In the Clouds with AWS

Introducing Amazon WorkSpaces Core

October 26, 2022 Jon Spallone XenTegra & Brian Schoepfle AWS Season 1 Episode 5
In the Clouds with AWS
Introducing Amazon WorkSpaces Core
Show Notes Transcript

Jon Spallone of XenTegra and Brian Schoepfle of AWS are joined with Kevin Goodman Director, Product Manager - Tech ES, End-User Compute Amazon WorkSpaces to discuss AWS' announcement of Amazon WorkSpaces Core. Amazon WorkSpaces Core offers a fully managed virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) accessible to third-party VDI management solutions.

Some topics we'll discuss are: 

Host: Jon Spallone
Co-Host: Brian Schoepfle
Special Guest: Kevin Goodman

WEBVTT

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Jon Spallone: Hello, everybody! Welcome back to in the clouds with uh Santago and aws. Um! We have a little tree today. We have uh K. Kevin Goodman with us, uh, which is, uh,

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Jon Spallone: really really great to like to have to make some discussion today around aws, workspaces core. So we're going to get to understand this. Get some grasp around it. Uh, But with that, Brian, if you want to, let's start some introductions here as we go around.

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Brian Schoepfle: Yeah. So as a If this is the first time you're hearing our voices. My name is Brian Cheeley. I run the partner. Solutions architect organization for our cloud foundational services group within the partner core organization at Aws.

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Brian Schoepfle: Uh, but today um, I come bearing gifts. Um, you know. Previously we have talked about a lot of the core and foundational aws services. We've talked about migration. We've talked about storage lot of data, center focus kind of stuff,

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Brian Schoepfle: uh, but we are. We are bringing things uh front and center Uh, we are going into end user computing,

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Brian Schoepfle: And to that end we are joined today by Kevin Goodman, uh Kevin is a director in our uh product management group here at Aws, and he runs uh, he runs workspaces in Munir Mears. This group. So uh, this is A. This is a a really exciting treat for us. I know Kevin has a lot to share about workspaces and workspaces. Core. Um! So i'll like Kevin introduce himself.

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Kevin Goodman: Hey? I'm, Kevin Goodman and I work on the team

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Kevin Goodman: at Euc for workspaces and upstream. I'm just a teammate on there. Thank you for the uh the fancy introduction. But yeah, um, Workspaces core is something that is brand new. We just announced it recently. And uh, John and I want to dig in for you and dive deep on it.

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Jon Spallone: Okay. So i'm gonna share my screen real quick here, everybody

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Jon Spallone: for those of you that are viewing for those of you who are listening. Well, eventually you can go view it, and you'll see everything here. Um. So as Kevin said, if everybody can see my screen. Okay,

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Jon Spallone: Um, Aws announced on September twenty ninth. Amazon workspace is core. Um. The press releases here in the link. I'll make sure that we get the link as well in the description of the podcast later on. But um! With that, said Kevin,

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Jon Spallone: give us some background. You know what what is workspaces core. How? What is this, and how does it differ from workspaces and upstream?

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Kevin Goodman: Sure. So, as you know, we get our ideas from our customers of of what they want, and what our customers have told us is

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Kevin Goodman: they. They love workspaces, but they have

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Kevin Goodman: users who are still on prem. Some of our customers told us they have plans to migrate to the cloud

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Kevin Goodman: some over five years. We had one customer tell us over twenty years, so that means you need a hybrid solution. So we came up with workspaces core to implement this. Customers who want a hybrid solution really want their users to use the same client. They want their administrators to use the same administrative console between on-prem and on workspaces and workspaces. Core in its essence, is a set of apis

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Kevin Goodman: that enable uh workspaces core partners such as Vmware, to enable products such as their horizon eight,

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Kevin Goodman: which is already already the very popular on-prem to run on top of workspaces. Now that's different from buying your own instances from Ec. Two. And if you have

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Kevin Goodman: expertise in that area, customers have been doing that for years. But workspaces is a managed solution, so that if you don't have that expertise on aws, you get the opportunity to take advantage of Aws. Keep your same clients and your same console.

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Jon Spallone: So one of your questions. A couple of other room in there,

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Jon Spallone: the users, and and, for example, Vmware, because we do know that Vmware made some announcements and and explore their recent event. Um! That they're working with you guys on this concept here, but it it's It's allowing them to extend into aws for compute. Correct?

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Kevin Goodman: Yeah. So the the Apis allow um to use the same curated list of instances that we have for workspaces, but they've been purpose built, so they don't have our um protocols attached to them. They don't have uh, you know, our gateway agents inside them, and these Apis allow vendors like Vmware to go plug in their own. As a matter of fact, the Uh the Api I.

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Kevin Goodman: It says, Byop, bring your own protocol. So this Api allows them to bring their own protocol. And um. You know what we see in the evaluations is customers, users. We're on prem earlier in the day,

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Kevin Goodman: on workspaces core in the afternoon, and users don't know where their vm resides, and and administrators and customers like it that way. But now they have all the benefits of Amazon workspaces at their at their disposal.

