we had almost 3000 people registering to attend.
And so it will be a series it's a series of virtual events
and webinars that are done in partnership with other leading
influencers and practitioners in the industry.
So expect if anyone's interested you can go online
and register for one of the ACG webinars
but we'll be having those every two weeks
through the course of this year.
>> Awesome, love that.
And I guess the last thing Katie, there's some other things
you've been doing help with unity in this need
of the pandemic.
Tell us a little bit about that.
>> So, two things in particular that we've really focused on.
The first one is across both the Linux Academy
and the ACG platforms, we have lowered permanently the price
of our individual memberships.
So for individuals from 449, down to 379, we've seen that
that has helped enable more people to be able to afford it,
who otherwise couldn't afford it.
So that's now in market.
The other thing that we're really excited
about that we launched this week
is a free educational assistance program.
So we are offering 1000 subscriptions to ACG for the year
so annual subscriptions for people
who have been most impacted by COVID.
So, we have a couple of different specific criteria.
But if you've lost your job due to COVID,
and you're in one of the most heavily impacted industries,
whether that's you know, retail, or hospitality or travel,
and are looking to really change careers,
get into the tech field, get your initial certification.
We do now have a program for that.
So, you go online to our website you're able to apply
to that program.
We launched it yesterday, maybe two days ago.
And I know we already have hundreds of applications.
So we're really excited to offer that.
>> All right well, we'll make sure to get this out
to the community 'cause I bet you'll pull that up.
All right Katie, thanks so much.
Really pleasure to catch up with you.
And congrats on all the progress.
>> Thank you so much Stu, thanks for having me.
>> All right, Serverless absolutely one of the topic
I've been personally enjoying digging
into the last couple years hope you've enjoyed coming
along the journey.
I'm Stu Miniman and as always,
thank you for watching theCUBE.
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