 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the CUBE's special program series, Women of the Cloud, brought to you by AWS. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I'm very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni. Adriana Bustamante joins me, the VP of Global Alliances at Rackspace Technology. Adriana, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me today. Lisa, thank you so much for having me again. I love this. Yeah, me too. Tell me a little bit about you, a little bit about Rackspace Technology, as well as the role that you currently have. Sure. So I, again, I'm Adriana Bustamante. I look after our Global Alliances within Rackspace, specifically looking after some of our strategic partners. I've been with Rackspace for a little over 16 years now, working with partners in some form or fashion. Rackspace Technology, we are the multi-cloud solution experts. We really work with our clients to drive business outcomes and transformations in this multi-cloud world. And our mission is to embrace technology, empower our customers and deliver the future. And I get to have the fun pleasure of building and curating and cultivating partnership relationships. So very much our partnerships are important to our success. We are privileged to be able to work with AWS, along with other partners across the industry, to help do more and bring more value to clients. So you've been with Rackspace Technology for a while. Tell me a little bit about recommendations, any tactical recommendations that you have for other women, maybe even men, who are looking to grow their careers in tech, maybe they're wanting to get into tech. What are some of the things that you've learned along the way that you highly recommend? Yeah, no, great, great question. I've had the fortune of being at Rackspace now for a number of years, and it's always because I've been able to create my own opportunities and work. And so that really falls in line to some of the recommendations that I hold dear to my heart. And number one is really to stay curious and learn from reading articles to staying close and asking questions from your colleagues. I know just like at AWS and at Rackspace, there are some very talented people across all areas of the business, and they are the best to learn from. I also am a firm believer in developing and expanding that network because that helps you bring and build out your reach and helps you continue to learn in different areas outside the company. I think from raising your hand, leaning in, don't be afraid to speak up, especially as we think about women of the cloud, which is part of what this theme of this session is. And I think about how much I love to see women elevated within roles inside of Rackspace and out. It is about raising your hand, getting uncomfortable in speaking up if you are a bit shy or timid, if there's an area that you are interested in and passionate about, go learn and drive because there's opportunities to create new roles for yourself, new ways to bring value into the organization, and then you become memorable for that. This person was known for helping solve this problem. It's been a good fortune, and within our company culture of any Racker, the front lines know how to solve most problems just as much as the top executives. Yeah, I love your saying stay curious. I think curiosity is probably one of the best things that people can have. It's to your point of, I like to call it getting comfortably uncomfortable, raise your hand, ask a question. I always think if you're in a meeting and maybe you tune out or there's something that you don't understand, ask a question because I guarantee there's five other people in that room that have the same question, but they're not curious enough or hungry enough to ask the question to learn more. So I think those are such great recommendations that you have provided that I think you probably would tell your younger self, stay curious, ask questions. Yes, for sure. I also am so big, at least for me personally, context is so important for me. If I understand context, then I'm really able to figure out where can I drive the most value for me personally, and then that goes into leading my teams. And so to me, the only way you get the context is if you're learning or asking the questions if you don't understand, because it really helps you understand the holistic business. 100%, that context is everything. But a lot of people are just a little bit timid sometimes and don't want to be the one to raise their hand in a room or online these days. And I think it's such a great skill that anybody can benefit from. I'd love to know some of your other skills, some examples of specific success stories where in your current role where you've really helped organizations solve problems related to the cloud. Yes. So I think about ultimately we're looking to see and always looking to see how we can help transform our clients' businesses. And often the underlying root of that is through technology solutions. And so we've helped clients who are mostly legacy data center based clients that have built large infrastructure components and environments and they want to learn and lean into the cloud. And they're not really sure how to do that. They probably may have a leader that's told them that they need to do this. Everybody's at a different level of journey. And so specifically and especially in partnership with some of our hyperscaler partners just at like AWS is, we can help customers understand what that journey needs to look like, how to successfully move. Let's say if they're a large VMware shop today, they already have a little bit of cloud native. Together