from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation hey welcome back to ready Jeff Rick here with the cube we're on Apollo Alto studios today for a cute conversation with some of our friends from VMware big announcement today and we're excited to have a kick Kolbert come on he is the VP at CTO of cloud platform business unit kid great to see you again I'm gonna be here absolutely so big announcement it's the second generation of the VMware cloud on Dell EMC now you guys just brought this to market barely a year ago tell us about about the new announcement and some of the excitement around the changes that you guys put in place yeah absolutely yeah so this has been a project that's been in the making for a few years now we first announced the product version of this in April of last year and then we announced the general availability of it in August at our VMworld conference and so as we've been engaging with customers since we went GA what we've seen and heard from them was that you know they're looking for more data center style options traditionally when we first started this project you may remember it was called project dimension before in the product of VMware Colin Dell AMC beccarose project dimension we had more of an edge computing focus we were focused on how can we get compute in our VMware infrastructure out to factories and retail settings and so on and so forth and so we designed the system for those types of environments a half rack configuration smaller number of servers things like a power supply and UPS built in but as we heard back from customers what they said was hey this is great but we have a lot of needs in our data center today and so the idea there was let's rethink this offering for the data center and actually produced the types of rack architectures and server types that customers are looking for just goes to show you try to give them yin and they want yang right it's yeah so so it's a very different kind of challenge than going into the data center environment and you know one of the promises of cloud is is obviously provisioning right and spinning things up so that's a really important piece of the puzzle how are you guys addressing you know letting people add capacity and kind of changes configuration if it's actually you know in my data center yeah yeah so you seen a number of different things that we're doing here really yeah enhancing the maturity across the board of this offering so it's important to realize that this is a cloud service yes even though the physical servers in the rack reside on premises for a customer again in their data center at a retail location it is a cloud service and that we are running this and managing this like cloud service and so like any good cloud service merge have to interact with any human being right they can just call any guy and indeed that's the way it works either through an API or through our UI workflow today a customer can come on and order a new esidisi rack for their environment and that initial provisioning you know we fully automated that we had a dell service technician coming out you know actually figure the hardware on on-site but then after that and you know we didn't have many options for customers let's say that they started out with maybe four nodes on-site but then they realize Oh Ashley needs six or eight nodes right they're getting more applications on there greater usage and they just need more capacity and so what we support now is this ability to actually again use an API using the UI request additional servers or their existing racks and this is again something very simple to do in just a few weeks that those things will arrive the the service ignition will be there to install them and get that customer up right so I was gonna say you know typically it's order and then you got you got to put the stuff in and deploy it right and then support it so you just touched a little bit on the deployment did you basically take that order and then just with your existing process get into the data center and and light up that additional hardware yeah so we're doing a lot to really automate this whole process and the powerful thing here is that you know this partnership that we have between VMware and difficult runs really deep so we've actually engaged and integrated into their manufacturing process so that as we get that order through the API through the UI from a user we can ship that over to Dell tell them specifics of what that customer ordered and Dell can get started manufacturing that we actually again as for that manufacturing process integration we can get the latest version of our cloud software onto those servers we can install unique cryptographic keys on those servers so we can identify them and then we work with the Dell shipping and the Dell service technicians to actually meet those physical servers when they arrive and properly set them up and configure them taking the customer it's a completely hands-off experience I think that's a really powerful they're not you know they don't need to give the nitty-gritty of hardware configuration and installing our software and managing the lifecycle of it it's much much simpler than that and so you know I think we've really taken that and extended it here both with the additional rack type scene we have for a full rack now for the data center new host types a new host type that's much beefier better for datacenter workloads and finally for that expanded capacity that we just talked about as well right and then on the support side I assume you know even though it's it's VMware cloud on Dell EMC that probably the first line of support is still VMware it's still the software on top of the infrastructure yeah that's a good question and yeah you're right it is it's a VMware on VMware operated service and absolutely VMware provides that first line of support so it's not one of these situations where you've got two different vendors pointing the finger at each other and the customer has to figure all that out now it's on VMware and we need to figure it out we obviously work with Dell on the backend we've also integrated with their telemetry systems so we can pull all the different sort of hardware telemetry monitoring data that they that they're getting so we can understand the health of those servers that are running and when we detect a problem is that something that we can fix remotely by just accessing it with our engineers or do we need a service technician to actually go out there and it's this whole issue right right so it's just interesting you guys launched this really thinking more edge and you're getting drawn into more of a data center so why are you getting drawn in what are some of the advantages you know that the sky O's and the CTOs are seeing with this type of a deployment yeah so the data center part is really interesting and again sir processing they thought we thought there would be more need at the edge initially just because hey these edge environments are really difficult to manage and they're kind of distributed and people don't have IT staff there but we're surprised to hear about is the very urgent need customers have their data centers now again they have servers in the data centers that they're running these things today but what they find is that it just doesn't work that well and that they're spending a lot of time and resources on just keeping the lights on and it's you know these things don't differentiate them as a business you know one of things I talk to customers a lot about is that no customer has ever differentiated itself by how well they run VMware infrastructure and that might sound kind of crazy at first right but yeah it's true I can differentiate themselves negatively by how poorly and they run an infrastructure and then you know their apps don't work very well but some degrees have been working VMware infrastructure is just table sticks right and then what they do in an app level is what differentiates them and so this idea that we can come in with VMware cloud on Dell EMC just take care of all of that operational overhead is really really powerful and so as you see folks and customers and companies going through these digital transformation cycles modernizing their applications they're like oh man I need to actually modernize my infrastructure as well and so that's a compelling event that