 Hey, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of AWS ReInvent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got two sets on the show floor. It's a virtual event. We've got the hybrid stream going. Check out all the content we're here for wall-to-wall coverage. It's all about data, cloud transformation, culture change, and making things happen. We've got a great segment here with the center. Chris Copeland, CTO of Accenture's Federal Services and Mark Kim, the CEO of Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, also known as the MSRB. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for coming. First of all, explain what the Municipal Rulemaking Board does so people know what it is and we'll jump in. Sure, thank you, John, for the opportunity to have this conversation. The MSRB serves as the principal regulator of the $4 trillion municipal securities market. So municipal securities or munibonds, as they're most commonly known, finance the majority of this nation's infrastructure from the public schools that educate our kids to the hospitals that care for our sick. Munibonds even finance the airport that we flew into to get to this conference. But in addition to writing the rules that regulate this market, the MSRB also provides the technology infrastructure that supports this market. So in addition to being a financial regulator, the MSRB is also a technology company. And we saw the future of technology and cloud computing and that was our decision to embrace that future and to move the MSRB to the cloud. And obviously, Chris, this is critical infrastructure. You're talking about legacy, it has a lot of legacy as well, a lot of data, money's involved. I mean, all the wrappings of transformation stories there. Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, the MSRB and Mark in particular really had the right mindset of understanding that, you know, we all talk about migrating to the cloud. That's really just the beginning. Like it's really about once you're in the cloud, the aperture that opens up of the art of the possible and what you can really do. And the MSRB is like right on all of it, right? It's all about data, it's all about transformation. But I think the key for that transformational success that we've seen is understanding that the organization needs to change too. And that we need to enable that organization to really be productive and deliver on that mission in a cloud-first world. Well, Mark, I want to get into this because this has been a big part of my reporting this past year during the pandemic. And maybe in the year earlier, I saw the public sector in particular really forced it to change. Cultural shift instantly, they had no choice. It was a forcing function. And there was the haves and have-nots, the ones who have done the work, put their toe in the water, invested in some technology, knew about cloud, and then ones that weren't. And they were thrown in the water. They had to figure out how to swim very quickly. So take us through the importance of that because we heard today, and even in the keynote, it was swammy on stage from Amazon saying, governance could be an enabler, not an inhibitor. So you're in this world of obviously, munibonds, I'm sure there's a lot of compliance involved. So take us through the journey. How you guys change the culture. What was the outcome? Take us a quick highlight on the whole process. Absolutely, so for the MSRB, the cloud migration was always about way more than just moving our applications from our servers to AWS's servers. This was an opportunity for the organization to put in place a cultural transformation. And that's the power of this opportunity for the MSRB. We were able to make a commitment to our people, which we did right at the outset, that we were going to bring all of our people with us on this journey to the cloud. This was a major investment in reskilling and retraining our staff. We didn't have staff who had experienced migrating applications to the cloud. We didn't have software engineers who had prior experience working in cloud-native environments. We trained them and we made that commitment to do that and to bring all of our people along. And that has enabled the MSRB to create a culture of innovation, of teamwork. It also allowed us to break down some silos within our organization, not only within the IT organization, but between IT and business. It was a transformational opportunity. Effecting changes hard. What was the learnings? When did you realize it's working? So, having completed the migration itself, one of my fears was we've just literally spent millions of dollars investing in our staff, reskilling, retraining them. We've just gone through a very technical, highly complex migration. These are people who are in high demand. Not to mention that AWS decided to put HQ2 right outside of Washington DC and announced plans to hire 10,000 people over the next 10 years. So, I was worried on the other side of the migration that we would have a talent drain. And the best proof that I have that we've got our cultural transformation underway and going in the right direction is we didn't see that brain drain. We have staff that want to stay at the MSRB that are excited about being able to continue to learn about new technologies. Staff that are excited to be kind of on the cutting edge of financial regulation and being a part of building the future of the MSRB. There's a purpose there. I mean, I think this highlights this whole conference here at re-invent. I was just talking to someone off camera during lunch. I'm like, it's an Amazon learning conference, as they say. They're humble, it's learning. But it's also a thought leadership conference because they're introducing new stuff that's actually like, it gets the juices flowing. You're like, wait a minute, I can do more things. So it's got that kind of conference, Ted kind of vibe to it. Plus, it's real. I think that's one of the best benefits that we saw as part of this program, that we talk a lot about how to infuse innovation into the fabric of your DNA and organization. And I don't think that personified itself anywhere that I've seen as well as at the MSRB. Mark was talking about people wanting to stay and work there. I think he's understating it. People were excited about the process. Yeah, they want to come to work every day. There was competitions going on who was going to get certified. There was challenges about who's going to learn the most cloud. And that desire to really continuously improve and bring those new innovations was unparalleled that I've seen. Mark and the MSRB don't have the luxury of just keeping pace with those that they regulate. They've got to stay ahead. And if you're going to stay ahead, you've got to have that innovative culture and you've got to take change as something that isn't this big mountain to climb, but something that's actually exciting to do every day. And I think it really, really came out in the program here. You know, that's one of the things I think it's one of the smartest moves you can make. And I think you've made it by getting the people on the right wave of technology is a retention bonus. Absolutely. It's not just keeping them happy because if you're working on cool stuff, it's fun. But if you get them on the right wave where they're