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Jon Spallone: So the the difference, then, between workspaces itself core, is more of providing that accessibility from a third party and or Aws workspaces, but it's It's built on that foundational.

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Well,

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Kevin Goodman: Pre Cookie Cutter, vm. Is that, am I? It's a good way to describe it. It's a it. It is uh what we say. Purpose built, but yes, exactly so. Reach out and core. Apis. Allow you to get to these instances, those instances. By the way, since I don't have some of our um protocols embedded in them, we can sell at a less expensive price, so you get a price discount by, and and you could just go

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Kevin Goodman: like I said, straight to Ec. Two if you wanted to, in and find some instances, and we have customers doing that we have customers doing that very successfully have their years. But now, if you go to our workspaces, core instances, you have the full power of the Euc ops team,

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Kevin Goodman: managing those for you. A key point, John, is. We work closely with the workspaces core partners, because where we we really exceed is on our support.

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Kevin Goodman: And

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Kevin Goodman: if you are a workspaces core, partner, we've tied our support groups together because their core and you, you instantiated, and with Core Api, our support team knows that it's a workspace, for instance, and we have been and always will be, have security as a top priority, and you could imagine a situation where maybe you're doing it yourself on Ec. Two, and you're doing it successfully. But for some reason you have a

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Kevin Goodman: a call into support that says, hey? I can't connect my Vdi our support team, Excellent as they are, They're not allowed to delve into that Vm: That's That's Pi. I right there, so they're kinda, you know. Have their hands tied. Um. Can you help us with the um the vendor? Have your vendor open up uh and you end up with like a two support ticket system when you do it that way

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Kevin Goodman: where it's until one support ticket system. Once you're a fully implemented core, partner, and we we think that's the best part about a managed service

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Jon Spallone: being able to work in that flow. I know we've done a lot on this integr side with our managed services that we provide to be able to integrate as as closely as possible to provide that one voice to the customer. Everybody hates the term, but it is what it is one throat to choke on it, to give that that to the customer. So they really enjoy that capability to have the one avenue versus going to three or four different partners and coordinating them together.

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Kevin Goodman: And in in in every one of those in that, in the scenario you just described may have customer obsession first, but it ends up with the mean time to resolution just takes longer, and we are hoping to do whatever we could to shorten that meantime to resolution

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Jon Spallone: now with with workspace's core. Um! I just know from

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Kevin Goodman: a lot of public cloud services that are out there as far as rollouts are concerned, is this offered throughout all regions at this time, so all commercial regions that uh Amazon workspaces support because it it really is workspaces. It's worth it. We did just open up the Cpt region in South Africa,

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Kevin Goodman: and as a commercial region, and you know, there are steps to go through to get certified, and we are not in Cpt yet. So we're in a dozen other regions that are commercial regions for workspaces,

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Jon Spallone: the backbone of workspaces. So that's that's what I imagine. But I know, like, I said, I want to make sure that that's clear to the listeners so that they're aware. Yeah, this is something that supported across the board from a commercial solution

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Kevin Goodman: absolutely, and that is in that you You mentioned Shawn Vass, and we got Shawn on stage with this, for you see innovation. Um, Id because one of the things we noticed as we were doing the beta is the customers all said,

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Kevin Goodman: um Is this supported on both sides, and we wanted to make that clear that answer that that, and we call it uh horizon eight on Workspaces core is the Api you call, so your

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Kevin Goodman: product can support it, can run on top of workspaces. And then again, because it's running off of that workspaces backbone. It. It meets those same sla as far as services are concerned. Correct? Yeah. And so you'll you'll You'll you'll see that if and if you copy of guard here. I don't know if I am where horizon eight has an sla on the cloud, but if they do um a and if the court partner me all the requirements, the ones for

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Kevin Goodman: support that I talked about, and and all of the other items that are in that checklist. Then. Yes, you get the same workspaces.

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Jon Spallone: And then, um!

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Jon Spallone: What does it take for

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Jon Spallone: a partner to become

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Jon Spallone: involved with the workspace core side of the house?

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Kevin Goodman: So it it, it's interesting. We we were wondering, you know. Do we need to? Um uh make this a brand and um spend a lot of time promoting this brand, and we can look at the answer of

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Kevin Goodman: No, not really, because we already know who all the Vdi partners are, and either you know they they they know how to find me, because I probably work with them in the past with some of the other companies I was in, and so you know They' there is a, and we can put it in the um uh we could put in the chat later. There's I how to get started. What workspace is Core is in um

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Kevin Goodman: a a blog, and we'll we'll try to find that blog for you. We have it teed up. I don't know

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Kevin Goodman: um. I don't believe I have that one. This one is just uh getting started with Workspaces core, but not the partner side. It may have a uh opportunity for you to raise your hand in there. We should do some work, Brian, to make sure. The listener knows exactly where to go. Now

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Kevin Goodman: that's partners right workspace is a bring your own protocol. And so, if you are a Vdi partner who wants to join that you end up getting in touch with someone on my team. The next question. It may be in there on our list. If so, now it's the appropriate time to ask. It is,

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Kevin Goodman: What if a customer wants to become a partner, can they?