we say it's like oh there's gonna be think this right as are we thinking that they're like well why am i doing all this work in the first place let's actually rethink the whole thing and take them better fundamentally better approach ie a cloud approach and so that's where VM were caught in delians he comes in again I think that's why we're seeing so much interest from customers and again we're CIA knows and CTOs can really see a lot of benefits right I'm just curious you're taking from kind of a product development a product release point of view right is this kind of a typical VMware you know kind of speed and pacing or is this really you know getting to the second gen and this shift you know kind of in your data market has really more of a response to the market because again as as I was preparing and looking up when the initial launch was it really wasn't that long ago - so - to kind of pivot and call it second gen and include features and functions that are coming back from the market would you say that's kind of typical or you guys get it a little bit more agile in your own you know kind of product development cycle and getting away from those massive PR d's and mr d's and actually you know trying to respond more quickly to the to the pace of the marketplace yeah that's a great point and yeah you're right we are going through our own digital transformation here at VMware all right now we are shifting from a company that primarily sold shrink-wrapped software to a company that sells all services and so you know as you look at that it actually changes a lot of what we can do we can respond much much more quickly much quicker to this sort of customer feedback now we can ship new updates much more frequently and so you know if you look at our traditional vSphere release cycles those were what every 12 months 18 months may be at most but what we can do now with our con releases is actually update and do major updates every three months and so we call this kind of the second you know major advance of VMware kondalian see but in reality it's our third our fourth actual release of our underlying software and so we're actually doing these underlying releases much much quicker I think the reason that we're focusing on this launch in particular is because of the fact that again customers have been asking for this data center level support and really optimizing this solution for the data center and so now we've gone and done that and again I think we're gonna see a lot more interest from the customers on the data center side because of it great well okay thanks for giving us the quick update congratulations on the release and just keep rolling it let's listen to those customers and they'll tell you what they want definitely yeah we're excited - thank you alright kit thanks again he's kid I'm Jeff you're watching the cube thanks for watching we'll see you next time you [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. We are wrapping up a three, the first day of a three-day show. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We are joined by Scott Lowe. He is the CEO of ActualTech Media. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having us. >> And also David Davis, director of events at ActualTech Media. Thank you so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So, you are a former CIO that started ActualTech Media in 2012, tell our viewers, a little bit about Actual, what was the vision and what did you set out to create? What kind of content were you setting out to create? >> You know what we started and what we have today are actually very, very different things. We started off to create sort of an empire of websites that provide content to people. What we do now is we're helping connect enterprise IT vendors with buyers, that's really what we've settled on over the years. We've found our path about six years ago, five years ago, and we've been executing on that ever since. And that's our mission, is to help buyers find the right enterprise IT solutions. >> So how do you do that? I mean, what's the lead generation that it takes? >> Sure. I mean we basically for our clients who are companies including Cohesity and companies like it, we do event series we call MegaCast, EcoCast, virtual summits, webinars, things like that. We have a significant audience that we draw from to drive those events. And we also created our own content series, we call Gorilla Guide, which is a series of books to help educate IT buyers about solutions on the market about different technologies and try to help them understand the lay of an ever-evolving landscape that seems to be changing faster than it ever has before. >> Yeah, and actually one of the reasons I invited the two of you is, you both have deep background in this environment. Scott, before the Gorilla Guides, you wrote big books about Microsoft, and David, you've been training people on this ever environment but the pace is faster. You're talking about it's changing all the time. So I'd love for both of you, just here 2019 Microsoft Ignite, first impressions, how you think of Microsoft in the ecosystem. David, let's start with you. >> I mean, it's my third Microsoft Ignite and every time I come here I'm really blown away by kind of the scope of the show compared to the typical infrastructure shows that I go to. Those shows are more you know, the plumbing of the data center. This show is the keynote, is like using AI and ML to cure cancer and provide food for the world and it's just, like, really empowering and exciting and I find it very personally exciting. And Microsoft Azure just seems to be on a breakneck pace to catch up with AWS and Office 365 and all these innovations they keep coming out with, have been really impressive so I've been excited about the show, what about you Scott? >> Same, I mean, I think that when we talk about other shows, we are really looking at plumbing. That's a good word. When we're here we're looking at real solutions that are helping solve big problems. And because Microsoft has such a wide ecosystem from which to, in which it participates, from productivity and enterprise to driving quantum computing, to artificial intelligence to help tractors talk to the internet. I mean just, it does everything and it does it increasingly well. Microsoft hasn't always been thought of as the most innovative company in the world but I think in the last few years we've seen a different Microsoft and I think that has a lot to do with Satya, and the leadership change but it also has to do with just a renewed vision for what the future looks like in the terms of IT. >> And what does that future look like? I mean it is interesting because Microsoft is a middle-aged company compared to all these young upstarts that really, that much more DNA of innovation, of course Microsoft has innovation in its DNA but how would you describe what is driving the change at Microsoft? This is not your father's Microsoft. >> Honestly, the Microsoft we see today and the Microsoft we saw 10 years ago are not the same company. This is, I feel like Microsoft is almost a startup again. And I think if you look at Microsoft as a company, it has its hands in so much that each individual silo is almost a startup feel in the way it's brought to market. Let's just look at Azure. I mean, Azure has been playing catch up in a lot of ways to AWS for a lot of years just like a lot of smaller companies are playing catch up to some of their bigger cousins in the market. But Azure has proven itself, it's still not quite as capable as its bigger, you know, its bigger sibling AWS but it's more capable than GCP for example. But as Microsoft continues to iterate that service, it gets ever more capable, it gets ever deeper into the organization and I think it's something that I see that across Microsoft and everything that it's doing. It's not just Azure that's like this. It's like this with, you know, we've been looking at Windows virtual desktops. That's not all that sexy and exciting on the surface, no pun intended on surface, sorry. But it's something that the world needs at this point. And how we're trying to handle computing in the enterprise as we move into 2020. >> There's so much, you know, there's a few shows I go to every year where you just drink from the fire hose when you go to the keynote. This absolutely is one. Amazon absolutely