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>> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage
of AWS re:Invent 2021.
I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE.
You're watching CUBE's worldwide leader in tech coverage.
We're in person on the show floor.
It's also a hybrid event, online as well.
CUBE coverage online with Amazon re:Invent site.
Great content all around, amazing announcements,
transformation in all areas are exploding
and in innovation, of course, we have innovation
here with Sandy Carter,
the worldwide public sector vice-president
of partners and programs for Amazon Web Services.
Sandy, welcome back, CUBE alumni.
Great to see you.
Thanks for coming on theCUBE.
>> Great to see you and great to see you in person again.
It's so exciting.
The energy level, oh my God.
>> Oh my God.
It's so much.
Thanks, great keynote.
Good to see you again in person.
A lot of action, give us the top announcements.
What's going on?
What are the top 10 AWS announcements?
>> Yeah, so we, this year for 2022, as we frame it out,
we decided on a 3D strategy, a three-dimensional strategy.
So we started with destination then data and then delivery.
So if I could do them in that order, does that sound good?
>> Yeah. Destination.
>> So let's start with destination.
So I got this from one of the customers
and he said to me, "look, Sandy,
I thought it was all going to be about getting to the cloud.
But when I got to the cloud,
I realized it wasn't about just in the cloud,
it was about what you do in the cloud."
And so we made some announcements this morning,
especially around migration, modernization,
and optimization.
So for migration,
we have the mainframe announcement that Adam made,
and then we also echoed it.
Cause most of the mainframes today sit in public sector.
So this is a managed service,
it's working with Micro Focus, one of our partners.
And Lockheed Martin one of our partners
is one of the first into the mainframe migration,
which is a service and services
to help customers transform their business
with the mainframe.
And then as we compliment them, we look at that
we also have modernization occurring.
So for example, IoT.
IDC tells us that IoT and that data
has increased four times since COVID
because now devices and sensors are tracking a lot of data.
So we made an announcement around smart cities
and we now have badging for our partners.
We have 18 partners solutions now in smart cities.
So working backwards from the partners
they were talking about
given now COVID is kind of in the midst of where it is
smart cities and making those cities work better
in public transportation and utility,
it's just all where it's at.
And then the final announcement in that category
is containers.
So 60% of our customers
said that they're going to be using containers.
So we announced a Rapid Adoption Assistance program
for our partners to be able to help our customers
move to containers overall.
>> So mainframe migration, I saw that on stage,
but Micro Focus, that was a good job.
Get that legacy out of the way, move to the cloud.
You've got smart cities, which is basically IoT,
which brings cloud to the edge.
And then containerization for the cloud native,
either development or compatibility,
interoperability kind of sets that table.
That's the destination.
>> That's right. That's right.
Because all of those things, you know,
you've got to get the mainframe to the cloud,
but then it's about modernizing, right?
Getting rid of all that COBOL code
and then, you know, IoT
and then making sure
that you are ready to go with containers.
It's the newest-
>> So you've got the 3D,
destination, data and delivery.
>> That's right.
>> Okay. Destination, check.
Cloud. Cloud destination.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm putting dots together in real time.
>> Destination cloud. There you go. You've got it.
>> I'm still with it after all these interviews.
>> Yeah, there you go.
>> Data, I'll say killer Swami's onstage today,
whole new data, multiple databases.
What's the data focus in this area?
>> So for our partners,
first it's about getting the data to the cloud,
which means that we need a way to really migrate it.
So we announced an initiative
to help get that data to the cloud.
We had a set of partners
that came on with us early on in this initiative
to move that data to the cloud,
it's called a Rapid Adoption Assistance,
which helps you envision
where you want to go with your data.
Do you want to put it in a data lake?
Do you want data stored as it is?
What do you want to visualize?
What do you want to do with analytics?
So envision that and then get enablement.
So all the new announcements,
all the new services get enablement and then to pilot it.
And then the second announcement in this area
is a set of private offers in the marketplace.
Our customers told us that they love to go after data,
but that there's too many pieces and moving parts.
So they need the assessment bundled with the managed service
and everything bundled together
so it's a solution for them.
So those were our two announcements in the data area.
>> So take me through the private marketplace thing,
because this came up when I was talking with Stephen Orban
who's now running the marketplace.
What does that mean?
So you're saying that this private offer
is being enabling the suppliers and in government?
>> Yeah. So available in the marketplace,
a lot of our government agencies
can buy from the marketplace.
So if they have a contract, they can come and buy.
But instead of having to go and say,
okay, here's an assessment to tell me what I should do,
now here's the offering,
and now here's the managed service,
they want it bundled together.
So we have a set of offerings
that have that bundled together today
with the set of our great public sector partners.
