Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel team of the year. Day number one was today. I want to talk about all the market movements that we saw today in terms of all the packs and the lighting rounds that were opened. Of course, talking about the new team of the year cards, the objective NESDA and the SBC Neuer and the other SBCs that we got today. Obviously, I want to first start off by talking about the team of the year Obviously, insane, insane team of the year cards, really awesome cards that came out today. There was a little bit of like a glitch and a hiccup, I guess, to start off a team of the year with this Mane card. Supposedly it came out right away and it was shown that it was 98 rated, but it was actually 97. So I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen with that. I think it is just going to be a 97 rated card. But regardless, incredible, incredible stat boosts for Mbappe, for Mane, and for Messi. So these are insane, insane team of the year cards, huge stat boosts, which is what you always expect with team of the years. But I think the Mbappe one out of these three might be the one that is, I guess, the biggest X factor, I think, with the dynamic image with the blonde hair, I think is like really sweet. I don't know if we've had a blonde hair dynamic image on Mbappe yet, like in the past couple years, have we? I don't think we have, but this is a pretty recent, like I think it's a pretty recent hairdo for him. So that's a pretty sweet dynamic image. It just looks cool with like the rest of the gold card, you know? So that's kind of cool. The Messi card, obviously with 99 rated, I wish they would have given him 99 shot and maybe even like 99 pace, just come on, he won Ballon d'Or. I know some people said they wish they would have seen the Messi dynamic image be him with the Ballon d'Or trophy as well. That would have been kind of cool. But I don't think anybody can complain about those three team of the year attackers today. Crazy price movements with those and we'll talk about those in a second as well. But what I also want to talk about is I want to talk about the vote today. So I voted for Lewandowski. There was obviously a 12th man vote today and it was kind of interesting as well. There was some stuff put on Twitter about who those players for the player pick were going to be and they ended up being different from the ones that we actually saw in game. Those are like the two hiccups that we saw today with the release of team of the year. It was Lewa, it was Ziyech, it was Ronaldo and I forget the other two. But I think the most popular three were those that I just mentioned right there, Lewandowski, Cristiano Ronaldo and Ziyech. And I do think it's going to come down to Lewandowski and Ronaldo. I've seen so many people that have voted Lewandowski today. It's crazy. But it's obviously Cristiano Ronaldo that he's going up again. So we'll really see what happens with the voting. And I think that player comes out on Friday. So the full team of the year, which is basically they base this the same as they did it last year as of now. It's what it's looking like. But they're basing this off kind of the same thing they did last year. This is definitely not the right price range. But they're putting the attackers impacts right away to start off with and then they are putting the midfielders the next day and then they're putting the defenders after that. So I do think that we are going to see the midfielders impacts for 24 hours today. There's a lot of people that are looking at this card right now. Sadio Mane was supposedly like 12 pages of supply in the middle part of the day. Right now it is a later night time and he has about seven and a half or eight. So that's kind of interesting. There was a lot of people that flipped these cards today with big time coin budgets, especially the extinction of Messi and Mbappe right away at the start of the game. People were flipping these cards and made some big time money on these cards, which is a big time Gigi. If you were able to flip one of these today, they were extinct at 6 million for the first like 45 minutes. They got their price ranged up to nine and a lot of people sold them around kind of like that, you know, eight to nine mill range and made a lot of profit on those cards for the great timing that that was. There's always going to be opportunities like that when you have the price range differences. And that's something that, you know, is it's a big ball's move. And I don't usually get to do that a lot myself because I'm usually at work and stuff like that. But that's something that if you have the time to do, it is very, very profitable. Just like there were many other areas of the markets, they that were super duper profitable, kind of like the stuff that I talked about in my upload yesterday about the panic selling of the icons and stuff like that. But again, day one, we did get those three team of your cards. Those are the only one impacts. They ran lightning rounds at multiple points throughout the day. They actually, the lightning rounds were a very interesting time state. They ran the usual 6pm, 7pm and 8pm lightning rounds with the 5100 and 125k packs. Then they also ran a lightning round, when was it, at 10pm UK of 125k packs. So I think those are the only lightning rounds we have or have had today as a part of the first day of Team of the Year. But there, of course, are other promo packs in the store. But that was just interesting that we got that fourth extra lightning round a couple hours after we normally see them end. But we also got two SBCs today, Team of the Year Challenge SBC for a pack. GGs, go do yourself this SBC. I think it's pretty cheap. Get yourself a pack. And then Manuel Neuer. And I think a lot of people are interested in this card. If we keep, this is when I saw this card today, I was honestly happy because I think this is the type of SBC that a lot of people want to see, right? That is a great big name player. Of course it's a goalkeeper. So you know, it's probably not a ton of people are going to do this SBC, but it's cool, right?  If I'm being honest, you kind of need Baby Mateus or, you know, somebody that you can maybe another icon center back. It's going to be a little bit harder to get links to a Neuer like this in this year's FIFA, which we don't have a ton of Bundesliga center backs or even Byron center backs that are super duper meta or anything like that. But there are some solid ones out there. Lucas Hernandez is the ones to watch and stuff like that. So there are some people that are definitely going to try to get this card. I think it's a decent SBC, not bad, just solid, but I like the boost and I like the player selection. That's the thing that I found most promising about this SBC today. So this is out for three days. We'll talk about the SBC fodder part of the market here in a second as well. I also want to look at objectives. Of course, last night we saw this flashback in the ESTA was put into concepts. It came out today as an objective player. And I think people are actually going to go out and grind this because it does take a lot and I don't know if they gave us enough time to do this. I think they have like three days, three days and 14 hours to do this objective, which honestly isn't a ton because you have to win six rivals matches. You have to get four rivals wins for that. You have to assist eight girls. Okay, that's not too bad. You have to play some squad battles, three squad battle rins and then two separate rivals wins. So it does take a little bit of grinding for this card. But if you're an ESTA fan, then it's definitely something you probably want to do. I just wish and I think you saw a lot of people mentioned this today as well. I think you wish that they would have boosted the card a little bit more just based on just based on any ESTA, right?  Like it's a good card. It's solid, but you know, I don't think a ton of people are going to go out and do this objective just because it is a pretty grindy objective, but it is an ESTA as well. So I do think some people will you saw a couple bit of you caught this, excuse me. You saw a couple market movements because of that today. Inform Saul was one of them because you needed 11 Spanish players. So there were some Spanish informs that went up today. So maybe you've got a little bit lucky if you maybe invested in a card like this, this is one of my most popular Thursday flipping cards that I like to mess around with. So that was pretty nice. But yeah, that was kind of the content that we got today in FIFA. We got the Neuer, we got the objective, the team of the year challenge. We also got a Luis Suarez player of the month, SBC, which if you're a Barcelona fan again, this is not a bad SBC, not a terrible card. Of course, he doesn't have the four star skills this year isn't as meta as he has been in years past, but not a terrible card. 82 acceleration, it makes this 79 pace a little bit more bearable.  