is one where you come through in the breath and depth of what they offer. So we've spent a lot time saying something like Azure Arc, it is early. And still trying to understand exactly where that fits, by the end of the day, I'm like, wait, it's management but actually it's highly tied to the application, which really is the strength of Microsoft if you talk about what Microsoft knows. Microsoft knows your apps, you're running so many of those apps, not just Office but SQL and some of the various pieces. I'd love to hear what, give me one or two things that jumped out at you either that you want to dig into or that you've been saying "Oh I've been waiting for that." >> I mean I was really impressed with the technical keynote where they talked about Azure Stack Edge and they have this mini server that can be ruggedized or even put in a backpack, and he had the demo going with the server, a person sitting next to him using the server and he said "It has battery power," so he pulled the power plug on it and it kept working and then he said "And it's rugged," and he just dropped it on the ground and it bounced on the ground and he said "See, the demo just keeps on running." So I was like okay, that's cool, that's pretty impressive. >> Yeah we actually had the HPE, an HPE representative on the program. They're super excited to have their gear in the keynote and those of us with a hardware background do like to wrap our arms around some sheet metal every once in a while and touch this thing, software might be eating the world. >> We call you server huggers too. >> Exactly, am I an Edge hugger now? >> I guess you probably are. >> Yeah it's free shruggs. >> When it comes to, in my opinion, Arc and Edge, I'm sorry, Azure Stack, I think it shows some incredible opportunity for Microsoft moving forward. I mean Microsoft has a formidable presence in the enterprise and not just the enterprise, from the SMB to the mid-market to the enterprise. Everybody, almost, has something Microsoft. So there's an opportunity for Microsoft to further that incursion into the enterprise that can help them be a driver for Azure. Because when you think about a lot of the challenges people have with cloud it's around adoption and integration. That's not quite a soft problem but close enough when you start thinking about the myriad of technologies that Microsoft is bringing out. >> Yeah, so Scott I think your background, you worked in some of the commercial markets, you talk about the education space, areas where Microsoft had a strong history. Are they still as prominent today as they might've been back in the days when you were a CIO? >> Yes and no, it depends on the organization. If I look K12, I think Google's had a lot of inroads there because of Google Apps for Education, whether that's good or bad is really a different opinion but I think Google's taken a lot of Microsoft's market share there. And higher education, we still see a lot of Google colleges and universities of course, but we see a lot with O365. And a lot of that is because of the pricing which you can't beat free. But it also has to do with the capability that the Stack brings to bare. So I think that Microsoft is playing differently than they used to, not necessarily, probably a little bit more strongly in some ways and weaker in others. >> Another, I'd love to hear you say, think about is, the Microsoft of old I think of as rather proprietary and you will do all Microsoft. We had one of the Microsoft partner executives on the program today and he was talking about embracing VMware, embracing Red Hat, not something that you would've thought of Microsoft in the past. How do you think of Microsoft just as a trusted partner in the ecosystem today? >> Yeah, you bring up that word trust and in fact we were talking about that at lunch, Microsoft, we feel like has so much more trust when it comes to our data, when it comes to our applications. I mean there's another cloud provider that starts with a G that's well-known for selling data, selling data that they own, you know. And he talked about in the keynote today, we protect your data and the security around your data and I feel like trust is going to be a big factor in the future when people think about which cloud should I trust? Microsoft seems like they have a leg up on some other competitors. >> I may be naive but I actually trust Microsoft and I have for a long time. There's other companies I don't trust. And Microsoft I actually do trust because for Microsoft, our data is not their resource to mine. They're using it to give me things but they're not using it to sell things to other people. Does that make sense? I mean, that is we're not the product of Microsoft. And it might be a little more expensive because of that in some ways but I think it provides that layer of trust that you're not necessarily going to get from other providers in the near term. >> So we're nearing the end of 2019, what is on deck for IT pros in 2020? I'll start with you, I want to hear both your impressions but I'll start with you. >> That's a great question, we're actually doing a big event this week. In fact and that's the topic is the pillars of IT for 2020. >> I might've done some research. >> Yeah, yeah. So I mean, in fact, I was at a local user group recently and I was asking IT professionals that very question. You know, where are you going to spend your budget in 2020? What are you going to re-architect? And there was a lot of answers around security. That was I think probably the most popular one that I heard. Automation, some people were interested in that and improving the efficiency of their infrastructure I think overall. No matter how they do it, hyperconvergence or something like that, just overall improving things to make their life easier. >> For me, I look at the role of the CIO and to look into 2020, I think we see a lot legacy challenges that are still not solved. Some new opportunities is probably a good word. Some of the legacy challenges are what's the role of IT? That's the age old question. I think we saw the next phase of IT business align with digital transformation and now we're going to look for what's next, right? 'Cause that phrase is now going out of style. But we're still looking for ways that we can do more with technology than we ever have. And as I look at some of the things that happened at the show this morning that were announced, I see a lot opportunity for CIOs and for organizations as a whole to do more than they ever have before without having to bring a whole lot more complexity to the organization. But I also think to see some of the things that have to be addressed. Security is a board level issue and it's a top issue for the CIO, it's a make or break your career type issue at this point. And I think going into 2020 as we look at some of these technologies, it becomes even more important because it's going to all require new focus on security. We have an opportunity around to actually solve the data analytics problem at some point here in the near future. That hasn't always been possible and now we have the tools to do it. And we have tools that can do it without having to hire a whole bunch of IT experts through some of things like companies like Microsoft can bring into market. >> Would love to get your viewpoint on the future of work. We've been saying what is the role of IT? And we say in its best light, IT helps drive innovation and actually can be a leader inside the business. But we know that the roles have been changing inside a company. Microsoft talks rather aspirationally about citizen developers, and we're going to empower everyone to be their best out there. But what does that mean to the person that has been a Cis Admin or going through certifications or trying to learn the latest on hyperconvergence infrastructure and Kubernetes and the latest buzzword that they heard of? >> I mean, I think that's exciting, especially for people who are new in IT or people who have the time to invest in learning development, they were talking about power apps in the keynote. I was excited, I wanted to try it for myself, it looks fun and easy. But in reality, in the real world of IT organizations, things take time. I mean I talked to a CIO at a large bank and he said "Hey, I have 10 stand administrators "and we're going to move to hyperconvergence "when they die or