 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re-invent 2020, sponsored by Intel, AWS, and our community partners. Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's virtual coverage of AWS re-invent 2020. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. A great segment here with Presidio, two great guests, Chris Kagnasi, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Cloud and Managed Services Group at Presidio and Sam Fadigato, VP of Cloud Solutions Group with Presidio, both been here in theCUBE, talking with us many times before. Great to have you guys on. Thanks for coming on, Chris and Sam. Great, thank you John, thanks for having us. We've had many great cloud conversations with your company and engineers, architects. Going back to I think 2016, 2017, really as cloud hit that inflection point, certainly scaling public cloud and on-premises cloud operations, certainly that has happened. And it's continued to accelerate. Chris, I would like you to explain your relationship with AWS and your focus at this re-invent. What's going on with Presidio? What's new in your world? What's changed for you and the customers? Right, so thank you John. So Presidio's focus really is around developing the right strategies, helping companies realize the full potential of the AWS cloud. Think of it as a very strategic approach that aligns technology with business outcomes really on a global scale. This past year, if I look back a year ago at re-invent when Presidio was there, Coder Global was also there, which was an acquisition that we did and we closed out in August and Sam Faragato was the CEO of Coder Global. So what's really changed for us is taking our legacy of business around infrastructure, around security, around managed services and combining that with the really combining that with what Coder had around the professional services side of cloud engagement and really building out a company that I believe can deliver a very unique offering to clients because we can cover the full spectrum. So for us, a lot's happened in a year since we were at re-invent. At the end of the day, it's really about business and technical leaders that we have that are really dedicated to focusing on customers, their client experience and really delivering the best business outcome that we can. You know, one of the things that we chatted in the past and you just mentioned managed services, this is a huge deal because one of the trends that we've been reporting on here at theCUBE and on SiliconANGLE is, you know, a lot of the transformational goals are accelerated with COVID, we see that. Projects that are doubling down are mostly cloud related, large scale automation, machine learning, but from an executive standpoint, the mandate is everything's a service. So there's a big executive push, CXO, CISOs, whatever for everything as a service. And when you put that out there and put that ball in place, so to speak, it's not easy, right? So when you say, hey, make everything as a service, it's not trivial. And then you go, okay, how does that work? That's where the hard part happens. I want to get your take on that. Is that something that you're seeing with your customers? They put that ball in play, let's get some managed services and then you got to put it together, not that easy. What's your take on that? Yeah, I think, you know, when you think about clients today and what CIOs are looking for, it's really, it is a pay by the drink or a consumption based model, right? But at the end of the day, they want to manage their business. They don't want to manage huge IT groups and software developers within their own business. They want to pass that responsibility onto experts like Presidio. So I think it's the fact, what's simple for them? How do they move kind of accountability and how do they get to their business outcomes without owning an IT business within their existing business? So those are some of the changes that we've certainly seen from a mindset perspective. But we're fully prepared to offer that Presidio. That's great for your business. It's certainly a tailwind. Sam, I want to get to you because when you get to that conversation, okay, put as a service, there's a lot in there to unpack. I mean, depending on who you're talking to, you know, certainly accelerating it with Presidio, I see that. You're now part of Presidio. Take us through what's going on in your world because when you get to the customer, you got to work backwards from what they're trying to do, not trying to retrofit a technology into their environment. You got to kind of work with what they got, but actually get them to the cloud. Can you share what you're doing with customers? Yeah, thanks, John. I appreciate that. And one thing I want to say about joining Presidio is that, you know, we had worked together for a couple of years and really found that we had a great cultural fit and that we had the same goal. And that's to become AWS's number one partner globally, providing these kinds of mission critical solutions for clients. We've been told oftentimes that we are Amazonian in terms of our customer obsession, our bias for action. And what you just said there is, you know, helping them get the benefits of cloud quickly, no matter where they're coming from. Because, you know, they want to have the availability, security, scalability, but they also have to integrate in with their existing system. So what we're finding with clients is they want to transform the way they do business. They want to transform their industry oftentimes. And that's what they're looking for, you know, when they