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Kevin Goodman: And we know of customers who are very forward thinking. And you know they're on the leading edge, and they can go through the same ability to support. Call the Apis. If you have specialized gateway needs or you're using a specialized protocol, you you're more to welcome to join the party,

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Jon Spallone: so that, based upon that that would allow the customer to then become their own multi tenant provider of core is that is that what you're saying there

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Kevin Goodman: and and make their users experience even greater than it is today.

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Jon Spallone: Allowing for monetization within an organization so that you can control that it budget. So it's definitely sounds interesting to be able to allow the customer to become the partner that that it department and deliver the services down to their different organizational units to get that bill back, and to be able to control the economics of a Vdi solution for their users.

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Kevin Goodman: So uh um at Innovation day uh Harry Levana, who couldn't make it in person, joined us virtually,

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Kevin Goodman: and was discussing just some of those exact ideas they don't want to be limited um by anyone, and if a you know, if a partner um meets their requirements awesome, but if not, they can augment it with those Apis that we have in workspaces. So if you're using workspaces core, Apis, you also have the workspaces, api's available to you. And just to point out Perry's a little interview is on that that core page as well, so that'll be in the description for the link, so you can check

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Jon Spallone: that out also. Um, So I mean, we really got down to covering the differences of it. So it's really allowing for the core side of the house is allowing for

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Jon Spallone: a customer, a uh, an it user organization to be able to bring their V I solution into core. And then,

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Jon Spallone: like we said, kind of Cookie Cutter, those workspaces instances without the binding. Um, so it's kind of like. If we talk about cell phones, it's an unlocked cell phone um, so we're not having all the uh aws pieces in it. It's clean and fresh, and they can build from there.

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Kevin Goodman: It's a I don't know like a jail broken cell phones, how I describe it. Well not jail broker. So

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Kevin Goodman: we're all about customer choice. That's what we want. We want the customers to have choice, and if they're on prem, and they they want to stay hybrid. We want to be able to accommodate them. And uh, we, we feel like this collaboration that we have with

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Kevin Goodman: um Beamware will enable those customers to have a more delightful experience, and and nothing drills me more than here in that Now, from using the workspaces side of the house.

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Jon Spallone: Are Are we, looking at the ability to be able to use app stream as well.

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Kevin Goodman: So we don't really comment on um roadmap items, not the public forum like that. But your our customers know how to get in touch with us to get roadmap and um, but

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Jon Spallone: it's up to the partner if you think about it right if that wants to support, and we can also support it on our side. You know It's up to the port, or how they handle those instances sure sure, and so like you said, A lot of this is about the partner. Obviously how they're they're tying with the Apis. This solution to be able to integrate their solution into it. You know we're referencing Vmware just because they've already publicly said a lot of what they're doing. Integration wide

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Jon Spallone: with you guys, especially with the blast protocol um which shawn it brought up as well, and that integration to it.

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Jon Spallone: So the um

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Jon Spallone: from the Vdi solutions that are there. We know. Vm. Where there is, there we support um. The environment to concern from the users. Is this really a net new service for them? Um, it sounds like It's something that we can expand from an existing Euc solution that they have on prem today.

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Kevin Goodman: Yeah. So the the whole idea is when someone makes a decision to do a cloud migration.

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Kevin Goodman: They typically don't flash cut. I know if I was doing a cloud migration, I might leave executives till the end to make sure I got this thing humming smoothly, or I might go by Geos, or I might go by, You know um use cases and stuff like that, and this gives them that option, and it should reduce significantly training you. Don't want to retrain all those end users if you don't have to, and

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Kevin Goodman: what I found is customers.

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Kevin Goodman: Business needs change from

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Kevin Goodman: day to day, week to week, month to month. That group might have been decided that they're gonna um be in this location, but they work from home Policy said those users could live anywhere. So now you have a situation where you want to use, say horizon eight. But now it's too much of a latency back to your data center. So let's move those people the ones that are complaining. Let's move those up

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Kevin Goodman: to a horizon eight on workspaces, and really give that it shop choice to make sure they are pleasing all their customers over time. It's it's side move more, it's at their pace and their decision, and that's what we like about it.

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Jon Spallone: Again. Another shameless plug. If you go back to episode one that Brian and I did um talking about the migration steps and processes and and planning for that. I mean that definitely fits into this scenario of following that that aws template of how those steps take taking a look at these services moving in like you brought up Kevin. You know the the use cases, you know, can be a factor with it. Um. Another thing I find with the Euc

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Jon Spallone: is the application data. Um, you know. Where is that application data residing. You know. What is the migration of the back end? How am I leveling that off between aws and between my on-prem environment that could be a deciding factor on what users you move over and don't move over,

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Kevin Goodman: and all that knowledge is just gold right there, John. That's why we like Zentegra

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Kevin Goodman: as a joint. Aws Vmware, partner, with experience on both sides to be able to, you know. Consult and educate that that customer. They're They're looking to folks such as yourself to say, I've not been on this journey before. Help, and there you are, and that's why and that's why we really have glad to have you as a a partner?

