Harnessing the Power of Cloud-Based Asset Performance Management with AWS and GE Vernova

Harnessing the Power of Cloud-Based Asset Performance Management with AWS and GE Vernova

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, businesses are striving to strike the right balance between cost, performance, and risk. This new partnership between GE Vernova and AWS unites the expertise of two industry leaders, offering innovative solutions to optimize their operations and meet these multifaceted needs.

In this webinar, we discussed how this partnership empowers businesses to harness the full potential of their assets at scale, ensuring operational efficiency, predictive maintenance, and unparalleled insights into asset performance.

The on-demand webinar covers:

• How this strategic collaboration brings together the global cloud computing prowess of AWS and GE Vernova’s domain expertise in Asset Performance Management.

• The advantages of migrating APM solutions to the cloud, including accessibility and real-time data analytics.

• How the integration of AWS’s advanced cloud services with GE Vernova’s APM software enables organizations to gain deeper insights into asset health, performance trends, and predictive analytics.

• The scalability and security measures inherent in the cloud based APM solution.

• A future roadmap of the partnership, including upcoming features, enhancements, and innovations aimed at staying ahead of evolving industry demands.



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TRANSCRIPT
Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. We want to start a minute minute behind to make sure we're out of time to get on a pretty good, attendee list today. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. We're really excited today to really introduce to the market, our partnership with AWS. So we're going to get right into it. During the webinar, the Q&A chat will be open, so please feel free to put your questions in. I will be moderating, and helping you get the questions to the right.  
 
Right. Presenter. So please, you don't have to wait to the end. If something sounds interesting, pop it in the chat and we will get to it. So without further ado, we're going to get this going. So just quickly for my, before I introduce you to the experts and let them speak for themselves. My name is Ryan Finger. I'm the global product marketing director for asset performance management. And also the product marketer within the AWS relationship. I've over two years in enterprise energy software, and another year plus in enterprise banking software. With a masters in high tech product and digital transformation. So really, really, really, really close on both our side on APM and then very familiar with AWS.  
 
So I'll hand it over to to Rachel and then Shankar to introduce themselves. Good day everyone. Thanks for joining. As Ryan said, really excited to be here with you today and talk about our partnership with AWS. I am the senior director of Product management in our PowerGen oil and gas vertical and our GE Vernova software business. I have, just over 20 years of experience in the industrial sector specifically, and aerospace, power and more recently our software and I lead a team of product managers responsible for, our asset performance management software, as well as some of our operations and PowerGen software, specifically. So really excited to be here today. And with that, I'll pass it to Shankar to introduce himself. Hello, everyone. This is Shankar. I am from the AWS energy vertical. I lead technology partnerships here. Over 15 years of experience in oil and gas. Power generation started off in the control systems and digital modernization initiatives.  
 
Interestingly, are from GE and GE Vernova, specifically and back in the day. So I'm very excited about this partnership, and I hopefully can transfer some of that excitement onto you all as we speak through what this partnership means, means for us, together as partners as well as for our customers in the industry. Okay. So I just want to kick it off and say a few words about some of the the challenges that we're hearing from our customers, specifically in asset intensive industries like PowerGen, oil and gas, mining and minerals, chemical and processing.  
 
And really what we see is as organizations are working towards solving the challenges that are shown on the left hand of this slide here, specifically around reducing unplanned downtimes, integrating various data sources, managing their O&M costs. There's really a number of areas that are creating a myriad of complexities, both in terms of access to technology, organizational and industry shifts. That makes it more difficult to achieve their outcomes around operational efficiency and really maximizing the return on investment from from the O&M spend. And I'll categorize this in four areas. The first is really around skilled workers shortages. So we all know in these asset intensive industries recruiting into them and then also retaining you know, in terms of sort of the the younger employee base in terms of how they're rotating through companies and jobs more frequently than maybe we have in the past, creates challenges on capturing that subject matter expertise and keeping it within the organization as it evolves. The other, the second one, is around aging assets and the energy transition. So there's complexity around, you know, exactly the time frame in which you're going to tran- transition and decarbonize your company.  
 
There's also this focus on how do we continue to to maintain these aging assets that can help us, support us. But maybe it's the timelines at which that some of those retirements are going to happen keeps changing. And so that's that's another complexity that makes this more challenging. The third one is really around disconnect disconnected data and workflows. And when they're disconnected and not streamlined, this really can prevent efficient and effective decisioning. And then the last one that we hear about a lot is, you know, the rapid pace of change in technology and being able to keep up with that. So they can reduce the time to value in adopting that technology and harnessing that value in, in your organization. So those are kind of just from our perspective, what we're hearing from, from the industry specifically around, you know, how adopting and getting to these value driven outcomes and managing cost, performance and risk? I don't know, Shankar, if you want to, jump in and add your perspective as well. Thanks.  
 