constantly learning and then if they're part of something, this cloud migration, I think that's a real retention thing. Do you agree, you've seen the same thing? Yeah, absolutely. It's such a motivator to know that our staff is front and center leading the charge in transforming the MSRB, not only culturally, but also digitally and bringing us into the future. Okay, so I got to put you on the spot because I'm going to put my evil genius hat on for a second. Okay, I want to make money. I'm a FinTech arbitrager. I want to get in and work the Munibond data angle. Obviously, you worry about, you got a lot of oversight, governance, regulation. Can you move fast enough to protect the data, to make sure things are stable? Take us through that because there's always a lot of money involved, talking about like a serious part of our economy and financial system. It's critical infrastructure. So you've got to also have that balance of innovation and compliance and governance without getting in the way. Absolutely. Take us through how you handled that. Absolutely. As a financial regulator that provides the market with its technology infrastructure, failure is not an option, nor is falling behind the times. We have to evolve with our evolving market and the pace of change is moving faster and faster. If you look at today, what's different about the MSRB being in the cloud than being on-prem in our data centers? For our stakeholders, we don't have customers as a financial regulator. We have stakeholders, the entities that we regulate and the entities that we protect. Our stakeholders will see systems that are more available. In the first 12 months of operations in the cloud, we achieved over 99.98% system availability. Performance has improved in our own internal benchmark tests. Our systems are running 30% faster than they were. And then finally, our systems are more secure. This is a hard one to quantify or to kind of deliver to customers, there's no ROI conversation when you've been hacked. Exactly, it's only disaster. But I am confident that our systems are more secure today in the cloud than they were on-prem in our data centers. Chris, this is a huge thing. I'm not going to rant a little bit, I'll do a side rant, but everyone who watches theCUBE knows I'm kind of a digital hawk. I truly believe that the red line needs to be changed because we are being attacked at a cyber level. And almost like I can see people being excited to work there because it's almost like the military. You got to protect, there's so much downside, it's not so much justification of ROI. This is critical infrastructure, financial systems and databases and there's no government forces to protect you. I mean, Mark said it well, failure isn't an option, right? And I think what we're seeing and why everyone is really rapidly moving to the cloud is you cannot get that level of cybersecurity, you cannot get that real-time information access and then run your models to look for trends of where the threats are maybe coming from and proactively address those trends. You can't do that in a legacy infrastructure model on-prem. You've got to embrace the power of the cloud and the services that the AWS cloud provides to be able to truly try to stay ahead. I mean, you have to bring that innovation every day in your lunch bag and say, how are we going to use these tools that only the cloud affords us to bring security to the forefront? John, can I add on that point? Because I think it's an important one around security. In the legacy environment, in our data centers, the MSRB was handling security by ourselves and I think one of the biggest lessons learned for us is pick your partners carefully. We chose AWS and we chose Accenture Federal Services and we've now tripled our investments in security, both what Amazon is investing in their infrastructure. We've also have AFS providing managed security services for the MSRB in addition to our own security team. So we've literally tripled our security. It's interesting and I think that's one of the reasons why you mentioned the retention thing and why people are happy is it attracts a certain kind of individual to work there. It's the elite tech athlete, we call them, because they like want the action. The young kids, they're in want the tech. They don't want to be boring. So what better way to ride when you know there's a lot to protect, again, back to the cyber? I think it's a huge cultural shift in the new generation coming in versus the old IT. The old IT was okay, we're operational, keep the lights on, get some servers. Now it's like a lot more is at stake. Okay, great, I know we don't have a lot of time left but I do want to get the data question. I have to ask you, you're a data company as well. You got to watch the data. What's the vision and data? How are you looking at the data with your team? So data is the future of the MSRB and we will remain a financial regulator and write the rules that regulate this market. That's our core mission and we will always do that. We will also always be a technology firm that provides the technology infrastructure for this market. But in the future, what the cloud has enabled us to do is to become a data company. We serve as the central repository of market data for this four trillion dollar market and we now, thanks to almost infinite scalable computing power, storage, we now have the ability to leverage cloud tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning to actually get at and unlock insight from the vast amounts of market data that we have and deliver that to the industry that we regulate and serve. And you guys have so much headroom because Chris, with Graviton 3 and the stack, you can actually write the apps built for the performance, for your needs, for the data needs, because that's your advantage. Yeah, it's just incredible. I just find it like, I haven't seen anything like this since the shift from client-serve or to internet-working back in the 90s where you saw a sea change of capabilities just completely change over. It's been pretty incredible. Okay, final word, just reinvent, what do you guys think? This is my first business trip since the pandemic started and it's fantastic to be with people, to see people, to do this in person instead of virtually, so thank you for this opportunity. I know, virtual events, Chris, what about you? It's wonderful to be here. It's great being back out in the world, I guess. Getting to meet with Mark where we're not looking at a screen of each other, meeting with peers, but also just the collaboration and innovation you're going to get in an environment like this and the energy that it brings. You just can't match that. So it's been a great show so far and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. The phrase I hear a lot on theCUBE also, I say it a lot, a kid in the candy store, because there's so much coming out, just the capabilities, you're starting to see more ease of use, more infrastructure as code. Now, data as code, a lot of great stuff, all part of the cloud transformation, so great for coming on and sharing the story, Mark. Appreciate it. Good to hear about your awesome program, Chris. Thanks for coming on too. Thanks for having us. Okay, CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in global tech coverage. Thanks for watching.