>> So tons of data action,
where's the delivery fit in?
>> So delivery.
This one is very interesting
because our customers are telling us
that they no longer want just technology skills,
they also need industry skills too.
So they're looking for that total package.
For example, you know, the state of New Jersey
when hurricane Ida hit, category four storm,
they wanted someone
who obviously could leverage all the data,
but they wanted someone who understood disaster response.
And so Maxar fits that bill.
They have that industry specialty
along with the technology specialty.
And so for our announcements here,
we announced a new competency,
which is an industry competency for energy.
So think about renewables and sustainability and low carbon.
These are the partners that do that.
We have 32 different partners
who met the needs of that energy competency.
So we were able to GA that here today.
The other really exciting announcement that we made
was for small businesses to get extra training,
it's called Think Big for Small Business communities.
So we announced last year virtually,
Think Big for Small Business.
We now have about 200 companies
who are part of that program,
really getting extra help as diverse companies.
Women owned, black owned, brown owned,
veteran owned businesses, right?
But now what they told us was in addition to the AWS help,
what they loved is how we connected them together
and we almost just stumbled upon it.
I was hosting some meetings and I had Tia from Bellflower,
I had Lisa from DLZP together
and they got a lot of value just being connected.
And we kept hearing that over and over and over again.
So now we've programmatized that
so it's more scalable
than me introducing people to each other.
We now have a program
to introduce those small business leaders to each other.
And then the last one that we announced is
our AWS government competency
is now the largest competency at AWS.
So the government competency, which is pretty powerful.
So now we're going to do a focus enhancement for federal.
So all of our federal partners with all that opportunity
can now take advantage of some private advisory council,
some additional training that will go on there,
additional go-to market support
that they can use to help them.
>> Okay. I feel like my brain is going to explode.
Those are just the announcements here.
There's a lot going.
>> Yeah. There's a lot going on.
>> I mean it's so much you've got to put them into buckets.
Okay. What's the rationale around 3D?
Delivery, data...
I mean, destination, delivery, data.
Destination, meaning cloud.
Data, meeting data.
And delivery meaning just new ways to get up and running-
>> Skills.
>> To get this delivery for the services.
>> Yep.
>> Okay. So is there a pattern emerging?
What can you say?
Cause remember we talked about this before a year ago,
as well as in person at your public sector summit
with your partners.
Is there a pattern emerging that you're seeing here?
Cause lots of the announcements are coming,
done with the mainframes.
Connect on your watch has been a big explosion.
Adam Slansky told me personally, it's on fire.
And public sector, we saw a lot of that.
>> Well, in fact, you know, if you look at public sector,
three factoids that we shared this morning in the keynote.
Our public sector partners grew 54% this year,
this is after last year we grew 45%.
They grew the number of certifications that they had by 40%
and the number of new customers by 32%.
I mean, those are unreal numbers.
Last year we did 28% new customers
and we thought that was the cat's meow,
now we're at 32%.
So our partners are just exploding
in this public sector space right now.
>> It's almost as if they have an advantage
because they dragged their feet for so long.
>> It's true. It's true.
COVID accelerated their movement to the cloud.
>> A lot of slow moving verticals because of the legacy
and whether it's regulation or government funding or skills-
>> Or mainframes.
>> All had to basically move fast, they had no excuses.
And then the cloud kind of changes everyone's mindset.
How about the culture?
I want to ask you about the culture in the public sector,
because this is coming up a lot.
Again, a lot of your customers that I'm interviewing
all talk...
and I try to get them to talk about horizontally scalable
and machine learning,
and they're always, no, it's culture.
>> Yeah. It's true.
>> Culture is the number one thing.
>> It is true.
You know, culture eats strategy for lunch.
So even if you have a great strategy around the cloud,
if you don't have that right culture,
you won't win in the marketplace.
So we are seeing this a lot.
In fact, one of our most popular programs
is PTP, Partner Transformation Program.
And it lays out a hundred day program
on cloud best practices.
And guess what's the number one topic?
Culture.
Culture, governance, technology,
all of those things are so important right now.
And I think because, you know,
a lot of the agencies and governments and countries,
they had moved to the cloud
now that they're in the cloud,
they went through that pain during COVID,
now they're seeing all the impact of artificial intelligence
and containers and blockchain and all of that, right?
It's just crazy.
>> That's a great insight.
And I'll add to that
because I think one of the things I've observed,
especially with your partners is
the fear of getting eliminated by technology
or the fear of having a job change
or fear of change in general
went away once they started using it
because they saw the criticality of the cloud
and how it impacted their job,
but then what it offered them as new opportunities.
In fact, it actually increases more areas to innovate on
and do more,
whether it's job advancement or cross training
or lateral moves, promotion,
that's a huge retention piece.