Thanks, Rachel. I you set the stage really well and summarized it well. It all comes down to balancing those three elements of cost, performance and risk. Especially let's double down on like the various data sources where they spend several years in the field, you know, even as a part of GE Vernova, and these the data sets sitting in different sources presents a big challenge. I've seen assets being heavily over maintained versus some assets, which are non perceived non-critical, are not, are under maintained because of lack of perceived perception of full risk. Right. But risk is is more than a hollow lens of a machine centric view. More and more, the ask is to have a unified enterprise level view of how does this machine affect my risk to perform, and get the business outcomes right.  
 
So simple things like asset strategy management as your asset, IRA hierarchies in your performance management tied to your ERP systems. Do you have the right inventories and in place if a machine were to fail? These are issues that that show up and manifest themselves in being in various data sources. And not having a full grasp and unified view of, having an asset performance suite. And that's that's one of the things is asset performance management will solve. And we'll we'll dive deep into this and also how we innovate together to solve these problems. Or for example, the data sources or lack of control and standardization. How do we make it simple for our customers? Is what what, the theme of this webinar is going to be. Yeah. And so I'll just kind of build off of what you, you brought forward, Shankar. And I love I love that you said, you know, this idea that, you know, we have access to data. There's tons of it out there, but it's really about how we enable our organizations to use that effectively and efficiently. And so, you know, I think that's a lot of what we're going to talk about how on sort of we're bringing to bear applications that can help, whereas we're really through this partnership utilizing all of the great cloud technology that AWS can bring to bear to help us move, move faster and innovate better together.  
 
And at GE Vernova, when we talk about specifically as an example, asset performance management, we have, I'll call it a multi-pronged approach, with this goal of bringing these disparate teams work processes together for efficiency and growth. And it it it is around again I'd say again four, four is my number today. Four key areas. The first is really how do we approach these problems? By designing applications that are composable and integrated by design. And so from what you can see on the slide here, we have a very comprehensive APM solution. But we are focused as a product team and an engineering team on how we deliver that in a way that allows our customers, to scale, with their priorities and changing needs. And so we understand that we see the maximum value at the enterprise level. So being able to connect your asset strategy to implement them through your condition based monitoring, monitor them with advanced analytics and reliability and so forth.  
 
But we know that that's not feasible necessarily to start everything day one. But we want to help our customers move along that journey. And so it's really important to us that when we think about how we bring a solution like APM to market, that it provides an enterprise level value, but is composable, so the customers can an organization can move as it's going to be most beneficial to them. The second area I would say we we really focus on, and I think this is something in terms of how we'll talk about our partnership with with you on the AWS side, is really about embedding our subject matter expertise into these workflows and applications. So again, that's an area where we feel we can really help differentiate the outcomes for our customers in embedding digital twins in content with expertise. And so this again helps organizations retain that knowledge and embedded into their tools to ease some of the challenges around maybe, you know, retirements in their workforce or changes in their workforce.  
 
The third piece I'll just highlight is, again, focusing in on a modern, new design and UX for ease of use. And then the last one and I'll hand it over to Shankar. To kind of add his two sense is really leveraging best in class technology. So we are cloud first. And this partnership with AWS really allows us access to be able to strategically integrate emerging technology to advance the application as our customers have evolving needs and allows them to consume and leverage that technology much faster. And so one example will be you and I'll talk about it more later is really around image analytics. And then also how we move forward in, writing and proof of concepts and implementation of AI capabilities into our product as well. So again, if I think about our approach, we're really trying to bring to bear our strengths for our end users to drive outcomes. And then in conjunction with, I'm sure things, Shankar's going to talk about today, specifically on the AWS side, how that helps us, you know, serve our customers better together. So I'll pause there and Shankar if you want to give, give us your perspective. That would be great to. Yeah. We do have a question for Shankar.  
 
But before we get to that, I think the important part here is that Shankar hit on it in his last section. Right. You about about IT systems and asset data, all this modernization and the work that we're doing for these composable applications gets back to that big issue, that Shankar hit on, right. The expertise, maintaining talent. And then also how do you get this data into 1 to 1 place. Right. So we talked about modernize infrastructure that's consistently modernize infrastructure. That's not a one and done. And I think we'll hit on that too as well is how do we keep taking what we're doing. From the infrastructure piece so we can provide a more composability, performance, usability to customers year over year, quarter over quarter. So just to tie it back to that data issue with these applications. They're using that data we're pulling from those systems from one pane of glass to solve for really specific use cases right across strategy health reliability to the end. So really making the most of that data issue, once you collect that data, this is the way you could actually action it the right way. So I think on that, I guess I again, Shankar, over to you. Especially being ex-GE and we say ex-GE in a loving way. Right. What what excites you, over your time with us and now on the AWS and what excites you about the path of, of asset performance management, specifically in the framework of this, this partnership. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Ryan.  
 
