Karen Dahut, Google Public Sector | Google Cloud Next ’24
[Rebecca Knight]
Introduction
Hello everyone, good afternoon. Welcome back to theCUBE’s live coverage of Google Cloud Next. I’m your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier.
Google Cloud Use Cases
John, so what’s been so fun and exciting about this conference is that we’re seeing so many different commercial enterprises, how they’re using the technology, financial services company, healthcare organizations, retailers, but it’s not just the commercial enterprises that are using Google Cloud.
[John Furrier]
Public Sector Transformation
The Google technology is built for everyone. The whole democratization has been kicked around a lot, but public sector is an area where there’s a lot of change. The change has really accelerated in modernization, which has been a really hard thing for the past decade as we’ve been covering public sector. So Google has good position to change the game in public sector, so it’s going to be a fun interview.
[Rebecca Knight]
Google Public Sector Announcement
Well, who better to discuss this than our next guest, Karen Dehut, she is the CEO of Google Public Sector. Welcome, Karen.
[Karen Dahut]
It is so great to be here with you guys, look at this, look at what we are sitting in the middle of.
[00:01:04]
[Rebecca Knight]
I’m so excited to talk to you about it. It’s pretty cool, and speaking of cool, you’ve had a big announcement this week. For our viewers who are not so up to date on every single thing from Google Public Sector, tell our viewers a little bit about the significant step that Google Public Sector made.
[Karen Dahut]
Google Public Sector’s Mission
Yes, so first of all, Google Public Sector was founded in 2022, June of 2022, really to bring all of this amazing technology to bear on the public sector mission. On Tuesday, we announced a major step for this technology to serve the national security community. We announced that we have authority to operate at the secret and top secret level. I cannot tell you, as a mission junkie, former Navy officer, how exciting it is to me to know that we are going to be able to deliver on the promise of Google magic to the national security mission.
[John Furrier]
Security Accreditations
Explain real quickly for the folks that aren’t in the know on these accreditations, the levels, what they mean, top secret, and then, I think, super top secret, there’s all these different levels, what the importance are.
[00:02:05]
Take a minute to explain that.
[Karen Dahut]
Sure, and thank you for the question. Think about our government. We serve citizens, we serve federal civilian agencies like the IRS, and we serve the Department of Defense, soldier, sailor, airman, and Marines, and we serve intelligence community professionals. Depending upon the level of information those people are working with on a day-to-day basis, they need certain classifications of that data, that information, and those systems. So you go from being able to leverage commercial technology and the Google Cloud platform, all the way to being able to use commercial technology on the Google distributed cloud hosted platform, which is a fully air-gapped platform to be able to serve edge operations for the most secret missions that our government has to serve.
[00:03:01]
And so, what we’re announcing over the course of this week is we can serve all of those missions with the same beauty of commercial technology, AI, data analytics, machine learning, and generative AI, and super excited about that.
[John Furrier]
Business and Public Sector Mission
And just to put a clarification, reason why I wanted to bring that up was it’s super important, and it enables you guys, from a business standpoint, obviously, to serve that, do more business.
[Karen Dahut]
Look, at the end of the day, we are a business, but we are a business and a company that wants to serve the public sector mission, and this allows it.
[John Furrier]
Security and Competition
I don’t mean to bring up the competition, but I have to bring this up because it talks about security. The Cyber Safety Review Board recently slammed one of your competitors, Microsoft, for a Chinese hacking situation. That’s a real dangerous situation, so security is the top bar to hurdle in public sector. It’s table stakes. Has to be designed from day one. How does that, I mean, that’s not good for Microsoft, but it’s going to be an opportunity for Google, obviously, competitor, but the point is, that’s not good.
[00:04:03]
The Chinese are in our government’s emails, and the breach happened.
Security Posture and Guarantees
Security, what’s that conversation like? What kind of guarantees are you guys offering? How does that security posture look? Can you double down on that a little bit and share your thoughts?
[Karen Dahut]
Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think at the end of the day, we are not building our technology to compete against Microsoft or AWS. We are building our technology to serve the public sector mission, and you’re absolutely right. Security is table stakes. We have built security into all of our products, not bolted it on as an afterthought. So, Google and the Google Cloud Platform is a zero-trust architecture. You guys probably know, in 2008, Google, the company, was attacked by the PRC. That was the beginning of our building, the zero-trust architecture. We are the pioneers in zero-trust. Our entire architecture is predicated on zero-trust.
