 Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to the nation's capital, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Stuart Minerman and we're covering, this is day one of the AWS Public Sector Summit, hashtag AWS PS Summit. Got that right, right Stu? You did Dave, Lynn Martin is here. She's the Vice President and General Manager of Government Education and Healthcare at VMware. We got news, Lynn, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. So let's start, before we get into the news, let's start with VMware and Public Sector. You were kind of explaining us off camera. Talk about VMware and its role in Public Sector. So VMware has been ingrained in the government agencies and education across state, local and federal government for the beginning of VMware. There's billions of dollars of investments across all the different parts of Public Sector. So we have a trusted partnership, 90% share wallet across those agencies and the different entities across state and local government as well. And today, I'll pivot a little bit towards the announcement, today's announcement, we were partnered with AWS around the VMC on AWS GovCloud. Today, we offer VMC on AWS. That is a commercial offering that supports all of our customers that do not require the same levels of security that the federal government and some of our state and local customers require. Yeah, Lynn, I'm just wondering to you know, we're intimately familiar with VMC. John Furrier was at the announcement with AWS and VMware when announced, but for our audience that's not maybe just the short summary as to what that solution is. Sure, so VMware cloud, that's VMC on AWS allows you to leverage the VMware suite of product sets that are already being used and running your data centers today, and then be able to move your workloads into the public cloud. So we call it hybrid cloud technology, utilizing the tools of the software defined data center that are already running in those customer environments and give you the flexibility and agility to move workloads in and out as you need for your business demands at a high level. We were just speaking to the former CTO of the CIA and he took us back to sort of the initial impetus for the CIA moving to cloud. And he gave four things, velocity, efficiency, drive innovation and security. If I think about the early days of VMware and the impact it had in the data center, I could have listed those same four things. It's now we're just taking it up another level in terms of everything is higher velocity, the drive for efficiency is even greater, innovations like we've never seen before and security is more important than ever before. So you got that dialed up, but you also now have to your point, the hybrid factor used to be all on-prem. Now we've got this morphing into public and private. So I wonder if you could talk about sort of those four pillars, they're similar issues for IT people today as it was yesterday. I don't think they've changed, to be honest with you. That's what you're hearing from customers. So I would say, part of the desire to move forward with the VMC on AWS, GovCloud is what we've heard from customers. So the solution will provide that flexibility even at another level for them public cloud because today, as most people know when you go to move your application, CIA is a great one, they started that endeavor I think three years ago plus, maybe four. It's coming on, yeah, three to four. To get those workloads moved is heavy lifting. So with the flexibility of the VMC on AWS and I think that's what's interesting in the partnership between Andy and Pat around this is really being able to take that software layer and being able to move much faster. So a great example would be the MIT had built an on-prem solution with VMware. Just recently, we've moved them to VMC on AWS. Those workloads got moved in days. The first time it took months and months and months in a year before we could move all 900 workloads. Literally, that was then less than two weeks and it could go back and forth. So the flexibility for new things when they come up and then when you wrap that around with the security layers, I think that's what really creates a unique value proposition. So I think public clouds here, I think you're going to see in the future over the next three to five years more and more different cloud providers and hybrid cloud technology with that layer that allows you to figure out where you want to go, when you want to go. Unique situations, if you think about the government and missions that come up, that gives you a flexibility to move at a speed that doesn't exist in the marketplace today. Yeah, Lynn, I remember last year at VMworld, I talked to a customer and there was a group inside the company that was like, we need to do more cloud, we need to move faster. But from an administrative standpoint, it's like, oh, I need to retrain, I need to do things to talent. And they're like, when I told them it's a full VMware stack, they were like, they actually opened up and they were able to move forward. And that was step one in making changes as to how they were building their applications. Teresa's keynote today had a side on the people piece. And I think one of the biggest benefits today is that your talent is already trained on the VMware tools. So you're not really getting through that mindset of doing everything different and retraining and trying to figure out how to get the expertise in. Those same computer operators that run the VMware environment can now run your cloud environment. That's a really important point. I remember when Hadoop first kind of hit the scene, everybody wanted SQL because they didn't have to re-skill. Exactly. And that was a game changer. And this is part of the, I want to bring in the Modernizing Government Technology Act. So to the extent that you don't have to completely re-skill, you're going to be able to- Modernize. Modernize faster, right? Right. So I think today the differentiator from the beginning of VMware was, we still had to teach a lot of the workforce how to use the VMware tools. Now, everybody was behind that. If you worked at HP or Dell or IBM, anyone selling hardware for server consolidation, they learned quickly how to spin up a VM and then move. Today, those organizations have invested in other software-defined data center tools, whether it be our networking tools, our storage tools, and then you got the compute layer and you can abstract that up and then have a management feature that allows you to make your hybrid cloud decisions and look at price points across the market as well. So with the same people that know how to work, that environment and manage it. And I think part of the issues when you look at server virtualization in the early days, I happened to work at another company back then, the challenge we ran into was to change management processes at the government sites. And it took years to transform the workforce into that type of an environment. So an example would be maybe security or backup, would be, I would think of- Easy, DR. Yeah, DR, right, data protection, right. Or new missions for things or a postal service for the Christmas mailing system instead of spending millions of dollars and spin up infrastructure. You spin out to the cloud, then in January you come back in to your on-prem database. Okay, Lynn, I wonder if you can help explain a little bit, you know, what goes into getting VMC on GovCloud? We heard from Teresa there are certain things that was like, oh, Aurora's on there. It's like, oh, we've been talking about Aurora for a while. So, you know, why isn't it ready day one? What's the process to get through it? And