His passing really isn't that bad, especially if you boosted a bit. 95 attack positioning, 94 finishings, so he's going to put the balls in in the box. But this SBC I think is right around 120k and then the Neuer SBC is around 100,000 coins as well. So not bad value, like decent value. If you're going to do that card no matter what, you're fine with paying the price for that kind of card right there, right? This kind of, his price right now is very, very similar to like a team of your nominee, Allison card. That's one way you could look at it, that those prices are pretty similar. One last thing about the content from the day, a little bit of a disappointing factor as well, that packs back from both of these SBCs were untradable. Like come on, man. Why are they giving us untradable rewards? We're already getting an untradable player from the SBC. That's what I think a lot of people were also a little bit upset about today, was the fact that we got untradable rewards back from these SBCs that even gave us packs back. So it was nice to get a few packs back, but they were untradable. So that kind of puts a damper on things a little bit. At least they gave us a tradable team of the year challenge from an SBC today as well. But what else happened across the market? Of course, there was a lot of people eyeing those team of the year cards today. A lot of people were trading with those, flipping with those with the big balls flips, as it's most often referred to. But this is the rest of the icon market. There was so much panic selling headed into the promotion, which I think was expected, especially on the higher tier, the Meta guys over 500,000 coins, icons, and some of the other big time special cards that you can see what happened right after the lightning rounds. And I think I talked about this yesterday in my video, especially I showed you the example of what I did last year with a baby George Best. And what I was doing, you know, picking that card up on the 59th minute, getting packed, you know, the prices were dropping down, panic selling from seeing the new team of the year attackers being in packs, and then the rebound that happened afterwards. And that is exactly what happened today. A lot of the panic selling happened. And there was also a lot of rebound that happened on today's game as well. So I want to look at a few cards right now that really did well. A lot of the ones that did the best were actually prime icons, prime icons had some of the best rebounds they how much is Ned Ved right now, I saw Ned Ved today in the panic under 800,000 coins. And we're talking like I'm pretty sure I saw him at like 770 or 780 on like an undercut. But he was consistently right around 800k flat earlier today.  So that's a nice rebound on a card like that. Another one that I wanted to look at as well was what is his name? I just looked at him. What is his name? Carlos Puyol. Carlos Puyol. I want to show you this card as well. So Carlos Puyol today actually didn't really go down. Look how rare he is man. Some of that's the issue with some of these prime cards is that people panic sold them. They saw how cheap they went. They saw how expensive the team of your cards were and they went and they bought these cards back later today. So this Carlos Puyol was down like 500 and like 50, 560k I do believe at one point. He's already back up to 645. So that's a really nice rise on a card like that. And I think this prime lamp art as well. I saw this card fluctuate a decent amount during the day today as well. He was 500k flat at one point now back up to 550k. So that's a nice 50,000 coin rise on a prime icon like lamp art. So there was a lot of those movements on the market that happened today. And I kind of expected that to be to be honest with you just because of all the packs that were open now. I can't go in here because I'm going to sign at the moment on Premier League Rare Golds. But there were tons of packs that were able to be open today. Lighting rounds that continued on and that of course this goes and also kind of explains why we saw this massive rebound, right? Because those team of the years were very expensive. But they're also for the rest of the market that maybe couldn't afford a team of the year, but opened up safe packs today or did lighting rounds that put a lot of coins onto the game. And if you remember this, I've been talking about how the team of the year probably is going to resemble somewhat closely the Black Friday promo that we saw earlier this year. And this is the first start of that and exactly mimicking what happened on Black Friday was that first bit of round where we got pack supply back onto the market. People have been selling things heading into the promo this week just like Black Friday. People were taking massive losses. I mean, we looked on stream of people that were selling middle hullet last week or earlier this week just before team of the year started. We were looking at guys that bought this middle hullet card for almost 6 million coins that were trying to sell it for like 4, 3 or 4.4 million coins. That's just kind of the crazy stuff that you see with a downturn of the market and panic selling heading into a promo-like team of the year. And now you see coins coming onto the market through lighting rounds and people opening up saved packs, which then just makes the game and makes the market a lot more rich and a lot more, you know, they just have more coins. So you see things like SBCs being done. SBC fodder rises because cards in the game, people are completing SBCs because they have coins, people are buying cards. And that is why last night I invested in a lot of out-of-packs special cards that were pretty meta. I've gotten some lazy buyers today and we're going to talk about some other possible investments at the end of this video here in a bit of what we could be picking up for more rises later this week. But since I'm unassigned, I really don't have much of a hurry to sell a lot of these cards that I bought. So I went about 3 to 4 million coins deep in a lot of these. I've had a few of them sell. So I have about 500,000 coins right now at the moment. But I just basically bought a lot of out-of-packs special cards that were really low. I bought these Benyetters for 155 to 160,000 coins. He's now 175, but I'm hoping to get, you know, 180, 190 a little bit later this week. The Sancho was it bought at like 115. These Verna's were bought at like 135. These Allicens are still kind of low and I'm a huge fan of this one because even if they somehow put Team of the Year nominees back in packs later this week, which I think they could do maybe on like a Thursday or Friday is say, oh, we're going to throw these nominees back in packs for the rest of the promo too. That's something to keep in mind. I think it's possible. Is there a high chance of that happening? Not really, but I do think that's possible. But his Team of the Year card obviously is going to be in the game at the end of this week well as well. So that card might not be in packs, but also a very, very popular inform. Some left-wing Sterlings basically for the position change and some other meta informs as well. That's the kind of stuff that I sunk my teeth into. And I also went unassigned on the Premier League Rare gold cards. And that's because I am looking to do tons and tons and tons of upgrade packs from the Premier League because I do want to pack myself a Team of the Year. That is the basis of me doing all these SBCs. And I'm really counting on those SBCs coming out, right? I'm really counting on those coming out. Hopefully they come out today on Tuesday. That's when they came out last year. So I'm really counting on those and looking forward to those. But if you were able to flip cards today, you probably that made the most return your investment. That was the smartest thing to do. And I think that's going to be the smartest thing to do today as well. I want to take a look here in just a few minutes at the stuff that we could also be trading and look at maybe even doing some of the same stuff that we did today on the market on Monday. Do it on Tuesday as well for when the midfielders come out into this game. First of all, I want to look at SBC fodder. Are these down? Yes, they are. This is why I was kind of telling you guys, you're crazy. If any of you invested in these cards before Team of the Year, because of all the packs that were going to be open, we had four sets of lighting rounds, I'm sure that people opened up some of their safe packs today. And you saw these guys definitely drop down in price. 85s are now 8k, 84s are around 3, 3.5 or 4,000 coins.  