 Welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin live here with David Nicholson. We're at AWS re-invent 2021. This is an outstanding event. There's a lot of people here, tens of thousands. And this is probably one of the most important and largest hybrid tech events that we're doing this year with AWS and its massive ecosystem of partners. We're going to be covering this two live sets, two remote studios, over 100 guests on theCUBE at this re-invent. And David and I are pleased to welcome Giorgio Vanzini, next, the vice president and global head of partners and alliances at DXC. Giorgio, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Talk to us about what's going on at DXC. What are you and AWS doing together with the scoop? Yes, well, some exciting things are happening between AWS and DXC, which is, we're really focusing on our customers that we have, especially in banking and capital markets, but also automotive. And then also, we were a launch partner today with the AWS mainframe modernization, right? And so we're focusing on mainframes as well. So exciting spaces for us to go collaborate and work with AWS for our customers. Talk to me about some of the things, you know, the last 22 months have been quite challenging, quite dynamic, and we've seen such a massive acceleration to the cloud. What have you seen from your perspective? Are you seeing customers in every industry that have really figured we've got to do this now? Because if we don't, we're going to be out of business. Yes, you're absolutely correct. We've seen a dramatic acceleration of people wanting or customers wanting to move to the cloud, public and private, and an acceleration of assistance that they're requesting from global systems integrators. So what we've seen is, you know, part of our cloud's right strategy that we have, really understanding what does the customer need from a strategy perspective, from a business value perspective and a technology perspective. And AWS has been a great partner with us to actually accommodate all of these kind of things. And the announcements that you had today, you know, just substantiate kind of that fact as well. Can you double click on the cloud-right approach? Talk to us about what that is, why it's important, and what are some of the outcomes that it's helping customers to generate? Absolutely, love to. Cloud-right is really DXE's strategy to take the customers on the journey from the mainframe to the cloud. And to customize this, because every customer is different, they have different requirements, different environments, different business strategies. So therefore, the cloud-right approach is really customizing it for the customer. What is the right business strategy? What is the right technology strategy? And then migrating them over into the cloud as well. Keeping in mind that, again, customers are specific. You know, industries are specific. You know, data requirements are different, analytics are different. You know, government requirements are different. So you need to keep those in mind when you transition customers over into the cloud space. Right, from a data residency, data sovereignty, and all of the different rules and regulations that are popping up that are kind of similar to GDPR, for example, that's a big challenge. But one of the things too that's happening, Georgia, is that every company to be competitive these days has to become a data company, right? There's no choice. You've got to be data-driven. You've got to have a data strategy at the core of the business. Otherwise, there's a competitor in the rear view mirror who's ready to take your place. That is absolutely correct. And so that's part of our cloud-ride strategy, is understanding what are the business requirements from the customer, understanding their competitive edge and migrating them over. Because in many instances, to your point, they have huge reams of data, petabytes of information of data, but really making sense of it. So running the analytics on it and having the business insights. So helping the customers understand that. But then also understanding of like, what are the key business requirements that they have, which applications to migrate and which not to migrate? So I'm curious, you mentioned that you're a launch partner for mainframe modernization. That's sort of one slice of, and a very important slice of some organization's business and migration strategy to cloud. I'm curious what the DXC blend is between standardized offerings and bespoke services and how you manage that. Do you have a thought about that? Wouldn't it be great to have small, medium and large and have people click on it? Yes, here's a T-shirt for you. Which size are you? No, I'm actually glad you're asking that question because that's exactly going to the core of the cloud-ride strategy. And the cloud-ride really means that, is like, which T-shirt size is correct for you, right? This is the question that we just addressed, which is it has to be bespoke because one size does not fit all. And so understanding the customer requirements of, do we need to move the data to the cloud or do we move to need a subset to the cloud? Do we need to move part of the business applications and which ones and in which order, right? And so that's why I think we bring something to the