 Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside analyst John Furrier. We are welcoming today Troy Bertram. He is the GM of Business Development, Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE Troy. Thanks for having me. A first timer. It is a first time. Welcome. Yes, thank you John, thank you Rebecca. So let's talk about your partner organization. Why don't you let our viewers know how it's structured, what its mission is, how it works? Yeah, certainly. So our public sector partner teams work with our partners around the world that really support the mission requirements of government, education, and nonprofits. We, our partners are part of the large Amazon partner network, so 35,000 plus partners, but really our customers choose, right? Whether it's technology partners that have really focused their SAS, past IFV solutions on government customers and work through accreditation and certifications or it's the consulting partners that go to market and own the prime contract vehicles. Contracts are how our customers buy in public sector. So what we've done is really focused our teams from startups and venture capitalists and incubators through technology, ISVs, past and SAS partners, to our large consulting partners, global consulting partners, but also really helping curate those consulting partners that meet social economic requirements. Oftentimes governments have laws, regulations to buy small, women-owned, 8A service disabled veteran as a veteran, one of my, one of my, a near and dear partner subset to me. And we work with them to help navigate through and develop programs to work through the APN. And oftentimes it's a partner-to-partner activity of a consulting partner working with a specialized ISV technology solution that can meet a customer's mission requirements. What's interesting about the cloud, we've been talking about our intro this morning, is the agility and governments now seeing it benefits. And it's not just an aha moment anymore, it's cloud is real, it's driving a lot of change. That's been lifting up a lot of your partner profiles. You got startups to large entities all playing together because the requirements may change based upon either the agency or the public sector entity. We have unique needs. So you have a broad range of partners. How do you guys nurture that? I mean, cause that's a good diversity. You have a nice solution set from tech to business. How do you guys nurture that? What's the, what are some of the challenges and opportunities you guys are seeing with the growth? Yeah, cloud has really allowed a reset for many of our partners, right? Whether you're born in a cloud company that doesn't necessarily have a long legacy and haven't built an entire infrastructure and you don't have an infrastructure of people. But also don't have technology debt that you've been burdened with because you're prior operating models. It's nurturing that born in the cloud company that may be a services oriented migration partner that's focused on moving our customers applications and workloads. Or it's nurturing the technology and helping them build. Or it's a refactor and legacy on-premise solution for those solution providers that have traditionally operated in an on-prem environment helping them train, certify, and really build a new practice. And it's exciting too. You got the ecosystem kind of approach where a thousand flowers can bloom. So I got to ask you, what do you see sprouting up? What's growing most? What are some of the trends that you see within the partner ecosystem? What's growing fast? What's the demand? What's the hot area? The real demand is for people with skill sets. And in our business, so skill sets also often include security, clearances, and a knowledge of the working environment that they're migrating from. So we're spending an inordinate amount of training and educating also our partner selling community of understanding the dynamics of how to go to market and the contract vehicles and how to navigate. The opportunities are really immense. So it's nurturing those thousand flowers. And it is a challenge for many of us is, how do we nurture those thousand flowers simultaneously? And are you finding the right people? One of the big theme on the cube here is the skills gap. I mean, I just saw a Deloitte survey, 60% of executives, and these are executives, they're not in the public sector, so the skills gap hindered their AI initiatives and hindering their cloud computing initiatives. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from the people you're talking to? There's a thirst for both knowledge and training, but there's also from the executive side, we have a need to fill. There's an abundance of roles and all of us working together. So one of our initiatives is even the job boards that we're working with our educate team and Ken Eisner up here that leads that is we're helping our partners promote their open roles. And allowing our partners to look for and curate the same talent that Amazon is helping train and develop. Because when our partners can find amazing talent, our customers win, it benefits AWS and the partner ecosystem. Education's huge, you got to have the ongoing digital course where is that a top priority for you? What are some of your top goals for this year and your plan? Yeah, when it comes to education, top goal is training many of our new partners through