And thanks for thanks for clarifying it in a loving way. Right. So but but but but the biggest transformative or pivotal shift in, in architecture and we're thinking about this together, especially AWS in the picture and working with you is, is the transition from a monolithic, single standing, code or product suite to a more modular, composable architecture. Right. This this means, a several facets. Right. And we'll talk about this in a second, like I again, I'll keep up with. Right. Rachel four-theme here. Right. It it creates a low barrier to entry because now your product is centered on specific microservices and are composable, interchangeable and modular. Second is in Amazon or AWS and Amazon in general. We have a saying think big, start small, scale big, right. So we want to be able to provide customers the ability to start small. And that comes from going away from this monolithic to a service, microservices based approach. I like to highlight, you know, the fact that, you know, we can look at these modules, whether it's strategy, health, reliability, as Rachel mentioned, customers can adopt singular one of these, but each of them are interoperable and interconnected. So each of these products can develop in real time and evolve, and upgrades can have independent cycles. While they maintain that interoperability and scalability for our customer. Right.  
 
That integration, the modular nature, the ability to scale and to have that low barrier of entry. Because we'll talk about this in a little bit. Most of the time we hear the voice of customer, welcome to digital transformation is they're not seeing that ROI. And that is because of that they get tied into these large monolithic applications. From there they cannot move fast enough. And a tight long upgrade cycle we'll hit on that. But that's that for me is a transformational shift in philosophy. And that is something that we would like to partner. And we take pride in taking away some of that undifferentiated heavy lifting in the bottom infrastructure layer so that GE can go do best what GE does. Perfect. Very, very well said. Will keep pushing on. Here's the here's the big one. Here's the why why are we doing this. Why is this partnership matter for the market, energy transition and our customers. So I'll kick it back back over to Rachel. I believe. Ah, I'll take on this one. Ryan. But this is, for me, a personal matter of immense pride, right? I come from these two, very strong organizations. With unique, distinct and complementary expertises, Right?  
 
GE on one hand, if you look at it, it's a beast in whether it's power generation, oil and gas or, any asset in intensive industry, GE has touched everyone's life in one way or the other, right? Over a century of experience, more than, I think 40 or 50% of electricity goes through GE’s equipment or software in one way or form. And asset performance management is recognized as a market leader. On AWS energy utilities. Two years ago, AWS took the stand to have verticalization in industries. And we here in energy and utilities are a strong team of over 200 people with deep subject matter in the industry. We come from the industry, right? I come from GE Vernova. We have people coming from various facets of the industry, understand the industry. We're sitting down with solution architects and service developers, helping them guide the product and how to develop it for the energy industry. Right. And we at AWS are committed to decarbonization. And you see that we are the largest buyers of renewable energy. So we're committed to this cause.  
 
And that's one of the reasons why we're excited about this partnership is how do we help GE unlock its potential and bring business outcomes to the customer while we complement with those microservices that we'll talk about that in a second and and bring that value together to the customer. Partnerships are going to be very important in energy transition. I think we all have to play to our strengths. This this includes a three way partnership between GE, AWS and the customer. Right. So we'd like to innovate on behalf of GE. GE would like to innovate on behalf of the customer. And the customer can go focus on their business outcomes and not worry about underlying infrastructures or upgrade cycles or any of that. Rachel, onto you. Yeah, I mean, I it's going to be hard to add to what you said because you really kind of pretty much covered everything, I would say. I mean, I think just to echo what Shankar said. It's really about playing to our strengths. And we feel that the complementary nature of what you see on the slide here is what is going to enable us to deliver better, faster, more innovative, value driven solutions for our customers. I mean, at GE Vernova, we're very focused on asset operations and carbon management software to accelerate that future of energy that, Shankar mentioned. It means focusing on how we can bring our equipment and industry expertise through software to support these organizations solve their toughest challenges. Of course, front and center is, energy transition and decarbonization. So we're clearly rallying behind behind that as well. So, I mean, I think it's really just an exciting time.  
 
And I'll speak a little bit more broadly. Today, we're being more specific on the relationship and partnership we have within our power gen oil and gas vertical, but this is across our GE Vernova software business. So within our grid and manufacturing. So really this partnership is going to help deliver more value across the board for our customers at GE Vernova. And so I think that's also really exciting. And and I wanted to, to share as well. Yeah. Perfect. We did have a question as while we're on this topic, could you please elaborate on the synergy of the partnership? Does AWS use for primarily data handling and cloud or something more? And I believe we'll hit on a little bit later. But might be good to cover briefly. On this slide. Yeah. I'll just add from a, from a GE Vernova perspective. Yes. I mean, our applications in the cloud are utilizing the microservices that are available through AWS. And so again, that really allows us to build our applications, harnessing that technology from AWS as well as security, scalability, accessibility to new technologies. So we'll go through more details. But from my perspective, that's really, you know, some of the specifics of of why it's so, this partnership is so important to us and ultimately really why we think it's important for our end users as well. Just to add to that question too. Right. It is it's not just about unlocking data or taking it out of these silos or utilizing data.  
 
