 Good afternoon, fellow cloud nerds, and welcome back to AWS ReInvent 2022. We are live here from fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by Lisa Martin, so excited to be here at Lisa. It's my first ReInvent. Is it really? Yeah. I think it's only like my fourth or fifth. Only your fourth. Only. You're such a pro here on YouTube. There's some serious veterans here and attendants that have been to all 11. I love that. Wow. Go with them. I know. Maybe we'll be at that level soon. One day we will. Are you enjoying the show so far? Absolutely. It is. I cannot believe how many people are here. Yeah. We've had 70,000 and we're only seeing what's at the Venetian Expo Hall. Right. Not at the other hotel, so I can only imagine. I mean, there's a world outside of this. Yes, and there's sunlight. There's actual sunlight outside of this room. Not a whole idea. Well, Lisa, I'm very excited to be sitting here next to you and to welcome our fabulous guests from Tech Systems. We have Brandon and Srinni. Thank you so much for being here. How is the show going for you gentlemen so far? It's great. A lot of new insights and the customers are going to love what AWS is releasing this ReInvent. There is such a community here and I love that vibe. It's similar to what we had at Cloud Native Con in Detroit. So much collaboration going on. I assume most folks know a lot about Tech Systems who are watching, but just in case they don't, Brandon, give us the pitch. You bet. So, full-stack IT solutions firm. Been in business for over 40 years. 80,000 global employees. Really specializing in digital transformation, enterprise modernization services. We have partners in one strategy, which is an acquisition we made, but a well-known premier partner in the Amazon partner ecosystem, as well as One North Interactive, who is our boutique, brand, creative and digital strategy firm. So together, we really feel like we can bring full end-to-end solutions for digital and modernization initiatives. I saw some notes where Tech Systems is saying organizations need experienced AWS partners that are not afraid doing the dirty work of digital transformation who really can advise and execute. Brandon, talk to us about how Tech Systems and AWS are working together to help customers on that journey of, which is nebulous, of digital transformation. So, our real hallmark is the ability to scale. We partner with AWS in a lot of different ways. In fact, we just signed our strategic collaboration agreement. So we're in the one-percenter group in the whole partner network. That's a pretty casual flex there. Oh, not bad. I love that. Top one percent. No wonder you're wearing that partner pin so proud today. Do you like it? Yeah. But we're working all the way on the advisory end, working with their pro-serve organization. And then, you know, transforming that into large-scale mass migration services, a lot of data modernization that Serenia is an absolute expert in. I'm sure you can add some context to. But it's been a great partnership for many years now. In the keynote, Adam spent almost 52 minutes on data, right? So it emphasizes how organizations are ready to take data to cloud and actually make meaningful insights and help their own customers come out of it by making meaningful decisions. So we are glad to be part of this entire ecosystem. I love that you quantified how many minutes talked about it. That was impressive. These folks, there's a little bit of data-driven thinking going on here. I think so. Well, we can't be at an event like this without talking about data for copious amounts of time. 52 minutes has used this morning. Right, absolutely. But every company these days has to be a data company. There is no choice to be successful, to thrive, to survive. I mean, even to thrive and grow. If it's a grocery store or your local gas station or what you name it, that company has to be a data company. But the challenge of the data volume, the explosion in data is huge for organizations to really try to figure out and sift through what they have, where is all of it? How do we make sense of it? How do we act on it and get insights? That's a big challenge. How is tech systems helping customers tackle that challenge? Yeah, that's a great question because that's the whole fun of handling data. You need to ensure its meaning is first understood. So we are not just dumping data into a storage place, but rather assign a meaningful context. In today's announcement, again, the data zone was unveiled to give meaning to data. And I think those are key concrete steps that we take to our customers as well with some good blueprints, methodical ways of approaching data and ultimately gaining business insights. And maybe I'll add just something real quick to that. The theme we're seeing and hearing a lot about is data monetization. So technology companies have figured it out and used techniques to personalize things and get you ads probably that you don't want half the time. But now all industries are really looking to do that. Looking at ways to open new revenue channels, looking at ways to drive a better customer experience, a better employee experience. We've got a ton of examples of that. Big oil and gas, leveraging like well in machine data, coming in to be more efficient when they're pumping and moving commodities around. We work a lot in the meeting entertainment space. And so obviously getting targeted adds to consumers during the right periods of TV or movies or et cetera, especially with the advent of Netflix and all your streaming videos. So it's been