>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital
coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020, special coverage sponsored by
AWS Global Partner Network. >> Welcome back to
theCUBE's virtual coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. We're not in person this year, we have to do the all
theCUBE interviews remote but we got two great guests from the Amazon Web Services
Partner Network, AWS (APN), Craig Wicks, Senior
Manager of AWS SaaS Factory and Tod Golding,
Principal Cloud Architect, Global SaaS Tech Lead. Gentlemen, thanks for joining theCUBE, 'ppreciate it. >> Thanks John.
>> Thanks. >> First of all, I want
to get in Craig with you and just take a minute to
explain what is the SaaS Factory? 'Cause this is a unique and
growing team within AWS. And we've been saying it for years, but the move to the cloud
obviously has been obvious, it's mainstream but your team your role is doing some
interesting things, explain what is the SaaS
Factory and what do you guys do? >> Yeah, thanks John. Really delighted to be here today. Yeah, the SaaS Factory may be for those that are maybe
just somewhat disappointing, there's no factory, there's
no sort easy button for SaaS, there's no templates,
there's no machinery, we wish we had it. But we're really a global team of subject matter experts in SaaS that really help AWS partners
transform their business. Both, business and
technical to the SaaS model and help them do that faster
with greater confidence and all the best practices
that our team has learned over the years. >> And Tod, you're a solution architect, so you're the partner, you have to help your customers get there. You know, being a solution
architect really is like the mechanic of the business, you've got to lay out
the engine of innovation and this is what clients
are trying to strive for. Can you take a minute
explain how your role is involved in this? Obviously SaaS is not,
it makes sense on paper but making it happen is
not a trivial (laughs). What's your role? >> Yeah, so I'm very much
in fact connected to Craig, we're all part of the same organization. And we're where we're sort
of very much deeply involved with these organizations. We get very much embedded
with these partners that we work with, and really help them through
sort of the nuts and bolts of what it means to
transform an application to a multi-tenant sort of SaaS model, so that means helping
them figure out how to map that to different AWS. Services, it means helping
them figure out how to realize the sort of
the business objectives of transforming to SaaS. But really our goal is to sort of just get into the weeds with them,
figure out their specific domain 'cause there's no one
size fits all for SaaS, figure out how that really
connects to where they're at in their trajectory in terms of where they're trying to get to
the journey as a business and then find that
alignment with AWS services. So there's sort of so
that trifecta of lining all those bets up and sort of formulating a technical strategy that really brings all those pieces together for them. >> Craig, I want to get
your thoughts on the trends and Tod, you can weigh into
I want to get your reaction. Over the weekend, I was pinging some folks on the internet, LinkedIn and whatnot from eight years ago when
we did our first CUBE at re:Invent, was the
second year of re:Invent, and nobody was there in the industry, press wasn't there, we're the first I think press to be there. And a lot of people have either
moved on to big positions or companies have gone public, got bought. I mean major things have
happened since 2013. Cloud certainly rose there
SaaS became the business model, everyone kind of knows that but the dynamics today are different when you think about the on-premises and you got the edge a big
part of the themes this week. In the next couple of weeks as
we unfold here at re:Invent, this is different but the same, can you share what is the trend
that people are riding on? What's the wind of innovation? >> Yeah, and certainly I would say, first of all just
personally, I've been in SaaS for some time, I was involved early on in sort of a model we call the application
service provider model, which was sort of a predecessor to SaaS. If you know the gray hair is out there, remember that one, but you
know, I think first of all I would say SaaS is everywhere and people want it to be everywhere. And so there's just, we just see insatiable demand for SaaS from customers out there. And I think the challenge
and problem we see is that organizations that we work with just can't transition fast enough, right? The real technical challenges
that are in front of them in terms of how they build and
architect the SaaS solution. But most importantly, the business model that sort of underpins that
is a huge transformation for companies that they're going through. And that's one of the
things that we just see, you know, just in my time
in SaaS Factory in AWS, the range of organizations
we've worked with has just changed. So, you know, early on
we're working with companies and infrastructure around
security and storage and those areas. And the last few years, it's just expanded to all sorts of industries from
public sector, oil and gas, sort of financial services. You know, everyone really
wants to build this model and that's really, you know, born around the customer
demand they're seeing for SaaS. >> That's interesting,
you mentioned challenge, I want to get your thoughts. You mentioned ASP,
application service provider, do you remember those days? You know, vividly mainly a tech thing but it's really a consumption model around delivery of software and services. And you know web services came on in 2000, the rest is history. We've got Amazon Web Services, but now as you get more
