 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. Welcome to theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. Next joining me is Leo Lebranche, Director of Global Strategic Initiatives at AWS. Leo, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, have a beer. So talk to me about AWS and IBM. What's going on there with the relationship? What are some of the things that are significant for both partners? Yeah, absolutely. IBM's relationship really started with us around 2016. I would say it was a little bit more opportunistic at the time. We knew there was an opportunity to go to market together. We knew there were some great things we could do for our customers, but we hadn't quite cracked the code, so to speak, on when and where and why we were going to partner at that point. We fast forward into the sort of 2017 to 2019 timeframe and we became, I'd say, a lot more intentional about how we were going to go to market, where we were going to invest, areas such as SAP, et cetera. We're an early one to be identified. And I'd say the ball really started rolling sort of in the 2018 timeframe, combination of a number of different things occurred. You know, the acquisition of Red Hat, obviously, Red Hat is a very significant, was a very significant partner with AWS prior to the acquisition. And so post acquisition, you combine that with ramping up a workforce, focus on AWS, combined with a number of different competencies that IBM really invested in around migration as an example or SAP. And the ball really started to roll quickly. After that, you know, I'd say in the last 18 months or so, we've both invested significantly in the relationship, expansion around the world, really, and joint resources and capability to make sure that we're going to market sort of a partnered intentional way rather than sort of an opportunistic. Oh, go ahead. No, so I'd say so far that's absolutely been paying off in that we are seeing a number of wins all around the world across a broad set of industries, as well as a broad set of technologies. So, you know, the strength of IBM's consulting services in particular, but also their software, combined with the strength of our platform is really proven to be successful for our customers. So you said, started in 2016, really started taking shape in the last couple of years that Red Hat acquisition. Talk to me about what's in this for customers. I imagine customers that are expanding or needing to move workloads into the cloud or maybe more of a hybrid cloud approach. What are some of the big benefits that customers are going to gain from this partnership? Yeah, absolutely. The reality is IBM has a long and storied history in relationship with their customers, right? They run and manage many of the workloads. They really know the customer's business incredibly well. They have domain expertise in industry and then the technology expertise from a professional services perspective to really help navigate the waters and determine what the right strategy is around moving to the cloud, right? You combine that with the depth and breadth of the skills and capabilities and services that AWS provides and the fact that IBM has invested significantly in making sure their professional services are deeply steeped in our technology and capabilities. It's a great combination of really understanding the customer's needs plus the art of the possible, honestly, when it comes to technology that we provide really can accelerate both and mitigate risk when it comes to moving to the cloud. That risk mitigation is key. So you guys recently, AWS recently launched, I'm going to get this right, Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or ROSA. Can you talk to me a little bit about ROSA? Yeah, so Red Hat obviously very well known and ultimately adopted within the enterprise. We have built a fully managed service around Red Hat on AWS. What that means is you'll have access to essentially the capabilities that Red Hat would normally provide but all containerized within a solution that allows you to have access to AWS services, right? The other benefit here is normally you would get sort of a multi-vendor sort of invoicing and cost model, right? Where you get built from Red Hat, get built from Amazon, you get built from IBM. In this case, it's essentially a holistic service in which there's a single sort of invoicing and vendor relationship, right? So it's a combination of capabilities that normally would be provided via Red Hat combined with access to cloud and all the interfaces and capabilities around OpenShift, et cetera, that you could do there. Plus a more interesting and beneficial commercial model. So streamlined pricing models, streamlined operating model for customers. Talk to me about some of the customers that have adopted it. Give me a look into some of the industries where you've seen good adoption and some of the results that they're gaining so far. Yeah, absolutely. So no big surprise, right? The existing customer base that currently uses Red Hat Linux and some of the options in OpenShift, et cetera, that are out today are then the right customers to potentially look at this when it comes to moving forward. Industry-wise, certainly there are areas within financial services, banking insurance, et cetera. We're also seeing some around manufacturing, a little less so, but some in media and telco as well. So it's a broad swath of the applicability of Red Hat and OpenShift is somewhat universal, but the early customer base is largely been serving those three areas. What I'm curious, what the key target audiences are these Red Hat customers or these AWS customers, IBM, all three? If there are existing customers that are currently using Linux or using Red Hat, if there are someone who, a customer who currently has a relationship with either AWS or IBM, there's an opportunity to essentially look at it from any of the angles. If you're already on cloud or you've already experienced AWS in some shape or form, there's an opportunity to potentially leverage ROSA to further expand that capability and also have some more flexibility, so to speak. If you're already using IBM as a professional services provider and advisory firm, then they absolutely have the expertise and understanding of this product set to help you understand how it can be best leveraged. So you can kind of look at it from either of the dimensions. If it's a customer that's completely new to all of us, then we're happy to talk to you, but it's something that will definitely take a little bit more explanation to understand sort of why you should or shouldn't consider sort of this multi-cloud OpenShift solution. Talk to me from your opinion about why IBM for SAP on AWS, why should customers go that direction for their projects? Yeah, you know, SAP has, sorry, IBM has over 40 years of experience in implementing SAP for their customers, right? They've done, I think it's over 6,000 SAP migrations, 40,000 global SAP consultants around the world, right? So from a capability in depth of experience, there's a lot of nuance to doing an SAP implementation, particularly one that's then moving from on-prem to the cloud, you know, they've got the experience, right? Beyond that, they have industry-specific solutions that are pre-configured. So I think that there's 12 industry-specific industry solutions pre-configured for SAP. It allows roughly 20 to 30% acceleration when it comes to implementation of the platform. So combination of just depth of experience, depth of capability combined with these solutions to accelerate are all key reasons for sure. The acceleration, yeah, you bring up, sorry, is interesting because we saw in the last year, the acceleration of digital transformation projects and businesses needing to pivot again and again and again to figure out how to survive and be successful in this very dynamic market in which we're still living. Anything industry-wise specific that you saw that was really deriving the acceleration and the use cases for Rosa in the last year? Yeah, so the SAP, it's an interesting trend as a result of what everyone's been experiencing in the last year with COVID, et cetera. You know, many organizations postponed large ERP implementations and large SAP migrations because of what you just said, right? They weren't entirely sure what would need to be done in order to survive either a competitive threats or more just the global threats that were occurring. So what we saw was really none of the transformations went away. They were put on hold for a period of time, let's say six to nine months ago, maybe even a year ago almost. In lieu of, I would say more top line revenue generating or innovative type solutions that maybe were focused specifically at the changing dynamic with COVID. Since then, we've seen a combination of those new ideas, combination of the new innovation around healthcare, of course, but also public sector and a lot around employment and the engagement there. We've seen a combination of those new ideas and new innovations with the original goal of optimizing, transforming SAP ERP, et cetera. And then combining the two to allow access to the data, that sits inside the SAP implementation, SAP, combine the data and SAP with all these new innovations and then ultimately use that to sort of capitalize on what the future business is going to be. That's been huge. It's been very interesting to see some organizations completely change their business model over the course of the last 12 months in ways they probably had never intended to before, right? But it's absolutely become an opportunity and a time of a lot of challenges. I agree, there are sober linings and we've seen a lot of those interesting opportunities to your point that businesses probably would never have come up with had there not been a forcing function like we've been living with. Well Leo, thank you for joining me today talking to me about what's going on with IBM and AWS. We'll be excited to follow what happens with Rosa as it continues to roll out and we appreciate you joining us on the program. Absolutely, thank you for your time. For Leela Branch, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's digital coverage of IBM Think 2021.