That's going to have to go up at some point during this promo. A lot of these guys were even cheaper on bid. 86 is at 14k, 87 is at 20k. I can almost guarantee you there is going to be a Real Madrid. Somebody from Real Madrid is going to get an SBC during this promo. What would be Team of the Year without a Real Madrid player, right? Of course, a lot of people are saying Marcelo could be that person, maybe even another Gareth Bale SBC, just a possibility. So I'm a huge fan of like a Castamiro and a Benzema under 20,000 coins and a Courtois for a decent price, even Hamas Rodriguez. I'm a fan of those guys, if you're going to invest in a specific 87 or 88 or 85 rated card. But I do think we're getting into the range where you can definitely club stock these cards. They're going to get hammered with more and more lightning rounds throughout this week. So I would not say that I would not say that going all out on SBC fodder is the smartest thing to do. Even though it's low, we're do a lot more SBCs this week, but we're also do a lot more packs. So I do think that all the packs opened up later this week is going to inhibit some of these rises. The real money is only going to be in, let's say they do release on Marcelo Flashback. If you have Real Madrid players and they require them, then you might be able to make some coins on an investment like that. But the safe thing to do if you're interested in getting some of these in your club is probably just doing a high rated club stock, getting one of each, throwing in your club. And I would go from 84s all the way up to 90, man. I would go through 84s to 90, get all the cheap ones, you know, 87s that are 20k. That's awesome. 88s are 25. That's a great 89s around 30. Fantastic. And then Tristegans, 40,000 coins, Modric 40k stock one in the club and just wait for more SBCs to come out. So I'm a fan of those right there. The other thing that I want to talk about possibly investment wise is this team of the week. Obviously, this team of the week today, it went really, really low. I bought myself an Anthony Martial at 110,000 coins and I just sold them for 125. I think you're going to have another opportunity to do this today on Tuesday, buying these team of the week cards during the lightning rounds. Look at what happened today to Martial's price. People knew that it was coming. They panic sold them. The panic sold them. He's 150, 140, boom. 115,000 coins. This is right when I bought them. He rebounded right back to 133 and we actually got hit with more lightning rounds right at this time. So we kind of dropped back down to like 128. He's 121 at the moment. But I think there's going to be a fantastic opportunity to buy this week's team of the week during tomorrow's lightning rounds. Is it going to be a good idea? I think it's not a terrible idea because these guys only had two days of lightning round supply. And before that, there were not a lot of packs opened other than weakening rewards. That was the only pack supply for this team of the week earlier this week. And there's a lot of players in here that are going to make it into people's teams after the team of the year. So Martial is one of my favorites, Aguero, Adama Treyore, probably Trent and Kante. Kane is okay, but Kane actually has a lot of supply for a 93 rated card, but it's probably going to be Kane's last special card for a while because he is injured. So if you're interested in investing in any of these team of the cards, look for today during lightning rounds to be a great opportunity to pick some of those cards up. We're talking like around the second lightning round, you know, maybe 7pm UK ish, 7 to 730pm UK ish is when I would say get on some of the lightning rounds, get on some of the bids for some of these cards. Bids especially are going to be easier to get insane deals on some of these cards, like Anthony Martial. Or if you have a favorite out of any of those cards that I have listed there, any of those, they could be in this week's team of the week, there could be a potential riser. I do think they do have a great opportunity to rise. And especially since they're on a lower budget, right, 100,000 coins, let's say you just want this Martial for your team, it's a perfect card to pick up as an investment and a card for your team right there. So that's what I think about team of the week. I do think a lot of people are going to invest in it. So that's one word of caution I might have for you is really make sure you can try to get the lowest lowest price as these guys do go out of packs on the end of the day, Tuesday into Wednesday. So we'll be getting a new team of the week on Wednesday and that team week is going to start out with a lot of supply from lightning rounds as well. But this one that we're on the tail end of, I do think is a decent investment in terms of rising out of packs later this week. Other stuff that I think you could do again, icons, even if you only have like 500,000 coins like me, you can look at some of these baby icons that people like to trade with and play with all the time. Michael Owen, how much is he right now? This card earlier today was 125,000 coins. He is now 140. He was bought back up to like 145 almost 150 at one point earlier today. Again, as the attackers, a lot of people panic sold their attackers, whether it was icons, whether it was high informed special cards and stuff like that. You can probably expect to see some more packs being opened again tomorrow with the midfielders coming into packs. I mean today, I always say today and tomorrow, I get them mixed up, right? Because I'm recording this a Monday night, but you're going to be watching on Tuesday. So to me, Tuesday is tomorrow, but it's actually today for you. So you get what I'm saying, the midfielders that impacts on Tuesday, watch for another drop in a card in price like this, especially watch some of the midfielders, right? So maybe, maybe you watch a pretty cheap prime card like that LAN part could be a good example again. Maybe people tomorrow that bought this card and wanted to go try it out. Maybe they panic sell this card tomorrow, it gets packed more. The careful, the thing that I would say to be careful with this though, these cards are going to continually get more and more supply on the market. So today, how much was LAN part earlier today? Let's look at LAN part really quick. What was he before? What was he before all the packs and everything came out today? I want to take a peek at this. LAN part was 510. 510, that was a big time undercut. He is not there anymore. But before the lightning round today, 620k, 650, he was 600k, dipped down to 520, 510. Now he's back up to like 555, 60, right? How much is he going to drop tomorrow? Well, since he went back up to 550 and he's kind of still chilling, maybe like 525, 30 tomorrow or Tuesday, I could easily see him under 500k, maybe like 475 at his very lowest, right? You might see this guy at about 475k, maybe 480, maybe 490, because I do think he'll drop lower than what he did today, but he won't rebound as high, right? So I don't think tomorrow night you can expect this guy to go to 550. I would expect you to see him maybe around like 530 or 540, maybe not quite the rebound that he had tonight, because he's going to have more supply on the market. And there's going to be other cards out that people might want to go and try. So that's one thing to think of. You might see more of a crash in some of the prime icon prices tomorrow, especially if they're kind of in this range, right? If they're in like the root hole at range, I do think you're going to see more of a crash in a guy like this, but you probably, you know, the buyback is going to be really intriguing to watch in a card like this as well, just because it's so rare. 4.5 mil right now, this might be again 4243 tomorrow, depending on the prices of some of the team of the years. If they come out cheap, then this guy might go cheaper.  I don't think the midfielders are going to be that expensive today as the attackers were, because these are the guys that everybody wanted to see, right? Now, Kante, De Young, De Bruyne, yes, people are going to be interested in, but I don't know if they're going to have as much of the hype as these attackers did today. I would expect these guys' day one prices to look a lot like Mane's, somewhere in the range of like two to four million coins from the start. Honestly, KTB might be five or so to start off and then dip down. Kante would probably be three, two and a half. De Young would probably be even like two and a half down to around two million, maybe dipping under two in the nighttime. But we'll talk about a little bit of these tomorrow a little bit more. And again, watch for the panic selling on the mids for the icons, okay? The mids for the icons is where I'd especially watch for your panic selling, again, your Vieras, your Holitz, your stuff like that. And just of course, being in lightning rounds, right? I'm probably going to get another SBC tomorrow as well, another flashback or player moments. So maybe some link investments or stuff for that could be an interesting look to buy as well. But again, if you're looking to trade in this market, it's a fantastic, fantastic time to trade a lot of undercuts, a lot of panic selling because of the cards that are coming out, especially in the upper tier icon echelon. That's a fantastic, fantastic place to trade as this market gets more coins and as this market gets richer and people go out and buy cards like that instead of losing coins and being just kind of dead in the water in terms of FIFA Ultimate Team coins based on all the panic selling that we have had before this promo. Another thing that I really hope happens tomorrow and you've heard me mentioned already is upgrade packs. Please upgrade packs. Come, I'm ready for you. I'm ready to spam upgrades for the rest of this week. If you haven't gotten some prem rares, that's one thing you can do during