partner with us and they look for leveraging the AWS platform. So let me ask you a question then, because certainly we've seen, I've interviewed a ton of Amazon customers and the executives. And it's some of the things that's going on with COVID has just been amazing what they've enabled people to move so fast and put real game changing impact, whether it's societal impact or some other transformative thing. And if you look at Amazon, traditionally they started out as a transactional thing. You get some EC2, you buy by the drink, everything's going on, but every reinvent there's more announcement. Angie Jassy said, one hour keynote turns into a two hour keynote, three hour keynote. And now you're looking at more transformational solutions. You still got some transactions in there, but when you got to put the holistic cohesive plan together, that has to be transformative. How do you guys talk to customers when you say, it's not just transactional, it's transformative. Yeah, well we look, we're doing it internally ourselves as well. With Presidio now, we've gone from transactions, transactions are important, but we really want to transform the way our customers are able to do business. And with COVID, it's been even more important to be able to get things done without having to be physically present in one location. And so whether it's telehealth or remote learning, remote sales activities, making sure that systems are integrated with commerce engines are again, are very secure. The cloud and AWS is really bringing a big difference to the marketplace. And we're very immersed in that. We have clients, I'll give you an example, Wheel Pros, one of the leading tire, aftermarket tire and wheel manufacturers and designers. We've talked with their CEO, Randy White. He said, what we're doing with Presidio and on AWS platform is building the wheel pros to the future. And what does that look like? He said that he wants his systems to be just like his products for his customers. They've got to be high performing, they got to be high quality, and they got to deliver a great customer experience. Well, we want to be able to leverage a lot of the services that AWS has to be able to deliver those kinds of things quickly and with high quality. So it's really exciting to be able to see the impact we're having on Wheel Pros business and other clients like that. So when you talk about your solution, take a minute to explain what you guys offer to clients because you have a Presidio cloud solution. You got a lot of services. Can you just take a minute to explain what people are buying and what they're getting from Presidio because that sounds like a great customer success story. What are they getting? Okay, so what they're getting really, again, following kind of the Amazonian way, working backwards, right? So let's start with an idea. Let's look at something we really want to do that's going to dramatically change and improve the way they delight their customers. So start with that idea. We'll help them design it. We'll help them build it. We'll help them deploy it. We can help support it, full managed service support. So from the idea through to production and then ongoing support and enhancements, they can count on Presidio to deliver all of those capabilities. And Coda couldn't do all of that on our own. We were really great at application development, data and analytics, DevOps and automation. But with Presidio, we bring everything to the table. And again, fully supported, help them from even managing their resell, being able to manage the environment and making sure that they're getting the most value out of these critical investments. Chris, I want to get your thoughts on this. Sam mentioned you want to be the number one solution provider for on AWS. Great mission by the way. I want to unpack that. Now, last year I reported at re-invent, one of the feedback items was, Amazon's got to think more about solutions. Certainly Microsoft does that, we've seen that. Amazon doesn't really flaunt those solutions very much. Even though they have them, they're there. You guys are a nice fit there. So if you're going to be the number one solution provider, what do you guys need to do to do that? What do customers expect from you guys? Can you take a minute to explain your plan? Yeah, absolutely, John. So I think when you think about clients that are transforming their business, right? They need to be competitive in their own market. So when they think about business outcomes and what Presidio does, we look at it in really a full life-saving approach. If you think about the applications that Sam spoke about, creating things that are cloud native, perhaps it's a mobile ordering app that's going to make them more competitive, especially in this COVID environment. Think about just their normal consumption of services on the AWS platform. How do we optimize it for them? How do we ensure that they have the right services in a very agile, secure environment? So managing and owning it before lifecycle is really kind of what we deliver from a solution set. But every client is a little bit different depending on really what their needs are and what their business outcomes are. So we can take it anywhere from full development to full deployment and managing it in a very secure way to adding in their consumption side of it, adding in their licensing component where perhaps they're buying under a marketplace or a CPPL offering. So what's really unique about Presidio is that we offer that full solution to clients from end to end and we can manage the entire process, deliver performance, cost