 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020. Sponsored by Intel and AWS. Okay, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here re-invent 2020 for AWS. Amazing content happening here within across the industry on digital transformation and more important than ever in the public sector has been more impacted by anyone during the COVID pandemic. And we're here remotely with theCUBE virtual because of the pandemic. Got a great guest, Kim Majuris. She's the leader of the US education state and local government for AWS public sector. Kim, great to see you. Thanks for coming on remotely. At least we get to have a remote interview. Well, thank you for taking the time. This is our world these days. So it's good to be able to connect. Well, thanks for coming on. We're doing some specialty programming around public sector, mainly because it's such an important area. Andy Jafsi's keynote, which is for the AWS conference at large at re-invent and talks broadly, but I think it highlights what's going on in your world. And that is this facing the truth. This digital transformation has been forced upon us. It's accelerated and it's get busy building or get busy, you know, figuring out how it might unwind and more education, virtual remote. If we didn't have radio conferencing, this could have been a disaster even further, but certainly has impacted everybody in the government education. How is it impacting? Share with us what's going on. You know, I think the difficult part is, is when we turned on the news early days during COVID, it was clear that students weren't learning and citizens couldn't get in contact with their government to ask for support. I would say it was that moment in time where the technical debt that, whether you're state, local or education, you had to quickly realize that you need to connect with your students and your citizens. But I take a look at how quickly they were able to turn across the US. Many of them realized what usually took years, literally turned into innovating overnight to support students as well as those filing for unemployment claims. And I think that's what we heard a lot of and those are some of the opportunities that Amazon really took to our customers, say, hey, we can help you solve these problems with great services such as Connect. You know, Connect came up in the keynote multiple times. Andy really spent time on that as a disruption slash enabler for value. Can you share how cloud has scaled up some of your customers? I know Connect's been pretty prominent in the public sector for COVID support and really has changed and saved lives in many cases. Can you share an example of how it's worked out? Absolutely. I mean, Rhode Island is a great example. They use Amazon Connect. They help the state literally address this massive surge of unemployment insurance applications due to COVID-19. But literally the call times and the vines were cut down and what they were able to do is answer the call, not just have it be on a fast busy or a disconnect. Whether it was Department of Labor at Rhode Island, whether it was the state of Kentucky or the state of West Virginia, all those authorities had to deal with that surge and they were able to do it successfully and literally in some cases overnight to support citizens. That's how quickly they were able to innovate and hit those call centers effectively. But it's not just about the call center because keep in mind, they would go in to those call centers with Connect. They were able to actually take those calls from home. When we saw that in education as well, take a look at LA Unified School District, what they had to do to quickly transition from in-person training to supporting these students remotely, they had to do it overnight and they use Connect there as well. Not only to support the students, the teachers or the staff, but they took that opportunity to really continue educating and continue serving. You know, one of the things I was talking to Andy about in my one-on-one interview before I reinvent was Necessity is the mother of all invention in these days. And I think that came from a quote from one of your customers that I interviewed when asked how the innovation strategy come about. And that's what they said. They said, we needed it really bad and we had to move quickly. And then Andy said in his keynote that everything's on full display right now, meaning that the pandemic has forced one and you can see who's winning and who's not based on where they are in the cloud journey. So I have to ask you, leadership's a big part of this. What is the trend that you're seeing within your world? Because, you know, government not known for moving fast and this is a speed game at this point. Healthcare, a big part of that. You got education, government. What's the leadership mindset on innovating right now? And can you share, because yeah, you got some easy examples now to point to us, hey, we have connected with people where that's a productivity opportunity. That's now the new normal. So even when life does come back, there's new things that have been discovered. Is that resonating with your customers? And can you share the leadership mindset? Absolutely, so make no mistake. It was never a question of if it was a question of when the pandemic clearly is accelerating it. But, you know, we've been working with over 6,500 government agencies and collaborating with them to really focus on some