lightning rounds is get on these bids for primarily golds, max price 650, minimum price 650, max price 750. And you can get a lot of these guys at like 650 to 700 coins. You know what? All right, there's people that are bidding 650. Let me see if I can bid 700 a couple of these and win them on a bid because there's a lot of people are going to want to do these packs, right? So I want to get a couple of these cards in my team or in my club and I want to do a lot of packs during this promo. So I'm going to be bidding on a lot of guys like these. Looks like 700 is kind of what you have to pay for them if you want to win any of them, which is interesting. But that's one thing you guys can do as well. Even some La Liga might be a decent pickup for people that want to try to pack a messy or a de young team of your card from those upgrades as well. And hopefully again, those do come today. So again, I do think it's going to be another day of like panic selling, dipping in cards, prices, icons, especially some panic on the market, another SBC, it's just going to be a fun day to see the ratings of the cards for De Bruyne, Conte, de young. It's going to be interesting to see what rating EA sports gives those cards. And it should be a fun one team of the year, awesome cards, awesome upgrades. And of course, some crazy market movements, tons of packs being opened and fun SBCs as well. So let's hope that day two of FIFA team of the year, FIFA 20 team of the year is a banger just like day one was, because I think day one was fun. It was cool, decent SBCs, nice objective for those who want it. And then big time boosts on some of those team of the year cards. And again, I hope that they continue that through the rest this week. If you enjoyed this video, smash your thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions. And of course, subscribe to the channel if you are new. It's been Nate, The Foot Accountant. Catch you guys later. Peace out.


Hey everyone, welcome back to San Francisco. Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson here. TheCube is covering VMware Explorer 2022, first year with the new name. There's about seven to 10,000 people here, so folks are excited to be back. I was in the keynote this morning, you probably were too, Dave, it was standing room only. Lots of excitement, lots of news. We're going to be unpacking some news next. We have Brandon Jackson joining us as DDC architect at CDW. And Keith Normie is back, one of our alumni, head of worldwide partner solution sales at NetApp. Guys, welcome back to the program. Thank you. Reunion week. So let's talk about what's going on. Obviously, lots of news this morning, lots of momentum at VMware, lots of momentum at NetApp, CDW. Keith, we'll start with you. Talk about what was announced yesterday, NetApp, VMware, AWS, and what's in it for customers and partners. Yeah, it's a new day. I talked about this in a blog that I wrote that, for me, I started out with VMware and NetApp about 15 years ago, when the ecosystem was still kind of emerging back in the ESX three days, for those who remember those days, and NetApp had a really dominant position because some of the things that they delivered with VMware, and we're kind of at that same venture now where everyone needs to have, as they talk about today, multi-cloud. And there's been some things that people try to get through as they talk about cloud chaos today. It also is in some of the realms of the barriers that you don't often see. So releasing this new FSX capability with the supplemental data store within VMware cloud and AWS is a real big opportunity. And it's not just a big opportunity for NetApp, it's a big opportunity for the people that actually deliver this for the customers, which is our partner. So for me, it's full circle. I started with a partner, I come back around, and I'm now in a great position to kind of work with our partners, and they're the real story here with us. Brandon, talk about the value in this from CDW's perspective. What is the momentum that you and the company are excited to carry forward? Yeah, this is super exciting. I've been close to the VMware cloud and AWS story since its inception, so almost four years building that practice out at CDW. And it's a great solution, but we spent all this time prior driving people to that HCI type of mentality where, hey, you can just scale the portions that you need and that wasn't available in the cloud. And although it's a great solution, there's pain points there where it just can become cost prohibitive because customers see what they need, but that storage piece is a heavy component. And when that adds to what that cluster size needs to be, that's a real problem. With this announcement, right, we can now use those supplemental data stores and be able to shrink that size so it saves the customer massive amounts of money. I mean, we have like 25, 50% in savings without sacrificing anything. They're getting the operational efficiency that they know and love from NetApp. They get that control and that experience that they've been using or want to use in VMware Cloud. And they're just combining the two in a very cost-friendly package. So I have one comment and that is finally, right? Absolutely. We used to refer to it as the devil's triangle of CPU memory and storage. And if those are inextricably linked to one another, you want a little bit more storage? Okay, here's your CPU and memory that you can pay for and power and cool that you don't need. No, no, no, no, no, no, I just need, I just need some storage over here. And in the VMware context, think of the affinity that VMware has had with NetApp forever. The irony being that EMC of course owned VMware for a period of time, kinda owned their stock. So you have this thing that is fundamentally built around VMFS that just fits perfectly into the Filer methodology. and now they're back together in the cloud. And the thing is, if we were sitting here talking about this five, six, seven years ago, an AWS person would have said we were all crazy. Yeah. AWS at the time would have said, nah, nah, nah, nah, we're going to figure that out.  It's not lost on me that, you know, it was great seeing and hearing of NetApp in a day one VMware keynote. It's amazing. That was great. And so we build off that because the great thing about kind of where this comes from is, you know, you built that whole HCI or converged infrastructure for simplicity and everyone wanted simplicity. And so this is just another evolution of the story. And as you do so, you know, you freed up for all the workloads, all the scenarios, all the operational situations that you've wanted to kind of get into. Now if you can save anywhere from 25 to 50% of the costs of previous, you can unleash a whole another set of workloads and do so, by the way, with same consistent operational consistency from NetApp in terms of the data that you have on-prem to cloud or even if you don't have NetApp on-prem, you know, we have the ways to get it to the cloud and VMware cloud and AWS and basically give you that data simplicity for management. But again, it isn't just a NetApp part of this. As everyone knows with cloud, a whole layer of infrastructure around the security networking. There's a ton of work that gets from the partner side to look at applications and workloads and understand sort of what's the composition of those. Which ones are ready for the cloud first?  That's what the partners deliver. NetApp has done everything it can do to make that as frictionless as possible in the marketplace as a first-party service and now through VMware cloud. So we've done all we can do on that factor. Now it's the partners that could take it and by the way, the reaction that we've seen kind of in some of the private previews of working has been incredible. These guys bring really the true superhero muscle to what organizations are going to need to have to take those workloads to VMware cloud and evolve it into this new cloud era that they're talking about at the keynote today. Yeah, don't get us wrong. We love vSphere 8 and vSan 8 in particular but there's a huge market need for this for what you guys are delivering. Talk to us, Brandon, from your perspective about being able to have the powerhouses of NetApp, VMware, and AWS in terms of being able to meet your customers where they are and what they want. That's huge, right? That the solution allows these things to come together in a seamless way, right? So we get the flexibility of cloud. We get the scalability of easy storage now in a way we didn't have before and we get the power that's VMware, right? In the virtualization platform and that makes it easy for a customer to say, I need to be somewhere else and maybe that's not a colo anymore. That's not a secondary data center. I want to be in the cloud but I want to do it on my terms. I want to do it so it works for me as a customer. This solution has that, right? And we come in as a partner and we look at, we kind of call it the full stack approach where we really look at the entire ecosystem that we're talking. So from the application all the way down to the infrastructure and even below and figure out how that's going to work best for our customers and putting things together with the native cloud services than with their VMware environment living on VMware Cloud and AWS. Leveraging storage with the FSX in so they can easily grow their storage and use all those operational efficiencies and the things that they love about NetApp already and from a DR use case, we can replicate from a NetApp to NetApp. And it just, it makes it so easy to have that conversation with the customers and just it clicks and like, this is what I need. This is what I've been looking for and all wrapped up in a really easy package. No wonder Dave's comment was finally. Right. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we've been, again, I, you know, we talked about the HCI like that made sense and three or four years ago, it may be even a little bit longer, right? That click, same thing was like, oh my gosh, this is the way infrastructure should work and we're just having that same nirvana moment that this is how easy cloud infrastructure can work and that I can have that storage without sacrificing the cost to throw more nodes into my cluster to be able to do so. Yeah, I've just worked with so many customers who struggle to get to where they want to be and this is something that just feels like a nice worn in pair of shoes or jeans to folks who right now, you know, look, the majority of IT spend is still on premises, right? So the typical deployment of VMware today is often VMware with NetApp appliances providing file storage. So this is something that I imagine will help accelerate some of your customers' moves. It absolutely will. And in fact, I have three customers off the hand that I know that I've been like not wanting to say anything like let's talk next week, right? There may be something we can talk about when after Explore, waiting for the announcement because we've been working with NetApp and doing some of the private preview stuff and our engineering teams working with your engineering teams to build this out so that when the announcement came out yesterday we can go back and say, okay, now let's have that conversation. Now let's talk about what this looks like. Where are you having customer conversations? So this is strictly an IT conversation. Has this elevated up the stack, especially as we've seen the massive cloud migration adoption of the last couple of years? I'll speak fairly from the partner level. It is an elevated conversation. So we're not only talking, at least I'm not only talking to IT administrators, directors, C levels, this is a story that resonates because it's about business value, right? I have an initiative, I have a goal and that goal is wrapped into that IT solution and typically has some sort of resource or financial cost to it. We want to hear that story. And so it resonates when we can talk about how you can achieve your goals, do it in a way with a specific solution that encompasses everything at a price point that you'll like and then that can flow down to the directors and the IT administrators and we can start talking about, turning the screws and the knobs. Yeah, and for us it does start with a partner because the reality is that's who the customer is all engaged and the reality is there's not just one partner type. There's many. In fact, the biggest thing that we've been really modernizing is how to address the different partner types because you obviously have the extensions of the world that are the big GSIs, you have folks that are hosting providers, you have Equinex in the middle of that, you've got partners that just do services that might be only influenced partners that are influencing the design. And so if you look up and down between VMware's partner ecosystem and NetApp's partner ecosystem overlap pretty well. But there's this factor with AWS about both born in the cloud partners and partners like CW that have really taken the step forward to be relevant in that phase going forward and that's what's exciting to us is to see that kind of come forward. So when something like an FSX-N comes forward in this VMware Cloud and AWS scenario, they can take and just have instant ignition with it. And for us, that's what it's about. Our job is really just to remove friction, back what they do and get out of the way. Help them win. And last week we were in Chicago at the AWS re-invent thing and seeing AWS with another partner in their whole briefing and how they came to life with this whole anticipation for this week. It's all the partners are very excited for it. So we're just going to fuel that. And I often wonder, we got the t-shirt that says, two's company three is a cloud, maybe it should have been four because it takes the partner for the completion. We appreciate that for sure. It sounds like there's tremendous momentum in the market, an appetite across all three companies, four, if you include CDW, in terms of the selling motion, it sounds like you've got folks that are going to be eating out of your pocket who've been waiting for this for quite a while. Yeah, I think the analogy used earlier, it's nice when the tires are already on the Ferrari, right? This thing could just go. And we've got people that we're already talking to that this fits. We've got some great go-to-market strategies as we start doing partner and sales enablement to make sure that our people behind the scenes are telling the story in the way that we want it to jointly so that all of us can come together and have that aligned common message to really make this win and make this pop. One correction, though, is technically we sponsor Aston Martin, so it's not a Ferrari, it's an Aston Martin. There you go. That's right. Point taken. Not a car guy. Can you talk a little bit, Brendan, about the routes to market and the GTM that you guys are working on together and even at a high level? Yeah, at a high level, we've already had some meetings talking about how we can get this message out. The nice thing about this is it's not relegated to a single industry vertical, it's not a single type of customer. We see this across the board and certainly with any of our cloud infrastructure solutions, it seems very, even from a regional standpoint and an industry vertical standpoint, so really it's just about how to get our sellers that get that message to them.  What type of events are we going to hold? Do we want to do some type of roadshow? We've done that with FlexPod very successfully a few years ago where our teams, working with your teams in VMware, we all came out and showed this to the world and doing something similar with this to show how easy it is to add supplemental storage to VMC and just get that out to the masses through events, maybe through sales webinars. I mean, we're still in this world where maybe it's more virtual than on-person, but we're starting to shift back. But it's just about telling the message and showing, hey, here's how you do it, come talk to us, we can help you and we want to help. Talk about the messaging from a multi-cloud perspective. Here we are at VMware Explorer, the theme, the center of the multi-cloud universe. How is the solution from NetApp's perspective and then CDWs, how does it enable customers that so many are living in the multi-cloud world by default? Yeah, and I think the big subtlety there that maybe was missed was the private cloud being just another cloud. The reality of that is probably a little bit short of what people kind of deal with on-prem data centers. Just because of some of the applications, data sets they're trying to work through for AI, ML, and analytics, but that's what the partner's great at is helping them kind of leap forward and actually realize the on-prem to become the private cloud and really operate in this multi-cloud scenario and get beyond this cloud chaos factor. So again, the beautiful part about all this is that the never-ending sort of options, the optionality that you have on security, on networking, on applications, data sets, locations, governance. These are all factors that the partner deals with way better than we could even think of. So for us, it's really about just trying to connect with them, get their feedback, and actually design in from the partner to take something like this and make it something that works for them. Back to your shirt. What does it say? Two's company, three's a cloud. That's right. But if you want rain, you need a fourth, right? We're here in California, I don't care about clouds. We need it to rain. All right. So it's all well and good that, yeah, the couple of you get together and offer something up, but where the rubber meets the road, the customer relationship, the strategic seat at the customer table, there aren't more of those than there have been in the past and ecosystems have obviously gotten more complicated. I can't help thinking back as I think back on the history of NetApp and VMware and CDW. There was a time when things were bad, you get rid of marketing. And then after that, it was definitely alliances and partnerships, because who the heck are those people? Now, everything is an ecosystem. Everything is an ecosystem. So talk about how CDW has changed through its history in terms of where CDW has