savings, and very predictable models for them. I love the, you know, I'm a big fan of the end to end. People who watch theCUBE know all I do is talk about end to end is really a critical way to look at things holistically. If you're looking at something cohesive as a solution with transactional and transformative capabilities. But I want to get your thoughts on some of the market demand challenges. And if you guys could react to it, Sam and Chris, there's two spectrums we're seeing with this pandemic. Clients, customers who were like, have a tailwind. Oh my God, this is accelerating my value proposition. I need more help. I got to get to the cloud. I got to transform quickly. And then the other end of the spectrum is the, we're screwed. So we're going to reset and retool while we're kind of in this bunker down mode. And they want to come out of the pandemic with a growth plan. So kind of two spectrums, right? But you guys see that as well. What's the range of psychology or buyer behavior for your customers? Because this seems to be like the airline, and that really getting a lot of business, but they're redoing their systems. They're being cloudified. Or this is an app for Zoom or school, educational. It's needed, it's in more demand. So you kind of have everything in between those. Do you guys see that? And if so, or if not, what's the reaction? We certainly see a component with our client base around saving costs, right? What are they going to do in this environment to save costs? But at the same time, we are seeing a lot of creativity around, what does their future model look like and what do they need to build? And that's what they're spending money on. So we've seen it across kind of all verticals within the business, but certainly it's a dual approach. And I think customers that go about doing that properly really prepare themselves for when we all do come out of this that the businesses will be set to capitalize on the change in market. That's what I've seen. I'm sure Sam has some additional comments. Sam, your thoughts. Yeah, absolutely. I would say, necessity is a mother of invention, right? So we're seeing customers that we're thinking about cloud or considering maybe a new application, cloud native application, but maybe you felt like they had time to do it where with COVID, the bold are going to be the ones that survive and thrive. And so just like we saw when people came out of 2008 financial crisis, those that invested in their systems, invested in their people, people skills is another big area, right? We at Presidio have, I think we're up to like 600 AWS certifications across the board from sales through all different technologies because we want to retain our people. We want to help them develop their skills and make sure that we're bringing the best talent to our clients. So yeah, it's a difficult time, but it's a time for opportunity. Necessity could be business opportunity to capture, opportunity recognition, capture, or survival. I mean, it is the mother of invention. It is a forcing function. Guys, thanks for that. Another one of our clients, if I could just mention our Duncan brands, they couldn't have traffic in their stores. So mobile ordering became even more important, with drive up pickup. And we helped them move from a multi-tenant SaaS application that wasn't performing, wasn't reliable enough to an AWS cloud native application. And they tripled the traffic while also improving performance and reliability. That's the kind of power that you can have with AWS and Presidio. That's a great example, we can relate to that. As well, Duncan Donuts makes great coffee from the East Coast originally, so I love Duncan Donuts D&D. But great brand, that mobile app, good call. Because look, people want to get in the curbside pickup or delivered. I mean, this is the new normal. Guys, thanks so much for the insight. Final word, if you both can weigh in, share with the audience the focus for this reinvent. If you could share the Presidio message for reinvent virtual 2020, what do you say? Sam, why don't you go first? Well, from my perspective, it's all about taking it to another level. That's what we feel like we're doing as part of Presidio now. Again, being coming the number one AWS partner, but it's also helping customers take their most important applications to the cloud so that they can improve the way they deliver for their customers. That's really what it's all about for me. Yeah, I would have to concur with Sam. I mean, our goal really, like Sam said a few times, to be the number one AWS partner. But with that comes a huge undertaking and a huge responsibility for us with our teams and with our customers. At the end of the day, we want all of our clients to think of us first when we're delivering these solutions and how impactful Presidio has been to their business for their growth and for their future success. So for us, the customer obsession side of it all is really we want to continue that and that's what we're going to get out of this conference is how do we continue that? Well, congratulations like Chris and Sam. Thanks for coming on. I always say, I enjoy my conversations with your team. They get the technical chops and having a service offering that accelerates more cloud goodness for customers and Amazon's got a great ecosystem. Cloud's growing like crazy. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. This is coverage of AWS re-invent 2020. It's virtual this year. We're not in person with theCUBE virtualization that's at the market. More CUBE interviews remotely. And I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.