table in the AWS mainframe modernization, which is unique because we have an end-to-end kind of approach from a planning to implementation to execution and running as well. So I think DXC is uniquely positioned with our cloud-ride strategy. One of the things AWS or Geo talks about is not being custom, but being purpose-built. Talk to me about kind of compare and contrast that with bespoke solutions, industry-specific, obviously customers have specificities. Do you see a difference there between purpose-built and bespoke, or are they aligned from your perspective? Yes, I do agree that the technology layers are definitely common layers, horizontal layers, right? Where I think you have bespoke implementations on the business strategy and the business rules. And so you have to understand what business is the customer really and how to implement the business rules into the technology stack as well and bringing it all together. So while the technology, I think, goes horizontal to your point, right? You know, compute and storage is the same wherever you go, the bits are the same. However, how they're utilized and how you use them for your customers and your interaction is completely different from customer-to-customer and industry-to-industry, as you guys know as well. You know, it can be really disheartening working in this space when you think of 475 different kinds of instances and how important it is to get that right for a customer and how much they don't care. Ultimately, they don't want to hear about it. They don't want to know. But they want you to get it right so that it doesn't matter. So it's this irony of all of the work that people have to do, like a DXC, to make those details not matter. Any thoughts on that? Are you dejected because of that at all? Well, that is part of the value that we bring, right? Sure. To your point, absolutely. The customer doesn't care in quotes, right? Just make it work for us and run it smoothly. On the other hand, we're on the hook to make sure that all the different partners that we have, that we integrate, including AWS, run smoothly and coherent and are up 99.999% of the time, obviously, right? And so the customers do care about our interaction with them as well, while AWS is always there. Sure. One of the things that we talked about a little bit ago is every industry had to pivot dramatically at the last 22 months or so. And we've seen every industry. Cloud is no longer nice to have. We've got to be able to get there. But you mentioned the focus in banking and I think automotive. I'd love to get your perspectives on what some of the things are the opportunities that DXC sees in those particular industries as opportunities to modernize. Yes. We latched on to banking and automotive because those are ripe for transition and the customers are willing to take the steps there as well. It doesn't mean that other industries are not relevant like consumer or retail or technology and manufacturing. However, especially in automotive, I think we have a unique positioning where we have the majority of the OEMs and car manufacturers worldwide as customers. And when you think about AWS, you think about the utilization of the information that comes back from telematics information and customization, right? Pedabytes of information that comes back from every device, which is a car and what kind of service you can provide there. So it's an industry, you know, we talked about Tesla early on as well, right? It's an industry that's ripe for software and software updates. Very similar, you see a lot of things happening in the banking capital market space where they're moving, you know, their customer base into new spaces as well. Just think about all the NFTs that are happening, all the fintech that's happening, right? So the banking capital market companies have to, you know, have an evolution going on, right? And assisting them in this evolution is part of our strategy. So you're responsible for global partnerships and alliances. DXC would be considered a large global systems integrator. The world is obviously moving in the direction of cloud. We've got the three big players, AWS and the other two. I can't think of their names while I'm sitting here in Vegas right now. How do you balance what you do with a variety of providers for customers? And are you going to market primarily as DXC with the DXC relationship with the customer or in support of those cloud vendors that have essentially technology that if left unimplemented is essentially worthless? I mean, you bridge the divide between the technology and the true value of the technology, but are you the primary seat holder at the customer table or is AWS the primary seat holder or is it a little of both? Long-winded question, I apologize, but I think you understand what I'm saying. It's an interesting world that we live in now. It definitely is. And if I wouldn't know you better, I would say it's a tricky question, but in all seriousness, we really are customer driven, just like AWS as well, right? So we're really trying to do the right thing for the customer, hence our cloud right strategy, where we don't have a cookie cutter approach of saying, oh, just go do the following five things and you're going to be fine. We really want to look at the customer and say, what is important to you? What