 Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS ReInvent 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. You're watching theCUBE's worldwide leader in tech coverage. We're in person on the show floor. It's also a hybrid event online as well. CUBE coverage online with the Amazon ReInvent site. Great content all around, amazing announcements, transformation in all areas are exploding in innovation. Of course, we have innovation here with Sandy Carter, the worldwide public sector vice president of partners and programs for Amazon Web Services. Sandy, welcome back. CUBE alumni, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great to see you, Dawn, and great to see you in person again. It's so exciting, the energy level, oh my gosh. Oh my God, it's so much fun. Great keynote, good to see you again in person. Lot of action, give us the top announcements. What's going on? What are the top 10 AWS announcements? Yeah, so we, this year for 2022 as we frame it out, we decided on a 3D strategy, a three-dimensional strategy. So we started with destination, then data, and then delivery. So if I could do them in that order, does that sound good? It was so, yeah, destination. Let's start with destination. So I got this from one of the customers and he said to me, look, Sandy, I thought it was all going to be about getting to the cloud. But when I got to the cloud, I realized it wasn't about just in the cloud, it was about what you do in the cloud. And so we made some announcements this morning, especially around migration, modernization, and optimization. So for migration, we have the mainframe announcement that Adam made, and then we also echoed it because most of the mainframes today sit in public sector. So this is a managed service. It's working with MicroFocus, one of our partners, and Lockheed Martin, one of our partners, is one of the first into the mainframe migration, which is a service and services to help customers transform their business with the mainframe. And then as we compliment, and we look at that, we also have modernization occurring. So for example, IoT, IDC tells us that IoT and that data has increased four times since COVID because now devices and sensors are tracking a lot of data. So we made an announcement around smart cities and we now have badging for our partners. We have 18 partner solutions now in smart cities. So working backwards from the partners, they were talking about given now COVID is kind of in the midst of where it is, smart cities and making those cities work better in public transportation and utility. It's just all where it's at. And then the final announcement in that category is containers. So 60% of our customers said that they're going to be using containers. So we announced a rapid adoption assistance program for our partners to be able to help our customers move to containers overall. So mainframe migration, I saw that on stage with MicroFocus. That was a good job. Get that legacy out of the way, move to the cloud. You got smart cities, especially IoT, which brings cloud to the edge. And then containerization for the cloud native, either development or compatibility, interoperability kind of sets that table. That's the destination. That's right, that's right. Because all of those things, you got to get the mainframe to the cloud, but then it's about modernizing, right? Getting rid of all that global call code. And then, you know, IoT and then making sure that you are ready to go with containers. It's the newest. 3D destination data and delivery. Okay. Destination, check. Yep. Cloud. Okay, yep. Cloud destination. Put the dots together in real time, okay? You got it, you got it, you got it. I'm still with it. If there are all these interviews. Yeah, there you go. Data, I'll say killer swamis on stage today. All new data, multiple databases. What's the data focus in this scenario? So for partners, first it's about getting the data to the cloud, which means that we need a way to really migrate it. So we announced an initiative to help get that data to the cloud. We had a set of partners that came on with us early on in this initiative to move that data to the cloud. It's called a rapid adoption assistance, which helps you envision where you want to go with your data. Do you want to put it in a data lake? Do you want data stored at it's is? What do you want to visualize? What do you want to do with analytics? So envision that and then get enablement. So all the new announcements, all the new services get enablement and then to pilot it. And then the second announcement in this area is a set of private offers in the marketplace. Our customers told us that they love to go after data, but that there's too many pieces and moving parts. So they need the assessment bundled with the managed service and everything bundled together. So it's a solution for them. So those were our two announcements in the data area. All right, so the private marketplace thing, because this came up when I was talking with Steve Orban who's now running the marketplace. What does that mean? You're saying that this private offers being made between suppliers and in government? Or what can you do? Yeah, so available in the marketplace, a lot of our government agencies can buy from the marketplace. So if they have a contract, they can come and buy. But instead of having to go and say, okay, here's an assessment to tell me what I should do. Now here's the offering and now here's the managed service. They want it bundled together. So we have a set of offerings that have that bundled together today with a set of our great public sector