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Jon Spallone: Um.

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Jon Spallone: So when we're talking about the instances of what users are pulling over into core these are already pre-fabbed instances, it can can a user bring over their own bring their own image over? Or is it build out in that prefab, and then do their applications from there,

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Kevin Goodman: so that one important thing to notice this is the Byol. So bring your own um Os license at that point. When you bring your O Os license, it is up to the front and the core partner, the Vdi partner,

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Kevin Goodman: to determine how they're going to get that combined with what we need from the workspaces side to what you need from your protocol and gateway side. To get that instance built. There is a way right now to start from scratch and take an easy to instance and apply and go through all those steps, but we believe partners um over. Time will invent and simplify

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Kevin Goodman: um ways to make that much faster. Yeah. So that I mean, that's great, because what

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Jon Spallone: what you what i'm, what i'm getting is is basically there's there's a default, you know. If you're doing this net new, that we can build this out, and Amazon is the Aws is giving us a capability for a default, or eventually with those partners with their their usage of the Apis there will be instances and options through their own platform solution.

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Kevin Goodman: Yeah, there is. And And so the reason i'm so confident about this is, I've been throwing that term partner around. But it This is what we are talking about. If you're in the Amazon partner network. We have this apn that you know we can wears a you know, a proud member of this uh Apn, and that's why this collaboration with Vmware is working so well, and you know there may be others who decide. They want to go down this road, and if they're not

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Kevin Goodman: an apn partner, that will be their first step, and um, you know we'll move forward from there. Um! But I have confidence in them, knowing because they were an Api and partner, and they did their functional technical references and other things like that. They have the chops to be able to pull this off.

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Kevin Goodman: Of course, be aware it's been with us for for years,

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Jon Spallone: and shameless plug-in. Uh zen Tiger is an apn so we're part of the network as well. So these are services that we'll be able to bring to our our customers, and it's funny because we use the word partner at Santagra. Everybody's our partner, including our customers. We we treat everybody the same, as far as you know, building that community out. So you know, when we we broach the term partner, we really mean, you know, having a

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Jon Spallone: symbiotic relationship of who we're working with, whether it's a customer or a solution provider, such as aws everybody's within that community because we're all trying to achieve one goal, and that's to deliver these services that we can to our end users.

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Kevin Goodman: Yeah, I uh, i'm a saying if it was easy everybody would be doing it, and that's why they um, you know they have trusted advisors. Customers have trusted advisors uh like Zantegra. Um, if nothing more to then say, Yeah, this is a valid idea.

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Kevin Goodman: And i'm imagine you're not going to tell me when or what. But imagine you advise customers in the past about other solutions, maybe from other vendors in which you said, no, not fully baked, Jed: Hold off on that. Yeah, and yeah, that's that's true,

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Brian Schoepfle: You know. I, John, I I think you and Kevin really hit the name on the head, as you talk about customer choice and the value of a partner. Right? Customers are choosing aws because of the breath and the depth of the services that we offer,

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Brian Schoepfle: and as customers get to learn more about aws, they start to a little bit more because of the visibility and the direct line of site that they are that they can have into what's going on inside of their it environment.

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Brian Schoepfle: Um, And that's why there's so much interest in enthusiasm in my group around what we're doing with observability and management right now. And so for a lot of customers are looking at

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Brian Schoepfle: future state. Two, three, four, five plus years down the road of beginning to internalize this idea of what will a truly cloud native solution be able to do for my business. What are the things that I can kind of to borrow a phrase here? Continue to raise the bar on what I consider to be on differentiated heavy lifting shift that aws, and allow me to focus on the things that are bringing value to my customers.

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Brian Schoepfle: Um! But as we talked about in the migration podcast, this is not a toggle switch, right. This is a dimmer switch, and customers, you know don't have the luxury of being able to shut down normal business operations for six months, whatever it is. Um! While they migrate things.

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Brian Schoepfle: Uh, I spent a little over three years in our public sector partners organization, and I know there were a lot of customers that we had in in K. Twelve and in higher education that found at stream to be enormously appealing.

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Brian Schoepfle: Um, especially as supply chain shortages like we're an issue over the continue to be an issue, but really started over the past few years, or even supply chain constraints with all the popularity of of Gpus among uh crypto coin miners. Um! It became less cost effective and and more difficult to go through

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Brian Schoepfle: uh annual, or or every three year refreshes of large tower Pcs. To do solid works or other types of cad applications, video editing and customers found it very appealing to move those types of workloads into Aw, as well from an ease of management perspective. Um, and also just an infrastructure availability perspective. So with uh, with partners such as yourselves and others, we're building these kind of classroom or computer lab as a

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Brian Schoepfle: service applications on app stream to bring these really resource intensive applications to low cost and user computing devices like chromebooks and and other things. Of course There's a you know. Um on the other side of end user compute. There's There's Amazon workspaces itself right. Been around for a number of years, and this is that secure reliable um virtual desktop from any location. And this is a managed desktop instance windows, or Linux

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Brian Schoepfle: that customers can can pick what applications go on that um pick some custom images and choose to either pay a fixed fee per user or pay per hour, depending on what the usage patterns are.