really interesting, but we really see the future in leveraging data as one of your biggest corporate assets. So do you still, I'm just curious on the ad thing just real quick, then I'll let you go Lisa. So do you still fall victim to falling for the advertising even though you know it's been strategically put there for you to consume in that moment? Most of the time, yeah. I mean, I think we all do. We're all guilty. I just, you know, you're behind the curtain, so to speak. So yeah. The Amazon pride truck shows up every day at my house, which is great, right? Hello again. But then the power of it is you're giving the customer what they're looking for. That's it. Exactly. We have that expectation. We want it. 100%. We know that. I agree. We don't need to buy it. Yeah. But technology has made it so easy to transact. Yep. That's like when developers started going to the cloud years ago, it was a swipe. It was so simple. Brandon, talk about the changes in cloud and cloud migration that tech systems has seen, particularly in the last couple of years as every company was rushing to go digital because they had to. Yep. So several years ago, we kind of pushed away that cloud-first mentality to the side. And we use more of a cloud-smart kind of fashion, right? Does everything need to go to the cloud? No. Does things need to do applications, data need to go to the cloud in a way that's modern and takes advantages of what the cloud can provide and all the new services that are being released this week and ongoing. So the other thing we're seeing is initiatives that have traditionally been in the CTO, CIO organization aren't necessarily all that successful because we're seeing a complete misalignment between business goals and IT achievements, outcomes, et cetera. You can automate things. You can move it to the cloud. But if you didn't solve a core business problem or challenge, what'd you really do? Yeah. Just to add on that, it's all about putting data and people together. And then how we can actually ensure the workforce is equally brought up to speed on these new technologies. That has been something that we have seen tremendous improvement in the last 24 months where customers are ready to take up new challenges and the end users are ready to learn something new and not just stick onto that status quo mindset. Where do you guys factor into bringing in AWS and the customers cloud journeys? What is that partnership like? We always first look for where the customer is in their cloud journey path and make sure we advise them with the right next steps. And AWS having its services across the spectrum makes it even easier for us to look at what business problem they are solving and then align it according to the process and technology so that at the end of the day we want end user adoption. We don't want to build a fancy new gadget that no one uses. What do you say? Just because you built it doesn't mean they'll come. And I think that's the classic engineering marketing dilemma as well as balance to healthy tension. I would say between both. You mentioned, Trini, you mentioned workforce just a second ago. What sort of trends are you seeing in workforce development? Generally speaking, there are a lot of services now that can quantify your code for errors and then make sure that the code that you're pushing into production is well tested. So what we are trying to make sure is a healthy mix of trying to solve a business problem and asking the right questions. Like today, even in the keynote, it was all about how QuickSight, for example, has additional features now that tells why something happened and that's the kind of mindset we want our end users to adopt. Not just we restricted themselves to a reactive analytics, but rather ask the question, why? Why did it happen? Why did my sales go down? And I think those technologies and mindset shift is happening across the workforce. From a workforce development standpoint, we're seeing there's not enough workforce in the core skills of data, DevOps, standard cloud type work. So we're actually an ATP advanced training partner, one of the few within the AWS network. So we've developed programs like a rising talent program that are allowing us to bring the workforce up to the skills that are necessary in this new world. So it's a more build versus buy strategy because we're on talents reel. Though it may start to wane a little bit as we change the macroeconomic outlook in 2023, but it's still there. And we still believe that building those workforce and investing in your people is the right thing to do. Yeah. It is. And I think there's a strong alignment there with AWS and they're focused on that as well. I want to ask you, Brandon. Absolutely. One of the things, so our boss, John Furrier, the co-CEO of theCUBE, talked with Adam Slipsky just a week or maybe 10 days ago. He always gets an exclusive interview with the CEO of AWS before re-invent. And one of the things that Adam shared with him was that customers, CEOs, and CIOs are not coming to Adam, to this head of AWS, to talk about technology. They need to talk. They want to talk about transformation. He's talking about... The topic this year. Moving away from amorphous topic of digital transformation to business transformation. Are you seeing the same thing in your customer? 