is the timeframe you're looking at? What is the strategic imperative that you have? What data do you have to move? What system do you have to leave behind? And then do the right thing for the customer, literally, right? And so in this instance, absolutely, in my role, AWS plays a huge role, as you know, as one of our core hyperscaler partners, a very good partner, we love AWS. And so making sure that they're always going to be there as part of infrastructure is part of our strategy. You meant, oh, sorry, Dave. No, no, no, I was just saying it makes sense. It does make sense. In terms of being customer first, we talk with AWS, you can't kind of have an interview with one of their folks without talking about that. We work backwards from the customer first, this customer obsession, it sounds like from a cultural perspective, there's pretty strong alignment there with DXC. Exactly right. So I think from that perspective, we share the same DNA where we look first to the customer and then say, okay, how do we deduct what is right for the customer and implement it that way, right? Because in many instances, as you mentioned, the two other hyperscalers that we don't talk about, customers usually don't have a single source kind of approach, right? They usually have a dual approach. And so while we have to work with that, there's preferred vendors that we engage with, right? And so clearly AWS is one of our preferred vendors that we engage with. Can you share an example? I'd love to know a customer that's taken the cloud-right approach, applied it really kind of in a textbook way that you think really shows the value of DXC. Any customers, but even by industry, if you don't want to name them, come to mind that really show the value of that approach. Yes, so we just concluded a major migration for one of our leading insurance companies, a global big company that is similar with my birthplace. But what we really did is a cloud-right approach of migrating them from their legacy mainframe and virtualized systems that they had to a cloud approach. And in the process of doing this, we reduced their overall operating expenses, their CAPEX expenses obviously, but also reduced their overall budget about 30% reduction by moving them to the cloud. Again, doing the cloud-right approach of understanding what exactly to move in which timeframe and what to leave behind, right? Because in many instances, customers don't have an exit strategy. They rush to the cloud, but then leave their old legacy behind and like, oh, what are you going to do with this? And so you need to have a comprehensive end-to-end system strategy of like, what do you want to leave behind? When do you want to sunset it? And when do you want to migrate certain things over as well? That's got to be quite challenging for I would assume a legacy history insurance company been around for a long time, lots of data, but culturally very different than the cloud mindset. You bring up one of those soft skills, right? Which is the cultural aspect of talking with the customers of how do we migrate you? It's not just, and that's why I said, it's not just a business decision or a technology decision. In many instances, you affect people's life as well, right? When you think about old systems administrators that were working on mainframes, now if you move everything to the cloud, they become obsolete. So rescaling the workforce and having a comprehensive plan is part of the soft skills, right? Where you think we're comprehensive about the customer. It's not just technology. It's really is the full experience, right? At 360, what happens to the people? How do we migrate the people? But also setting expectations with top management, for example, right? Of saying, how is this going to change our business? What new opportunities are going to be there? So those are all the soft kind of skills as well. You know, one of the things that struck me this morning during the AWS keynote is just all of the innovation that goes on. That AWS really, that flywheel of the customer and all the opportunities that their customers create for AWS and the opportunities then that AWS technologies create for the customers across industries. I just kind of really felt that flywheel this morning when Adam was talking about all of the things that they're revealing. You must feel the same as a partner. I do and I'm a tech geek, so I'm totally excited about this and it feeds my soul because I can remember when we first had analytics with Redshift, and then customers were coming back and going like, well, could we do something that is real-time, right? Because we have requirements in this and then Kafka came out, right? As a new service, they're like, okay, great, right? And so we're really there to embrace every new service that comes out from AWS, which is fantastic, right? I mean, the speed and agility that comes out with AWS. And we totally embrace that for our customers. Awesome, Georgie, thank you for joining David and me today talking about what's going on with DXC, your partnership with AWS, CloudRight, and how you're helping customers get CloudRight. We appreciate your insights and your time. Thank you, appreciate it too, thank you. All right, for David Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, a V-Leader and global live tech coverage.