vertically expanded in oil and gas and go mainstream, what are some of the challenges? Because as people get smarter, it's not just about self
service or buy as you go, it's a business model you mentioned, is it a managed service? Is it self-service? Is it been embedded into the application? Can you share some of the new things that are emerging on
the business model side that people should pay attention to, what are some of those challenges? >> Yeah, I think one of the first things is just fundamentally your
operating service, right? So that changes the
dynamics for everything, for in terms of how you
engage with customers to how you deliver, you know, the kind of simple thing I often tell people is, you
know, who's answering the page or now if something goes wrong, it's not your customer, it's you, right? And you have to manage
and sustain that service, and really continue to provide innovation and value to customers, right? That's one of the challenges we see, is organizations are now on a treadmill in terms of innovation, where
customers expect something from a SaaS model and you
really have to deliver on that. And then one of the
final points I would say is it really transformed how you think about going to market, right? Sales and marketing are
fundamentally transformed and you know, traditional ways
of really selling software and technology largely go away and go away in some good ways in SaaS where you can really put
customers in an experience, right? And have them evaluate your technology in a manner where they can
have a trial experience, right? And in a way to really introduce them to technology very slowly and then they grow over time, right? As they see value in that software, which is very aligned
to how we think about, you know, AWS or on technology. >> Okay, Tod, I got to ask you, obviously you know I
want to drive that car, the SaaS car what's under the hood, we have the right tires,
what's the conditions? And is there any technical issues here? If I'm a customer, I'm an APN partner, okay, I'm in there, I got a traditional
business, pandemic hits or just my business models forcing me. What's your advice? What do I got to do? What's the playbook on the technical side? How do I go to the next level? >> Well, you know, we're
obviously going to ask a lot of questions and probably
the answer to that, sadly like most technical
people will say to you is it depends of which is
never the answer anybody wants to hear, but so we're
definitely going to ask a lot of questions you about
like where you're at? What are the immediate sort
of pressures in your business? This is one of the technical
people on our team tend to wearing a little bit
of a business hat here where we want to know before we sort of guide you down any
one particular technical path like what are sort of the
key sort of dimensions of getting you to a SaaS delivery model. But probably as a theme, generally what we're saying to people is, let's look at how we can
get you there incrementally, let's get you into a SaaS model
as fast as we possibly can. So we have a lot of
different sort of patterns and strategies we'll use that are about sort of
incremental adoption of SaaS, which are how can I sort of
lift my existing environment, move it into a SaaS model, present a SaaS offering to the business, let me operate and run, get
the metrics and analytics, get the sort of operational efficiency and the DevOps goodness of SaaS. And then sort of move after that into the insides of that SaaS application and think about now how
can I begin to move that to more modern constructs? How can I move that into
containers potentially or how can I begin to adopt
serverless technologies? How can I apply IEM and other constructs to achieve tenant isolation. So we're really just trying to put them in a position where they can sort of incrementally modernize
their applications while still realizing the benefits of getting to market in a SaaS model. >> So you saying that
the playbook has come in low-hanging fruit has used the existing core
building blocks, EC2, S3, Dynamo, whatever, and then
hit the higher level services as you get more experience or is there a certain recipe that you see working for customers? >> So it's probably less about that, it's probably, it's not about necessarily where you're at in this service continuum and which services you're using. Well, we're going to move
you to a set of services that are probably a good set
of services that are that way to move your monolith in most
effectively into a SaaS model as a beginning point that
could land you in EC2 that could land you in containers. The more important thing
we're going to do here is, we're going to surround
that sort of experience with all the other moving parts that you have to have billing, metrics, we're going to build in onboarding so that you can get
frictionless onboarding. Those are all going to be net
new things you have to build. We're probably going to
change your identity model and connect that up with Cognito or one of our partners solutions. So for us, it's sort of grabbing
your existing environment, can we move it over effectively, maybe modernize it a
little bit along the way but more importantly, build
all those horizontal concepts in leveraging the right
AWS services for you to bring that to life. >> That's actually smart. I like the way you described it that way, it's almost as if it's the core tenet of what Amazon stood for. You stand it up fast and
you get value, right? So what you're saying is whatever it takes is a variety of tools to stand it up. I mean, this is interesting, Craig and Tod, you can comment on this because one of the things
that we've been reporting on, I've done probably a dozen
interviews specifically around companies that have moved to the cloud early proactively
