 Welcome everyone to this CUBE Conversation. It's part of our Season 2 Episode 4 of the ongoing AWS Startup Showcase series. Today's theme, Cybersecurity, Detect and Protect Against Threats. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got one of our alumni back with us, Rakesh Narasimhan joins me, President and CEO of Anishin Rakesh, it's great to have you back on the program. Thank you very much. Have a pleasure to be here. So some congratulations are in order. I see that Anishin was recently awarded nine Global InfoSec Awards at RSA Conference just this year, including a couple great titles here, Hot Company and Security Company of the Year. Talk to the audience who knows Anishin, what is it doing to enable and empower the digital transformation for enterprises that are, I mean, we've been talking about the acceleration of digital transformation. How is Anishin an enabler of that? Thank you again for the opportunity. I think a big change that we brought to the table, Anishin, is really what is typically a very manual, complex, time consuming, and quite expensive process. We've just brought software innovations to it. And really that's customers who are trying to do compliance or security in the cloud. We just provide a platform that basically accelerates a customer's application migration to cloud. And so that ability is the software innovation that we were able to bring to the space. And that just wasn't there before. And so we're just happy that we took the opportunity to innovate there and just bring it to the customers. So let's now talk to and address those AWS customers. When you're talking to prospects, existing AWS customers, what do you say are the differentiators that makes Anishin so unique in AWS? That's a great question. I think the biggest innovation, the biggest thing that we bring to the table is really acceleration and timeline and completion of their applications. If you're a customer and you're trying to get into a new market for compliance, for example, or you're trying to basically get a new application up and running in a secure environment, in either one of those cases, we have a product offering, a platform offering that enables you to quickly get up and running and get to production. And that's been the reason why we've enjoyed enormous success in the marketplace in the AWS customer base. One of the areas where I see that Anishin has been very successful is in helping cloud software vendors get FedRAMP compliant and be able to access what is a huge federal market. How are you able to do that? Yeah, I think the big thing that we focused on was you have a complete class of SaaS vendors out there who provide enormous innovation that they bring to the marketplace. But the government market in general has not been able to participate in it because again, like I said, it's very complex, it takes time and it's very expensive. And so we focused on that opportunity to really make it easier for all of these cloud service providers to be able to bring their innovations to the government market, for example, with FedRAMP. And so we helped with the automation and the acceleration with our platform offering on top of cloud providers like AWS. And that enables the SaaS provider to offer that opportunity that hitherto is not available to make it available in the government marketplace. And that's a huge buyer, if you will, their budgets are huge, they're still buying even in a downturn in the market. Even as commercial vendors look at that, that market, everybody's nervous about it. But if you look at the government market, they have budget, they're buying, and that needs to be provided to the install base. And so we helped make that happen. How does that make you unique from a competitive perspective to be able to accelerate FedRAMP for AWS customers in particular? I think the biggest issue has always been three things, right? It's complex, it's time consuming. But most importantly, how quickly can a company make their software innovations available to a large market has always been sort of the challenge, especially in the federal market. So we, by basically pre-engineering a platform, taking care of all the requirements of the standard in compliance and security, and then essentially help the customer bring that innovation on top of the AWS environment and making it available to customers in record time. That's the reason why we're able to enjoy the success. Historically, the space has been very focused on a lot of consulting folks, really providing consulting on an hourly basis. We thought of actually bringing a software-oriented approach just like people buy email, they buy a service, and then all the innovations that come along with it for the subscription that you pay, it's a very similar concept we brought to the space. Prior to this, either people did it themselves or they hired a lot of consulting folks to tell them what to do. And that could take a long time. And then not just time and expense, but every single time they made a change, they would still again have to go redo all that work. We just brought a platform approach which is well understood by now in the industry and you pay a subscription, you buy a platform, and all the innovations come along for them. So that's a huge productivity, time to market, but most importantly, it enables them to achieve their revenue goals because they're trying to get to market and service a customer, right? So we helped them accomplish that in record time. So you're really impacting your customer's bottom line. You've been very successful in helping AWS public sector customers to accelerate FedRAMP as you talked about FedRAMP compliance. How are you now switching gears to focus on the AWS commercial customers and even enterprise DevOps teams to be able to accelerate cloud application security? Yeah, I think, again, we started from a place of a humility, if you will. There's a lot of vendors, a lot of folks make a lot of claims. We wanted to make sure that we first were very good at doing something and that something was really go after the federal market. And the success we achieved in that marketplace had a few insights for ourselves, which was people really struggle in all kinds of environments, not just public sector. And what we found is that commercial customers are also trying to go to cloud. They're also dealing with the issues of security and securing their environments. And it's really the DevOps and DevSecOps folks on whom this burden falls. And they have to answer to so many different constituencies in an enterprise company. And so we time and time again, while we did the work in FedRAMP, we learned that it's not just about compliance, it's also about securing on the base of standards. So how could we provide the same pre-engineered environment for DevOps and DevSecOps teams to be able to run that environment for their applications? That became