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Brian Schoepfle: Then we had Amazon workspaces web, which is this fully managed, secure browser access to internal websites and and software. As a service applications. So, continuing to add this amount of choice. And now, because we know that we've had so many customers, tell us,

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Brian Schoepfle: I see the value of aws. I'm bringing other enterprise workloads into aws. I'm taking advantage of of of all the ancillary benefits that come with that. But I don't have the luxury of completely changing. How i'm delivering my Vdi infrastructure today. That's why things like Amazon workspaces core so exciting, so so that kind of covers like the level of choice just within the end user computing realm. Uh that that customers have. But then some customers may be thinking,

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Brian Schoepfle: Okay, Well, what's right for me, and there is no one size fits all approach. And and how am I going to? How am I going to bring these technologies into my business and realize their benefits? And that's the value of the partnership. Right? That's the value of Zen Triagra having been out there.

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Brian Schoepfle: Having seen this, and being able to guide customers towards for this class of users, or for this workload, or you know, even for this geography. Here's what's more, appropriate for you and and let me help you get started. So we've got the partnership with the aspect and the Aws aspect coming together to say, We've got so many choices that can line up to so many different use cases for customers, but to help customers make sense of all those options, and to bring those together into a working solution. That's where folks like yourselves is so critical.

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Jon Spallone: Yeah, and it's It's funny, because, like when when we first spoke about the workspaces core and and how everything was breaking down with it,

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Jon Spallone: you know, allowing those Apis to not be out there for these other integration solutions to come in and play.

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Jon Spallone: You know myself, I've always taken the approach of being as agnostic as possible for my customers. You know we from a zentagger approach. We know the ecosystem. We know um the environment as far as you see the digital workspace is concerned, so it helps those customers

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Jon Spallone: plug in the pieces that work best for them. And now what aws is offered with core

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Jon Spallone: is that ability to be able to leverage that, And then to your point, Kevin, if they're not in there, That's where the customers and partners like myself come to those providers and say, look, you've got to get in there. Um! That's a different approach, and what we've seen from a lot of public cloud providers out there where it's a one and done solution. You guys have have open an environment to allow anybody to bring what they need to bring to the table to be successful.

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Kevin Goodman: You know customers tell us time and time again. They want to run their desktop workloads where

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Kevin Goodman: their server and app workloads are, and you know those customers have been running those server and app workloads and aws for quite some time, and this enables them to do that, and I like your comment about it. Dimmer switch, Brian, You know. I want to turn off the lights on that on premises data center because it got obsoleted by the new work from home policies.

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Kevin Goodman: But uh, yeah, just can't flash. Cut it. It's gonna take forever. I, You know I, Five percent a year would take twenty years. Think about that. So you know it's just gonna keep happening that way. And um, you know. Now the customer like we say they have the choice, and and that's what we like about it.

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Jon Spallone: So we're talking from a Vdi solution. Um, you know, by default we have what's offered there from the workspace side for workspace core uh with solutions that integrate with it. They'll have their options, and and how things are handled within the environment from there. Uh, but from from a workspaces core standpoint,

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Jon Spallone: you know, we can bring our own licenses. We can bring our applications obviously, into these images. Uh, what about like third party integrations like, uh, specifically like

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Jon Spallone: around persona management, those integrations there available. And again, this goes back to something Brian and I talked about on the fsx solution. When we're talking about integrating personas for an example, Fs: logics just bringing that up as an example. But

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Jon Spallone: the does that type of integration a allowed within this spot. Uh, you know, is that so obviously the partner needs to integrate? But you have that availability for them? Right?

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Kevin Goodman: Yeah. So you know,

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Kevin Goodman: your mileage may vary uh for our friends overseas your kilometer, which may very, I know, but it all depends on what your license allows you to do. I Um, you know, if your license allows you to use Fs logics, you use an Fs logics on Prem. You can continue to use Fs logics in the cloud that you that all of those um your um

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Kevin Goodman: uh app layering solutions and things like that? Because that instance, if you you

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Kevin Goodman: what did you uh bare bones, or stripped down, or what we call that image, that that curated purpose built image can be built essentially from the ground up with the tools that you need in there again. It's based on how your partner

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Kevin Goodman: um, you know, if it if it's in their realm of possibility, or if your customer wants to be an apn partner in this. Then you know you, you know, can do that yourself as well.

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Kevin Goodman: We're not going to restrict you for that it's it. Think about it. It's a shared responsibility model. It's it's it's a combination of

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Kevin Goodman: all the value that we bring from workspaces. But then the vendor has to have a responsibility in this, and if the customer wants to take on some of the workload themselves, and they have a responsibility in this, and we're happy to work in all three scenarios,

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Jon Spallone: you know, when when somebody is listening to this, and they're they're looking at. Okay, this is what I have on Prem. This is where I would like to get, and just understanding that we're not talking about new tools and feature sets here that the whole idea of this is to leave your familiarity of what you have today, and just cord it over into a cloud Instance to be able to like you said, or or Brian point out the dimmer switch, and obviously not taking the approach of five percent a year, because

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Jon Spallone: you know by that point who knows where the world will be.