[00:05:01]
So, when I talk about Google Cloud having all of the commercial technologies of zero-trust built in, that’s what I mean. It’s built into our company’s DNA. We also don’t do business in China. We don’t have data centers. They don’t have access to our source code. We don’t serve the Chinese people or government. It’s a really important distinction between us and our competitors. And then, lastly, I would say, we bought Mandiant. Mandiant is a world-class intelligence, threat analysis, incident response company, and those capabilities and tools are built into our products.
[John Furrier]
Well, Kevin’s great at that.
[Karen Dahut]
Kevin is amazing.
[John Furrier]
He’s the best, and we interviewed him at this show last year. He brings up a point. That’s why I want to, I don’t mean to go on a tangent here, but I think this is important for the national security conversation. They have threat detection. They have all the data. They know who the threat actors are, what the rankings are. It’s almost like a leaderboard. He got a whole leaderboard going on. So, there’s a huge national security, but they have to manage the new threats.
Generative AI and Public Sector Modernization
And so, the real question here that’s great about this show is that all these models being discussed is generative.
[00:06:05]
So, generative is a new category of user experience and technology system architecture. So, this is now an opportunity to flip the script on what was a slow road in the public sector modernization efforts. I mean, we’ve been following it. It’s an inch by inch, one brick at a time. Now, you really can change the game and go faster. What’s your view on that? What’s your vision on how Gen AI and this change is an opportunity to accelerate?
[Karen Dahut]
I have so many thoughts on that, but before I go there, I want to say, Kevin Mandia is a national treasure. I feel like I need to say that.
[John Furrier]
He’s a CUBE alumni, too. Is he? As are you. Of course he is.
[Karen Dahut]
Generative AI is changing the game, as you said. And I would say a couple of things on this point. First of all, Google has been an AI-first company for a long time. Generative AI is not something new to us. We’ve been building generative AI and AI into all of our products for a very long time.
[00:07:05]
When you talk about the platforms of commercial cloud to Assured Workloads IL-5 to GDCH IL-6, all of that is built with commercial technologies enabling the full use of Vertex AI and generative AI as capabilities that are available to government. Now, we know from surveys that we do with state and local governments, as well as our federal government leaders, that they have already been working with generative AI. They see it as a game changer for them. They want to rapidly adopt, and they are trying to implement it as speedily as they can.
Generative AI Use Cases in Government
And there are four use cases we generally see across government. The first one is what I call an always-on personal assistant. Improving worker effectiveness. Reducing their toil, if you will, and allowing them to work on that higher-order work. That’s generative AI at its best use case.
[00:08:02]
Breaking through all those government policies and procedures and giving them answers always-on. Second use case is automating some of these functions. The best use of technology is to automate some of these things that have become mundane and rote. Technology can be a huge enabler to automating that process and that function. Third use case, citizen engagement. We know from our state and local leaders firsthand that there are citizens in this country that want to be able to engage in their government differently and get answers to their tax questions, their benefits questions, unemployment. They want to know how to engage differently. Using their own language, so language translation is super important. Document AI, being able to read and understand documents. So all of these things are ways to engage with government differently. And the last use case is around producing different products and being able to produce government products for citizens in new and different ways.
[00:09:06]
So the applications of generative AI across public sector are wide ranging and massive. Our job is to educate, is to show not tell how it can be really effective, and then to make a difference in the lives of government workers and citizens.
[John Furrier]
Pandemic’s Impact on Public Sector Mindset
You’ve been a senior veteran in the public sector throughout your career. A long time, I’m old. And thank you for your service to this country, being an officer. And if you look at the pandemic, I’d love to get your thoughts on this, because what’s the mindset of the practitioners in the public sector right now? Because when the pandemic hit, everyone was scrambling. The new way to work was no work, no working at home. And so you couldn’t foresee and provision work at home, call centers, how do people get their social security checks? All those services were basically failing. And then the cloud players stepped up and said, did that change the psychology of the market in terms of the practitioners now?
[00:10:06]
Actually, we saw things like Jedi and other contracts out there. There’s always the modernization, but has it changed since the pandemic? Or people are aware, what’s the mindset?
Adoption Progress Bar
Where’s the progress bar in the adoption?