retire." So things take time, that's my take, Scott. >> For me, I think it's the enabling new ways to work. If you look at ActualTech Media, we're 100% virtual. We don't have, people ask where we're headquartered, we have a PO box in North Charleston, South Carolina and the rest of us work in Microsoft Teams. For me one of the most exciting things I've looked at in the last year is Teams. I absolutely adore the tool. >> I've heard a couple of people talking about you know people thought Teams was dying and Slack was killing it but Teams is really good. What is it about it that drives your business? >> So we used to use Slack, we used Skype, and then we used Slack. And Slack was good for what it was, it's an instant messaging tool that makes sure that you can get in touch with people right away and you can share a file. What it lacks is context. Once something is scrolled off the screen, that's it, you don't ever look at it again. And what we get with Teams is an ability to provide context for the work we do. So we were working on one of our Gorilla Guide books this week collaboratively inside Teams. We had the document open in one window and we were chatting about it in a chat in Teams in the other window. But the document lived in the same channel that we were having the conversation. So enabled a great degree of collaboration that we just couldn't get with Slack. That's not to say Slack's not a great tool, for what it is, it's a great tool and I still use it for other teams, which sounds weird. But I love the ability that we've had to bring additional tools into Teams that we didn't have before. When we bought, when we bought, when we deployed Teams, we got rid of Slack, we got rid of Smartsheet and we're in the process of getting rid of Dropbox. And it wasn't 'cause we wanted to save money, I mean it's nice, but at the end of the day it's about improving workflows especially when you don't live in the same office. You don't get to talk to each other over the water cooler. >> So particularly for distributed virtual teams, Microsoft Teams. >> It's a beautiful thing >> It's a beautiful thing. >> And also even with clients, now that Teams has guest capability, we have guest teams that we work on, work with clients in the same way we work internally. So it's become a central hub for just about everything we do. Literally Teams is open on my laptop and on my phone 24/7. It's an app that never closes. >> That's a powerful endorsement. >> It is. >> Scott, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, David thank you so much. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, we will see you tomorrow for more of theCUBE's live coverage from Microsoft Ignite.

>>live from Washington, D. C. >>It's the Cube >>covering Bumi World 19. Do you buy movie? >>Hey, welcome back to the Cube. We've got candy. That's right. I am Lisa Martin in Washington, D. C. At booming World 19 with John Ferrier and John and I are excited to be talking next with a chief technology officer of candy dot com. Gary, welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you for having me great to be here. >>So tell our audience about candy dot com Guinea all that you want dot com cool stuff. >>It is cool stuff. It is the endless. I'll just like going to the supermarket and never runs. Oh, it's absolutely perfect. That's actually how we started knowing that there was so much candy out there that people wanted in the lines just weren't long enough to put him in, no matter where you checked out, and we started off being the online candy store, which was a foot in the door, but it was a very small opening at that time. >>One of the things you said when I met you today whilst eating candy that you guys brought thank you very much for that was very appropriate. Um, was that candy? Is recession proof? >>It is. It's it's ah, you know, good times, bad times. You know, people are gonna have birthday parties. People get married holidays. They're going to come. You know, you've had a really great day. It's a candy bar. You know, you've had a really bad day. It's the candy bar. That's just it's an impulse buy, but it's an impulse buy with your favorite. I mean, it's something to comfort more than anything else, actually. And the technology side talk about how you guys were organized. What? Some of the challenges and how does Bumi fit in? Take us through the journey. Sure, when we started out, we thought, How hard could it be doing? Data entry will get the orders. They'll come across, we'll have some people. Instrument to the system will start filling up, you know, and then everything else will take care of itself. And within about a few minutes, we realized that that was probably not going to work. It was not scalable because first of all, data entry is air pro. You know, if you have someone actually trying to do with their, it's not gonna work for us. So we realized that there was a mechanism out there with Edie I and we went to 1/3 party provider to help us with the FBI. And that's how we started with the first couple of integrations and it was good. It got us off the ground and got us further into that door. >>So you started with, um, how many different partners trading partners take us back to kind of the last 10 years of candy dot com and how that Trading Partner Network has grown. >>Oh, it's like the journey. It's still we starts with the first step. We had one that was interested, one that wanted to work with Austin, and we started to do the work with them and figure out how to handle it. But they had multiple divisions, so, you know, there was only one that was 32 actual integrations that had to be done on being a traditional brick and mortar. It's very competitive. So once the word got out that they were work with us, there was a couple other. So we had six pretty big ones lined up early on that we needed to have integrated in up and running very quickly. >>And from a digital perspective, what were some of the initial system's applications that you implemented just start being able to manage and track those trading partner interactions to ensure that you're able to deliver? You know what? The candy, the candy demand that you need to fill? >>It was, sadly, a lot of C S V. A lot of email, a lot of phone calls back and forth. There was a lot of hours, and it was one those ones where we would really just bring in temps and try to keep up with it did not really have a repeatable process or a good technical footprint of what we needed to d'oh way didn't know what we didn't know when we started, and we very rapidly came to become aware of what we needed to do. >>So starting with air P Net sweet brought net Sweden two years ago. Tell us about that and what you thought was gonna solve all of our problems. Well, that's why it's >>a great package because it brought us both order management and it brought us here. Pee in. There were so many models and so much technology behind it and they have a warehouse module. There's, like all we could grow forever With this, it will never be bounded. This is gonna be fantastic. But what we forgot is that it was only as good as the data in there. And if we're using as a manual data entry, it's not going to meet our needs. We needed to come up with a better way in a more efficient way to get the data in. And this was still back in the day when we're trying to fulfill something within a week, much less where we're at today. >>Okay, so where does Bumi fit into play? >>We realized, unfortunately that even when you have an integration up and running and as good as the integration is, some of your trading partners will have changes. They're going to give you a different reference number. They're gonna give you a different requirement. They're gonna make something that was optional now mandatory. So we had problems because it wasn't just also that was impacting everyone that was doing an integration with that trading partner had it. So if I had outsourced it and there was 100 people that had that map. We were one of 100. Sometimes we were one, and sometimes we were as far away from one is possible and you understand that, and you appreciate it because there's only a finite number of hours to get things done. So we understood that to be really profitable and get to the level of service we needed to control the data. And that's when we decided that we needed to bring the E. D I and house. >>So