Right? For us, in the end, the work for working backwards from business outcomes, what does the customer want to accomplish and how do we provide the right tools for GE Vernova to go develop those, solutions as well as now GE takes those and brings those business outcomes to the customers. Right. And everyone's got a data fatigue at this point, I believe. Like, it feels like everybody's like talking data. Data, data, let's say like unlocking our let's let's take it to, let's put on a data lake. It's not about that. Like we're not trying to sell like data lakes or data utilization platforms. How do we how do we enable those business outcomes? And how does how do does how do we think through that and then see what's the right data to get in the right hands. And it's not just about data. At the end of the day, it's insights. It's business outcomes and the right insights for the right persona within the organization, whether it's an operator who uses machine data and real time, or it's someone at the enterprise level making decisions across the different assets and finding out what it where the ROI stand. Right. So let's it's not just purely an infrastructure data play is is my point.  
 
Very, very well said. We'll keep we'll keep pushing on. We're on good timing. So we're going to, you know, head over to the next one here. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks, Ryan. So I like to highlight this is a statistic that I put on top right there was this McKinsey study. Yeah. We're happy to send it over to that, audience here. A few years ago, a survey was done about organizations. have either a have a digital strategy or working on a digital strategy. But if you talk to the employees in this organization, less than 16% of them actually believe that these are bringing them sustained long term value. Now at AWS and me having so many years of experience, you know, talking to customers, this points down to a few fundamental issues. One of them we hit early on is this monolithic application and getting tied into a large, heavy upfront capital investment into a solution and then realizing, now we need more upgrades and now we need to change. And now I have realized that I've learned my mistakes. I've learned my lessons from mistakes in the last few iterations. Now you're tied to this large, monolithic application and a long upgrade cycle.  
 
That's one fundamental one that really affects the ROI. Second is we again touched on this is data source flow from different applications, like how do I take and work with the data from an asset performance management, integrate it into my ERP to understand my spare part, situation. How do I tied to a supply chain? How do I have a holistic view of my risk of this asset, and not just a hollow lens view of one of these applications? Right. And the third one, and we see this more and more, especially in, utilities and in renewables, is scalability. I want to start small with, with a small asset. Try how this works, learn my lessons and be able to scale up and fast. Right. So these three main elements contribute to that lack of ROI and digital transformation efforts. This is where cloud comes as a great enabler, right. This is where we specialize in. We want to take away first things first, the underlying infrastructure, taking stuff away from on prem and bringing you those microservices to the table so that you don't have to worry about, having resources upfront. Scalability. All our microservices are designed to be scalable. You can start small, you can scale up and down depending on the, depending on the needs that you have. And I'll let Rachel touch upon this. A little bit more detail is the upgrades and updates, right. Being in cloud inherently gives you the ability to access them. Latest updates, whether it's product features or a large major upgrade that gets you, the latest features in your hands faster, in a more innovative pace. We take security very seriously in AWS. It's it's job zero day one, as we call it.  
 
And we take data protection data services, security, extremely seriously. And we make sure that you we are working towards compliance. We are we are the only cloud service provider, I believe, in the NERC CIP. For example, we are understanding with the regulators what data should be, in the cloud, which one should not be. How do we access the right amount of data? The cloud takes away some of that heavy undifferentiated lifting off of your plate and off of GE Vernova’s plate. So GE Vernova can go innovate on their customers behalf. And we'll touch upon these microservices in a bit in how AWS philosophy in developing these are, but I'll stop there and they will. It's a good segue for Rachel to, cover on how she's taking some of these services and partnership that we bring to the table and then integrate into our product development lifecycle. Sure.  
 
And let me, let me jump in there. So I think kind of building off of what Shankar just just shared I from a GE Vernova perspective, we really believe strongly in the value of the cloud technology. And as I mentioned, we're cloud first. And we are, I think, for the a number of the reasons you see on the slide here in terms of how we see the value of cloud translating for our customers. And so, you know, as Shankar mentioned, one is really it provides faster access to the latest capabilities. And so this idea of, you know, if you're on premises, you have to go through an upgrade cycle to get the latest and greatest, whereas if and if you're in the cloud, whenever we we make an update, it's it's available to you immediately. And I'll just kind of share a couple of, of examples of where we've, we've heard this, at one of our conferences last year, we had a North America utility speak who, who had done the transition from on premises to cloud. And that was the first point that was made, was about the value of being able to get access to enhancements in real time versus having to wait for the next upgrade cycle as well, as they had built a lot of customizations on premises that made it difficult or more complex to do those upgrades. And so by moving to the cloud and making it configurable, they were able to move away from a lot of those, those challenges.  
 