can you give us a little business ability as to when this will launch? So, what we announced today was our intent to enter into the FedRAMP process jointly. So the engineering teams both are working right now on the solutioning. The differentiator is we already have VMC on AWS, as you guys know, and it's available in quite a few places and more are spinning up and being announced of the AWS locations. It's taking that through the security accreditation processes that the government has. And we will be pursuing FedRAMP high as well as DOD impact levels. So we are going for the highest levels of security because then you can do everything else after that. Okay, but it's not a days or weeks kind of initiative. This is a months plus kind of thing. But once you enter into the FedRAMP process, which we're looking towards fall this year, once you enter in, you actually can start going after procurements in there because you're in process. So through that. I mean, it's early, you just announced it, but maybe you talked to a few customers beforehand. What's the reaction been? What's the feedback? So we have a list of customers that are fighting to be our sponsor. We have more customers wanting to sponsor it than we can have. So how do you then? So when I, and I would say the driver from the market really to push this with VMware was customers. Yeah. Customers were like, VMC on AWS is great, but these customers here that we're talking to are public, they're all like, we need it on AWS, CuffCloud. Just saying how things have changed so quickly. It was like VMware and AWS are kind of adversaries. There was a lot of fear that, oh, the public cloud is going to kill. And then all of a sudden these two companies come together and you see this huge momentum. Well, and I think it's a unique value proposition that isn't offered in the marketplace combined. So all the cloud providers that are there today, I think they still are struggling with how you, you know, you can move workloads, but then there's going to be some, you just can't get off of the VMware platform. I could go count by count and there's some they're keeping in house. This allows you to afford the flexibility of the cloud environment, utilizing what you have there on-prem. Well, and your share of wallet. True hybrid. But your share of wallet makes it different as well because you have such a huge footprint. Other, you know, cloud companies have relationships or other companies have relationships with cloud companies, but VMware is the standard. For virtualization. Right? So that's kind of, you know, those customers talking. You know, Angie Jassy always says we're customer driven. We're not, you know, competitive driven. I mean, I think the culture- And I think for us as well, I'm sure you guys have talked to Pat. So we've been with us. I think we've realized that's a good marriage for us too and our customers. It solves a problem that no one else has solved that's very unique. Has the Dell acquisition, what has that changed if anything or expanded or, you know, culturally? I know VMware's largely sort of its own, you know, separate entity, but still, you know, Michael's around, he's very- I just heard last week had a bunch of customer meetings here with Dell on the executive calls with their worldwide sales leader. So I would say that the culture between Dell, legacy Dell and VMware are very similar. EMC a little different, but the culture between those two were very, very similar. I think the good news is, and I give Michael Dell a lot of credit for this, with the Dell Technologies, which is a collection of all the companies underneath that. So VMware, Pivotal, Secureworks, RSA, Dell EMC, et cetera. He really has tried to put together a business model that customers get the benefit of that. So when VMware was owned by EMC, we kind of said, oh yeah, you can get EMC, VMware together, but then customers had to write two contracts. Customers had to deal with two different. Here, Michael's allowed and created frameworks to allow customers to get the benefits of Dell technology. When they want to, they don't have to. VMware still is an independent company, and we work with all different companies. But he's created an environment that really is conducive for the teaming, for customers' best interests. So then what should we be watching? You know, near term, mid term, long term, in terms of just adoption in federal, maybe partnerships, ecosystem growth. Yep. So I think you'll see what we're already beginning to see across the marketplace with non-gov cloud adoption. And I would say that the public sector team is actually driving a faster rate of adoption than other parts of our business already. Really, okay. Very interesting to see what's going on in all our joint planning meetings with Amazon and VMware and looking at the adoption we're seeing from the government as well as state and local and education. And then I think you'll see the ecosystem. So, you know, Teresa and I've worked through who's the right ecosystem? What does that look like? Who are yours? What are ours? And you know, that's been a big emphasis for AWS. So it's very complimentary. We've got distribution set up to be able to enable us across this market because that's important for the markets. And because of the way they procure we have to do everything uniquely for them. So I think there's going to be a lot of exciting stuff. And then as soon as we can get in process there's a lot of activity in the market to respond to. And you also, you touched on it, but you do healthcare and education as well. Very quickly, what are the sort of similarities and differences there relative to those things? I see a lot of similarity between all three verticals. They're all unique in their own way. But because they're unique there's benefits of it being together for VMware. So a great example would be our commercial healthcare business may not have FedRAMP but they have special certifications for patient records and things that require engineering to build special products a certain way to support our healthcare market. So you can take the same processes and things that we put together and applied for federal and state and local and then apply it to the healthcare market. The other piece I would say as some of the things we're doing first and I would compliment AWS on this is they really did a good job of standing up the government business and it provided benefit to the rest of their business as a result of that emphasis in government. I think the same thing applies across VMware as we start to look at the verticals that have special needs. And then because you can handle different kinds of security requirements and things that are unique it's easier to scale that back towards the other business. As a benefit, like financials, think about it. If it's good enough for certain customers, CIA and things like that, it's good enough for them, right? Or patient care records, things like that. So there's actually application of all that to the other pieces. And then there's this 20% that feds different because they're fed, sleds different because they're sled and then healthcare is different because it's healthcare. So we see a lot of great synergy that's relatively new. Last year we merged the healthcare team into the new organization. It's kind of like our kids do. Yeah, that's right. Lynn, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. It was great having you. I enjoyed it. Thanks so much. All right, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest. Dave Vellante for Stu Miniman. John Furrier is here as well. You're watching theCUBE from AWS Public Sector Summit and we'll be right back. All right.