>> Narrator: From around the globe, its theCUBE
with coverage of SUSECON Digital,
brought to you by SUSE.
>> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman
and this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20.
Really excited to be digging into
some of the cloud discussions.
I've got two guests joining me now.
One from across the pond
and one from across the country.
So, joining me is Julie Baldwin.
She is the Senior Director of Global CSP Alliances
with SUSE coming from across the pond,
and coming from California is Mikhail Prudnikov,
who is the Principal, Business Development
at Amazon Web Services.
Thank you both for joining us.
>> Thank you, Stu.
>> Thanks for having me. >> Really excited to be here.
>> All right, so Julie, obviously we know
where Linux have been proliferating the cloud
for something that for most people, I think
really understand big piece of the overall SUSE discussion.
Bring us inside a little bit,
your role and of course the long partnership
that SUSE's had with AWS.
>> Yeah, so my role is working with
the major hyper scalers and the public cloud providers
and offering solutions that's driving digital transformation
and it's modernization.
Even more so in today's current climate,
we're seeing modernization transformation
is being driven out of necessity now
due to the COVID-19 impact.
So, I'd really want to draw on,
we've been working with AWS for the last 10 years.
We've serviced thousands of customers between us
who are looking at how they innovate
and drive flexibility and agility into their IT
and their accounts.
So it's really important that
we look at how we support our customers
from an integrated support perspective
and how we can move them forward
in the digital transformation journeys.
>> Awesome, so, Mikhail
and I want to hear what Julie's talking about.
I think about, when I look at AWS,
you talk about builders when you go to the conference,
that Amazon hold.
Innovation is absolutely something there.
So talk to us a little bit
about how the Linux community in general
and SUSE customers specifically
are engaged in a piece of what AWS is doing.
>> Sure, so in my role at AWS,
I'm responsible for making sure that our customers
are successful as they go through
their long transformation journey
or business transformation journey.
So, those are all involved transformations
and it's actually an interesting position to be in
because you see it firsthand on the ground
for all the challenges and the interesting problems
that customers get to solve.
And then it's actually incredibly exciting that
we're having this conversation
in the framework of SUSECON
because Open-source is incredibly important for AWS
and at AWS we understand
how important Open-source is for customer success
and therefore we've been involved
and contributed to the projects
from very early on, such as Linux and AVM
and Java and Kubernetes.
So we see a lot of proliferation in the space
and then another interesting,
I guess parallel that I would say is
if you think about the Open-source notion,
which is largely around the community.
So there is this sort of juxtaposition
of the Cathedral and the Bazaar
and then so, the Bazaar is the vibrant community of people
coming with ideas and they're pursuing them
and they're innovating.
So something similar we see in the,
I guess in the Bless Community
with several million customers,
day to day they're solving challenges
and bringing lots of requests for innovation.
I won't call it put pressure on Amazon to innovate,
but it's a lot of inspiration.
And then therefore, it's interesting to see
that because of all that innovation
and all those requests,
customers get access on Amazon to all the features
such as, same as Open-source.
So you capitalize on this innovation and here as well.
Customers give requests,
let's say in financial service industry
and then you get all the security features,
all the controls, let's say like ISO, SOC, ISO Compliance
and then some of the most stringent compliance already
like product guys at AWS,
that's one of the example.
>> Yeah-- >> And that's...
>> So sorry, Julie.
That customer flywheel that you've talked about
is what we've really watched there.
So, Julie, you wanted to comment on what he was saying.
>> Yeah, I was just kind of like,
just to kind of like reinforce
that whole community and that whole innovation phase as well
because from an Open-source perspective,
that sense of community is really driving those changes
and with the AWS platform,
it's got a very rich functionality behind it.
It's one of the, the first time platform
so it does have that pedigree of innovation
from day one
and that's just being driven by the buyer customers
who are pushing the envelope saying, we want more
and that's where the relationship between SUSE
and AWS has really started to excel
looking at how we move into that container space
now as well and help the customers marginalize,
not only their cloud native apps going straight to client
but how do they modernize
their legacy applications as well
and how do they take their on-premise,
environments and make them more effective
and more efficient and by using public cloud
to be able to do that.