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Kevin Goodman: So you know, an important point to bring up to is is on-premise

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Kevin Goodman: different from the cloud and and on prem your vdi Vend yourself software, and you manage the infrastructure yourself, and you have this size for peak workload. So you size up. Let's say you size up for a a machine that can run

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Kevin Goodman: um fifty users. You pay for that hardware upfront,

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Kevin Goodman: and if it's not fully provisioned it's twenty-five users somewhat. You already paid for it that doesn't work great in the cloud customers. One. The reason they go to the cloud is for cost, and the reason they like us is, we give them pay as you go,

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Kevin Goodman: and and the ability to scale. So with no upfront cost for workspaces core. You can then migrate over, and you don't have to do all of that um provisioning ahead of time.

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Kevin Goodman: Um, do you? You get in a situation where you just maybe don't know peak loads for workspaces been handling that for customers for years. All right. If If you wanted to roll your own on our cloud, you'd have to make those decisions upfront by dedicated instances and such, and spend a lot of money. Money, upfront workspaces is pay as you go in, and if your vendor supports it, we give you the uh ability to run monthly, but

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Kevin Goodman: you could also do hourly if the if the vendor supports it. Your client knows when you've disconnected, and you want to hibernate that um. You want to hibernate that instance. There are apis to do that, and we really like that. The um uh

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Kevin Goodman: the the issue with lifting shift is, if you know fifty of those users at twenty-five logged off.

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Kevin Goodman: Your cost went way up. And what we encourage you to look at is, Don't think about it the way you did on prem think of cost per user per unit of time. And that's the pieces that you're looking for. And the other thing I don't like, you can always over provision.

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Kevin Goodman: And and what? So

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Kevin Goodman: another two companies go, one that I sold to be aware, by the way, had a monitoring solution that would monitor what machine you were on when you were having the issues, because users would um learn that if they were getting poor performance log off log back on, and they'd be load balance to a new server. All of that noisy neighbor and all of that stuff we. We've been working on that for quite some time now

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Kevin Goodman: over on the works basis side. Um, Internally, we call them heat issues right. We've been working in the internally on that for quite a long time to try to avoid that for the user we really want that users experience. And what we really want you to have is a consistent price with no hidden charges, you know. So um

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Kevin Goodman: that uh frustrates some customers when they they see that how much they have to um

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Kevin Goodman: pay once they've done a lift and shift. Oh, I didn't anticipate this cost. I didn't anticipate that cost. I didn't anticipate that I have ten servers uh hosting fifty users,

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Kevin Goodman: and no matter what happens, not all fifty ever log off one machine at a time, so i'm always under utilized, and it stepped in the very best of used cases like I've got shift work and a fully provision twenty, four, seven. It might not be the best use case, and that's that's where workspaces comes in,

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Jon Spallone: sure. And another link i'll include in our description as well. I pulled up the pricing model as of today. Um like you were showing the breakdown of monthly and hourly pricing

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Jon Spallone: for these instances, as far as Workspaces core is concerned. I mean, I like that, that

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Jon Spallone: that ideal there, because from a monthly standpoint, if you take that approach, one of the things you can eliminate or bootstorms. So you've got your machines up and running um. And then, if you go at the hourly side of the house, you can have those downtimes, and you know, control your bootstorms ahead of time, and just knowing that you've got the system to be practically.

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Jon Spallone: If there is a breakdown here. If you look at um, the link, it covers all the different type of instances that are there in the hourly pricing as of today and

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Jon Spallone: all the other sales stuff. Which yeah, I don't get into that stuff technical guy here, but you'll be able to view that information for yourself here, and just kind of get that cost. Analysis and understanding of how This works from a workspace's core side of the house.

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Jon Spallone: Now

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Jon Spallone: one of the other things to note, too, and I know it. It's it's all related to

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Jon Spallone: the partner, the the system, or the software integrator, to really step up and utilize these Apis that you have for their solutions to

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Jon Spallone: make the best of their solution within this workspace's core environment.

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Jon Spallone: You've you've You've given them the capabilities. They've got to do it. Um! So around from a security standpoint like you you hit on earlier. I know uh aws is very secure, conscious.

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Jon Spallone: But from a user's remote access standpoint we can use those system integrators, solutions, or those software integrator solutions. Uh, is there anything within core side of the house That's there? Um! To allow for the remote access for users

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Kevin Goodman: the secure, remote access? Um, yes, so so uh double click on that a little bit. Um. So what what do you mean? There? Um! So when the users are connecting um, For example, there's some networking equipment you can use with one partner that gives you a secure Ssl connection into the user's desktop.

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Jon Spallone: Um, You're encrypting everything on that user's connection. If i'm using another third party solution within workspace's core, let me think about this a second.

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Jon Spallone: Is there anything from the Aws side that I could utilize beyond

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Jon Spallone: a system or software integrator solution to allow my users to access these remotely and remotely within a secure connection.