when you were looking for the right integration partner, what was it about Bhumi from a technology perspective and a business perspective that really differentiated it. >>First and foremost, the number one requirement had to talk to nets. We had a have a native nets. We'd integration if it did not talk to net sweet. It wasn't gonna make it onto our plate because we weren't gonna spend the time to reinvent the wheel when obviously the wheel was out there. We had actually done that once before, and it was successful but painful. And there's people out there who build a connection and work to silver partners like blooming in the platinum partners that can go out and they can actually keep up with the release before it comes out. And you're being proactive by the reactive from a business need. It was We can't drop data. We need to be efficient. We need to be timely. We need visibility. And looking at Bumi, it met all those needs. We had a connection into nets. We had a reporting tool. We had error messages coming back. We had everything that we needed to manage our own world and take control of it. Or so we thought >>that look. Okay, so get this implemented. What sort of opportunities is the start opening up? You talked about control there, or so we thought. What have you been able to unlock where control is concerned? In the last few years, >>what we didn't realize with what we were doing is that way. We're just basically turning on everything and trying to run this efficiently and fast as possible. And that was really the wrong approach to take what we needed to do it as some governance to it as some logic to it, too, you know, not compete with jobs. There's there's a finite number of avenues into the back end system, you need to utilize it. But there was also tools that we found out inside this system that handled things like error trapping and retrial, logic and time outs and stuff like that. And as we worked with the subject matter experts at Boom, as we worked with the people at Nets, we in our account managers who would show us things and help us long. We learned a lot more about him. When we went live back in February of 2016 we were very excited. We did 1000 orders into our system and one day and we thought, How phenomenal is this? I mean, 1000 orders. How many more orders could you actually look for? And we very soon realized that there was a lot more orders willing to come into our system if we could handle it. >>So what? So when you first started with Bhumi went from some number 2 1000 orders today. What was that original number that you guys were able to handle when it was more of a manual process? >>It depend on how many attempts we could hire that sometimes it was 100 orders we got in. Sometimes it was 100% dependent on people. Also depend on someone, Remember, understands the spreadsheet. >>The Sun's painful, >>painful and not really easy to plan for. >>But you discovered pretty quickly you went from I won't say 0 to 1000. But somewhere in between that realized tha the capabilities, though of this system was gonna allow you to get 20,000 orders per day. Where was the demand coming from? Was it coming from trading partners was coming from their customers? Was it coming from your internal team seeing Hey, guys, I think there's a lot more power here than we originally thought. >>Well, success begets success because we were able to get an order in now in a timely fashion and ship it out there. All of a sudden, I realized we were shipping orders within 48 to 72 hours. It wasn't taking 10 days anymore, so we had repeat customers, which obviously makes your numbers go up. And then, as you know, your experience is good and you share it because social media is the weight of the world All the sudden, you know if if you tell two friends and they tell two friends we start getting more volume. Damn white starts happening is someone realizes they're losing market share of their brick and mortar website. And who was fulfilling the orders for them if they're doing so well and we're losing business and they start knocking on the door saying what? We'd like to work with you as well. And the other thing, too, is just timing. In the United States, it's pretty warm between April and October, and the bulk of perishable and heat sensitive product will ship through one of our warehouses because we have the thermal controls in the programs in place to give a good experience to make sure the product arrives the way it's supposed to be treated. >>Yeah, you were mentioning that when you were on stage this morning with Mandy Dolly Well, Mami CMO and Jason Maynard from Net Sweet that there are obviously, if you order some chocolate. I wanted to get there in the exact state in which I saw it online, right? But there's you've gotta have a lot of access, invisibility and systems to be able to help you facilitate that temperature control, depending on the type of product. >>Absolutely. So we're very proud of the fact that, you know, we're temperature controlled where humidity controlled were suf certified. We've done everything the right way to make sure that what we do is gonna be the best experience that your food is safe. Because, Paramount, the last thing we ever want to do is to keep a product of someone's gonna make your child sex because, you know, you don't want anyone to get sick. But the worst feeling is apparent is when your kid doesn't feel well. So we understand that Andi have a phenomenal staff. Are Q A team will go through and we have ways to test the product to get to the melting point. And we know different products melted different temperatures, and we determine what those temperatures are. We build those thresholds we do calls out to get the weather. No, I'm shipping it from my location to you. What's the temperature of my It doesn't matter if it's cold at your place. It is 90 where I'm shipping it from. So we look at what is it now? Where is it going? What's it gonna be the next few days? How big is it? You know how much product is in there with that? That isn't heat sensitive. And we have a pretty complex algorithm that we put in place That has really enabled us to handle the summer months and give a good product because, I mean a lot of people like s'mores, but they don't want the pre melted chocolate showing up at their house. >>Would agree. That takes the fun out of the bonfire part, right? Exactly. So let's talk about the people transformation because you were saying your 100% dependent on manual Somebody even sending the spreadsheet little into star inputting data to process X number of orders per day went from almost 0 to 1000 overnight with Bhumi, then saw this capacity for 20,000. How have has your team has other business units within candy like finance? How are they benefiting from all of this? What a presume is massive workforce productivity gains that you're giving everybody? >>Absolutely. It was a great problem tohave because as we got bigger and we started getting more and more orders than we got more and more invoices and you know, we got more and more checks in which we always think it's a good thing, but those checks need to be reconciled. They have to be reconciled against the transaction Inside the Nets week. It's no exaggeration that we would have pages printed out with a ruler going down and highlighting one by one on the invoice to make sure nothing was omitted. And we were spending an individual spent an eight hour day, three days a week, just going through direct missile. One invoice that was coming in and we would get two or three a week from them. So it was painful and again also error prone. And these people are very creative, very smart, and they offer so much more to the business that it was a waste of their time in a waste of their intellect. S o del. Booming, we found out, is not just any eyes phenomenal, Aditi, I but it has all these other tools and won. The tools we had was to be able to take the remittance file from the financial institution, reconcile it against the invoice is in the system and create a C S V import that would run that we have a script for that created a cash payment in our system that would actually close out the invoices and be paid so that we don't take care of it. It was done, and finance would basically get the file and e mail to us. We would file it back and they'd run an import. So instead of 250 hours a week, it was