And then I heard it again last week and just a customer call, with a global mining company, where again, they're currently on premises. And they said it's great that you're putting the enhancements in the latest, but we're not quite there yet, so we don't have access to it. So again, this is where, you know, moving to cloud, we see as this great enabler is what it says on the slide to help. We really want our customers to be able to adopt technology at the pace of change. And cloud is the easiest and most, accessible way to do that. I think you know, the others that Shankar mentioned. Really again, this it allows you to easily scale up and down as needed, which is going to contribute to lowering your total cost of ownership. It leads to, like I said, faster deployments. So not the same level of commissioning. And that's required for on premises. You've got data recovery built in and back up, high availability even as you scale quickly.  
 
And then I think the piece that, you know, Shankar mentioned just, you know, NERC CIP requirements, again, this includes this robust security framework that we share between AWS and GE Vernova to make sure that we’re incorporating security in depth by design across the applications and the infrastructure. And then I think the last is just, you know, it can even contribute to your carbon footprint with more efficient computing. So for us, we see significant value for, for our end users in terms of of moving and why we see again, the partnership with AWS as a huge enabler for us as well to deliver that for our for our customers. Yeah. All really good points. A question, Rachel, for you here in a second. But I think to tie this all together, and Shankar hit on it, we think about the scalability, but it's also scalability and composability. And I always like to tie this back to other industries. To give an example, especially with this statistic at the top that that Shankar shared, when you look back at industries like banking, financial services, manufacturing, you think about some of these, even telecoms, you think about some of these initiatives that have undergone. Right? It turned into this big rush to do everything and anything. Right.  
 
But what you're hearing from Shankar and Rachel is how do you start small scale and use expertise to, to get those business outcomes? So the shift that energy is seeing and working more in microservices and the cloud is right along that path we've seen from industry before. So I always like to bring that up because there are learnings from other industries trying to pull together these software ecosystems that even though it's not an asset or an energy use case, there's a whole lot of learnings out there, that you can take from and really understand the value of what this partnership means, and then understand is going to be a learning hand-in-hand trajectory together between Vernova, AWS and the customer. Right? So now that's the beauty I think of this slide. It’s pulling those things together, and making sure that 16% goes up. Right. We want to make sure that 16% turns to 20, that 20 turns to 25.  
 
So so on that note, Rachel, for you, how are you, you mentioned a few customer conversations, how are you seeing the shift, over the past few years of cloud adoption, within the space? Yeah, I think we've seen a significant uptick and acceleration to adopt cloud across industries. Initially, we've seen it in PowerGen, but there's lots of movement in oil and gas and other sectors now, as these businesses are looking for ways to be more efficient and adopt the latest tech faster. And I do have just to, to compliment the, Shankar's, numbers on the slide here. We actually did a poll through Reuters, at the end of and C-suite executives from a wide range of industry sectors on topics around the importance of digital technologies in the energy transition and also around technology adoption. And in that survey, they found 71% were completely or somewhat committed to a cloud first strategy, with only 8% saying they were not, and 7% saying they were not really aware. So again, the majority of the industries that, you know, the organizations that we serve are very much moving quickly to cloud. Very good. And I think this is a good, good question.  
 
We have two questions in here, that I think go hand in hand. So I'm going to ask, a two part, right. What is the large- And I think it plays in the second. What is the largest challenge and pushback from energy organizations who do not want to move to the cloud? And then the second part, which is a separate question, How do you handle some customers in specific countries who aren't showing interest in transmitting data outside of country? So it's two part question. One, I guess high level, how AWS and Rachel and Shankar, how are we handling that conversation.  
 
And two I think Shankar, maybe leans your way around the data sovereignty and compliance piece. So that was something that was taken a lead on. Yeah I can so that the first question was around the biggest challenge. I think it, you know, I would say from, from from our perspective, some of the things we do is just making sure the customers are comfortable with the security in the cloud. So if you have everything on premises today and you manage that, you have direct access to how that's managed. Again, I think moving to the cloud, that's, that's sometimes, you know, that that's always a point of discussion, let's call it, but definitely not something that we usually get stuck on unless it's very specific around the data sovereignty question. I think that's probably one of the, the bigger ones.  
 
As well as getting the IT groups comfortable with how it's how we're going to be able to respond and execute on the requests of the business stakeholders. Right. So, you know, how can we help continue to evolve the applications to better fulfill their end users needs in terms of usability and so forth. So sometimes it's like how how are we going to understand what's coming when in terms of enhancements because it automatically be there. And then just also how do we make sure that if there are things from our organization that we need prioritized, how does that work with you. And we have have processes and tools that we use today extensively. But I would say those are maybe two areas I would highlight. And I'll, I'll let Shankar, weigh in on others around it that you hear from an AWS perspective on adopting. Thanks. Rachel, I think you hit the head on the main ones, and, security. Right. I want to double down on security. That's one of the major ones a lot of customers, show hesitance towards. And most of the times you realize through education and conversations, it is it is more a perceived risk than risk.  
 