kind of in this way, not in a major radical way, but you know, operationally,
they have been transforming, you know, piece by piece
as how Tod you laid it out and then pandemic hit, and they've had successfully
positioned themselves to take advantage of the forcing function of necessity of dealing with remote work and all these things
that just clobbered them. So, and again, they were on
the wave at the right time kind of not because they had to because they did the right work. This is a factor, this
is going to tell a sign, can you guys share your
reaction what you've seen with the SaaS Factory because
this is the benefit of moving to the cloud being positioned, I mean it's pandemic
today, tomorrow is edge, what's after that, right? Space, I mean, (laughs)
there's a lot of things. This is kind of the playbook, what's your reaction to that, Craig? >> Yeah, I certainly see,
you know, organizations that we work with that have
really delivering the SaaS model being more agile, right? The ability to sort of flex resources and change the way they
sell and work with customers and find ways to sort of deliver to them that don't require some of the things that are really maybe some of the things that are holding them back
from traditional software in terms of how fast they
deliver new features and services and, you know changing to sort of market and world dynamics very quickly, right? Is a big part of that. And you know, one of
the things we talk about in the SaaS model is really
not just getting to SaaS but being to deliver in that model, right? And drive innovations to
customers very quickly so that you're really
getting sort of securing, you know, sort of them as loyal customers and sort of a lifetime
customer, hopefully, you know that's a big part of SaaS. >> Yeah, and there's two
types of organizations that you guys have been successful with, the startup, obviously,
you know category creators or disruptors will come in, you know, come in with
an app born in the cloud, kick some ass, you've seen that
movie happens all the time, still going on. And then you've got the
existing organizations that have to stay in that innovation wave and not get crushed by the change. Can you guys share how
the Factory is working, the SaaS Factory from a mix of clients? Is it more established? Is it startups in between? Give us a taste of what's the makeup. >> Yeah, it's range, just
to give you the range of some of the companies we worked with from kind of legacy technology companies or companies that have
been around in some time like BMC, F5, Alfresco,
we've all worked with over the past few years and
they've launched products with our team on AWS, you
know to kind of startups like Matillion, you know,
cloud zero Cohesity, which just launched a
data management service, announced here at re:Invent, two very kind of specific
industry players. I think this is a trend
we've seen most recently where you know, we work with
organizations like NASDAQ, (mumbles) in the aerospace area, Emerson in oil and gas, we've seen a number of oil
and gas companies really come to us based on sort of
dynamics of their industry and the constraints the customers are in in terms of how they can deliver and the value that they provide. >> Is there a key thing that's
popping out of all these deals that kind of has, is
a tell sign, a pattern or a specific thing that's obvious, and then when you look at
the data when you zoom out? >> Yeah, I think one
thing I would just say, people underestimate
(laughs) the transformation they have to go through continually, and we still have
organizations that come to us and maybe they come to Tod or others. And they're really,
they're envisioning this as a technical transformation, right? And they sort of want to talk
all about the application and sort of the new architecture
that they want to move to. But we really see the
opportunity to align business and technology around SaaS as a model. And that's truly fundamental
to getting it right. And so, you know, often
we see organizations that really have unrealistic launch dates, you know, which is pretty common in software and services these days, but particularly in SaaS model, we just see that, you know, they underestimate the
work in front of them and kind of what they
need to bring to that. >> Todd, real quick before we
get into the announcements, which are cool technical things that pop out of these organizations, is there the cream kind
of rises to the top when you look at the value proposition, what are they focused on technically? >> You know, it's
interesting 'cause to me, a lot of the focus tends to be more on the things that would surprise you, like a lot of people are
want to sort of think about how to design the ends the application and the business logic of the application and take advantage of the
scale and the sizing of AWS. And those things are still all true, but really in a SaaS organization with a really successful
SaaS organizations, we'll see a lot more shift to the agility and the operational efficiency, right? So really good organizations will say, we're going to invest in all the metrics and all the land and analytics, all the tooling that lets
us really have our finger on the pulse of what
our customers are doing. And then they'll derive all their tech and their business strategy based on this really data-driven experience. And I see that as the
trend and the the thing we certainly advocate a ton
inside of the SaaS Factory is don't under-invest in that data because that data is really, especially in a multi-tenant environment
where everybody's running in this sort of shared environment, that data is essential to understanding how to morph your business, how to innovate, understand
how your cost profile is really evolving. And so I see the really strong