five minutes of file. >>That's a dramatics saving hundreds of hours a month, but also faster time to revenue recognition. >>That's a big one, you know, because when you try to get people discounts or give them brakes or if your terms are out there, it's nice to get it in there and keep your system's clean, because you also have to answer to the end of the month. You know you want to close the books and everything in manual processes. Air one the few things that you can't just throw more horsepower at. >>I'm glad you brought up, though from a resource kind of reallocation. Perspective is, these folks, in particular areas of the business, have value that they're not able before weren't able to really unlock and deliver. Now, with the technology in place, they're able to probably focus on more strategic areas of the business or more strategic projects. I also imagine your sales. We said faster time to revenue in revenue recognition, but big boost to candy dot comes sales. Since you've implemented the technology >>direct, I mean the sales numbers have just grown. I mean, as much as we do. No do are forecasting and think where it's going to go. Wee wee drastically underestimated this year. The summer was very, very good to us. Our first year under booming, we ran for 11 months. We did a little over 600,000 orders for that first year. In comparison, in June, July and August this year, we did over a 1,000,000 orders. That's a lot of chocolate. So a >>lot of candy, >>most certainly >>busier time, period. I mean Halloweens in a few weeks, Christmas is coming. How does that compare in terms of like the Flux >>way? Have a peek? Obviously, Halloween Halloween is obviously the time, of course. November 1st, our orders are zero because everyone walks in with a pillowcase of candy from their kids to the office, so it literally goes from a 1,000,000 miles an hour or two nothing, and it's it's kind of eerie. But throughout the summer we stay very, very busy because a lot of the market places don't have the facility and listen, they're great, you know, it's one stop shopping. They have everything, but everything is in a warehouse in that entire warehouse is not properly controlled to handle food products. So they decided it was an advantageous for them to ship, you know, during the summer, and it's poorly monitored as a summer Shipp program. But it's really more of a heat sensitive program because we'll add the thermal product to protect the thermal packaging to protect the product, even in February. I mean, there's some spots in Florida in Texas at a pretty one that you want to protect the item. So it's a heat sensitive program that we're very proud of, and we keep advancing and we keep growing. And, you know, I have. I'm very fortunate. I have a great team. I mean, we're not gonna call out, you know, like Jim and Scott, because that would be wrong to deal with. These guys have been with me from the start, and they put the E. T. I in place. They put the scripting in place that the guys were just, you know, rock stars on. Do I look good because of their effort? And I'm very, very proud of the team we've assembled that does this to make sure that you're and satisfaction is always met. >>Awesome story. So I imagine you know, when we hear like, four out of five dentists recommend this kind of bet. Is the fifth dentist recommending candy dot com? Is that where that guy's been? >>Yeah, he's got four kids >>going through college and >>everything, so he figures candy dot com to go. Way to make the money to make sure those tuition skip. >>All right. Well, Gary, it's been a pleasure to have you on the keys. Thank you for sharing what you're doing with bhumi at candy dot com. We appreciate and thanks for all the candy. >>Oh, our pleasure. Thank you very much for having been a great couple of days. I'm glad to be part of it. >>All right. Our pleasure for John Ferrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Bhumi World 19. Thanks for watching

>> Narrator: From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusets, it's theCUBE, covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. Presented by SiliconANGLE. (upbeat music) >> I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's fifth year at the VTUG Winter Warmer. 2018 is the 12th year of this event, always love when we get to talk to some of the users at the conference which's why I'm really happy to introduce to our audience Sue Morrow, who is a network manager at United Methodist Homes. Thanks for joining me Sue. >> No problem. >> First, tell me a little bit about yourself and what brings you all the way from Upstate New York to come to the VTUG. >> Well, I like to go to conferences whenever I can continue my education in IT. I grew up with computers in my house in the '80s. My dad was a physics teacher and a scientist so we always had a Commodore 64 or an Amiga in our house, growing up, when most people had Atari, we had computers. >> Totally, so Commodore 64, classic. I myself was a Tandy Radioshack, the TRS-80 Model III. So, in a similar era. >> Yep, I actually took a basic coding class on a TRS-80 when I was around 10, I think. Anyway, grew up with computers and somehow stumbled into IT later in life. So, that's why I'm here. >> United Methodist Homes, tell us just a little bit about what the mission of the company is. >> United Methodist Homes is a longterm care corporation. We have four facilities, two in the Binghamton area and two in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We have all levels of care from nursing homes, skilled care, up to independent living, and everything in between. >> Okay, and as network manager, what's under your purview? >> Well, it's kind of a silly title, actually. In longterm care or in healthcare or nonprofits, as we are, you often wear many hats and so that's, sort of, a weird title for me, but I supervise our help desk which we serve centrally from our corporate office. We serve about 600 actual computer users and, all in total, about 1200 employees who interface with the technology, in some way. So, I supervise the help desk, I make sure our network is running well. IT has changed over the years so that we're now providing more of a service and making sure that everything is up and running, network-wise, for everyone instead of keeping our servers running all the time. >> Yeah, reminds me of the old saying, it was like oh, the network is the computer, things like that, so you've got both ends of it. >> Sue: Yes. >> What kind of things are you looking at from a technology standpoint when you come to event like this? Did you catch some of the keynotes this morning, there was a broad spectrum? >> Yes. >> What are the kind of things that you're digging in to and find interesting? >> Yeah, the keynotes are really interesting. I think the first one that I went to with Luigi and Chris was great just to, kind of, expand your thinking about your own career personally, and where you want to go with your life was really interesting. I also watched Randall do his coding which is completely outside of what I do everyday, but was fascinating. And then the last major keynote was fantastic. I think that from my perspective in my company, we're kind of small and we don't do a whole lot of, we don't run apps and things like that, so the things that we have ritualized is mostly storage, so I'm looking at better ways that we can manage our storage and stuff. Most of the applications that we run now are SAS applications hosted by somebody else and their cloud, or a public cloud, or wherever, so I'm not so much looking at the cloud technologies like more businesses are that are providing an application for their company. >> It sounds like cloud and SAS's being a part of the overall strategy, have you been seeing that dynamic change in your company? How does it impact what you're doing or is it just a separate organization. >> It's definitely been a shift in the last few years, we used to run all of our applications in-house. Longterm care has caught up now, with the hospitals, so we have our electronic medical record which is a hosted application, whereas, up until five years ago, that was an on-premises application that we hosted and had to run and maintain, and update and upgrade, and make sure was available. That is definitely been a shift, that everything is now hosted. So we just make sure that