We do have a security practice within AWS, and we triangulated in three different ways. Right. We work with the regulators and we work with the partners both in the security space as well as, application developers like GE Vernova and also the customer. We take security very seriously, right? It's not it's not we're not we're not going to take customer data and build applications on, on top of it by ourself. We want to make sure that you're comfortable putting your data in the cloud and understanding where your data sits. How does it work? How does cloud, security in the cloud work and how the security off the cloud work? Right. We have this model called shared security, where we take care of security off the cloud. Very clear. And then we work with partners and customers to make sure that your your data is secure in the cloud. And coming to the question of data sovereignty and getting data, outside the country or regulatory levels, it be just consistently working and taking customer feedback.  
 
Right. Just this this week or or late last week, we announced the infrastructure region in Saudi Arabia that is that is years of customer feedback, talking about data sovereignty in that region. And that's a very important region for us when it comes to energy transition. So we're consistently taking that feedback, understanding which ones are true risk and perceived risk. But also when it is, it is a case to have infrastructure specifically in a region. We are willing to take that and and develop that for the customer. Right. So, more and more organizations are getting, warmed to this when when I started in GE in 2011, 2012, when I used to speak about cloud, people would look at me like a crazy person. But now we have truly customer use cases running in the cloud, on critical infrastructure. So, a rapid shift in just one decade. And we'll see this adoption happen more and more, because the pace of innovation we need to keep up with the pace of innovation and cloud is the way to go. So we can take off some of that burden off your shoulders. Yeah, all really good points that from a higher level, I think it comes back to that total cost of ownership.  
 
Without getting too deep in the weeds there, there's the perceived cost of going to cloud and there's that 3 to 5 year return window. Right. So when you when you all of a sudden look at how much this shift is going to take and get to that, you start mixing in how much you save on services for updates or human hours or server costs, or running, a virtual machine alongside of it. Right. And a lot of customers they love, they don't have a grasp on what that cost looks like and what cost can be removed from going to cloud. So a lot of it is also to the perceived total cost of ownership. Right? At a very high level, which is again, the scale piece and how we build our applications really help to drive that down. By design. So we'll keep pushing on. And Shankar, this is, over to you on the, the microservices end. Thanks, Ryan. So we spoke about this a little bit, right.  
 
What are the underlying microservices? And AWS has over 200 services. It's a comprehensive set of services to serve every different use case. And we're constantly developing more services. Our, our, CTO Werner jokingly said to the customers, like we've heard from you, the need for all these services, and it's kind of your fault that we have so many services. So, jokes aside, like depending on what area you're looking to, incorporate and innovate, we have the right services for you, right? Just some databases. We have about 15 database services, depending on what data we we believe in two things. We don't want our customers to compromise on performance, cost or scale. But at the same time, we know that one size doesn't fit all. So, the need for a database in an oil and gas midstream application is going to be different from that of, utility for the latency as well as the frequency of data is going to be different.  
 
And so from an application standpoint as well. So we are making sure that we have the right capability innovating on behalf of all those fundamental infrastructure needs, whether it's compute, storage, database or any of those fundamental needs of our customer, but also the applications that we will build on top of it. Right. We have the SageMaker for, machine learning. Generally, I would be remiss if we don't talk about generative AI. So we want to build those foundation platforms so that that heavy lifting is taken off. And GE Vernova can come and help your customers build, concepts on top of it and not worry about the fundamental layer of, an AI application.  
 
And even simple things like QuickSight, which is, you know, our business intelligence server, we can we can quickly spin up a QuickSight service, we can have an operator view. We can we can also have an enterprise view at the same time. It's about innovating different features, even within a product, taking customer feedback and depending on which people we're targeting, depending on the application or depending on the services they're trying to serve downstream, whether it's an ERP or CMMI system. So to summarize, we just have we have boil this down to this composability view of software design that you can interchange any of these services for a different service depending on the industry. Whether it's oil and gas, utilities, renewables, any asset in this asset intensive industries can take take a reference architecture can work towards that and work and replace the right services to develop the solution that you want to go drive the business outcome for.  
 
I don't want to deep dive on each of these services, but that's the point I want you to take home is, the philosophy of product design that GE Vernova is based on is the composability and the modularity and services, bringing a much more, faster, rapid pace of innovation to your table. And we want to hear from you. We want to hear from customers. We want to understand what's working and what's not working. We want to be able to get those upgrades in your hands fast enough. And that's what these services will enable us to do. Yeah. So I can just add a little bit onto that. So I think again, you know really this partnership allows us at GE Vernova to focus where our expertise matters the most by having access to these 200 different services that we can go use, rather than have to wait and build and then use and maintain. So again, that is sort of what allows us to move faster and innovate more quickly for our customers.  
 
