 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS re-invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage live from AWS re-invent 19 in Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier, and we're going to be taking something that was an exclusive from John's interview with Andy Jassy from a couple of days ago. Something that he told John, and we're going to be talking about it here with Verizon. Please welcome Steve Zabo, head of Global Products and Solutions IoT in 5G Edge. Welcome Steve. Thank you, thank you for having me. This is an exciting day. It is an exciting day. So one of the things that Andy Jassy told John in that exclusive interview that went viral, if you haven't read it, check it out, was that companies are going to want to eliminate network hops and find a way to have the compute and the storage much more local to the 5G network edge. Tell us, what did AWS and Verizon just unveiled this morning? Yeah, so today it's all about Verizon's network and AWS cloud, right? So we've taken what they're calling wave length. They're centralized cloud platform. We're moving it into Verizon's network, fully integrated. This is 18 months of engineering effort. So this isn't something that you just wake up and you have access to. This is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that the companies have put in together to get this opportunity. What this does is it takes their cloud capabilities. It puts them on our network fully integrated with the radio access layer so that customers will have access to everything that they were using from an AWS perspective, but then also be able to leverage Verizon's network capabilities. So all the APIs, the currencies that Hans talked about on stage today, giving developers and businesses a like the opportunity to leverage the best of those and go ahead and leverage the bandwidth, the late C type use cases, and really transform the way that folks are thinking about leveraging the network. You know, Steve, one of the things in the network, in the computer industry, everyone always talks about trade-offs, hops on the network, spectrum. I got a longer range or shorter throughput. 5G's got some pretty significant bandwidth. Up to 10G's, gigs on that. That's phenomenal, but the footprint's a little bit different, so that begs the question for high bandwidth needs, whether it's gaming, immersive experiences, whatever. You got to bring the compute. This is the whole thesis of Amazon's shift. They're bringing Amazon to the edge. You guys are providing it. What's different about the Verizon 5G that makes this a unique opportunity? Is it the throughput? Is it the topology? Is it the... We like to think it's a little bit of everything, right? Tell us how it works. Yeah, I mean, listen, at the end of the day, we have 5G, it's opening up the eight currencies. When you factor in 5G edge, that's when you really see the power of 5G, and then when you layer on the AWS Wavelength stack integrated into the network, it just gives an opportunity for folks to take advantage of these eight currencies. 100 feet behind me at our booth, we have Bethesda Gaming, and that was one of the things that we talked about, but if you think about it, they have an Orion gaming platform. They leverage AWS today. They want to reach out and have the ability to have their gaming platform stream to Verizon customers using mobile devices. If you think about the fact that you can almost take the council out of the home, folks are literally leveraging GPU, CPU intensive graphic and gaming streaming content, and they're using a Bluetooth controller, and they're doing it on a Verizon 5G device. I mean, who would have thought that you'd be able to do that? And you can see it, and that's live in Chicago. Now they're piloting it on our network, so. Talk about the partnership with Amazon. You mentioned it wasn't just an overnight thing. Multiple months in the making, announced on the station, Wavelength was their product. That's the stack. It's essentially an outpost for telco. That's the way I'm calling it, whatever you want to it. There's some things in there, but they still got to deploy it. What does that look like? How long have you guys been working with Amazon? You share some details on the relationship. Where is it located? Is it in your network, close to the edge? How close is it? Has it all worked? Yeah, so we'll touch on what we can here, but it's live in Chicago, so that's our first market. We'll take an approach to announce it similar to what we've done with our 5G city announcements, which is we'll work with our partners, we'll talk internally, and then we'll announce those as it makes sense into other markets and cities. Currently, the way that it works is is at our SAP sites or our service access points, AWS will have their equipment. It'll be tightly integrated with our radio access network, which is when you can see the benefits of the low latency and the compute all kind of working together. The way for folks to procure that is they would go through, if you're an AWS customer today and you're getting storage and compute, you would be able to access that through AWS's portal environment. It'd just be labeled as Verizon 5G edge capabilities. If you're buying bandwidth, if you need pro services help, other network service capabilities, you'd work with Verizon just like you do today. It's a true partnership opportunity, and it allows us to kind of work together and kind of head on this journey. So the key thing is there, Amazon console access, flick, provision. You're in, yeah. We did all the hard work and engineering between the two of us to make it as easy as possible for the developers and the businesses quite honestly. We want what they're familiar with today, both on our network and the tools that they're using in the cloud to be the same experience that they have, only just with the benefits of wavelength and with Verizon 5G edge. Any feedback you can share on early returns or early engagements or early tinkering and playing around that you could share? You know, I would tell you that it's operating as we would expect it to, and that's why I would encourage people to go over to our booth and see what's happening over there because it's, when I say that it's live and it's working, it isn't a video, it isn't anything that folks are talking about. This is on our production network. Bethesda's actually gaming with it, leveraging AWS wavelength, and we've got other customers that we're working with as well. And if they're not on here on site can they go to the website? Is it online now or? Yeah, you'll be able to see whether you go through Verizon's web experiences or AWS portal, it will redirect you either way to learn more. So if you want to learn more about the capabilities on Verizon's side, you'll punch into our site. If you want to go learn more about wavelength and what Amazon's doing, we'll punch it back to them. So for, let's talk about benefits. You gave a great example of somebody gaming and that they're accessing live streaming content from wherever they are from the Bluetooth device. So I can understand it from that perspective. But from a business