our network is up and running and support our users and all of their issues when they break things, flip their screens, drop something, provide hardware for them all that sorts of stuff. >> The constant pace of innovation change. On the news this week they were saying, okay, medical records on your iPhone is up for debate. Does regulation impact your day to day activities and what are some of the challenges in that area? >> Absolutely. One of the other things we have to do is interface with the providers. We have medical providers that come in from the outside and they need to access our EMR also, so we need to provide access for them on, sometimes, whatever device they bring in, which is not always compatible, so we have a whole other set of challenges there. Where we can manage our computers for our employees by pushing out policies and things that are required for the application. When someone comes in from the outside, it isn't, necessarily, setup right, so we have that other set of challenges, and regulation-wise, yes. The government is always pushing out new and updated regulations for healthcare and we have to keep on top of that too. Of course, we have HIPAA concerns and things like that, which is also comes into play when you're talking about cloud host, and any hosted application. We have to be concerned about HIPAA, as well. >> Yeah, wondering when I look at the space that you're in, the ultimate goal is you want the patients, the people at your company, be able to spend more time, help them, not be caught up in the technology of things. Could you, maybe, talk a little bit about that dynamic? >> Yeah, one of the things that I always say is, we need to give our employees the tools that they need to do their job most efficiently. A nurse needs to be ready to go at the beginning of her shift on her laptop, ready to pass meds, and when they can't remember their password or that computer isn't working, my team needs to work as quickly as we can to get them back to work. We serve our users, really. We're not there being all techy. They want us to fix them and get them back to work, and that's what we do. We put tools in their hands, any device that they need to make them more efficient. I try hard to provide a variety of devices, people have different preferences on how they do their work. Some people prefer a laptop, some people prefer to stand at a wall-mounted touchscreen and document, some people want to carry a tablet with them. I try to provide a range of devices so that they can have whatever suits them and makes them most comfortable to get their job done. >> Love that, it's not, necessarily, about the cool or trendier thing, it's about getting business done, helping, and in you're case, enabling your employees to really help the people that are there. Anything you want to highlight as to things you're excited to look at this show, or just technology in general? >> I'm just kind of here for the general nature of it. I enjoy the networking and getting to talk to people, and keeping current in what's happening in the industry and my career, so that's why I come. >> Alright, well Sue Morrow, really appreciate you coming, sharing with our audience. >> Absolutely. >> User groups like this, all about the users. Happy to have lots of them on the program, so big thanks to the VTUG group for bringing us some great guests. We'll be back with more coverage here. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE. 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(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We thank you so much for hanging out with us today. We've had an amazing day, Jeff Frick, George Gilbert with me, Lisa Martin. I think guys, first impressions or overall impressions of the day, it started with Werner Vogels very energetic, very passionate keynote. It was almost what can't Amazon do. The amount of services that they're offering, the amount of customer logos validating, presumably, and substantiating all of these services. It was really quite eye opening. >> Yeah. >> I think for me. But also some of the use cases that they've shared were, those that were on main stage, those that were in breakout sessions or here with us, really shows that the culture that they're building, or have built over the last 11 years now at AWS, is really one of experimentation, failure is okay, let's keep moving. Speed, speed, speed and undulate. >> So many, so many great things. I just want to touch on some of the culture, pivot off the cuture. For instance, Andy Jassy and his keynote. And I think the culture is so, so important. But one of the things he talked about is they banned PowerPoint. He said because it wasn't interactive, wasted a lot of time, no one was prepared for a deep dive 'cause they just put the slides together. And they went to this thing he called the six page narrative, which I thought was pretty interesting. And everyone reads the narrative at the beginning of the meeting. So, you know, everyone's busy. >> Before the meeting. >> Yeah. >> Oh. >> But I think at the beginning of the meeting. So everyone's had a common point >> Right. >> 'Cause let's face it, everyone's busy, no one really preps as much as they should before the meeting. So now, they force it with a 20 minute read the narrative. And so everyone is at the same kind of depth of knowledge. I thought that was really powerful. And then, to write the press release and the FAQs- >> That was phenomenal! >> Before you write the line of codes. >> Yes! >> So what are the issues that people are going to raise and what's the really exciting value that you're delivering to the market that you defined in a press release. >> Yeah. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> You know, I think it's great stuff. >> That was as interesting, I thought, as any of the product releases. >> I agree, yeah. >> 'Cause it almost told us how they keep the wheel spinning so fast. >> Right >> Exactly! But that is really culturally different than I think a lot of the companies that we talked to who, when you get to a six dot one dot two press release. >> Yeah. Is it really that interesting? >> Right, right. >> So that was really, really revolutionary. And I think speaks to your point, you know, how have they been able to build this dominance this quickly and not let their competitors gain on what they project as a six or seven year advantage. >> Like he said though, 'cause they don't look at the competitors. They just keep movin', right. And they didn't have the kind of the legacy thing holding them back. You know, Clayton Christensen, innovator's dilemma. They just kept moving forward. But I thought the other really insightful thing that came out of his fireside chat was the conversation around third-party sales when they were still just Amazon. And do they let other people sell on their platform. And he said "You can't fight gravity". So, it goes back, it reminds me of like when Schwab went to $19 trades. Dave Pottruck tells the story of online trading. And they were giving up these expensive commissions but he basically said "If I don't kill my own business, somebody else is going to do it for me. So I better be the one that kills it and at least try to take advantage of that next wave". Really powerful concepts. >> But there's an analog to the "fulfilled by Amazon", which is where the third-parties went. Where they sort of, essentially, took the eBay model and said "We're going to essentially make our fulfillment platform, and commerce platform, stronger because we're going to take all of those other third-parties". And then what they did with Amazon, AWS, was take the whole commerce platform. >> Right. >> And open it up for other people 'cause that made it more powerful for them. And there's still more to come. What they really didn't talk about. They talked a lot about AI, and mostly at the framework and tools levels. And where framework levels would be for, you know, world-class scientists and the tools would be for data scientists. But when they talked about the image recognition, the voice recognition, and text-to-speech, things like that, they were saying then they're leveraging the Amazon data and training those models so that mere mortal developers can do that. What he didn't say, and when we had their product marketing guy here, what he didn't want to say was there's whole lot of other