partners. Tons of data action. Where's the delivery fit in? So delivery, this one is very interesting because our customers are telling us that they no longer want just technology skills. They also need industry skills too. So they're looking for that total package. For example, the state of New Jersey when Hurricane Ida hit category four storm, they wanted someone who obviously could leverage all the data, but they wanted someone who understood disaster response. And so Maxar fits that bill. They have that industry specialty along with the technology specialty. And so for our announcements here, we announced a new competency, which is an industry competency for energy. So think about renewables and sustainability and low carbon. These are the partners that do that. We have 32 different partners who met the needs of that energy competency. So we were able to GA that here today. The other really exciting announcement that we made was for small businesses to get extra training. It's called Think Big for Small Business Communities. So we announced last year, virtually, yeah, Think Big for Small Business. We now have about 200 companies who are part of that program, really getting extra help as diverse companies, women-owned, black-owned, brown-owned, veteran-owned businesses, right? But now what they told us was in addition to the AWS help, what they loved is how we connected them together. And we almost just stumbled upon it. I was hosting some meetings, and I had Tia from Bell Floor, I had Lisa from DLZP together, and they got a lot of value just being connected. And we kept hearing that over and over and over again. So now we've programmatized that so it's more scalable than me introducing people to each other. We now have a program to introduce those small business leaders to each other. And then the last one that we announced is our AWS government competency is now the largest competency at AWS. So the government competency, which is pretty powerful. So now we're going to do a focus enhancement for federal. So all of our federal partners with all that opportunity can now take advantage of some private advisory council, some additional training that will go on there, additional go-to-market support that they can use to help them. Okay, I feel like my brain's going to explode. Those are just the announcements here. There's a lot going on. Yeah, there's a lot going on. So much, you got to put them into buckets. Okay, what's the rationale around 3D? Delivery data, I mean destination, delivery data, destination meaning cloud, data meaning data, and delivery meaning just new ways to get people up and running to get this delivery for the services. Okay, so is there a pattern emerging? What can you say? Because remember, we talked about this before a year ago as well as in person at your public sector summit with your partners. Is there a pattern emerging that you're seeing here? Because obviously the announcements are coming. We've got all the mainframes. Connect on your watch has been a big explosion. Adam Sileski told me personally, it's on fire. Yes. And public sector, we saw a lot of that. Yeah, well in fact, if you look at public sector, three factoids that we shared this morning in the keynote, our public sector partners grew 54% this year. This is after last year we grew 45%. They grew the number of certifications that they had by 40% and the number of new customers by 32%. I mean, those are unreal numbers. Last year we did 28% new customers and we thought that was a cat's meow. Now we're at 32%. So our partners are just exploding in this public sector space right now. It's almost as if they have an advantage because they drag their feet for so long. It is true. It's true. COVID accelerated their movement to the cloud. They're slowly moving verticals because of the legacy and whether it's regulation or government funding or skills. Or mainframes. All had to basically move fast. They had no excuses. And then the cloud kind of changes everyone's mindset. How about the culture? I want to ask you about the culture in the public sector because this is coming up a lot again. A lot of your customers that I'm interviewing all talk and I try to get them to talk about horizontally scalable and machine learning and they all, no, it's culture. Yeah, it's true. Culture's the number one thing. It is true. You know, culture reads strategy for launch. So even if you have a great strategy around the cloud, if you don't have that right culture, you won't win in the marketplace. So we are seeing this a lot. In fact, one of our most popular programs is PTP, partner transformation program. And it lays out a hundred day program on cloud best practices. And guess what's the number one topic? Culture. Culture, governance, technology, all of those things are so important right now. And I think because, you know, a lot of the agencies and governments and countries, they hadn't moved to the cloud. Now that they're in the cloud, they went through that pain during COVID, now they're seeing all the impact of artificial intelligence and containers and blockchain and all of that, right? It's just crazy. That's a great insight and I'll add to that because I think one of the things I've observed, especially with your partners is the fear of getting eliminated by technology or the fear of having a job change or fear of change in general, went away once they started using it because they saw the criticality of the cloud and how it impacted their job, but then what it offered them as new opportunities. In fact, it actually increases more areas to innovate on and do more, whether it's job advancement