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Kevin Goodman: You know what that would be up to the partner to take advantage of that if you think about that. But if that partner Isn't, secure that partner's probably not going to be, it's core. Um! So these are public Apis. But what you find out there is what we call allow listed so um and and Ec. Do you have several of these as well. It's it's it's common. If you call this Api, it's gonna say you really need to be approved, and that's

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Kevin Goodman: part of because we had bring your own license for the uh Os. So you you you can't just call these Apis without bringing your own license, and it it it. It protects the customer from getting frustrated, or the partner from um, you know. Uh stepping on their own foot. So um you will go through

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Kevin Goodman: um, you know a a a checklist to make sure that you are, uh, you know, certified to be a partner. After that you can take advantage of any aws Api! That's out there.

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Jon Spallone: Um. So let me think about this. The so from a workspaces. Let's just say i'm implementing workspaces today. Uh I provide that completely, solely instances. We're not utilizing Core. But I I have that up and running for my organization,

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Jon Spallone: and I want to allow users remote access to the environment. How how is that done? From a workspaces approach today?

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Kevin Goodman: So for from a workspaces approach it's pretty much an easy button. You go into our console. You assign a user you They get an email um, inviting them into the workspaces, and then they get directions on how to download the client at that point in our console. You can

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Kevin Goodman: learn about the health of that, and we also have other ways to determine if you're up and running. Of course we have to,

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Kevin Goodman: you know. Calculate your time and usage and things like that. Um! If you are a partner, you can choose to use as much of that, or as little as possible. So let's say you said I don't I know the health better than you do

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Kevin Goodman: uh at workspaces core. I'll handle all that health. Then you wouldn't go to our console to get that. Let's say you did not want the user your partner. You're building a core solution now, and you will. Your goal is to not need

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Kevin Goodman: um workspaces core except for the essentials. You're always going to have to create a count there. And all of this. We have a a concept called the zoom role, and so you will go in there. And if as a port, or if you're using this as zoom role. Then you're able to do things on behalf of the customer, and that also lets us know on our side, so we can support you. What you're doing in there. For example, if we, if you

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Kevin Goodman: you didn't do that

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Kevin Goodman: uh, you might look like a unhealthy workspace for us, and the end user called out, we'd be going uh um! That's unhealthy. We can't seem to connect to our client, and you know we'd get all

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Kevin Goodman: we get it all wrapped around the axle on that. We don't want that to happen. That's why we work closely with the partners to make sure they take those steps, but after that they can go and use it as many or as few additional aws apis that they they want to.

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Jon Spallone: Yeah, I just was uh

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Jon Spallone: trying to make sure that you and you've You've hit the point. You know you've got the workspaces side of the house, and then it's up to that software, integrator to handle. How they're going to do those secure connections on their solution on the core platform?

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Exactly Exactly.

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Jon Spallone: Um. So with that

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Jon Spallone: is there just some last-minute thoughts, or or some last minute impressions you'd like to to leave with us in our listeners. Yeah, I want to hear what's in Tanker Have been up to, as you know, I was uh

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Kevin Goodman: uh working very closely with you um back all the way up until two thousand and eighteen um before we were rudely interrupted. And um! Why don't you uh once you bring this up to speed that's been. That's a long time. Um tell us about It's intake or

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Jon Spallone: yeah, it's integral um. Like I alluded to earlier. Sorry

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Jon Spallone: our focus is in the digital workspace, the desktop, or the the digital transformation for our customers, and and working with all of those peripheral solutions on the edge uh, as well as those Euc solutions that are tied in there in the middle. Um, from an aws standpoint, You know we've We've worked very hard uh to become a part of the Apn uh in offering those solutions for an aws platform, which is another tool in our our Swiss army

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Jon Spallone: of offering these solutions to our users. Now, the other thing I like to is the fact. I I said earlier, you're taking an agnostic approach which I definitely like about this. We're just going to make sure from our standpoint. It's integr that we're going to help lit that load to get these other software

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Jon Spallone: um solutions into this platform because there is a great value. Add to this for our customers. Um, you know we're we're dealing with the public cloud. We're dealing with our own centigrade. Connect our own cloud hosting environment uh multiple data centers doing that our own managed services as well. Um, we do see some integration here that we would like to see in the future. And yeah, it's a it's an interesting time. I know My focus right now is been public cloud

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Jon Spallone: um specifically around the Aws side of the house, but getting our engineers getting our sales people and getting our community aware that public cloud is out there because of like this workspace's core solution.

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Jon Spallone: There are options out there for these users and these customers to provide Vdi in the Cloud, I think more so today than we would joke about way way back in the day, and the old Bri forums and everything about you can cloud this, you can cloud that, and nobody

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Jon Spallone: really didn't understand what it was, and you know, moving up to the cloud. Um, And I think Brian and I mentioned this before. You know. Another key term is tossed out is bursting.

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Jon Spallone: You know that really doesn't fit within an infrastructure side of the house. But I do see this from the core side, the hourly billing in the monthly building it. It. It allows customers to understand their users better.