>> Yeah, Julie, I'm glad you brought that up
because absolutely there's opportunity
but there's challenges there.
Customers really have,
it's either hybrid or multicloud deployment,
containerization, Kubernetes are absolutely enablers there
but I wonder if you can bring us inside,
what's SUSE doing,
do you have any customer examples of
how they're really making this change.
We know that, it is still,
majority of applications have not been modernized.
They've not gone cloud native,
they're not ready for these environments.
So how are customers working through this ultimate journey?
>> Yeah, it's really complex
and I did a presentation at our Sales Summit
talking about (mumbles) about,
what applications can move to the cloud,
how easy it is to do that
and I think there was some research done last year with 451
where the previous year,
a lot of customers said,
"Yeah, we're moving to cloud and it's easy,"
and then this year when they re-run the survey,
it was, "No, it's really hard.
"We need partners, we need to look at how we do this."
And so, not every application is going to be able
to be moved to the cloud
and it's really important that they,
the customers have a strategy
and look at what they're doing on-premise
and then start to identify
what is cloud friendly, what do they need to do
to kind of go forward,
do they need to completely
rewrite an application,
do they need to refactor it,
can it just be a lift and shift?
And so what we're doing with AWS is,
we've been working with some of the partners
like Wipro for example,
who have built out a retail application platform
to be able to migrate those customers
quickly into a more cost-effective
and efficient way of delivering businesses
because they all say,
even more so in the current scenario,
the margins have been squeezed,
they need to be looking up at being able
to deliver a higher returns of investment
and TCO with any of their,
with their spend.
So, that's one area that we are kind of looking at as well
and we've had some great success with it.
We've also got
Quick Start programs with AWS that allows customers
who need to migrate quickly and easily to be able
to take those applications
and their environments
and move them onto the public cloud.
So, those are two key areas
that we're really looking at
driving forward because it's critical
because it is complex.
You need to have a roadmap,
you need to have a strategy about how you do it
and you need to identify and include the stakeholders,
when you're changing your environment
to make sure that you haven't missed anything.
>> So, Mikhail,
we'd love to hear your viewpoint on this too.
When you look at the Amazon ecosystem,
you've got a huge AWS marketplace.
Obviously the system integrators help customers
work through their various environments
and how to modernize them, how to move there.
What are you seeing in the SUSE customer base?
Any customer examples you can help share
as to how they're moving along in their journey.
>> Sure, we have to understand
a little bit of the context.
So all this talk about,
let's say cloud migration and innovation.
It's not an abstract sort of exercise
an abstract discipline, it happens for a reason.
If you look at the innovative companies,
at fast moving companies.
Effectively, they see it on average time to value metric,
about 440 times faster
than let's say what's we call slow companies.
So that puts a lot of pressure on companies
to actually embrace this innovation,
digital transformation and engage with customers
in a way that they have never done before
such as, technology enables so many things,
so many opportunities.
And then with any opportunity,
here comes the challenge.
As Julie pointed out,
it's a difficult exercise.
Let's not mean sports here
and therefore we have to make sure
that everybody is aligned.
Let's say a customer goes through this exercise,
they're trying to change their processes,
the leadership sets new goals,
the leadership sets new objectives.
They have to change the culture,
they have to train people.
So that is the challenge that they're facing
right there within the company.
Then outside of the company,
you want to make sure that effectively,
everybody comes to the table
with a lot of value and very much aligned
and that is where we see,
I guess a lot of opportunity
because as you go through this process,
you have to have the right stakeholders,
you have to have trained people
and then if we look at another statistics
it's just six companies or so,
they have cloud perspective
and yet 86 infrastructure spend this too on-premise
and the reason for that is companies cannot hire
and train fast enough.
So therefore on AWS side,
we invest a lot in training programs
and certification programs
as well as we have the vibrant community of partners
who can step in and help us with challenges,
such as, we have system of GSIZE and the SIZE
so we have (mumbles) of the SIZE, MSPs, we have providers
and then effectively affect what results here
is that you have the synergy,
not only the change going from the inside company.