>> It really is.
And I will tell you that the movement to the cloud
enabled people to see
it wasn't as scary as they thought it was going to be,
and that they could still leverage
a lot of the skills that they had and learn new ones.
So I think it is.
And this is one of the reasons why,
I was just talking with Maureen
launching that 29 million training program for the cloud,
that really touches public sector
because there is so many agencies, countries, governments
that need to have that training.
>> You're talking about Maureen Lonergan,
she does the training.
She's been working on that for years.
>> Yeah.
>> That's the only getting better and better.
>> Yeah.
>> Well Sandy, I've got to ask you,
since you have a few minutes left,
I want to ask you about your journey.
>> Yeah.
>> We've interviewed you going back a long time
look where we are now.
>> I know. It's incredible.
>> Look at these two sets going on at CUBE.
>> You've been an incredible voice on theCUBE.
We really appreciate having you on
because you're innovative.
You're always moving like a shark.
You can't sit still.
You're always innovating.
Still going on, you had the great women's luncheon
from 20 to 200.
>> Yeah, we grew.
So we started out with 20 people back five years ago
and now we had about 200 women
and it was incredible because we do different topics.
Our topic was around empathy and empathetic leadership.
And you know how you can really leverage that today,
back with the skills and your people.
You know, given that Amazon just announced
our new leadership principle about wanting to be
the Earth's most employee centric company.
It fits right in, empathetic leadership.
And we had amazing women at that luncheon
that told some great stories about empathy
that I think will live in our hearts forever.
>> And the other thing I want to point out,
we had some of the guests on sitting on theCUBE.
We had Linda Jojo from United airlines.
>> Oh yeah.
>> And a little factoid,
yesterday in the keynote, 50% of the speakers were women.
>> I know. The first time I did a blog post on it,
like we had two amazing women in STEM
and we had, you know, the black pilot that was highlighted.
So it's showing more diversity.
So I was just so excited.
Thank you Adam, for doing that
because I think that was an amazing, amazing focus
here at the conference.
>> I wanted to bring up a point.
I had a note here to bring up to you.
Public sector, you guys doubled the number of partners,
large migrations this year.
That's a big statoid.
You've had 575,000 individuals hold active certifications.
Okay. That grew 40% from August 2021,
clearly a pandemic impact.
A lot of people jumping back in
getting their certs,
migrating so if they're not...
They're in between transitions
where they have a tailwind or a headwind,
whether you're United Airlines or whether you're Zoom,
you got some companies were benefiting from the pandemic
and some were retooling.
That's something that we talked about
actually at the beginning.
>> That's right. Absolutely.
And I do think that those certifications
also demonstrate that customers have raised the bar
on what they expect from a partner.
It's no longer just like that technology input,
it's also that industry side.
And so you see the number of certifications going up
because customers are demanding higher skill level.
And by the way,
for the partners we conducted a study with ESG
and ESG said that more skilled partners,
you drive more margin, profit margin,
42% more profit margin for a higher skilled partner.
And we're seeing that really come to fruition
with some of these really intense focus
on getting more certifications and more training.
>> I want to get your thoughts on the healthcare
and life science.
I just got a note here that tells me that the vertical
is one of the fastest growing verticals
with 105% year on year growth.
Healthcare and life sciences, another important...
Again, a lot of legacy,
a lot of old silos,
forced to expand and innovate with the pandemic growing.
>> Yes.
You know, government is our largest segment today,
our largest competency.
Healthcare is our fastest growing segment.
So we have a big focus there.
And like you said, it's not just around, you know,
seeing things stay the same.
It's about digital transformation.
It's one of the reasons we're also seeing
such an increase in our authority to operate program
both on the government side and the healthcare side.
So we do, you know, FedRAMP and IL5.
We had six companies that got IL5,
five of them in 2021, which is an amazing achievement.
And then, you know, if you think about the healthcare side,
our fastest growing compliance is HIPAA and HITRUST.
And that ATO program really brings
best practices and templates
and stronger go to market for those partners too.
>> Yeah.
I mean, I think it's opportunity recognition
and then capture during the pandemic with the cloud.
More agility, more speed.
>> That's right.
>> Sandy, always great to have you on.
In the last couple of seconds we have left,
summarize the top 10 announcements in a bumper sticker.
If you had to kind of put that bumper sticker on the car
as it drives away from re:Invent this year,
what's on that bumper sticker?
What's it say?
>> Partners that focus on destination, data and delivery
will grow faster and add more value to their customers.
>> There it is.
The three dimension, DDD.
Delivery...
Destination, data and delivery.
>> There you go.
>> Here on theCUBE,
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I'm John Furrier your host.
Thanks for watching.
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