come from. Sure, I know. Not everybody knows that CDW is involved in as sophisticated an area as you are. And that's true. I mean, sometimes it's tongue in cheek, but we've fulfilled a lot of needs throughout the years and maybe time is just a fulfillment or a box pusher, but we're really so much more of that and we've been so much more than that for years. And through some of our acquisitions, Sirius last year, IGNW, our international arm with CalWay and what it became CDWK, we have a premier experience around consultative services. And we talked about that full stack, right? From the application to the cloud, to the infrastructure, to the security around it, to the networking, we can help out with all of that. And we've got experts on the pre-sales and post-sales that that's what they live for. It's their passion and working with partners close in hand that we've had great relationships with NetApp. And again, I've been with CDW for over 12 years and all 12 of those years, I've been very close to NetApp in one way, shape or form. And to see how we work together to solve our customer's challenges, it's less about what we want to do, it's more about what we're doing to help the customer. And I've seen that day in and day out from our relationship and kind of our partnership. So say we're back here in six months or maybe we're back here at re-invent talking with you guys and a customer, what are some of the outcomes that at this stage, you were expecting customers to be able to achieve? Be able to do more, put more out there, right? To not be limited by the construct of I only have X amount of space and so maybe the use case or the initiative is wrapped around that. Let's turn that around and say, that's your limit list. Let's have, move what you need and you're not going to have to worry so much about the cost the way you did six months ago or seven months ago or six months in a day ago, that you can do more with it. And if we have an X amount in our bucket and in July we could do 200 VMs, you know? And now six months later we've done 500 VMs because of those efficiency savings, because of that cost savings and using supplemental storage. So I see that being a growth factor and being say, hey, this was easy. We always knew this was a solution we liked but now it's easy and bigger. Yeah. I think on our end of the spectrum, I'll just say what Phil Broden would say. As I said previously, and he was in the previous segment which is, this is going to go pretty quick. Folks that have wanted to do this, now that they know this is something to do and that they can go at it, we already know the partners are very much in like ready to go mode. They've been waiting for this data just to get the announcement out so they can kind of get going. And it's funny because, you know, when we've presented we've kind of presented some of the tech behind what we're doing and then the ROI TCO calculator last and everyone's feedback is the same as they said you should just leave it to the calculator. So then you can see exactly how much money you save. In fact, one of the jokes is there's not many times you've saved this much money in IT before and so it's a big wow factor. Big wow factor, big differentiator. Guys, thank you so much for joining Dave and me talking about what NetApp and VMware AWS are doing, how it's being delivered through CDW, the evolution of all these companies. We're excited to watch the solution. We better let you go because you probably have a ton of meetings. People are just chomping at the bit to get this. It's exciting times. I'm loving it being here and being able to talk about this finally in a public setting. So this has been great. Awesome, guys. Thank you again for your time. We appreciate it. Yeah. For our guests and Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from VMware Explore 2022. We'll be back after a short break. Stick around.


We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech and it's the 9 o'clock block with Bert Mom, who is the broadband strategy officer at that right for the state of Hawaii. He lives with the governor. Am I right? No, no, no. I've got my own little office. All right. Welcome to the show, Bert. Nice to have you here. Thanks. We caught a piece in the paper about how broadband was getting big money from the federal government, which is really, that's squarely on you. Congratulations. Tell us about it. Tell us about the amount of money and what it's earmarked for and all that. Tell us how we're going to infuse the money into broadband here and how as a result, we're going to further diversify our economy. It's on you, Bert. Well, I need to maybe make a little clarification on your big money reference. The topic of conversation that is underway right now is something called the Emergency Broadband Benefit. The EDB, Emergency Broadband Benefit, was a $3.2 billion appropriation that came as a result of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. So that was something that President Trump signed back in December of 2020. And the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 created several line items specifically for broadband. And the EDB was one of them. And it took a while for the FCC, which is the administering agency, to actually roll it out. So what we have at our fingertips, and we made the announcement on the 5th of May with a press conference with the governor, and then the FCC slash USAC, which is the Universal Service Administrative Corporation. They're the ones that do all the administrative work for the FCC. They actually had the official launch of the EDB on the 12th of May. So just to give you some sense of timeline. And you might be wondering, what is that $3.2 billion for? Well, it's for the entire country.   And this benefit will only last as long as a $3.2 billion last. So now you got to imagine that this is money that the entire country is applying for. And it will last only as long as that bucket of money lasts. So we're in the sort of the beginning stages of signing up new participants in this program. Just to give you a sense of the ISPs that are participating, you can think of all the major ones. You got the oil and telecom, you got charter slash spectrum. You have the wireless carriers, which include Verizon, AT&T, as well as T-Mobile. So you got them all. And that's not to even mention some of the smaller providers that are perhaps reselling the T-Mobile brand or even independent ISPs like one on a big island called Aloha Broadband. They are also participating. So I can get into the detail as to how people can sign up. But in essence, that is the program. There's also a $100 hardware credit or any participating ISP that wants to offer hardware as part of the benefit. Well, okay. Let's unpack some of that. The restaurant revitalization money is the same kind of thing. You have a fund and it's a specified dollar amount for the country. And it's the Oklahoma Land Rush. Everybody trying to get a piece of that right now. And you know it's not going to last very long. It's going to be evaporated in short order. That's probably what's going to happen here. But let me ask you, is this retrospective or prospect? I've been paying my internet bill for a long time. And certainly since December, certainly a couple of months in the past. So query, can I apply for money retrospectively? Or is it only prospective? Yeah, it's not retrospective. It's I guess prospective using your terminology. It is based on qualification. And some of the qualifying parameters include whether you've been unemployed over the course of 2020. Are you a recipient of let's say a Pell Grant? Are you a SNAP recipient?  So the basic criteria is whether you have been economically impacted by the COVID pandemic. And based on some of the criteria that the FCC has stated as being the qualifiers, that will determine whether you can receive that $50 benefit. So there is a process. And that's what if you were to go on to the Ustack website and go through the MI qualified, that's what you would need to verify. If you apply, you have to fill in the form somewhere, probably online. So okay, so let me do the math with you. Let's assume that 100 million people in this country, that's probably an overstatement, would qualify, but just for numbers. So how long would this last if they got on board and they had the $50 or $75 benefit plus the $100 benefit? How long would it last in terms of? Well, so I kind of have been following some of the national organizations and their assessment as to how long this money might last. And their sort of rough gauge would be anywhere from four to six months. And then I looked at what would Hawaii potentially be able to bring in if the numbers that are reflective of who's been affected by the pandemic through unemployment, how many SNAP recipients are there, how many are there who have free or reduced lunch. The number could be anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000. So if I took an estimate of 200,000 participants in Hawaii that were able to get at least a $50 monthly benefit, then that would be about $40 million that we could potentially bring in to help subsidize that internet service bill within that four