perspective, business apps to business apps, what are some of the projected benefits that enterprises are going to see with that respect? Well, I think a couple of things. One, it's going to open up use cases for latency intensive. So I brought up Bethesda for a reason. They're cloud gaming to actually stream Doom, which is the game that they're demoing in our booth. They couldn't do it without the edge, right? They would not have the real-time gaming capabilities to actually work without it. When you start thinking about retail environments and getting into AR, VR, these immersive experiences to get customers to come into the four walls of your retail building the ability to have application services that'll reach out and engage with consumers for a variety of things, whether that's helping them with their buying experience or just for the benefit of your business gathering intensive sensory data and kind of getting into the AI and ML of how your business is operating on a day-to-day basis. It opens up a variety of things. It's really an ecosystem, which is what I think the power of this partnership is all about, right? We're bringing our customers and our network and buying that with AWS services and their developer community. And I think it's a tool in the developer toolbox that whether you're a developer at a large enterprise, small business, public sector, et cetera, it's something that you can use your imagination to go out and do something with and kind of test the balance of three to three. Anything about the headroom available in terms of future proofing? You got optimization closer to the edge edge. You got inside the network capabilities to manage software, to manage resources, kind of a new architecture. A new way to think about resources allocation from bandwidth to compute the data. You bring up a great point because that's something you had mentioned earlier about the difference between what we've done versus Kolo or something like that. And this is a full integration. So the ability to architect something that did not actually exist before. WaveLength is new for AWS. Our 5G edge and our 5G network capabilities, integrating that seamlessly so that the developer and the enterprise business can have access to that with having a minimal impact to their user experience is really important. And then you figure on the layering of possibilities as they start getting more familiar with it. Andy Jassy mentioned on stage with your chairman and CEO comment. I don't know if he was just pre-ambelling on the intro, but he said, Verizon, the leader in 5G. I'm sure he meant that. For the folks that aren't following the 5G situation, are you guys the leader and what way are you leading compared to the others? How should consumers think about 5G? It's almost like this magic pixie desk. It's almost a magic. But wait a minute, we can't have those speeds. Some say hype. What is the reality of the 5G and why are you guys being called the leader? Yeah, well, we were the first to market with 5G. So by default, I think that makes us the leader. But we'll be in 30 cities by the end of the year. The fact that we're the first to have 5G mobile edge computing capabilities, it's integrated with AWS WaveLength. That's to my knowledge, not out there in the market yet today. The ability, the fact that we have this live in Chicago, we have customers using it. It's demonstrating real world use cases on a live production network. I mean, we're excited about it. Something we're proud of and it's something that we expect to watch grow and actually ideate with the customers in mind. Congratulations. Thank you. One of the things that Andy and John talked about and with this whole, not just the notion of transformation and there's a lot of talk about transformation today but also the fact that businesses, you know, the vast majority that are around today, if they're not already iterating and moving towards digitalization and modernization, that there are a million companies probably doing the same thing or very similar that are going to be able to take them over. But that's a hard change for a legacy enterprise to be able to do. This new ecosystem that Verizon and AWS are building and delivering, what do you guys see together as its ability to be an enabler to transform businesses? Such that, you know, we don't see a business doesn't go by way of, you know, Toys R Us, for example. Yeah. Well, I think the fact that 5G and the Edge, it offers you to touch out and reach the customers in a way that you couldn't before for your business. That's one. Two, this is geared around 5G and Edge and that's when you really see the power of what we're doing between Verizon and AWS. But one thing that I'd like to highlight is wherever you're at on your digital transformation, some people are going to be starting from zero and some are going to be more advanced. I mean, that's a reality of kind of the technology and business alike. We're actually have solutions today. AWS has products today. They're already in the cloud. We have LTE capabilities and other network services, capabilities, virtualized networks, software defined network capabilities. We can work with customers and help them kind of grow into where they want to be. We do not want somebody to feel like they're buying in and almost isolating themselves into a technology. What we're all about is helping them build the solution that's right for them at whatever point in the journey they're at and then helping them grow into where they can be with 5G and Edge compute. Yeah, I think this is also instructive for the industry structure. You look at the landscape of kind of everyone thinking about replatforming their business in the modern era. You guys have a great footprint, great leadership. Just the idea of this win-win that makes you guys so much more powerful for future applications. I mean, I can almost see the edge just becoming a very fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity, applications that you guys are going to be powering. I mean, born on the edge might be the new phrase. Not born in the cloud, born in the edge. You can trademark that. No, we're excited. I mean, listen, it could be anyone from two people in a garage developing something to developers at a small, medium, or large business taking advantage of use cases and things that might not been achievable. Local education. I mean, it's endless opportunity there. Yeah, opportunities in energy management and sustainability we're very proud of. Education, healthcare are going to be areas that we'll focus on. So there's a lot of opportunity out there. We're at the forefront in our opinion at helping kind of just jumpstart that ecosystem and we're excited about it. Really, really great. I'll echo that. Congratulations and thank you for sharing with John and me more detail about AWS and rising in this new ecosystem that opens up tremendous amount of opportunity. We appreciate your time, Steve. Thank you very much for the time and we're excited. It's a big day. It is a big day. Big announcement. For Steve and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from ReInvit19 from Vegas. Thanks for watching.