[Karen Dahut]
Yeah, I mean, look, I think on March 14th, 2020, we all went home and we had to imagine a different way of working. And I do think cloud companies and Google stepped up to produce different applications and capabilities. And I think that it accelerated the transformation of government. And it accelerated the idea of what could happen and how things could be done differently. One of my favorite stories is the work we did for the New York State Department of Labor. They had a massive backlog of unemployment benefits that they couldn’t get to. And Governor Cuomo at the time called us up and said, we need help.
[00:11:00]
We need Google to help us deliver on the promise of benefits to our state employees. And we were able to, within a few weeks, turn around that backlog into being able to deliver services. And it was using AI. It was using document AI. It was using translation. All of these tools that I just talked about, but being able to implement it in such a short period of time was mind-blowing for people. And that really changed the mindset of what could be done with technology.
[Rebecca Knight]
Government’s Image and Practitioner Mindset
Does the government get a bad rap? Because when you hear words like cutting-edge technology and rapid adoption, these are not exactly things that come to mind when you think of the government, which is slow-moving, more turgid. How do you, does it get a bad rap? I mean, the practitioners that you’re working with on a day-to-day basis, what is their mindset? Yes.
[Karen Dahut]
I would say it’s not uncommon that they get a bad rap. I think it is unfair. I think most of our government customers are dedicated, hard-working employees that want to make a difference.
[00:12:09]
They are hamstringed by budget, by legacy technology, by cloud providers in the past that created more dead-ends and more silos than created the transformation platform. And so I think the answer to that question lies somewhere in between. Do they want to make a difference? 100%. Is it easy for them to do? Not as easy as it should be.
[Rebecca Knight]
Applying Commercial Learnings to Public Sector
How easy is it for you to take the learnings of what Google is doing for commercial enterprises and apply them to the public sector? Or are they just apples and oranges, and it is too hard because of all the…
[Karen Dahut]
It is not apples and oranges, Rebecca. It is the use cases we see in commercial businesses and commercial enterprises are directly applicable. We may use different words, like citizen versus employee, or customer versus employee, but the applications of Gen AI to make a difference in the workforce, to customers, to product development are common.
[00:13:16]
I think the only thing that we have to pay attention to is clearly there are bad intentions out there by our nation-state threat actors that we have to make sure that our products are foundationally secure, built in, not bolted on, and we are assured of that at Google.
[John Furrier]
Use Cases Coming Online
Awesome, and talk about the use cases you’re going to see coming online this year. Obviously, we’re well past the pandemic. Google Cloud has a growing ecosystem, and so I’m anticipating a lot of people want to do business with you. What’s your story to existing partners, got the new IL level fives, you got certification. What’s, you got FedRAMP, always a hassle.
[Karen Dahut]
FedRAMP, IL-5, and IL-6, yes.
[John Furrier]
So FedRAMP’s a big deal.
[00:14:00]
You have FedRAMP, you’re locked in on that. Okay, you got FedRAMP, IL-5.
Pitch to Partners
What’s the pitch to the partners that want to come on board that may not be on board yet, and the ones that are there now, because the ecosystem will make or break, because you got to execute through. You’re going to sell through partners. They’re going to implement services on your behalf.
[Karen Dahut]
You know this business well. So I would say, let me start with, look around the room. This is eight football fields of technology and people and partners that want to do business with Google, and so that is super exciting. My strategy for Google Public Sector, we are going to scale through our partners. We are not going to scale simply by delivering the best technology. We need to enable them. So that comes with training. It comes with investment on our part to get them their certifications, to give them sandboxes to play with, to get comfortable with the technology, and then a go-to-market together, building pipeline and go-to-market together.
[00:15:00]
I’m so excited. We made so many important announcements with partners just over the past six months. I’ll mention two with Deloitte. We are going to market with them in the state and local space around generative AI. Again, delivering on the promise of generative AI to state citizens and employees. Secondly, with Accenture around security. Accenture is a leader in security. We’re a leader in security technologies. We’re going to market together to bring that to bear on the federal government, and look, we need our partners, 100%.
[John Furrier]
Importance of Partner Ecosystem
I’m glad to hear that because that’s going to be key to success. One thing I want to bring up, because this is a use case that might be a tailwind for public sector, we’ve been seeing it in regulated industries. In the old school, pre-gen AI, it was like, public sector, oh, they go so slow. Regulated industries, ah, there’s no innovation there. So if you look at those markets, regulated industries are very data-driven, very structured, everything’s buttoned up, everything’s labeled, they have great governance, and so they’re kicking butt with generative AI in regulated industries.