to six month period. So that's kind of the back of the napkin estimate. That's not very long. And after that, let's assume it's all used up, then you're back to ground zero again. So there is a recognition by the federal government that there is an issue around affordability. So what this program helps to do is to start to gather up some data on how well received is this benefit, what is the distribution of this benefit, and obviously, how long is this benefit going to last. There is a section I think in the jobs plan that looks to extend this benefit. So there's already discussions about extending the benefit. I don't have much detail on what that is and what's the criteria for that extension, but there is discussion at the federal level in terms of extending it. The other thing that is happening with this particular program is it helps to inform what is the federal government going to do in terms of the redesign of something called Lifeline. And so Lifeline historically was a benefit that was offered to people who deserve or qualified for a discount on their telephone bill. So Lifeline was primarily around telephone service. And there has been a recognition that obviously telephone service has evolved quite a bit since Lifeline first came out, and that there's nothing really in place to address broadband connectivity. So part of the exercise we're going through is how can the lessons learned and the data that is results from the EBB, how can that help inform perhaps Lifeline could be modified or further enhanced. And to be perfectly honest, up until this particular program started to develop and roll out, there was not a whole lot of attention being placed on Lifeline. And you might ask, Jay, who does Lifeline in Hawaii? And the answer is there's only one, there's Hawaiian Telcom. And how many subscribers does Hawaiian Telcom have prior to EBB rolling out? My estimate based on some information off the federal website, the USEC website, was that there were probably about 500 recipients of benefit. And you might say, well, that's not that, that's probably not that much. And that's true. And the other thing that you might observe is that is anybody actively kind of like marketing or outreach or building awareness around Lifeline? And the answer is no, there was no real outreach on Lifeline. And so Lifeline obviously needs to be further, let's say, developed or enhanced or modified. And that's what the EBB is trying to do given how this particular program unfolds and what does it help to inform us of. So, again, I think it's a good start. It's an issue around adjusting affordability. And I think this is a way to try to get to some answers around that. Yeah, let's step through the one that's coming down the bike here.  What is the role of these carriers you mentioned? Are they actually accepting the applications, processing the applications, distributing the money, crediting the money to your bill? I mean, what is their role? So the way the program works is that and a lot of this. So the role that we here at D-Bed wanted to help play was to provide a local aggregation point for information that would indicate what ISPs are participating and where do you need to go to, let's say, go and do a national verifier. So a lot of this information we've put up on our website at broadband.hawaii.gov slash EBB. So that's kind of an essential EBB. Can you tell us again what EBB is saying? Emergency Broadband Benefit. Got it. And then to your question about the, how does this work? So in essence, what the potential applicant needs to do is they need to register on the federal website. And that is, I mean, you can check out all the websites, links on our page, but you register on that federal website. And between the federal website registration, which ultimately qualifies you, and then you select the ISP of choice. So in some cases, people already have an ISP. So they're looking at getting a benefit off of their current internet bill. Or maybe they want to sign up for a new one. So then they basically determine their ISP of choice. And everything happens between the FCC slash USAC and the ISP provider. So let's pick on Hawaiian Telcom. So if the applicant went to the site, registered for the EBB, got verified, provided the documentation, and then qualified, and their selection was Hawaiian Tel, then what Hawaiian Tel does is that they basically sign that person up. And through the back office or back end of the EBB system, the federal government at the FCC would then extend the $50 credit to Hawaiian Tel. And then Hawaiian Tel in turn would credit you on your bill for $50. So that's how the $50 credit works. You don't get like a $50 check in the mail. It goes directly to the carrier, and then the carrier will discount your bill accordingly. And does this keep going? And what do you have to apply again for every month or every author? Oh, yeah, this keeps going. Once you're on, you're on for the duration of the EBB funds. So yeah, you don't have to worry about trying to reapply. The key is, and this is recognized by the FCC, that they don't want to have people all of a sudden at the end of the four to six month period either lose their service, get, you know, charge the retail rate. That's not going to be counterproductive. So, you know, the program in essence tries to get, you know, as many people signed up at a discount. And then the next, of course, challenge, which is in the next, you know, four to six months is how do you transition that to another program that continues that that's the level of benefit. This is, aside from that phone program, telephone program you mentioned is really unprecedented. Does the FCC administer the phone program and this broadband program both? Yes, yeah, yeah. So again, the two agencies that people may start to hear about and may not be familiar with is FCC Federal Communications Commission and their administrative arm, which is USAC, which is the Universal Service Administrative Corporation. And what you just mentioned in terms of being unprecedented is the fact that it's been, it's been pretty rare that the FCC would deal directly with consumers. And most of the time, you know, it's at, at the corporate level or, you know, at, at, at policy levels that the consumer tends not to have a way to directly interact with the FCC.   But other than that, the consumers don't really interact with the FCC. So the, the, it is unprecedented. And the recognition from a local level was that, you know, if, if we did not provide some localization of the program and give people a sense of how it might work in Hawaii and establish some, some degree of, of trust, you know, in terms of how you might interact with a, an agency like, you know, like the FCC, we wanted to provide some of that local collateral that would help to outreach into the communities that would, you know, be receptive to this. So on the local level, and I got a lot of help from Laura Arcebol who is with the Department of Health. She also does a lot of work with the telehealth community. And, and she helped me pull together a variety of, of nonprofits as well as translators that provided localized versions of what it is that we wanted to get into the communities and help them understand what this program was all about. And that's the stuff that you'll find on, you know, the website, broadband.hoi.gov slash ebb. So we wanted to localize that to give, give it a, you know, sense of, of more, not only local language, but just local connection between, you know, this sort of federal agency and, and, and Hawaii benefit. And again, it is unprecedented, like you said, right? It's very rare that, that a agency like an FCC would, would actually have a program for, you know, for consumers. Now, you might say, well, what about lifeline? Well, lifeline, again, was out there. It wasn't really, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of marketing around lifeline. And now, given the pandemic and given how much recognition of the importance of broadband and how much we depend on it for, you know, whether it's work or education or telehealth or even just, you know, civic engagement or, or socializing, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a necessity, right? It's beyond the recognition of a, a nice to have, it's like a need to have. And that's why, again, it's, it's just the first step in, in a process that I think was long overdue. One of the, one of the next steps for, you know, do you see a time when there'll be not only a continuation of these support payments, but an increase in support payments or even, you know, free broadband, you know, they're sort of chicken in every pot. Everybody gets broadband.  There's no such thing as free. So the question is, you know, as, as broadband becomes recognized as a more of a utility, how does that actually start to manifest itself into some kind of, you know, business or policy? What, what we're keeping a very close eye on is the, you know, the rolling out of programs for broadband in the American rescue plan, which is in play right now. And, and how does that help to change the environment, as well as what's, you know, what's happening with the American jobs plan? American, the American rescue plan, if you look at some of the, you know, sort of like the fine print and the implications that the, the rescue plan outlines is that it's not simply providing infrastructure money to the, the big carriers. It's also encouraging infrastructure for the independence, the nonprofit, the smaller ISPs, even, even encouraging municipal broadband.  