or cross training or lateral moves promotion. That's a huge retention piece. It really is. And I will tell you that the movement to the cloud enabled people to see it wasn't as scary as they thought it was going to be and that they could still leverage a lot of the skills that they had and learn new ones. So I think it is, and this is one of the reasons why I was just on with Maureen, launching that 29 million training program for the cloud. That really touches public sector because there is so many agencies, countries, governments that need to have that training. Good one Maureen Launder because she's done the training. She's been working on that for years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's only getting better and better. Well, Cindy, I got to ask you, since we have a few minutes left, I want to ask you about your journey. Yep. We've interviewed you, went going back a long time. Look where we are now. I know, I think we're all available. There's two sets going on with you. You've been an incredible voice on theCUBE. We really appreciate having you on because you're innovative. You're always moving like a shark. You can't sit still, you're always innovating. Still going on. You had the great women's luncheon. Yeah. This is from 20 to 200. Yeah, we grew, so we started it with 20 people back in five years ago, and now we had about 200 women. And it was incredible because we do different topics. Our topic was around empathy and empathetic leadership. And you can really leverage that today back with the skills and your people. Given that Amazon just announced our new leadership principle about wanting to be the Earth's most employee-centric company, it fits right in, empathetic leadership. And we had amazing women at that luncheon that told some great stories about empathy that I think will live in our hearts forever. And the other thing I want to point out, we had some of the guests on here on theCUBE. We had Linda Jojo from the United Airlines. Oh, yeah. And a little factoid yesterday on the keynote, 50% of the speakers were women. I know, the first time I did a blog post on it, like we had two amazing women in STEM, and we had the black pilot that was highlighted, so it's showing more diversity. So I was just so excited. Thank you, Adam, for doing that, because I think that was an amazing, amazing focus here at the conference. I wanted to bring up a point, I had a note here to bring up to you. In the public sector, you guys doubled the number of partners, large migrations this year. That's a big statoid. You've had 575,000 individuals hold active certifications. Okay, that grew 40% from August, 2020, 2021. Clearly a pandemic impact. A lot of people jumping back in, getting their certs, migrating. So if they're not, they're in between transitions, whether they have a tailwind or a headwind, whether you're United Airlines or whether you're Zoom, you got some companies were benefiting from the pandemic and some were retooling. There's something that we talked about actually at the beginning. That's right, absolutely. And I do think that those certifications also demonstrate that customers have raised the bar on what they expect from a partner. It's no longer just like that technology input. It's also that industry side. And so you see the number of certifications going up because customers are demanding higher skill level. And by the way, for the partners, we conducted a study with ESG and ESG said that more skilled partners, you drive more margin, profit margin, 42% more profit margin for a higher skilled partner. And we're seeing that really come to fruition with some of these really intense focus on getting more certifications and more training. So I want to get your thoughts on the healthcare and life sciences. Got a note here that tells me that the vertical is one of the fastest-lowing, growing verticals with 105% year-in-year growth. Healthcare and life sciences. Another important, again, a lot of legacy, a lot of old silos forced to expand and innovate with the pandemic growing. Yes, government is our largest segment today, our largest competency. Healthcare is our fastest-growing segment. So we have a big focus there. And like you said, it's not just around seeing things stay the same. It's about digital transformation. It's one of the reasons we're also seeing such an increase in our authority to operate program, both on the government side and the healthcare side. So we do FedRAMP and IL-5. We had six companies that got IL-5, five of them in 2021, which is an amazing achievement. And then if you think about the healthcare side, our fastest-growing compliance is HIPAA and high trust. And that ATO program really brings best practices and templates and stronger go-to-market for those partners, too. Yeah, I mean, I think it's opportunity recognition and then capture during the pandemic with the cloud, more agility, more speed. That's right. Sandy, always great to have you on. In the last couple of seconds we have left, summarize the top 10 announcements in a bumper sticker. You had to kind of put that bumper sticker on the car as it drives away from re-invent this year. What's on that bumper sticker? What's it say? Partners that focus on destination data and delivery will grow faster and add more value to their customers. There it is. The three-dimension DDD delivery, destination data and delivery. There you go. Bringing you all the data, live on the ground here. Cube Studios, two sets, wall-to-wall coverage. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in global tech coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.