organizations billing lots of the sort of foundational bits here, even ahead sometimes of building features and functions into their own products. >> It's not only moving
fast and deploying tech is moving fast on the business
model innovation as well, that's what you're basically saying? >> Yeah. >> Don't overplay your
hand and try to lock in the business model logic 'cause it's going to change with the data, that's what you're saying? >> Yeah, they're playing
for the innovation, they're playing for the agility, they're playing for new markets, new segments that may evolve. And so they're really
trying to put themselves in the position of being
able to pivot and move. And they're really
taking pride in the fact that their technology lets them do that. >> You know, that's not,
that's a business model that's not for the faint of heart. You know, when you have
a market that has a lot of competitiveness to it, and certainly we're seeing the sea change happening over this year in past few years with cloud completely
changing the playing field, winners and losers are emerging. And that's, I think this key it's, you know, as I said, in the godfather, you know, you need a wartime conciliary for these kinds of times, and this is kind of what we're seeing. And I think that's a great point, Tod, good stuff there. Okay, so announcements,
you guys had some things on stage talked about Craig, you guys launching some
new stuff, new programs? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, John, I guess our model is really to learn from a range of partners and experiences we have and then, you know build tools and approaches to help everyone go faster, right? Because we certainly can't work with thousands of organizations. And one of the things that our
team has had the opportunity over the last few years is
published ton of articles, blogs, white papers, you know, very specific approaches
to building SaaS solutions. If you search Tod Golding out
there on YouTube or anything, you'll find a bunch of things, but we wanted to bring on that altogether, and so we've created a central directory called SaaS Factory Insights Hub. And there's right now over
70 unique pieces of content that our team has produced and curated whether you're starting on
your SaaS journey, right? You need SaaS 101 and business planning to level 400, right? Tenant isolation from Tod Golding, right? That's all there and available to you on the SaaS Factory program page. >> What's some of the interesting things that came out of that
data from the insights that you can share? >> Yeah, a couple of things that we have we've published most recently I would point to are really interesting. We just recently published a 5K study where we go deeper in terms
of their transformation to really understand what was,
you know, behind the scenes. And that we also published a white paper called the SaaS Journey Framework, where for the first time our team really broke
down the journey (laughs) and what are the steps required, and what are some of the key
questions you need to ask. And then a final piece I'd point to for the people that that Tod talks to is we have a white paper on
SaaS tenant isolation strategies where we really go deep on
that particular challenge and what's there and that's also published and available in our SaaS
Factory Insights Hub. >> Could you just define
what does that mean, tenant isolation strategies? What is that? >> Go to Tod with that for sure. >> Tod, let's get that on the record, what is the definition
of SaaS tenant isolation? >> Sure, so, you know, I
think I've been in the room and with a lot of people that re:Invent and basically have been
in Chuck talks and said, you know what is tenant isolation to you? And a lot of people will say, oh, that's authentication essentially, somebody got into the system, so now I know my system is isolated but in a multi-tenant environment where we're running all these resources and this data all co-mingled from all of these different tenants, it's it would be a huge
blow to the business if one tenant somehow
inadvertently exposed the resource or exposed to the resources
of another tenant. And so fundamentally,
tenant isolation is all of these techniques and strategies and architectural patterns
that you use to ensure that one tenant can
inadvertently get access to the resources of another tenant. So it's a sort of a layer of protection and security that goes beyond
just the authentication and authorization schemes
that you'll typically see in a SaaS architecture. >> Sure, so that's basically
like having your own room, lock and key, doorway, not just getting in but no one can access your stuff? >> Yeah, so it's a whole set of measures. You can imagine identity
and access management and other policies sort of
defining tenant boundaries and saying as each tenant is
trying to access a resource or trying to interact with the system in some way you've put
these extra walls up to ensure that you can't
cross those boundaries. >> Tod, I want to get your thoughts on this well-architected SaaS lens piece, what is this all about? >> Well, AWS has had
for a long time the sort of the well-architected framework, which has been a really great set of sort of guiding
principles and best practices around how to design and
architect solutions on top of AWS. And certainly SAS
providers have been using that all along the way to sort
of ask foundational questions of their architecture, but there's always been this
layer of additional sort of SaaS considerations that
have sat on top of that are that are SaaS specific
architectural patterns. And so what we've done is we've used this mechanism called
the well-architected lens that lets us essentially take our SaaS architectural principles and extend the well-architected framework and introduce all of these