Because if there's more options to enable your choice for, for connectivity, then the competition will help bring down, bring down prices. So it's a, you know, it's kind of a bold move. Obviously, you know, there's a lot of lobbying going on in Washington. It's, it's going to be interesting to see how a lot of this unfolds. And, and for Hawaii, you know, that's why we wanted to keep a close eye on any of these programs that are becoming available.  I mean, we have, we have the establishment of the broadband digital equity office. It still needs to be signed by the governor. So we're hopeful that that will take place. But it's, it's at least a recognition by our state legislature that, you know, Hawaii needs to focus on, on broadband and digital equity. So that's kind of, you know, right square in the crosshairs of what I'm, you know, what I'm doing here at the bed. And I am, you know, happy to have this, this conversation with you, Jay. And of course, this is a, you know, this is something that we've been working on ever since I got this job back in 2018. So it's kind of a pivotal moment. And how we continue to develop this into the future is, is really going to be how well we can create this environment for broadband for all. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the state bill. And I suppose congratulations on the federal bill. But query is the money coming? I mean, is it a certainty or does it require more congressional action for the EVB to start funding these payments? The EVB is underway. So that's already been funded. That's already been that's the thing that usually happens is that these bills, you know, they go through Congress, they become acts like the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act. Those need to be basically signed off by the president, right? And so they have been that. But the, but what that does is that it stepped in motion, something called rules. And those rules are what the federal agencies need to develop in order to roll out the actual finance, the money and the rules by which that money gets spent. So it's really critical that these rules are well thought out. And that's why between between December of 2020 and May 12, you know, the good five months, that's how long it took the SEC to come up with the rules and not only the rules, but kind of the back office system that ultimately enabled USAC to connect with all the carriers. So when we first heard about this, I mean, we were pressing the carriers to sign up for this program because it was a voluntary opt-in for them, right? It wasn't a forced upon them. So they voluntarily opted in. So likewise, any of the other broadband references, like in the, not only consolidated appropriations, but also with the American Rescue Plan, those all need rules. And so the rules are only now coming to fruition. So that's what we're trying to pay close attention to. And that will determine how we can propose projects based on those rules. Well, I suppose the rules might cover the question that I'm about to ask, which I hope it does. I hope they do. Suppose I have a business that would qualify, you know, my business was out of business for a while, say a restaurant, you know, I was, I was crippled by COVID. And in my restaurant, we have like five computers. And we have five connections to the internet. And we get a bill from our internet provider for all those five, or have a nonprofit, the same thing. We would qualify as, you know, a needy organization, not necessarily a needy individual with food stamps, but a needy organization. So I get five times the amount of the benefit you've talked about. How does that work? So the benefit, the EDB is only for residents and consumers. So it does not qualify for businesses. Because as I mentioned, the qualifiers are whether you are unemployed, a SNAP recipient, telegram, things like free and reduced lunch. There is, there's other programs that are benefiting businesses. But, but this one is strictly for the consumer. Got it. The other thing is, you know, okay, what we want to do is bring broadband to more, more people. We want to have it available to everyone so that they can have the benefits of the information highway, so to speak. God, I haven't heard that term in a long time, the information highway. So, so, I mean, how, how does, how do they think, how do you think this is going to achieve that? And further to add to that, you know, we are all interested in seeing, as you know, as you've written about and spoken about for a long time, we're all interested in seeing a diversification of the economy. We want to see tech companies come up. So, query, how does this kind of program affect that, encourage that, incentivize that, if at all? Well, you know, the recognition was that a lot of people were not connected. And so there's a whole spectrum of issues that are, you know, at hand to try to resolve. And one of the things that we did early on in the broadband who we was kind of recognize the fact that it's not just access. And that's what led us to something called the digital equity declaration. And it was also a recognition, we've kind of adopted this, this phrase, broadband for all, but all stands for access, literacy and livelihood. And it's a recognition that it's not just getting access to everybody, which is still important, but it's not the only thing. There are issues around literacy, around digital literacy. And can the, you know, the folks that are receiving some of this technology through access, are they able to use the technology in a way that is benefiting them on an economic social level, right? So, from a literacy standpoint, you know, we have started programs around digital literacy and computer literacy, around the issue around, you know, let's say you have access, and you're interested in moving more toward the digital economy. Do you even have the hardware to enable you to do that? And, you know, a lot of the initial funding sources went to purchasing of laptops and tablets. But we also encourage, you know, there's a nonprofit that has been part of the Hui from day one called Hawaiian Hope. And they take refurbished computers and make them available for next to nothing to anybody who's, you know, like, qualified or deserving. I mean, if you're, if you, let's say, you want to upskill through some digital literacy classes, but you don't have a computer, then, you know, organizations like Hawaiian Hope are able to get you a computer. So, Jay, you know, the effort around digital equity helps to get everybody up to speed with the technology. It's kind of like, I like to think of it as the democratization of technology. And, you know, in the spectrum of things that need to be done in order for us to diversify the economy, you know, you have to have, I think, the baseline goals of establishing degrees of digital literacy. You have the ability to get broadband to as many communities as possible that helps to encourage things like remote work. We are also looking at trying to apply some of the federal funds toward things like, you know, carrier, neutral cable landings, as well as the backhaul solutions that would perhaps encourage some of the cloud platform folks to consider Hawaii. We're also working with Amazon, AWS, and we have a program called AWS Cloud Certification. And so, it's a whole spectrum of offerings that help to get everybody from rural communities economically challenged, perhaps even disenfranchised to benefit from this technology. And not to lose sight of the goal that, you know, we are trying to achieve, which is digital, you know, get to a place where we are competitive in the digital economy. And not only, you know, so that you, Jay, can go home and watch Netflix, we're looking at how do we enable the, you know, the right kind of robust resilient network that companies can actually do business from Hawaii. Remote workers can work from Hawaii and through their collaborations, perhaps create some, you know, great startups. Yeah, that's the future. That's the future. A democratization and availability, even at home, you know, because COVID has taught us about the value of working at home, the value of organizing businesses and enterprises to take advantage of people who are literate and have the equipment and the broadband connection. So I can see this is happening all across AWS's term, all across the spectrum. And it's on your plate, Bert. I expect to see you more often. I expect to hear from you as you promote these things and make people aware of it. Bert Lum, star of stage and screen on wide public radio, the open data program, the Hawaii broadband hui and probably half a dozen other things. Bert is a very active person. Thank you very much for showing up today and doing this show with me. Bert, really appreciate it. Appreciate it, Jay. Mahalo for having me on. Aloha.