areas where Amazon the commerce company, the retail company, has data that no other cloud has that they can offer. Not to think about really the machine learning as tools again, but as semi-finished applications. >> Right. >> And I think that's going to be pretty profound differentiated versus other clouds. >> Right. And just the basic scale, right. The slide that Werner showed, not only with all the customers and partners of this, but just the breadth of services and the way they keep adding more based on whatever your special function is. I need High I/O, I need ML, I need really cheap cold storage, I need whatever. They can apply the scale to all those kind of sub-segments and offer a breadth at scale that, you know, pretty tough to compete against. >> Absolutely! And they continue to innovate. And Andy's fireside chat, he was really kind of talking about why and how they're able to do that. Being customer focused, not having to look at the competition, is a major advantage. And one of the themes I also heard and felt today was you think back 11 years ago to their genesis, they were very much focused on the start-up community, the developers, really won long ago the hearts and the minds of those developers. Because they were the ones that would try and innovate, and fail, and try again. >> Right. >> But as the code becomes, in I think Werner's words this morning, "the new normal", they've done a very good job of continuing to foster and enable developers within start-ups and those entrepreneurs who want to start SaaS companies. >> Right. >> All the way up to the enterprise. As we see the dynamic and buying software change dramatically, thinking about the Amazon marketplace as a great example, we are now seeing the C-suite being mandated sometimes by the board. You've got to move more applications into the cloud. Well how do I do that? >> Right. >> So it's developers, it's lines of business like the marketing folks, or the sales folks that Shadow IT say "We need to do this. You can help us move fast enough". All the way up to the C-suite and the board. And they've done a great job of expanding the conversation. >> Jeff: Right. >> Expanding the services to really target multiple audiences and meet a lot of pain points. >> You know, there was a press briefing, pre-brief for the announcement of the marketplace expansion yesterday. And what came out really interesting was, you know, when you go to the Amazon marketplace homepage and there's dozens of categories and about, I think it's 35 hundred actual products from third-parties and 12 hundred vendors. And, you know, you can't go to an enterprise, you can't go to JP Morgan and say "here, you know, go to town". But what IBM does with sort of their own rich library of stuff is they have their global business services and their industry solutions development groups. They take the piece parts and put solutions together for their customers. But what Amazon is now in a position to do is they have solution architects working either for them, who are billing out at maybe two- or three-hundred thousand a year, or who are working for VARS who turned into manage service providers who configure these solutions. And so, what looks like a self-service marketplace now can serve, you know, a bank with a hundred billion in assets or a trillion in assets because there's now the IBM equivalent of a system integrator who can put the pieces together. And who can run them for you if you don't want to. >> Right, and have the aggregated data of everybody else runnin' those services. So for best practices and stuff, you're leveraging the whole ecosystem, not a single instance at a single company. And that is so big! >> And that was actually, that was one of the themes of our last guest. From Datadog. Which is, they can watch so much of what's going on. Not just a customer's workload, but maybe they're not doing it now but they will be able to do it in the future, where they can look across workloads and identify best practices in configurations and things like that. >> Right. >> And then you send that back to the customer and they pay for that advice. >> Right. It's just interesting, you know, three years ago the conversation was all about security around public cloud and, you know, we're done with that conversation. Especially since most security breeches are people lose their laptops, right. It's an employee, or a disgruntled employee. But the thing that's interesting to me on this start-up and rent versus own is, again, the answer to every question in a Cube interview. Why do you want to do the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure? Those guys, ThinkLogic, still like 14 people and a couple of dozen developers that are attacking the IOT space. They would never even get an approved vendor status at somebody like Boeing or GE. They would never even get to the procurement issue. But now, as part of this marketplace, you know, they can come in either as a partner, part of a solution, an adjunct, part of an SI, or as a standalone app that you still buy through your approved vendor process with AWS. Why would you go anywhere else? >> Right. That was a great point that you brought up a number of times today. Showing, not only how Amazon is innovating internally and to enable the start-ups to the enterprises from a public cloud perspective, but they're also enabling businesses to be born that would never have gotten off the ground. >> Jeff: Right, right. And, to your point, it's very valid about even becoming an approved vendor for a company the size of ThinkLogics, they would never have been able to do that. So, it's really exciting I think overall, I think we'd all summarize the day as a very positive, very enlightening. I think, for me, I was really excited to hear what was going to be going on for IOT and Hybrid. Heard some interesting things there today, so I think that's just a dot dot dot to be continued. >> Yes. >> I think overall, really strong announcements from them. The passion was there. Culturally, I think they really reap what they sow and I think that was reflected in the conversations that we were able to have today. >> One thing I want to ask you about, George, you're a smart guy. Speed of light's too damn slow. >> So you think so. (laughter) >> The speed of light's too damn slow. >> Right. >> Jeff: Hear it over and over and over again. >> Yes! >> And still, cloud-based, soft underbelly of cloud, you got to be connected. Do you think that the speed of light issues with Edge and shifting resources, co-locating storage compute in the data. You see any really big hurdles that are just really scary? >> Like, following on the "dot dot dot", computing always follows a pendulum. Centralization, decentralization. No side ever goes away, it's just a change in emphasis. And we're going to see some analysis have to move to the edge because for the speed of light, you know, your smart car, you know, it doesn't have time to say "That looks like an old lady who's actually in the crosswalk, you know, I'm going to go back to the cloud and ask whether I should plow through her or, you know, the car next to me". You know, that needs a low-latency analytic. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> But at the same time, and one of our guests was talking about it, if you're looking at the pressure at valve at, you know, a thousand-mile pipeline, you probably don't need to react instantaneously. You send that back to the cloud and it'll look at it over, you know, a period of time and say "This one's looking like it's going to leak". >> Right. Anomalies. >> So, different scenarios. >> Okay. >> And, unfortunately, we are going to have to say "dot dot dot". We talked all day about this! Jeff Frig, thank you so much! George Gilbert, what a fantastic day we've had here at the AWS Summit in San Francisco. We thank you for joining! You can follow all of the replays here on siliconangle.tv. And Jeff, what do we got comin' up next week? We're at several events. NAB next week. >> NAB, Oracal, Modern Customer Experience, and you're doing a red carpet, I guess a green carpet award show. >> A green carpet award show at the Computer History Museum next week. So stay tuned, stick around on siliconangle.tv to find out all the things we're doing. It's going to be a exciting spring. Again, thanks for joining. See you next time. (light, upbeat music)