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Jon Spallone: Um! That's one of the things that I bring up with my customers. Understand your use cases, understand what those users are doing, why they're doing it, and that helps you to define better on the services that you do, and that's that's not just me. That's the the entire team. It's integr or bringing these offerings to our customers that are out there.

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Kevin Goodman: So we had a lot of joint customers together back when I was at that other. The Fs logics, and the One thing I remember is they're all super loyal, happy Zendagra customers that were Fs. Logics, customers. Um, and that is a quite the reflection on on you and the rest of this integrity. But um! One thing I will say is, you know part of the reason we built workspaces all those years ago is because,

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Kevin Goodman: and we get all our ideas from customers, maybe ninety ninety-five percent. Or because customers said, we'd like this. What they were telling us is, we tried to back in the bri forum days. We tried to lift and shift ourselves to the cloud for Vdi, because it makes so much sense, and we got it up and running, and then we went broke. What are we doing wrong? Can you help us, you know, and nothing more frustrating than succeeding? And it for everything except cost right. And so that's

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Kevin Goodman: That's why we built workspaces. In the first place. Um like to call it a big easy button

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Kevin Goodman: for you, and you know you you take in some of those soft costs like management, or you, taking some of those actual costs like dedicated instances in in in workspaces deserves um for you to take a look at. And now, if you have an existing Vdi vendor and you want to not retrain your administrators. Now you get both best of both worlds.

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Jon Spallone: Yep. Agree completely,

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Jon Spallone: Brian, You have anything to add.

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Brian Schoepfle: Yeah, just in closing, You know, i'd say

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Brian Schoepfle: a couple of episodes ago we we talked about storage, and and we talked about all the different types of Aws storage, and certainly there's no one size fits. All approach. Right. So from uh, just take a managed files system uh perspective.

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Brian Schoepfle: We had lots of customers telling us that they they see the value of a managed uh file system for their Linux workloads with the elastic file system, and they saw the benefits of a managed windows file system with fsx for windows.

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Brian Schoepfle: But they were really really loving what they could do in an on-prem environment with Netx with net apps on tap system.

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Brian Schoepfle: And So a year ago, a little bit over a year ago we brought net app fsx for on tab into aws, and we run that um as a managed net at file system in the cloud. We're listening to. Customers exactly like have been said who are telling us they see the value in bringing so many things to aws. But there are tools from our partners that they just really can't live without. And for good reason. These are really high quality tool.

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Brian Schoepfle: So I love the idea that we're opening up the workspace platform to allow people to bring their own Vdi management system into what we're doing, so that they're shifting more and more of this on differentiated, heavy lifting, like I talked to so many customers. What would you be able to reinvest in your business if you could just get out of the blinking lights business right? If so much time and attention is devoted to the care and feeding of physical machines.

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Brian Schoepfle: That's a core competency uh of Amazon and aws, and we really want our customers and partners to be focused on what brings them value not what causes them headaches. So let us take care of that kind of stuff. Bring your existing tools. As Kevin said earlier, Don't. Worry about retraining your people um, and take advantage of what the cloud has with the tools that you're already using. So this is another perfect example of that. And I know in future episodes we're going to get into many more examples of things just like that,

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Jon Spallone: just being who you are. I want to give you the last put here, and then we'll we'll close it out.

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Kevin Goodman: Do you have anything to add. What does that even mean? I'm just uh you know a humble merchant uh it's spelling wares, and then and then I I don't know what lucky star I was under. But I ran into the workspaces, group and and Menier and all that team and I found a home. It's just been fantastic, and it was in all those other companies. Uh we had.

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Kevin Goodman: We didn't really call it a tenant. We didn't really, you know. Say it was a leadership principle, but everybody who worked for me knew we would earn the customers money before you went out and chase new money. I didn't have to be in a meeting with sales, said, Hey, we need this feature, or why Won't close this deal, and it conflicted with. We need to fix this bug of this customer. They already knew what the answer was going to be. So don't even ask, Let's concentrate in on that, and then I walk into a aws, and the Euc team

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Kevin Goodman: and the leadership principles are just like markers in my life. They all make so much sense, you know. Customer, obsession, invent and simplify, you know. Think big all of these things, and they all tie in with each other. And and uh, I don't. I don't know there's who I am. Stuff is, but I am. I'm very happy to be a um, you know a a cog in this workspaces Euc team,

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Kevin Goodman: because it is just a joy to work here.

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Jon Spallone: Well, that's We'll put Thanks, Kevin, and I appreciate you taking the time to be with us today, Brian, as always. Um, you know definitely

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Jon Spallone: like I said, the links that we discussed. They'll be in the uh description when I post this out there, and uh look forward to future episodes like Uh, Brian said. We'll get in deeper into some other things. Uh, but again, thank you so much, Kevin, and thanks Brian for being here with us today.

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Kevin Goodman: I see you and see everyone on this podcast, every invent, I hope? Yes, definitely. Thanks. Everybody.

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Brian Schoepfle: Thanks. Guys.