concepts into the SaaS then to the architecture pillars that really ask the hard
SaaS architecture questions. So security, operations, reliability, all the sort of classic pillars that are part of the
well-architected framework now have a SaaS specific
context added to them to really go after those areas that are unique to SaaS providers. And this really gives developers, architects, consultants
the ability to sit down and look at a SaaS application and evaluate its alignment
with these best practices. And so far, we can really
positive response to the content. >> Great job guys doing great work. Finally, there's some something new that you guys are announcing today to make life easier preview
building SaaS on (mumbles), what's that about? >> Sure, so, you know, you can imagine we've been
working with these SaaS providers for a number of years now, and as we've worked with them, we've seen a number of
different themes emerge. And we've run into this pattern that it's pretty common where
we'll see these customers that have a classic sort of
installed software model. They're installing it on
premises or in the cloud but basically each customer
sort of has their own version of the product, they
have one-off versions, they're potentially have customizations that are different. And while this works for some
time for these businesses, what they find is they sort of run into this operational
efficiency and cost wall, whereas they're trying
to grow their businesses. They just really can't, they can't sort of keep
up based on the way that they're running
their current systems, and this is sort of a natural
draw to move them to SaaS. But the other pattern
that we've seen here is that these organizations are
sometimes not in a position where they have the luxury
of sort of going away and just saying, hey,
I'll rewrite my system or modernize it and make
all of these changes. There could be any number of
factors, competitive pressures, market realities, costs
that just make that too much of a difficult process for them to be able to just take their
application and rewrite it. And so what we did is sort
of tried to acknowledge that and say, what can we do to give you a more prescriptive solution to this, that sort of turnkey easy
button if you will to say, take my existing monolithic application that I deliver on this classic way and plug it into an
existing pre-built framework and environment that
is essentially includes all these foundational
bits of a SaaS environment, and let me just take my monolith, move it into that environment and begin to offer a SaaS
product to the universe. And so what we've done is
we've created something and we've introduced this
thing called AWS SaaS Boost. So AWS SaaS Boost, it's
not an AWS service. It is an open source
reference environment, so you essentially download it, you install it into your own AWS account. And then this installs
all these building blocks of SaaS that we've talked about. And it gives you all this sort of prescriptive ability to say how can I now take my existing
monolithic environment lifted into this experience and
begin to out offer that to the market as a SaaS product, so it has, you know, it has billing, it has metrics and analytics, all the things we've been
kind of talked about here, they're all baked into
that from the ground up. And we've also offered this
in an open source model. So our hope here is that this is really just the
starting point of this solution, which will solve one business
case, but our hope is that essentially the open
source community will lean in with us, help us
figure out how to evolve and make this into
something that addresses a broader set of needs. >> Well, I love the SaaS Boost. Firstly, I want to take the
energy drink business right there. It sounds like an energy drink. Give me some of that SaaS Boost, (Tod and Craig laughs) Buy that at 711. Craig, I want to get
the final word with you. You've been in the SaaS
business for over 20 years, you've seen this movie before. There are a lot of people
who know the SaaS business and some people are learning it and you guys are helping people get there. It's different though now, what's different today because it's not just your grandfather's SaaS as the expression goes, it's
different, it's new dynamics. What is the most important thing people should pay attention to whether they have a SaaS legacy kind of mindset
or they're new to the game? Take us home. >> Yeah, I think certainly, you know, getting to SaaS is not
the end of the journey. You know, we see really
successful SaaS providers just continue to differentiate, right? And then one of the things that I think we've seen successful SaaS providers do is really take advantage of
AWS services to go faster. And that's really key. I think in this model
is to really find a way to accelerate your business
and deliver value faster, and then just sort of keep that differentiation innovation there. But, and I would just say now that there's more information out
there available than ever, you know, and not only from our team, but from a host of people that really are our SaaS experts and follow the space, and so lots of resources
available to everyone. >> All right, gentlemen, thanks
for coming on great insight, great segment on getting to
SaaS Boost, just the landscape, you guys are helping customers get there. And that's really the top priority, necessity's the mother of all invention during this pandemic more than ever, keeping a business model going
and establishing new ones. So thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Okay, it's theCUBE's virtual coverage. We are a SaaS business now, we're virtual, bringing
you remote SaaS CUBE, and more coverage with and
re:Invent next few weeks, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
