 Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Bahrain for the exclusive coverage of AWS Summit and their announcement and their execution of a new region, which should be online here in early 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host with SiliconANGLE Media theCUBE, extracting the signal from the noise, meeting all the people. First time in the Middle East in the region should be a big impact, having a digital footprint in size of Amazon Web Services, bringing energy and entrepreneurship and innovation and economic revitalization and enablement. We love the coverage, we're meeting a lot of great people. Our next guest is Simon Martin, who's the ambassador of the British Embassy here in Bahrain. Simon, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. So, okay, so I want to just kind of get your perspective. I met the US ambassador yesterday last night at dinner. He's kind of new to the area in the job. But he's already well-informed, I can tell you. He's well-informed, birthed by fire, thrown in the deep end. You've been here for a few years. Yeah, that's right. Take a minute to talk about the environment here, because we're first time here, we're learning, we're observing. I'm certainly surprised. My daughter was asking me, you know, what are the women like there? We had a women's breakfast yesterday, 70 plus people, the energy, the diversity. Interesting culture, feels like very open. What's your thoughts? Well, very much so. Bahrain has been at the sort of crossroads of international travel for hundreds and hundreds of years. The UK's relationship with Bahrain, the former one goes back just over 200. And that was all to do with trade. Manama means the place of sleep. And it was a place that people used to stop to rest on their way across the Arabian subcontinent and towards the Indian subcontinent and so on. So it's a place which is naturally welcoming of foreigners and outside ideas. And I think that's what Amazon have found here. So there's an awful lot of change going on in this part of the world. Bahrain is a relatively small economy compared to its neighbors. It was the place that oil was first discovered in the Gulf, but actually once they discovered it, they realized it actually had rather less than most of the neighbors. And therefore it's an economy which has had to adapt to keep growing in contrast. Mainly the dependence on oil, other oil rich areas. Yeah, right, is that right? So that's been the mainstay of the economy for some time, but there is not yet the potential for the growth that's needed in order to help develop an economy with a necessary modern infrastructure, a growing population, the need for quality employment for young people, which is something that we've heard a lot of in the last few years. Talk about your history. How long have you been in the job you're in? What's the background? What are some of the things that you've done in the government in the UK? Yeah, well, thank you. So I've been here for three years. Before that, I was working actually for Israel Highness, the Prince of Wales. And in that role, visited this part of the world on a couple of occasions and saw the impact of that very important part of our relationship, our Royal Family's relationship, but the Royal Family's in this part of the Gulf. And it just opened my eyes a bit to the importance of having multifaceted relationships. And again, this is what we're now seeing here, that Amazon Web Services with the cloud region that they are building here have brought a new dimension to the flag I'm going to wear here. To the Bahraini economy. So talk about the multifaceted pieces. What I'm fascinated by is the Dubai dynamic, right? You know, I see Dubai, a lot of events there, blockchain events, AI events, a lot of tech events. Feels like New York to me using the American metaphor. It's kind of like a Silicon Valley kind of vibe. But they all have been working together for years. What's the historical relationships? How have they changed? And how does cloud computing make up for that? How does it play into it? Well, of course, there's been a very collaborative and yet competitive relationship between the different, particularly the finance centers of the Gulf for many years. The economic success story of Dubai is very well known. Bahrain has continued to develop, but without the resources that underpin the UAE's success, has done so on a more progressive way. But this is always going to be a much smaller economy. And Bahrain has to compete in niches in which it has a competitive advantage. And what we have now happening here is creating a wonderful new niche opportunity for Bahrain. But of course, I don't think I'm letting out any secrets to say that each of the countries in the Gulf would love to have been hosting the new cloud region. So Bahrain had to try incredibly hard to present an environment in which to host this kind of investment, which requires regulation, it requires openness and ease of doing business. And it also requires an openness to developing the labor force, to support not only Amazon, but all of the train of companies that we're expecting to invest along behind it. Well, Simon, I really appreciate your experience and the candor here in the cube, certainly for us it's a new area. And you have certainly a perspective for the Royal family in the UK and now being here. But one of the interesting things I'd like to get your perspective on is, you know, you look at globalization and you look at regulations, you look at digital, things like GDPR, you see all traditional things. And you can go back when I was a young kid growing up. I remember the pound and the French franc and all the different currencies going on and then the EU comes together. And now you have Asia and cryptocurrency. So you have a whole nother cloud computing generation coming where that might reimagine the political landscape, might imagine the economic relationships. These are opportunities but also threats. And so how people handle it is interesting. So when you look at that kind of dynamic, you got a little bit of uncertainty and opportunity at the same time. Depending on how you look at it, the glass half full or the glass half empty. How should executives and government officials start thinking about this new model, this new marketplace? London, certainly the center of the action and connects now into Bahrain, could be a different dynamic, frictionless, digital. People living in cross borders, these are new dynamics. What's your thoughts on this new melting pot of digital impact? Well, of course everybody wants a piece of it. Everybody wants to be at the center of the new melting pot. And for Bahrain, they're looking to be the center of it within this region. But of course, the Dubai Finance Center and Abu Dhabi and Kuwait and so on are also very keen. And no one is expecting to be the dominant player. And certainly from Bahrain's perspective, it's