 Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of AWS re-invent 2021 live from Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin. We are doing one of the most important industry events, hybrid events this year with Amazon, and it's massive ecosystem of partners, some of which are joining me next. We've got two live sets, two remote sets, over 100 guests on the program. I'm going to be talking about the next decade in cloud innovation. I'm pleased to welcome back Anthony Lai to the program, the executive vice president and general manager of public cloud. Nice to see you, Anthony. Good to see you. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you in person. I know, it's been a couple years. It's been a couple years. And Amoram Cheshire is here, the VP and GM of Spot by NetApp. Amoram, it's great to have you on the program. Welcome. Likewise, thank you. So the acquisition, the spot acquisition was during the pandemic, mid-2020. Amoram, talk to me about that. Why NetApp? How's it going? Give us the leg of the land. I think that's the, it's one of the greatest things that NetApp has done. And I think it's one of the most amazing outcomes we could have as a company. And if you think about it in a first sight, when you look at storage company and compute company, what's the connection? But the thing is that NetApp is a company that is going through a huge transformation in the cloud. And by doing this acquisition, it's really like signaling where it's going. It's going way beyond. And honestly, I just wanted to be part of it. And what's the customer sentiment been, 18 months or so post acquisition? I think NetApp has done specifically with Anthony leading that acquisition. NetApp has done a phenomenal job of keeping spot as a business unit, independent business unit. So our customers, they didn't really feel that something had happened. Like the only thing we told them is we're going to have more funding. So. I'm sure they like that. Anthony, talk to us about NetApp's transformation, transition spot as part of that. And then of course, Cloud Checker, which acquisition was just announced, I believe, yesterday? We closed on actually November 7th. So it's almost been a month now since we closed. But I've been a NetApp, my gosh, it'll be five years in February. And I think that the company had a real desire to reimagine itself. And to embrace the public clouds. And to give its customers, what I think it's done incredibly well is this idea of symmetry. That we wanted to build something on Amazon that was as good, or maybe a little bit better than on-premise. And customers really, I think, depreciated, they appreciate that sort of, that desire for us to do those kinds of things. Now, of course, Cloud Checker was my ninth acquisition in four years. Just to sort of, you know, to build on what I'm saying, I mean we, Cloud Checker, we acquired four spot. And we acquired, what, four companies in the last 12 months for Spot. So we really believe that as a company now, we can address all of their potential opportunities, whether it's a legacy application, whether it's a virtual desktop, whether it's a cloud-native application, or we just went and announced Ocean for Apache Spark. So Spot now has an optimization and automation solution for Spark on AWS, which we announced, I think, just yesterday. And it lets you get both of your perspectives on keeping Spot as a brand. Anthony, we'll start with you and then Emeram will go to you. You know, Emeram is the founder and was the CEO of the company and built a fantastic company. And, you know, we, NetApp, I think, has a phenomenal brand, but a brand that's associated with the sort of the traditional IT organization. And as you know, in the cloud, the buyers are slightly different. They're sort of application owners, or they operate in a sort of a construct that most people call cloud ops or dev ops. And we felt that Spot represented that new buyer in ways that NetApp didn't and probably couldn't. And so we really liked the idea of having, you know, the sort of the structure of the big end supported by, you know, a little pink and a little blue and a more sort of cloud-native brand. And that's key, especially the dynamics in the market that we've seen the last 22 months with the rapid changes, the pivot to cloud customers that weren't that digital needing to go in that direction to survive in the very beginning. I imagine this was really kind of core to NetApp's strategy, but also helping both of your customers to survive initially and then to be able to thrive and identify some of those, you know, key areas where they can cut costs and be far more efficient. Look, I think if you were born physical, you're now digital. And if you weren't born physical, you were born digital. And, you know, digital is a very effective medium accelerated by the pandemic, because as you said, we couldn't really get close to each other. And, you know, you just look at the innovation around us here at Amazon. It's just amazing to watch. And, you know, we've just been really, really good partners with Amazon now for many, many years. And we continue to see just huge, huge opportunities. Well, Adam Salipsky in this morning in his keynote, one of the partners called out, wasn't that out? Yep, yeah, I mean, you know, we'll talk a little bit later on maybe with Yonsei and I, but you know, Amazon now sells our product. They haven't done that with anybody. So, OnTap is now a product that Amazon sells. Okay. Amazon supports, Amazon builds, Amazon runs. So, you know, we've really, really demonstrated, I think, not just to our customers, a sort of a high rate of innovation and an opportunity to sort of accelerate their businesses, but we've demonstrated it to Amazon themselves that we can operate like them and we can develop with them at a speed that they are comfortable with that maybe, you know, a few years ago, many people would have doubted that a legacy company could operate this way. Right. One of the things we know about Amazon is the speed, but also that their focus on the customer is, it's laser focus, that whole flywheel of Amazon. Everything that was being announced this morning was exciting to your point, Anthony, but it's also showing how involved the customers and the partners are in the ecosystem and that flywheel. Emeron, talk to me from your perspective, what are some of the, from a visionary standpoint? What are some of the things that you're looking forward to going forward with Cloud Checker, but also knowing how deeply connected and integrated that app is with a big powerhouse like AWS? Yeah, so a few things about that. I think the first thing is also my take from today, like listening to the keynotes and looking at all the new announcements. I think the trend is that deployment to the Cloud is becoming easier, but operations is becoming messier. And I think when we look at our category and where we aspire, where we want to be and where we are going, so I think with a Cloud Checker acquisition, so we're expanding into an area that we haven't been to because there are two categories in cloud cost. There is optimization and there is cost management. What we've done, what we've built, what we've, the business we had is in the optimization space. It's actively reducing and optimizing resources for customers, and there are very few companies in that category, as I can say. But right now we're expanding into that area of cost management so we can meet our customers sooner. And you can see us doing it in multiple areas, not only here, but also if you look at a customer journey in the Cloud, it starts with bring workloads to the Cloud, deploy them, and then secure them, and