our emerging partner team. It's really in many of the new partners have a commercial practice. We're also looking at those partners and actively recruiting those partners that have built a commercial practice that are looking to enter government. And whether it's our distributors or our resellers that own the prime contract vehicles, we're doing partner to partner activities. We call it partner speed dating is contract vehicles that exist across state and local government, US federal, or in the international community for those ISVs that want to enter new market regions is pairing with those existing local companies that have contract vehicles and then helping train and educate on the nuances of public sector. We were talking with General Keith Alexander and retired general yesterday, came on, I asked him directly, you know, if you could have a magic wand, I think I said that something like the one the lines of, if you have a magic wand, what would you do to change the government? It could go faster. And he said the technologies check, we're doing very well, it's moving along great. It's the procurement process. It's just too long. You mentioned contracts. This is really the key point we keep hearing, the red tape. Yes. It's the update there. I mean, I'm sure partners aren't wanting more red tape. They want to cut through it to your point. No, and it's really, it's an education process. When I started at Amazon over six and a half years ago, my first role was to stand up and it still is the core of my role. I have individuals in 22 different countries around the world, and we're helping governments and VR partners through the procurement process. We did this past week in my home state of Minnesota our 10,000 RFX. So we consider an RFP, an RFI, an RFQ, a tender, a I would need to buy, I want to buy something. We've responded to 10,000 of those in six years and two months. That's an abundance of contract that ultimately, many of them are task orders and IDIQs and GWACs. There's an abundance of pathways, as General Alexander stated, for customers to buy the technology. Now it's educating the contracting officers, the CEOs, the KOs around the world on the existing pathways and how to leverage them. We still see old procurement methodologies being applied to the cloud, and it does slow down the end customer's mission requirements. And the path to value. Yes, the path to value, exactly. And they want to move and move fast and contracts are what is how we buy, but it's also what slows us down. You know, you're Amazon's multiple six years plus, so you know this. So the speed to value has been the key thing for the cloud. As you look at success now with Amazon public sector, not only in the U.S., but abroad and internationally, you got massive tailwinds on the success. The growth is phenomenal. How does that feel? What's observation? What's some learnings that you can take away from the past few years and where's it going? It feels like it's day one. It does feel like it's day one. There are tailwinds, but there's still an abundance of customer requirements and they're evolving and they're more complex. I personally really like my career's been public sector. Solving the mission requirements, whether it's helping a forward deployed airman, soldier, really keeping them at the cutting edge of technology and out of harm's way or our first responders. Some of the new product demonstrations that we've seen of evolving technology that's helping a firefighter see from an aerial drone vehicle, what does it look like on the other side of this building and how can I now communicate across different agencies is phenomenal. In my home state where Army Futures Command, I live in Austin, Texas, Army Futures Command is working with the state of Texas as well as the University of Texas to really collaborate as we've never seen before. The barriers of emerging technology to legacy government, to ministries and health defenses around the world, ministries of defense and health agencies around the world. And the data, the scale of Amazon Cloud is going to make that possible. Ground station's a great example of how that's growing like a weed. The DOD has got a great charter around using agility and AI. The collaboration which is so critical too, as you said. It is and our VMware partnership with VMware on AWS can really help and that's a partner play, right? That's partners helping migrate using the co-developed technology to really move and move faster, use those existing apps and vacate those data centers. Well, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Gavi, a quick plug, plug the organization, share with the audience what you're looking for and update on the partner network. Give a quick plug for your group. Yeah, so what we're really looking for is we've got 105 different competency partners that have really invested in their government, their education, their nonprofit competency. And we want to help, I personally want to help them promote their business and what the opportunity is to connect to either other partners or to government mission requirements. So really welcome the opportunity, John, to come on and look forward to seeing my partners on theCUBE in the future. Thank you. Well Troy Bertram, you are now a CUBE alum. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. You are watching theCUBE. Stay tuned for more from the AWS Public Sector Summit.