very much about creating the environment in which companies will see this as a good place to start. The Gulf region is a coherent region with an incipient single market and so on within the GCC. And so naturally investors from the outside are going to look at one place to start. And so what Bahrain has done, and I think it's been very well founded, this has taken place over the three years that I've been here, is to dramatically increase the ease of doing business and then find proportionate ways in which the government can support new companies to get them established. So you mentioned GDPR, how's this going to affect a company in the Gulf? Well, I was at the launch of a very interesting new big data software project by one of the, in fact, British owned new startups in the FinTech Bay here, which is supported by the Economic Development Board. Their starting point is that the product that we are selling out of Bahrain is GDPR compliant, which gives you an idea of the way in which even from this relatively small island in the Gulf, the global perspective is being taken. And certainly with digital currency that know your customer anti-money laundering is a big thing too, you got to get that right. Absolutely. So they have an opportunity with FinTech. Final question for you, as you look out and see the human capital market and the future of work is a big conversation we're always having. And certainly I live in Silicon Valley where everyone's no secret that there's migration out of Silicon Valley due to the prices of living there, but yet concentration of entrepreneurship, people are going to have engineering teams all over the world. So you have a dispersed workforce now crossing borders and not just the domicile issue, that's one, taxes, where to domicile outside, either the US or other countries. So you have the combination of diverse workforces. This is a big opportunity too, challenge and opportunity. It is, it is. And of course there are not just big changes now, there's constant fluctuation in the way the workforce and the populations in this part of the world within the Gulf are changing. Look at vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia, the big increase in the Saudi workforce, both through the policy of Saudiization and through the creation of many more opportunities for women in the workforce. That's affecting Bahrain. But Bahrain has always been a place where people come to to work and sometimes to work remotely, sometimes to live here and work across Saudi Arabia. So the Bahrainis feel that they're very attuned to these challenges. But I might just mention as well that this is not just about economics. And what impresses me about the reform program you see going on here is that the idea is that we will create a broader and wider spread opportunity, particularly through the opportunities for young professionals working in AWS, but also in the environment all the way around it for all communities in Bahrain. So not just the wealthy, not just the sort of Ivy League equivalent graduates. And so that's why the academy that they're setting up here. And the network as they merge in social networking is going to bring people closer together. Okay, great to have you on. Final question is as people look at this moment in time, maybe an inflection point shot hurt around the Gulf if you will of Amazon. Certainly they did this with the CIA in our country. They set successes coming in and kind of changing how things do, reimagining value creation and value capture. What do you see as the impact of the AWS region have in this area, in its geography? Just your thoughts on what the impact's going to be. Well, of course, this is a virtual world and a cloud region is a virtual concept. So it's easy to say, well, it shouldn't take an Amazon web services cloud region to transform the way in which governments work here. In practice, what AWS have seen wherever they have established cloud regions, it's a magnet for other businesses to develop around it and it provides the reassurance that governments need to take that step forward. I don't know whether you heard Max Peterson in his presentation this morning saying he was amazed at the speed with which the entire Bahraini government system has embraced the move to the cloud, which indeed my own government is doing as we speak. And this I think is going to be one of the really big, the really big impacts, which will allow governments to get smaller and more efficient and more transparent. And serve their citizens in a different way and a better way. But one last thing, John, because you may not have heard about this is we're hearing a lot about the shift towards renewable energy in this part of the world. And people say, why on earth would we need renewable energy, which so much of the world's petrocarbon resources are based here. But of course, if you don't burn them, you can sell them. And that's a very simple economics. The fact is that it has taken longer than other parts of the world for the transition to renewable energy, even though we have so much sunshine and at times quite a lot of wind. The government here has just put out a tender for a 100 megawatt solar farm. And the driving force behind that is because AWS have said, we want to power our cloud region from renewable energy. And this is an example of industry and the big investors actually applying a positive force to speed up the direction of government policy already. And it's something that has been well-comformed. And it's happened fast. This private partnership, public relationship, that's a success story. And I think there are lots of other ways we will see this happening. As I say, you can't have over 2,000 people here, all focusing on cloud technology without bringing an awful lot of extra attention to and focus on what else is going on in Bahrain. From my perspective, the Bahrain government is saying we welcome this publicity and we look forward to explaining ourselves. And I think we'll see a lot of further development in this area. Well, Simon has a great point, sustainable energy and the trade off between industry, private industry, trying to make money but contributing technology and a co-creation with the government. I mean, data center's hot here. You need cooling. You got sun, power, you have to have a solution. Absolutely, yeah. You can't burn it, you can sell it. So, good opportunity. Simon, Martin ambassador, the British ambassador to the embassy here in Bahrain. Thank you for sharing your insights and color commentary. Pleasure to meet you, John. Appreciate it. Hey, live coverage here. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, bringing you all the new observations. Our first time in the Middle East region, well-coherent structure, great economics, great society benefits, cloud computing, Amazon Web Services region opening up in 2019. Exclusive coverage. Stay with us for more after this short break.