And, you know, internally, it really allows us to spin up as these new services are available or technologies to be able to run proof of concepts internally faster, leveraging all of that scalability, from AWS so that we can in turn test concepts for our applications and then implement them faster in the product so that our end users have access that. So an example of that would be, we're in the process of launching what we call autonomous inspections, which allows users to take images or pictures, infrared pictures of assets and gauges to be able to turn that image into data. And we're leveraging SageMaker as an example here. And then tomorrow it's working on how do we deliver prescriptive recommendations around our, predictive diagnostics with generative AI. So again, this technology stack that AWS gives us access to allows us internally much the ease to iterate quicker on ideas and concepts that we see potential value to end users and then bring that into product faster. So again, that's another way we really see this partnership as as an enabler going forward. Awesome. And we have a few questions here.  
 
So I'm going to go back to one I was asked earlier and I referred to it. So for generative AI you hit on it for prescriptive, Rachel, where do you see generative AI playing a big part in asset performance management? Is it just prescriptive? Is there is there more to it or what are your thoughts on on the future of it? No, I mean, I think there's a lot of, opportunity across the board to leverage generative AI, whether it's, more sort of a support assistant, for end users in terms of accessing they have questions, you know, you have to go into a user doc, find your answer using generative AI to streamline that process for our end users. That's maybe 1, 1 obvious example. As we mentioned, prescriptive recommendations. They're really pulling on, work history data, subject matter expertise that that we have in documentation and incorporating that into the workflow around, alerts and alarms on analytics. There, I mean, there's, there's there's a ton of different ways it could be automating different parts of an RCA process. I mean, there's just I think a lot of use cases. And so it's definitely an area that we are, running proof of concepts on to see how we can work from, like Shankar said, where where is the value to be captured, what is the problem to solve?  
 
And working back and understand how we can utilize, the right technology to, to service and deliver on that outcome. So that's just a couple of, of examples that, that we're looking at, right now. Just to add to that, Rachel, I think you hit a great, great point that it's it's a transformative play on productivity improvement to it. Right? I'm I'm tremendously jealous of this generation for having AI because, my younger days, I spend hours and hours, looking through documents, looking for trends, days of trends, machine trend, data. Generative AI has that ability to take away some of that. Again, I call it undifferentiated work of taking away some of that and getting the subject matter experts to the data fast enough so they can they can have some quick decision making around it. Right.  
 
So we have several POCs that we have already successfully implemented and are scaling with energy customers. We're happy. Please reach out to us or Rachel, and we can give you a deep dive on any of those specific ones. It's not there's not enough time today to cover some of those, but it is it has definitely changed and transformed the way, experts look at how they work today. There we go. I know we have we're good on time. So we have two more questions here. So, with the, alongside the microservices piece, what other technologies do you see becoming a part of what we'll call the APM ecosystem? What do you what do you see on the horizon with all this excitement around the move we're doing towards microservices? So I'll take that on. I'll let Rachel lead on. Right. So the more and more as we're as we asked in asset performance management is is elevating the conversation from from asset centric view to an enterprise view. Right.  
 
And Rachel touched on it. It's going to be the unified view. APM today group into already integrates with your ERP system with the SAP or IBM Maximo. But we're being asked more and more for tighter near-real-time integration. How do I get real time insights from my spares? Spare part inventory optimization, supply chain? The ask is going to be for more and more faster insights, on the table. Right. And again, we touched on this a little bit is the generative AI piece. How can I make my workforce more productive? How can I take away some of those undifferentiated tasks off their table so they can focus on what they do their best? And and thirdly, we're seeing more of this as well, is the connected worker solutions like autonomous I think Rachel touched on this.. I’ll let her dive into this autonomous inspections and connected worker solutions. How do we enable the workforce to get the right data and have them at real time in their fingertips. Right. So those are some of the key themes that we are seeing today. But I'll let Rachel add to that. Specifically on the APM front, what other add ons are you seeing seeing from from a market standpoint. Yeah, I mean, I think it again, if I I'll step back to what Shankar said, you know, it's really starting with like what is what is the outcome that the customer is looking for, the organization is looking for. And then how do we come back in and understand what is the the technology or the solution that's going to solve that. And so I would agree with everything that that Shankar said.  
 
And, and specifically like the example I gave, around autonomous inspections, this is again leveraging newer technology within AWS so that we can enable customers, you know, if they're taking pictures of, on their inspections or corrosion analysis. Now, instead of taking weeks to analyze those images, we can use the software to do it, you know, in a matter of, of hours for the users so that they can focus on really where they can add incremental value with their with their expertise on taking action around those findings. So that's an example of where we're going to continue to work with AWS and, and using their myriad of services and technologies that I know are going to continue to, to evolve and innovate so that we can deliver on, real value driven outcomes for, for our end users.  
 