You also have the support structure
as Julie talked about, bigstart.
We have training and then we have programmatic support,
how to navigate customers through that
and then as they switch (mumbles),
you mentioned there are new processes.
This is where the power of the cloud comes in
and power of the community.
So all those challenges they have been solved
so we can take some of the blueprints
and apply them as is
and you can pick and choose what you apply.
So for example, you can go with Cloud Native tools
with Amazon Web services.
At the very same time,
you can also pick products for example,
SUSE Cloud Application Platform,
which provides you this,
I would call it slightly more opinionated approach,
how to implement your DevOps practices and Agile practices
and then it's still native where it runs
on top of Amazon Elastic and Vendor service, so yeah.
And as Julie mentioned,
Wipro, for example had a lot of success with it.
>> And just touching on that point, Mikhail
we talk about,
we're not islands.
We have to engage with the partners.
We want to make sure that the customer success
is at the heart of everything that we do
and we have to bring in the right skill sets
at the right time
to make that journey as easy as possible
and as quickly as possible.
And so that's the beauty of community,
that's the beauty of partners
and vendors coming together
with the customer at the heart of everything that they do.
And I know that's a very strong message
that you're going to get from know from SUSECON
but it's also a strong message
that we share with AWS as well
about how do we do the right thing for the customer
and how do we enable that success for them to be successful,
which will drive ultimately successes as partners as well.
>> Excellent, Julie, one of the big themes
we heard in the keynote
was talking about the developer communities.
Obviously, SUSE and AWS have a lot of developers.
Anything specific for the developers out there
that either one of you want to highlight?
>> So obviously we've got the Cloud Application Platform
and we've got the Quick Starts as well.
So, to me it is,
you've got a proven platform with AWS
the infrastructure available there,
the ease of which,
kind of the application platform consists
on top of that,
of the EKS, the Elastic Computer Services
is really kind of critical
and for me it would be just try it
and give us your feedback as well.
I think that's really important
because the way that we drive innovation
is through the feedback from our customers
and people actually using the services.
I think Mikhail pointed to that earlier as well
that the innovation that they've seen
has been driven by customers actually saying,
"We want this feature or we want this (mumbles),"
and from the DevOps community is,
there are alternatives out there
and you should try and look at,
if that suits your needs better
and look at how you can use a trusted partner
like AWS and SUSE to actually
meet some of those new needs
that are coming on board.
>> And that's also, to Julie's point.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of builders,
of people who own this innovation within the company.
The biggest thing that a company can do for their success
is to enable builders
and as I've mentioned before,
the process is challenging.
There are multiple partners involved
but at the very same time,
you empower people to drive this change.
It's almost like, instead of directing them like,
oh, this business presents a pretty interesting analogy.
So instead of, if you want people to know
how to build a ship,
you do not tell them like,
go gather wood and this is how you hammer things together,
you just make sure that they yearn for the sea
and then ultimately,
this is what drives the innovation.
And here we are essentially,
with for example, SUSECON,
you already have enabled people
and they can practice the DevOps,
they can practice Agile
and essentially align this
with the first time to value practices.
So that is the pull-in
and then you take Quick Starts
and you put literally innovation
into those people's hands.
For example, SUSE app, Quick Starts
allows you to bring up the whole environment
in pretty much minutes.
Well let's say if you want to innovate on SAP systems.
Again, you take Quick Starts
and then while SAP takes a little bit more involved.
So maybe like in an hour and a half,
you have the SAP environment
and then you can essentially start innovating there
and, yeah.
>> Excellent, well, Mikhail and Julie,
thank you so much for the update.
Love hearing about innovation,
companies absolutely building is what differentiates
the companies that are ready for today's modern era.
So thank you so much for joining us.
>> Thank you.
Thank you, Stu.
Thank you, Mikhail. >> Thank you.
Thank you, Stu.
Thank you, Julie.
>> All right, we'll be back with lots more coverage
from SUSECON Digital '20.
I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.
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