[00:16:04]
Because they’re all, the table’s set.
Public Sector Modernization and Regulated Industries
Public sector, maybe not as organized as regulated industries, but they’re antiquated, but still adequate. So how do you get that antiquated modernization? That’s, I think, the opportunity. Do you agree with that statement?
[Karen Dahut]
I do, I 100% agree with that statement. So look, federated, regulated industries, banking, healthcare, Google Cloud on the commercial side is doing amazing work. Eight of the 10, I think, largest medical centers, we are serving them with generative AI. You heard the announcement from Goldman Sachs yesterday during the keynote. We do a ton of work with banking. The challenge, the very similar regulated industries to government, your point is exactly right. The challenge is all about budgetary authority and being able to invest in these new technologies. Where I think generative AI makes a tremendous difference, you don’t have to rip and replace technology.
[00:17:01]
You can leverage existing legacy technologies, you can leverage existing data stores, raise it up in that vertical stack that I mentioned in Vertex AI, and we can accomplish much of the same work in the federal government that we’re doing in some of those regulated industries.
[John Furrier]
Impact of Generative AI on Public Sector
You know, it’s interesting, I heard a hallway, in the hallway, I was always talking to folks and getting data. We had a person said, it’s mostly public sectors, kind of similar, but they said, we’re running this workload, and nobody knows actually who built it. It’s so old, the person’s no longer here, and they didn’t document their source code. So they ingested it into Google Cloud and it did all the documentation, and fixed the code review. So you’re starting to see the impact to the practitioners who are told by their boss, we’re going with this new solution.
[Karen Dahut]
It’s the power of Gemini, I have to say, it’s the power of Gemini, multimodal. It is a game changer. I don’t know that everybody understands that.
[John Furrier]
And by the way, DNA is a mode, modal operation, it’s data too.
[00:18:01]
So I think this is a game changer in the sense that the people who have to implement and run are going to have an easier path because it won’t be a hassle to run it.
[Karen Dahut]
That’s right, that’s right. And I do think it levels the playing field for some of our government customers that really want to make a difference, but don’t have necessarily all the budget to do so.
[John Furrier]
Google Public Sector’s Roadmap
So you got a good organization, the CEO of public sector, it’s its own thing, and it’s big. What’s your plan? What’s your roadmap look like? We’ve got the vision, we see the ecosystem. What’s the business plan for you?
[Karen Dahut]
Well, let me tell you some of the things I’m most excited about, and then I’m going to share with you my vision. First of all, we’ve only been in existence since June of 22. That blows my mind to see what we’re accomplishing in such a short time. We’ve been able to recruit amazing talent, and I think it’s the promise of Google technology and the opportunity that’s in front of us. We have a board of directors that’s chaired by Dave Goldfein, the former chief of staff of the Air Force, for goodness sakes, and is populated with the most amazing federal, state, local, and education leaders.
[00:19:07]
And so leveraging that to really help us understand real use cases is so important. So this journey we’ve been on from the beginning to today has been nothing but amazing. Our strategy is to be the preliminary mission technology provider, to be able to show how Google technology can transform government, can transform mission, can make it easier for citizens to engage with their customer.
Business Plan and Recurring Revenue
That comes by building recurring annual revenue. Of course we’re a business, right?
[John Furrier]
Got to build business, it’s got to be recurring.
[Karen Dahut]
We’ve got to be building unique and differentiated products. I think what I described to you as our continuum is exactly that. Being able to demonstrate the promise of AI and generative AI to the community, making sure that it is always secure, and making sure that it is founded on principles of responsible use.
[00:20:03]
And so, super excited to be a part of Google.
[John Furrier]
From national security to democracy. Yes, there you go, I like it. Liberty for all.
[Rebecca Knight]
And liberty for all. I feel like we should stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, right.
Conclusion
Excellent. Well, Karen Dahut, mission junkie herself, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. A really, really fascinating conversation.
[John Furrier]
Thank you so much, both of you, really enjoyed it.
[Rebecca Knight]
I’m Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE’s live coverage of Google Cloud Next. You are watching theCUBE, the leading source of tech enterprise news.