So, again, I think the, the areas he highlighted are definitely areas we'll continue to see more of a push, from our from our customers in. Awesome. And I know we have we have about ten minutes. So Q&A is still open. I know we have a I think one slide left Q&A is open. So any last minute questions? Please put them in the chat. So here here's where we'll wrap up I'll kick it back over to kind of talk about the end user. Big picture. Yeah. And I think just to wrap it up, Ryan, this is kind of a good summary slide that really again, we didn't want this webinar to be about AWS and GE Vernova specifically. It's really about helping to convey how we see this partnership coming together in a way that provides incremental value to our end customers, our collective customers. And we think that with this partnership, you know, we have these complementary strengths and focuses that allows us to do that.  
 
And so, again, it's really about providing access to the latest capabilities, reducing that time to value so that you can adopt at the pace of change, which we all know is sometimes pretty overwhelming. But that's how you're going to continue to to have your organizations evolve and be able to be most productive. Again, allowing us to help you scale up and down to meet your needs cost effectively. Again, ensuring data is secure and recoverable. But also really look at how we can expand that value with new integrations and technologies. So again, it comes back to what we talked at the very beginning, which is really we are looking for ways to solve those challenges around managing the trade offs between cost, risk and performance, so that with a solution like APM, you can reduce your unplanned downtime and get the most out of every single dollar you spend on O&M while supporting your strategic business goals.  
 
So I think from my perspective, that's really ultimately what we hope you walk away from this session today, is that this partnership is to create more value for our end users and there's a lot of different aspects to that. And we hope that, today's webinar shared a little bit of those insights with you. Thanks, Rachel. I think that you've covered a really well on what it means to an end customer. Right. There's is not it's hard to lead from the, take from there. But one thing I'd like to take away from this right, energy transition is not going to be possible without partnerships. And and I don't I want everyone here not to just look at this as a two way partnership between GE Vernova software and AWS, but a three way between you as a customer and how we can implement and help you optimize to optimize your assets. Right. Optimization is an unsung hero in the energy transition space, in my opinion. But but one thing I'd like to take away for you to take away from that as well, is basic innovation like Rachel hit it. We want you to be able to innovate and focus on what is your differentiation in the market as a customer.  
 
While we support each other, GE Vernova and AWS in helping that we bring that outcome and business innovation to your table. So you can go focus on that and not worry about some of the fundamental underlying infrastructure. So I'll leave it at that. And, and and yeah, reach out to any one of us and we're happy to help and work with you. Sorry to see how we can work with you. Right. But look at this as a three way partnership, and we are here to serve you as partners. Yep. No, very well said. Very well said. I know we have a couple questions, but I wouldn't be in product marketing if I didn't put this slide up. So we're super excited. If you haven't heard from us, we have our flagship event in Houston this year called Transform to Transition.  
 
This is our global customer event. So right now, we have 200 customers and representatives registered and ready. We are very thankful for AWS. They are a sponsor of the event. So, if you are interested, we have a QR code on the left. We're going to be talking a lot about APM adoption best practices, a ton of customer stories. We'll have a solution studio and even an opportunity for some one on one networking time. So with you, you are thinking about APM, you're thinking about going to the cloud. We will have experts in the room in Houston. So, if you have any questions, I urge you to either reach out to myself, for some questions or take a look at that, that barcode in the left. But, we'll be an action packed two and a half days. And we hope to see you there if you're not registered already. So after that quick pitch, we do have a couple more questions.  
 
So, we had a question come in. So from an APM side, the specific question is, are we doing feed studies for customers that focused on sharing site specific ROI and benefit before the actual purchase of APM. So are we piloting and doing POCs prior to purchase? We we we certainly, do on occasion, do what we call solutioning or APM road mapping, where we're happy to engage with customers. And again, it starts with what are the outcomes the organization is trying to achieve. And then working back from there into what would make the most sense for that organization in terms of, you know, a year, multi year plan along with expected value and payback on those investments.  
 
And so certainly, where we we definitely see a lot of customers get value out of that. It helps them put together their business case so that they understand what they should expect in terms of value. And, anticipated cost as well. Yep. Well that... I believe that is unless there's any last minute adds. I think that was the last question. So on that note, we will we will wrap up. Shankar, Rachel, I believe your information can be found in the dashboard. So any APM questions?  
 
Feel free to reach out to myself or Rachel. The very interested on the AWS end. Please feel free to reach out to Shankar. We'll make sure you have the info and insights that you need. But again, hopefully this is a great first introduction. It will be a lot more you hear from Vernova and AWS across all of our businesses as we head through 2024 and beyond. So thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Rachel and Ryan and Darlene, who’s help us through this webinar. Thank you.