through our ecosystem of relationships, we've helped customers not only be able to build and maintain part of their data center footprint that's not ready yet to transform but move some of this into a facility that is within our data centers to get out of that huge kind of cap X heavy workload type in environment. And then especially with AWS and the partnership that they have along with Rackspace with VMware, we leverage BMC on AWS solutions. And then we can help them fully embrace that cloud native. And from a Rackspace perspective, we are providing those services and expertise across all levels in a single pane of glass. So you can manage from your more traditional workloads to embracing more of a cloud native approach. And it's all about helping clients drive business outcomes, as you said. Every organization these days, I always like to think it, whether it's my grocery store or retailer or bank, has to be a data-driven company but it has to leverage obviously the cloud. But there's so many options. It's quite nebulous, no pun intended, maybe pun intended. So, but it's all about helping clients drive those business outcomes. I imagine it's quite fulfilling for you to be able to help different types of organizations really maximize their use of technology their understanding of technology to really build bridges, deliver the products and services that everybody's expecting these days. Yes, no. And I think, again, it's what I love about being in partnerships because those relationships become fundamental in helping remove those complexities for the clients. And so the more that we as Rackspace are able to connect and deepen these relationships, it just becomes less decision-making, less things that the client ultimately has to think about. So, nothing gives me more joy than being able to help solve the customer's problems. And then in turn, we're doing that through our partnership relationships. So we're bringing everybody together to ultimately provide a better outcome for the client. Yeah, and as you said, those relationships are foundational to everything and ultimately the outcomes that the end customer is able to deliver to these demanding, whether it's consumer or business or whatnot. A lot of challenges that organizations have today, but it sounds like the relationship cultivating that you're helping lead is really critical in those organizations. Being able to embrace technology, utilize it in ways that allow them to get products and services to market as fast as the consumer demands. I'd love to get your perspective as a female in technology. We talk a lot about diversity, inclusion, equity. We can talk about it all day long, but there's still some challenges there. What are some of the challenges that you see that are still persistent with respect to diversity and tech today and maybe some of your recommendations to eradicate some of those? No, sure. So it starts really early. It starts almost in education and making sure that women and a diverse set of applicants are taking certain and studying certain disciplines. And then I think about it from a recruiting and hiring perspective. Are organizations doing enough to expand their reach? You know, we were actually talking. I have the good fortune of being the executive sponsor of our resource group within Rackspace. It's called Power, which is the professional organization of women's empowerment at Rackspace. And we were talking just, I think last week, on we need to make sure we're going where the women are to make sure we're letting them know about Rackspace, the benefits about Rackspace. And ultimately in turn, that helps build more recruiting into the talent pool. More people are raising their hand and interviewing and hiring. I think talent in general, as we're seeing right now, is so hard to come by and so even more important to retain. And the more diverse pools that we have of Rackers, it's just bringing different perspectives and Rackers are what we call Rackspace employees. It's bringing those Rackers together to help solve the bigger problems because you're able to do more with a diverse set of outlook. And I think, you know, as a woman, I want to have that equitable seat at the table. And so ultimately, when I think about myself from a leadership perspective, am I making sure that all of those opportunities are available for the women that come along behind me? And how am I elevating other women within our organization from a day to day? So they have that spotlight. So, you know, fundamentally, organizations need to focus on how to expand that reach to bring that diverse set of applicants and voices. And then you need strong leaders at every level to be advocates and sponsors to make sure that this is an important topic and top of mind in all organizations. So you can ultimately provide an equitable approach. Yeah, I love that. I agree 100 percent. You know, it's it's so important to start at the education front, but also to be able to have just the thought diversity alone in organizations. I've seen many studies that show having females in executive positions are companies that do that are more profitable. There's a lot of data out there that demonstrates that there are huge advantages to any type of organization to really invest in diversity. But to your point, it's not just about attracting. It's about retaining the talent as well. I mean, that that is critical for every business. Yes, no, absolutely. You know, more and more and more, we're starting to see that soft benefits are becoming more important as we think about a younger workforce coming in. And when I think about soft benefits, it's more around our employee resource groups. What are our benefits look like for our females within our in our health care within the insurance plans? What type of time off and maternity benefits are we are we extending? What does that work life balance look like in a hybrid world or a virtual world? Those those questions become. I mean, when I I remember years ago, no one would even think about asking those questions. And now we see not only those questions coming up more regularly, but we're trying to be more intentional within our organization to be proactive about that messaging. So we can help show and demonstrate that we are an inclusive community and and that their support for women to be successful within Rackspace. You know, we have mentoring programs that we do that are, you know, that we really try to highlight and promote for our female community and then also for our broader community. We look at building different circles that women can come together in a space that they feel comfortable to ask questions to figure out how do they excel in advance in their career? Those become very attractive for for getting that that talent that we want. Absolutely. And you just brought up such a great point, Adriana. That's intention programs like what you're describing that the Rackers have opportunity to access as there's intention in all of this, which is so critical for diversity programs to be successful to attract the right talent, to retain the right talent. It's like a flywheel. I think it's all it's all linked together. But I'd love to know what you see that's next in cloud. How do you see your role evolving in the industry? We talked about the great relationship building that you're doing. What do you see as next in cloud? No, sure. Again, because I helplessly can't be biased. It is all about to me that that partner ecosystem. It is how we can build strong relationships that help minimize the complexities for the clients. Now the pace for innovation and competitive edge is faster than it was that we saw 24 months ago. We saw COVID advance lots of different areas of the business but really it forced a lot of companies to transform. And this is where I think there's a unique opportunity to really look at what a partner ecosystem looks like. Who are the right partners that organizations like AWS like Rackspace should be working with? Because oftentimes the partners that were our partners and key partners maybe three to five years ago maybe aren't going to be as relevant in that same ecosystem in the next five years. So constantly making sure that we have the right ecosystem in place and the right relationships to help ultimately drive better outcomes for the clients. And that's like we said several times already during this interview. It's all about the outcomes for clients. You mentioned COVID you know there's been I call them COVID catalysts a lot of transformation forcing function there's definitely been some silver linings but I'd love to get your perspective if we go back to like the last five years some of the biggest changes that you've seen in the tech workforce in innovation in the last you know three to five years that really excite you. Yeah so I think we all had to learn to be virtual by default and so I think we're just coming out of people are excited to be in person again. You know when we have different events whether they be with internal records or with partners or clients like everyone's excited to see each other again but you're still seeing this mix of we need to be hybrid by by default which I know wasn't in everybody's DNA from a technology perspective and I think that's enabling more virtual teams more matrix type of teams where you're bringing together different expertise across the organization to move at a faster pace. You know we talk about you know talk about COVID which led to that great resignation where you saw many people changing their their jobs. You know we saw women not only within rack space but even outside like really you know take a pause and and really start thinking about what's important to them in that returning that returning to work and so I just think all of this has really as as you mentioned Lisa a forcing function on being intentional to create the right environments that are that are building a place that we can retain that level of skill and expertise and I think that's just going to become something that's more increasingly important with with every year and profession choice. I agree it's it's going to be building upon like it's that flywheel that I'm talking about that of successes of promoting women of making sure that there's plenty of opportunity encourage you women to your point to be curious raise your hand ask the question there's so much value it's invaluable for organizations to really have diversity throughout their organization you did a great job of explaining even in the benefits frame framework so I so appreciate you being on the cube Adrian it's great to see you again thank you for sharing your story the successes that you've had as a rocker in cloud and some of the things that you recommend to the next generation we really appreciate your time no thank you if I can walk into more rooms where there is more women at the table and on the calls I am a happier I'm a happier individual so I love any opportunity to really see how we can continue to to make more space in the rooms for women that are just overly talented and deserve to be there I am with you on that again thank you so much great to see you and we'll see you again soon thank you Lisa take care have a good afternoon thank you we want to thank you for watching the cubes special program series women of the cloud brought to you by AWS I'm Lisa Martin thanks for watching