100%. And if you're not starting at the business level, these initiatives are going to fail. We see it all the time again. It's about that misalignment. And there's no good answer to that. But digital, I think, is amorphous to some degree. We play a lot with the One North partnership that I mentioned earlier, really focusing on that strategy element because consumer dollars are shrinking via inflation, via what we're heading into. And we have to create the best experience possible. We have to create an omnichannel experience to get our products or services to market. And if we're not looking at those as our core goals and we're looking at them as IT or technology challenges, we're not looking in the right place. Well, businesses aren't going to be successful if they're looking at it in those siloed organizations. Data has to be democratized. And we've been saying data democratization for so long. But really, we're seeing that it has to be moving out into the lines of business because another thing Adam shared with John Furrier is that he sees, and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, the role of the title of data analysts going away because everybody in different functions and different lines of business within an organization are going to have to be data analysts of some degree to use data, whether it's marketing, ops, sales, finance. Are you seeing the same? That is true. I mean, at this point, we are all in the connected world, right? Every data point is connected in some form or shape to another data point. We are many data points, just sitting here, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So I think if you are strategizing data needs to be right in the center of it and then your business problems need to be addressed with reliable data. No, I mean advertising, supply chain, marketing, they're all interconnected now. And we're looking at ways to bring a lot of that silo data into one place so we can make use to it. It goes back to that monetization element of our data. It's a lot about context and situational awareness. We want what we want, when we want it, even before we knew we needed it then. I think I said that, right? But you know, it's always more faster, quicker, and then scaling things up. You see a lot of different customers across verticals. You have an absolutely massive team. Give us a sneak peek into 2023. What does the future hold? 2023 is again, to today's keynote, I'm bringing it back because it was a keynote filled with vision and limitless possibilities. And that's what we see right now, our customers, they are no longer scared to go and take the plunge into the cloud. And as Brandon said, it's all about being smart about those decisions. So we are very excited that together with the partnership that we recently acquired and the services and the depth, along with the horizontal domain expertise, we can actually help customers make meaningful message out of their data points. And that keeps us really excited for next year. I love that. Brandon, what about you? I think the obvious one is FedOps and a focus on optimization financially, security, et cetera, just for the changing times. The other one is I still think that digital is going to continue to be a big push in 2023, namely making sure that experience is at its best, whether that's employee and combating the war on talent, keeping your people or opening new revenue streams, enhancing existing revenue streams. You got to keep working on that. We got to keep the people happy with the machines and the systems that we are building, as we all know. But it's very nice. It's been a lot of human-centric focus and a lot of customer obsession here at the show. We know it's a big thing for y'all, for Amazon, for pretty much everyone who's sat here. Hopefully it is in general. Hopefully there's nobody who doesn't care about their community. We're not talking to them if that's the case. We have a new challenge on theCUBE for the show this year as we kind of prepped you for... And you can call it a bumper sticker. You can call it a 30-second sizzle reel. But this is sort of your Instagram moment, your TikTok, your thought, a leadership, highlights. What's the most important story coming out of the show? Shwini, you've been quoting the keynotes very well, so I'm going to you first on this one. I think overall it's all about owning the change. In our tech systems culture, it's all about striving for excellence through serving others and owning the change. And so it makes me very excited that when we get that kind of keynote, resonating the same message that we imbibe culturally, that's a big win-win for all the companies. It's all about shared vision. A lot of people with similar vision in this room right now, in this room, like it's a room. It's a massive expo center just to be clear. I'm sure everyone can see in the background. Brandon? I would say partnership, continuing to enhance our strategic partnership with AWS, continuing to be our customers, partners in transformation, and bringing those two things together here has been a predominance of my time this week and will continue throughout the week. But we're in it together with our customers and with AWS and looking forward to the future. Yeah, that's a beautiful note to end on there. Brandon and Shrini, thank you both so much for being here with us. Fantastic to learn from your insights and to continue to emphasize on this theme of collaboration. We look forward to the next conversation with you. Thank all of you for tuning in, wherever you happen to be, hanging out and watching this fabulous live stream or the replay. We are here at AWS re-invent 2022 in wonderful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada with Lisa Martin. My name is Savannah Peterson. We are theCUBE, the leading source for high tech coverage.