an aha for us because we were running into it all the time in the public sector side. So we went and talked to a few customers and said, hey, how about we do the same thing on the commercial side for you? And I wish I could take credit for this, but it's actually not true. It's actually customers who came to us and said, hey, you did this really well for us in public sector side. Could you provide the same thing for us in the commercial side, where it's not about all the documentation and all the audits and things that happen in the compliance side of the house. I just want you to provide an environment so that our DevOps teams could just operate in that environment and Devs can work on it. Can you do that and we'll pay you? And that was born really our idea of secure cloud enterprise. Our primary offering historically has been secure cloud compliance with the compliance business, if you will, where people could go into market and have a completely new market to go after. Whereas in the enterprise side, we brought those innovations, those learnings and brought it to a commercial market. And so that's the new product, if you will, that we're launching to service that customer base, if you will. So if I'm an AWS customer, when do I know it's time to contact Anishin and say, guys, we need help and we think you're the right ones to help us accelerate? Yeah, I think it's really straightforward. If you are a customer, a commercial SaaS vendor, if you will, that runs on AWS and you want to go after a new market, then you come to us and we can help you quickly get to all the compliance standards so that you can go sell in the government marketplace. That's an offering we already have. Or you are a brand new company and B2B company and you're developing an application and you want a pre-engineered environment that passes all the security standards so that you don't have to worry about it. You have a subscription to AWS and you have a subscription to us. And then that basically provides you a secure environment in which you can start developing your applications and start developing, deploying them much like your DevOps cycle would work. So we provide that basis already for you. So if you're a customer on the B2B side and you're going to cloud to get your applications to the marketplace on AWS, we're a great solution for you to actually have that engineered platform in place already. So those are the two areas where you can contact us and we can help you out. And talk to me about when you're in customer conversations, especially as we've had such challenging times the last couple of years, how have those customer conversations changed and evolved? Are you seeing an acceleration up the C-suite stack? Is this a key priority for the CEO and his or her team? Yeah, yeah. I think it's a phenomenal point. I think security has always been top of mind for folks, not just the C-suite, but in boardrooms as well. But the key thing we found is that even in a down market, sometimes in the environment that is playing out in the macro environment, I think the thing that has not changed is people are still trying to figure out how to make their dollar go further and how do I get a better return on investment? So if you look at our compliance business, that growth is all about, that market is growing, there's still opportunity and people are still having budgets and spending. So commercial companies are still trying to figure out how can I extend my market creation to new markets? So that's an area that the C-suite is really interested in. Funny enough, you would think in the cyber world, it's the CISOs or the ones who actually are looking for solutions from us. That's certainly in the audience, but CEOs and CROs are the folks who really clamor for our solution because it is their ability to enter a new market and go after a new budget that can grow their business and have an ROI pretty quickly. That's the ability for them to make that decision. So it's very pertinent to their buying behavior that we've aligned ourselves to. Very simply put, by engaging us, they get to go after a new market. They establish a new line of revenue they didn't have before. So that's always interesting to any C-suite member as you can imagine, and that's the compliance side. Absolutely, establishing new revenue streams is huge and that's a big competitive differentiator. We've seen a lot of customers that weren't able in any industry to do that during the challenging pandemic times and that is a game changer for organizations across industries. Exactly, exactly. And we're seeing that play out, not just on that side, but even on the commercial side where people are also trying to figure out how do I basically make sure it's pre-done so that it's one less thing for me to have to worry about so that I can be more productive, I can get to market pretty quickly, which means I can again deliver to my customers quickly, which means revenue for them as well. So we are the security business, but really if you notice, we're solving a business problem for our customers and we're aligned to the ROI so that it's relatively easier for them to make a decision. They certainly get security and compliance, but the bigger benefit for them is to grow their business itself. So we're trying to accelerate that momentum for them. That's critical and I'm sure your customers really appreciate the impact that you're having on their growth, their ability to deliver to what I can only presume is they're demanding customers as one of the things right now that's been in short supply in the last couple of years is patience and tolerance. Is there a customer story that you think really articulates the value of what Anishin is delivering? Like maybe a favorite customer story that you mentioned when you're giving talks. Sure, we really have a very customer base across the landscape. If you think about our compliance business, Smartsheet is a great example who partnered early. They were not even in the cloud before and then that's a great example with AWS where the three of us work together to offer Smartsheet, the collaboration software public SaaS company if you will, who really established themselves and differentiated themselves in the marketplace by offering that on AWS and we helped them accomplish their FedRAMP itself not just for once, but they've been great customers of ours, multiple renewals over the years and every single year that the business that they get on the federal size has increased because of the work that they did first with us. And so we've looked for more opportunities with them certainly on that part and increasingly we start thinking about where else can we help them grow? Because typically most customers have a thing to solve or on a compliance standard, but it turns out that the compliance journey is, some companies are trying to do a sock to to be able to even sell, then you