then automate them, and then optimize them. Nobody moves to the Cloud and optimizes. So we're typically meeting customers at the end of their journey. We're meeting customers when they need an optimization and they have everything already set up. And right now with Ocean for Apache Spark, Ocean Continuous Delivery, Spot Security, we're meeting customers sooner in their journey so we can provide a much more holistic solution and platform to customers wherever they are in their migration to the Cloud and scaling in the Cloud. And with Cloud Checker also taking us to a whole new world of cost management. So, you know, I think we're scaling and ramping and doing all these things and it's so amazing to realize that we haven't unleashed even 1% of what we can do. Really? So there's much more under the covers that we're still waiting for. You know, I think the good news is, you know, to comment more on what you said, our roadmaps are now largely being driven by customers. And that's just so refreshing to know that you've not only solved a problem for a particular customer, but the customer wants you to solve more problems. And that they trust us to be that sort of organization that can help them. So, you know, we're full steam ahead. You know, we're going to continue to acquire in areas where we think we can get acceleration. But, you know, our acquisition of Spot was very much about, as Amaram said, bringing not just a great company into the business, but to invest significantly in it. And that's really proven, I think, to be, as Amaram said, one of the most, if not the most successful acquisition that I've ever done. Well, congratulations. That's fantastic. But it also sounds like from that customer focus, there's clear, strong alignment with how AWS operates, how it values its customers from that app's perspective. And I imagine it from spots as well. You know, there is one thing I was really proud of during the acquisition, is I got a phone call from a customer. It's the largest food delivery company in South America. And they were very worried about this acquisition. And I asked them why. And they told me, because your customer service, Spot customer service, is the best customer service I've ever got. And if I'm not going to continue to get this customer service, I need to look how I'm finding another vendor. And they told me that when they want to even tell AWS, like which company they can learn from, they're always pointing at Spot. So, and that was a very refreshing moment for me to realize how much also at Spot we care about our customers, but not only as a gimmick, as something that customer obsession, as something that we really live. And that was interesting to see that that was a concern by our customers when we got acquired. Well, that's proof in the pudding, because you're right, it's one thing to say, companies can always say, we're customer obsessed, we're customer first, we're customer focused. It's one thing to say it as a marketing term. It's a whole other thing to actually live it and demonstrate it. And actually have people coming to you, saying that we want to model that. I'm curious, Anthony, what did you pull over from that? What has NetApp learned from? I always tell Amaram that the idea was that they would essentially take us over. That we sort of loved their culture. We loved their people and their process. And we literally changed a lot of how NetApp operated to operate along the Spot model. So we really did, as Samaram said earlier on, we let them not just sort of exist, but we let them thrive. And we encouraged them to point at other areas at NetApp that they thought we should change to be more like them. And it's raised the bar across everything we do now. And so we now have a lot of the Spot business processes, a lot of the Spot cultures sort of seeping into the whole of the company. It's a very empathetic approach, and that's one of the things that we've learned in the last year and a half. Is key to leadership, is key to anything, is that empathy. But the ability to recognize where there are things within an organization that can be improved and looking at leaders like Spot to go, let's actually make this really symbiotic and bi-directional. I imagine with Cloud Checker, it's going to be the same type of influence. Well, as I have always said, and I say this to the employees and to the acquisitions that we make, what we are acquiring is people. You know, the logo, the software, even in many ways the customer base is really very much, I think, a function of the people. And we work incredibly hard to retain the people, but we do so by sort of empowering them and encouraging them to lead. We really don't want to sort of have the sort of the historical perspective of acquisitions where big company swamps the little company. And I think we've tried very hard to make that a part of our acquisition strategy. And so Cloud Checker is very early in the process, but very much we're following those things. Even Amraam and his team are learning from them. If they're doing something a little better than Spot is, then that's something we'll pick up from them. And that's just from a very open cultural perspective. That's a big change for now, but it's also a smart way to go, because you're right, you're acquiring people. And we often talk about people process technology. But it's sometimes, to be honest with you, it's rare that we hear companies talking about the people focus as being that's critical. It's because of our people that we have successful support, happy, successful customers. So that people focus is table stakes. You know, it's the company. And culture is not something you can manufacture. It's something that happens. And it happens, I think, through people. And it's an important thing, is if you can establish, you know, an organization with the right kinds of people. And again, all credit goes to Amraam as the founder and CEO of the company. I think you sort of demanded a kind of person and a kind of culture that set you apart from so many other companies. I think the focus on culture was, I was very obsessed with it from very early on in the process that even spot investors or very, they were questioning like, how come that you are so much obsessed with culture so early on? And I think it paid off big time. There was a book I read while being a CEO that really helped me to scale from quarter to quarter. Because I really believe that as a CEO of a startup, every quarter you're basically applying again to your job because you're getting a new company every quarter. And about people, processes, technology, so at spot it was a little bit different through the book I read, which is the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. It's people, products, revenue, it's PPR. And you need to take care of the people. And if you don't take care of the people, so nothing else matters. Like, it's nothing else, just. And if the people and the product are not working well, so the revenue are not going to come. So revenue was always for us as something that is coming, it's trailing after a good product and good people. I love that. What a great, honest focus and vision you guys both have. Congratulations on the acquisition, Cloud Checkered. But also just the cultural alignment that you've done that's really driven by your people and the customers. It's very refreshing to hear that. And congrats on NetApp's continued partnership with AWS. We look forward to having you on again next time. We can see you in person and talk more about customer successes. Thank you very much for hosting us. My pleasure guys. Thank you. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage.