 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of AWS ReInvent. My name is Savannah Peterson, and I am absolutely thrilled for this segment. We are joined by leaders at Cisco App Dynamics, as well as Royal Caribbean. The two have been working together for over five years, leveraging full-stack observability. We're going to dig in. But first of all, please welcome Alice from Royal Caribbean and Greg from Cisco App Dynamics to the show. Hey, friends. Hi, how are you doing? I'm excited, clearly. How are you doing, Greg? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me on the show today. Hey, it is absolutely our pleasure. Alice, I have to start with you. I don't think there are too many industries that have gotten as much coverage as cruising has over the last couple of years. You've been working with Royal Caribbean for over a decade. You've seen it through the stormy seas of the pandemic, if you will. What has the last few years and the last few months been like for you? It's really been a wild ride, to your point. We were sailing high, and then I don't think any other industry experienced what happened with COVID that you walked in one day, and then that day the whole industry shut down. So it was a big challenge for us. And then as soon as we shut down and we weathered the storm with COVID, then we have what we called our health and return to service. So as quickly as it stopped, we had to start sailing again. So it's really been a challenge, but we're happy to be back on our feet and heading in the right direction now. I really hope we can continue the sailing metaphors throughout the course of this interview, and you nailed that first segment, Alice. I'm so here for it. I want to talk about how you've worked together, but I want to give Greg a second to chime in here. So Greg, you're the executive CTO at Cisco App Dynamics. How have you and the team weathered the last two and a half years? Well, it's interesting. The pandemic really brought together an interesting conundrum, right? So on one hand, you had, you know, the consumers, the end users, that became very reliant on digital services. They had a function in a way that was very performing, right? So 84% of the respondents that we had come back through a report called the Appattention Index came back and said that digital services were really instrumental for them to get back to some level of normalcy. But the interesting part that came about that is that out of those respondents, 60% of them blame the brand if the application did not work the way they expected it. So they didn't really care about the complexity that's in the back end, right? So when you look at the shift in the IT department, the IT department had to go out and quickly innovate, quickly start to introduce new services, which ultimately brought together a sprawl in their technology stack. So when you're adding to it, you're not taking things away. You're continuously growing. You're finding that the problems or the root cause of an application issue became more difficult. So that's where, you know, from an Cisco App Dynamics perspective, you know, we're one of the leading observability and application performance monitoring tools. So we help customers like Royal Caribbean to be able to zero in on root cause and ensure that their end users have that best experience. I'm smiling as someone who was a former waitress and I can remember the amount of times I was scolded for something that happened that was far out of my control in the complex layers of the kitchen. And I think that anyone who's had a poor customer experience while interacting with a brand may or may not intentionally, I think it's actually sometimes very unintentional to your point, get frustrated with said brand. I can imagine that is an experience and a priority that you have at Royal Caribbean Alice. How has full stack observability played a role in your team's ability to serve the customers and keep your community engaged during this very kind of wobbly time? Yeah, you know, we have really worked hard to improve and remove friction from our guest vacation. And we want to keep them on vacation and having a great time. You know, we say we don't really sell a cruise. We sell an experience. So we use App Dynamics to monitor those key applications that our guests are interacting with to ensure that they're having that experience that we expect. You know, we've learned that just because a system or a server says, hey, I'm up 99% of the time, that doesn't mean that my guests are experiencing that same type of stability. So once again, we really worked well with App Dynamics. They partnered with us to ensure that our guests are getting that vacation experience they're looking for. Do you think, just to follow up there, do you think that you would have advanced in the ways that you have working with Cisco App Dynamics and across functions over the last few years without this crunch was necessity the mother of invention for you to any degree? You know, I don't, I don't think that the crunch brought it on because we, like I said, we started this journey back in 2017. And we're not unlike a lot of companies where we're on this we're on this maturity ride where we want to go from being reactive where our guests are telling us something is broken to being prevented. Definitely, you know, COVID played into this because I think we learned to do less, you know, more with less. So, you know, we got, you know, it's very hard in the cruise industry. We did take a hit, but we were able to use the App Dynamics tools to ensure that our systems were running with having less people also watching the system. So less eyes on glass, more automation. And that's a more with more more stability, more credibility and more transparency is definitely something that we're all looking forward. And it's nice to see that implemented, especially at scale when you're dealing with so many customers from all over the world trying to access your service and wanting that personalized experience. Greg, what does it feel like for you as a leader to hear someone like Alice say how powerful your tool has been and ensuring that customer experience? Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic. And especially, you know, Alice is absolutely right. You know, the cruise industry was really had a very unique challenge in front of them. And I really applaud the folks at Royal Caribbean for stepping up to make sure that when the pandemic eased, so to speak, that the experience to the customer was actually even better. Right. So when we were able to work and partner together to make sure that, you know, the user experience is top notch. The availability is there. The resiliency of their platform is there. So by working with customers like Royal Caribbean is really one of the shining stars that we can talk about that really helped make a big difference in, you know, that post pandemic era to be able to really do what's right for the customer. How often are you engaging with customers like Alice as a team? How big is that feedback in your product roadmap? Oh, personally, I'm engaged with customers on a daily basis. And I see it across the map from many different industries. And, you know, a lot of folks had different challenges, but the ultimate commonality that I've seen across, you know, multiple industries is that, you know, when you were in that pandemic state, digital services were the only way that their customers were interacting with them. So, you know, when you're looking at a bank or you're looking at, you know, different types of travel agencies and organizations that, you know, like Royal Caribbean as well, that really had that opportunity to focus on what's the most valuable thing to them, which is user experience. It's a very, very common trend that we saw. And, you know, you see an expedited path of digital transformation happen. And really that's where we partner with, you know, customers like Royal Caribbean and many others across different industries to make sure that the business outcomes were being driven towards the proper direction as well as that, you know, the user experience. And I don't think I can emphasize user experience as being so critically important any more than I've already had, but it's really one of the most valuable currencies most organizations have. One of my favorite lines is community is your first defensible asset. And, you know, you can talk about user experience as much as you want on here at the end of the day. If people aren't having a positive interaction with your brand or your product, it's probably not going to last super long unless it's legacy and we won't have to go down that rabbit hole today. Especially if I can add there's a lot of competition. Of course. Right. There's a lot of competition out there. So if your applications do not perform or your digital services do not perform, the end user has the quick ability to just quickly delete and move on. And in the same thing with what Alice sees in the cruise industry, you know, you have an opportunity to rise to the top. And I've really applaud them for taking advantage of that opportunity. Yeah, well, I'm here for both of you cheering each other on. Certainly the water level rises together. That's right. Alice, what sort of challenges are you taking on currently that you're able to disclose? What sort of leaps do you think, or doesn't have to be leaps, but what kind of experience are you hoping to continue to enhance for Royal Caribbean customers? You know, right now, you know, with our current connectivity, it's all about managing that bandwidth. You know, we're hoping to go to that state where bandwidth isn't at a high cost. So now we're going to be even able to watch our user interaction more from ship to shore. You know, and you're, we're maybe moving to that area where we're thinking cloud first from a shift. If you think about it, we've got 50 plus data centers floating around the world. So that connectivity is key. Now we're opening up that bandwidth. Now I need to see how that, how the transactions are performing as we come off ship, you know, with that once again, that cloud first mentality. It's a super exciting time for us. And I really see, you know, Abdi is going to play a role in that. I love that visual just for a second of 50 data centers with also surrounded by people having a very wonderful time on board. What a nice spot. I can't say that every data center I've ever been to is as glamorous, fun, or sexy as being on a Royal Caribbean ship. However, I hope that we do perhaps in that direction. We were just at super computing a few weeks ago and it was great to see all the hardware there. So you never know what role do you see yourself and the team and Cisco app dynamics playing in that future for companies like Royal Caribbean, Greg. You know, it's really, it's really staying right lockstep with our customers as they move through that digital transformation efforts. The key piece is that we look at it from that full stack view. So we offer full stack observability, which, you know, if you look at the challenges that we want to go after is traditional IT departments were historically siloed pretty significantly between, you know, network and infrastructure security app dev. So I mean, ensuring that we can get our customers to be able to have that common view that shows what's the real important pieces across all domains. So when they start moving down the path of digital transformation, that's an opportunity to also revamp how their processes are, the people interact and the technology that they use to be able to deliver the proper business outcomes. So we talk a lot with our customers around full stack observability, but the key part is business context. So if you have a big effort for digital transformation, you're starting to add new services to it. How do you know if it's actually impacting the business in the positive or negative way? So by us implementing the business context to ensure that you understand the investments being made, that you can show to your business leaders is showing an uptick in the business outcomes you're going after. It's really, really about a strong partnership with our customers, but also ensuring that their business is being positively impacted by our technology to be able to help them really align the teams and be able to have the right desired outcomes. I love that, Greg. And I love that customer first, that community first attitude. It's something that you both share. Final question for the two of you. And I'm going to start with you, Alice, since I suspect you've probably been on more cruises than Greg and I combined, though I could be making a wild assumption. Where are you cruising to next? You know, I just got off the cruise. So next up, I want to revisit the Galapagos. I think the Galapagos is the best place to go. And if you haven't done it, it's absolutely where you should go. It's a beautiful trip. Greg, have you ever done the Galapagos? Is that going to be your next Royal Caribbean cruise? I've never done the Galapagos, but they may just have made it to my list. Fantastic. Well, I second Alice's endorsement on that. I had the pleasure of going about a decade ago. Very magical place that teaches you a lot about nature, much like the two of you have taught us very extensively about full stack observability, how it applies to user experience, customer experience, and the ocean that I am currently staring at here in Pacifica, California. Alice, thank you so much for joining us from Miami, Greg, to you in Colorado. I hope that you both continue to work in harmony together and that we can all see each other on the friendly seas soon. Thank you all for tuning in to our AWS re-invent coverage. This is theCUBE. My name is Savannah Peterson, and we look forward to seeing you for our next segment.