of their mission critical cloud-based services. So this is the new normal. They recognize it and it's the foundation that during the pandemic that it's been set to say, hey, we're going to push and we're gonna push quicker because they were actually able to demonstrate that they could do it. I'll give you an example. It's a heartbreaking one from my perspective, being a mom. LA County Department of Child and Family Services, they upgraded their analog child protection hotline. Now the numbers are unfortunate and staggering, but when you took a look at the peak before the pandemic, the call center received as many as 21,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in a month. During those peak times, up to 100 staff members would log in and literally take 120 back-to-back calls per hour. Now, when you think about that legacy environment, with Amazon Connect, they were able to continue the service, continue the support to help these children and available 24-7 and they were able to do it from their homes. So, I mean, it gives me chills just thinking about the unfortunate situations, but they were able to quickly move and continue to support. And the thing too, I want to just bring up, also had a customer I interviewed from Canada. I think they were partnered with Accenture. They had unemployment checks they couldn't get out and entitlement things that were literally checks and Connect stood up that in record time. He was convinced. He was kind of an Amazon fan, but he was kind of still on Amazon. He was like, I'm convinced we're going to use Amazon going forward. It was a tipping point for him. There's a lot of these tipping points going on right now. This has been a big theme of this reinvent so far. Yeah, cloud transition to full cloud value. This is the new normal. What can clients get when they have budget or trying to get budget when they say, the benefit of the clouds are what? Well, I mean, again, use another use case. I'll go back to another example in LA County. So, when you think about LA County itself, I won't give you the exact numbers because I don't know them off the top. But approximately 10 million residents and employees over 100,000 staff. Again, look at the cost savings that they saw. So, technical debt is a problem. Being able to invest is a challenge because of budgets, but they were able to save 60% in one year from their on-prem environment and licensing costs. But the cost is one piece. If you could take 17% fewer calls and you're solving those challenges by using AI and ML through the technology of what they were gathering through those calls, it made a huge impact and improved their service to their citizens. So, the cost savings are there and there are so many examples that states are recognizing that they need to move quicker because they could take advantage of those costs, especially with some of the budget challenges we're going to see across the U.S. And the machine learning examples are off the charts. So Kim, I got to ask you going forward now and reinvent what's the big focus for you and your teams and your customers? You guys are very customer focused. You're working backers from the customers. We hear that on and on. What is going on in your customer base? What are the priorities? Priorities for us will always remain on the mission to which our customers are focusing on. If we think about education, the question is how are they re-imagining the delivery and the success in this new world that we're dealing with? So, we'll continue to work and innovate with our partners and with amazing attacks that are in our business. Take a look at Blackboard, right? They were able to scale 50 times their normal capacity globally, literally within 24 hours. They're looking at how do they continue to innovate to serve? We're going to work with K-12s through academic medical centers and research because when you think about what we need is we need to find that vaccine. We need to find the ability to treat and serve. We're focused on those missions with the states, the research and the education teams. Well, it's been an unusual year. Learning is changing, remote learning, remote work, the workforce, the workplace, the workloads. They're all changing and Cloud's a big part of it. Final question for you. What's the takeaway for re-invent this year? I mean, it's different. You mentioned some of those highlights. What's the big takeaway for your audience? I think for state, local and education it's available, it's now, and they have to serve their students and citizens quick. What they've been able to do in the Cloud, again, as I said at the start of the interview, they can now do overnight within minutes and hours and support their citizens and they have to do it quickly. So- A lot of IoT too, a lot of IoT goodness for those state and local governments too. Absolutely. It's going to continue. And I think the important part is focused on the opportunity of innovating and supporting the mission. Ken, great to see you. Thanks for the insight. Thanks for the update. Appreciate it. We'll be following it. A lot of great successes you guys have been having. The Cube's been involved in a bunch of them and we'll continue to follow the transformation. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Enjoy seeing you. Okay. This is the Cube Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. More coverage. Wall-to-wall re-invent 2020 virtual. Thanks for watching.