want to do electronic commerce, you might have to do PCI or you want to sell under the federal government you'll have to do FedRAMP and FedRAMP has moderate, high depending on the customers you have including DOD and once you get to DOD, they'll ask for IL-4 and IL-5. So these are different compliance regimes, if you will, think of them as a journey and we want to make be the company that provides a seamless progression for customers as they're on that journey so that we can actually deliver something of value. We're not interested in nickel and diming customers and charging them by the hour. We're a platform player, we want to make sure that they use it to basically get their ROI and growth happening and we just take care of the hard part of making sure that they are in compliance, right? And similarly, we're bringing the same idea like Smartsheet had told you about to a commercial marketplace of customers who can do the same thing for commercial apps in the cloud. And so that gives us a very clean way for customers to really become not just productive but satisfy their customers quickly and hence grow their business and we celebrate that collaboration and all of that happens because of AWS and our ability to focus on those customers. Sounds like a great partnership and definite synergy there on, I know and you know as well how customer obsessed in their own words, AWS is speaking of customers. One more question for you in terms of being on that journey, that compliance journey which isn't a destination, right? It's probably a zigzaggy path. Do you work with customers that both haven't started the process to Fedrem compliance or those that maybe have with a competitor and are running into roadblocks? Are those both routes to market for you? Yeah, we interestingly enough, historically we used to see a lot of folks who have tried to do it themselves and found it hard or for a variety of reasons they just gave up and so they would come to us. We have also examples of customers who have tried to go on the consulting path and has not worked and come to us. So that it's sort of a broken project. We start from there, but a majority of our business is people who've gotten a contract from one of the agencies and they're like, oh, now what? We need to get this done before September. And so what's the quickest way to get there? And generally that's where we can help you because we are the best fastest way to get there. And so we get that mix of customers. People who have already tried, hasn't worked out. People who have tried with other folks who hasn't worked out, but a majority of the folks are people who don't even know how to go about doing it but they know they have to do it in order for them to keep the customer that they have won one of the agencies, if you will. So that has given us a very healthy perspective on how to help customers of different kinds in that journey. The other thing is, we've grown tremendously in the last couple of years. And the other thing we learned is every customer is different and we tried to bring a very common approach to addressing this problem, even though customers come in all shapes and forms. We have startup companies in early forms of maturity and we have like really iconic unicorn companies who we've helped go through FedRAMP. So the gamut is large, but we're learning a lot by doing this and I think that's the key thing for me. I want our company to be one that is growing with innovation but at the same time keeping flexibility in our approach so that we are not just learning new things, we're delivering on the harder problems our customers are facing. Because I think that's where software innovation can really play a big differentiating role and that's the reason why I always enjoyed being an Anishin and growing the business and keeping the company really fast-moving and innovative. Speaking of being fast-moving and innovative, here we are coming up on the fourth quarter of calendar year 22. What's next for Anishin? What are some of the exciting things that have you pumped up? Have your mojo going for what's next for the rest of the year? Yeah, I think a big portion of my enthusiasm for the company and the road ahead I think it's rare if you look at the industry, oftentimes you see companies that start out with a single solution and then are able to grow from there. One of the best advantages Anishin has is this platform-centric approach to do compliance on the journey I talked about. So if you think about that journey, every customer that is going to cloud has this challenge that they either have to comply to a bunch of standards one or many and then how do I do that in a platform approach in a common way so that I don't have to worry about it? I play a subscription and I am just protected by that and I actually get to marketplace. So that's a tremendous journey we're on. We've only done a few of them and we have a whole new set of compliance standards coming on our platform. So that's one way I look forward to that. The other one I'm really looking forward to is the commercial customers. There's a huge opportunity for people to really know that they're sitting on top of a very secure environment on the AWS and how do I quickly propel myself into the marketplace so that I can be differentiated. I can get to market quickly but I can also make sure my innovations are getting to the marketplace as a customer, right? So I think I'm really excited about the things we are bringing to market not just this year, but next year, early next year on the compliance side as well as the commercial side that'll actually differentiate us and make it a lasting part of a customer's journey. And that's I think the best thing you can hope for for building a lasting company where your innovations are powering the productivity of your customers in a meaningful manner. And I always feel proud of the team. You mentioned the awards but honestly more than anything else we've put together a great team and the team does a tremendous job with a very good ecosystem of partners and our humility is it's not just us it's the ecosystem together and the partnership with Amazon that helps us be the company we are able to be. We live in really story times and we're lucky to be part of this opportunity if you will. Yeah, better together that ecosystem is incredibly powerful. Thank you so much Rakesh for talking about what's going on at Amnesian how you're helping customers accelerate FedRAMP compliance, what you're doing in the commercial space and how you're helping your customers really improve their bottom line. We thank you so much for partnering with theCUBE for season two, episode four of the AWS startup showcase. My pleasure. Thank you very much. And we want to thank you for watching but keep it right here for more action on theCUBE which as you know is your leader in tech coverage. I'm Lisa Martin, see you next time.