(lively music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> We are back in Las Vegas. Welcome back to the CUBE's coverage of Dell EMC World. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Keith Townsend. We are joined by Lawrence Weitzman. He is the managing executive for Technology Transformation Solutions within BCX as well as Burtus vanHeerden, I hop I'm saying that right. The executive for Dell Technologies within BCX. So, thank you both, so much, for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Big news today. A partnership to revolutionize cloud in South Africa. Tell us a little bit about that. >> Yes, I think from a BCX prospective, our customer base has been looking for a business critical cloud in South Africa for a long time. That's both our corporate enterprise customer base and the public sector customer base. They're looking for 24/7 support by a local partner. But backed by an international player. We believe our partnership with Virtusstream would definitely, be a game change in the South African cloud industry. >> So what appealed, specifically, about Virtustream. Because there's a lot of international cloud providers. What's specific about Virtustream? >> I think there's two components being the fact that it provides the reliability, the security of a private cloud environment but it also allows us the flexibility and scalability as well as economic benefits of a multi tailored public cloud. >> What type of solutions are you looking to offer to your customers as a result of this partnership? >> We going to look at, mostly, ACP application hosting and Oracle hosting to start off with our offering. >> And where's the value between what BCX will offer versus Virtustream to the customer? Are you guys going to manage SAP applications on top of Virtustream? Where is that relationship? >> BCX has got a number of tier four data centers within South Africa, so we have three tier four data centers so we would be providing the facilities to host the applications. We also, are a big managed services provider in South Africa so we would be providing some of the many services on behalf of Virtustream as well. >> Tell us a little bit about the customer base in South Africa. Educate us on the market overall. >> We've got basically, three different types of customers. We've got a big public sector business as well as large corporate entities or the lesser entities within the country. A huge amount of financial services and insurance. A big amount of retail customers, as well as mining and manufacturing. And then the third category is, from an economic perspective, a huge amount of smaller (mumbles) market companies. As a group, we've got access to about 15,000 customers which we'll be targeting. >> What's the drive for those customers? What are the specific challenges? Has BCX solved for them in the past and what new capability will you be able to offer from a business perspective? >> I think from a past history perspective, BCX is entering the IT company. We provide system integration. We provide data center hosting, cloud business. We recently, became part of the Telkom group. Telkom is the national carrier within South Africa. We can provide an interim digital solution to our customer base across all our customers. >> Burtus, I was wondering if you could just talk to us, a little bit, about down the road? What you hope we'll be talking about a year from now at the next Dell EMC World or even five years from now. What you hope this partnership will involve into? >> We're moving away from colleges selling boxes into this cloud world. Thinking about the cloud world. I think everybody's out there with Microsoft and Azure, those types of solutions. This is a data center. This is an enterprise, mission critical, type of work load that we can add clients on. In a year from now, yes. We, probably, got to talk about the first five or six clients that we got on the cloud but after that, we expect it to accelerate. It's about providing something new to our clients. That's what they want. They don't want to pay too much over a proper solution but being mission critical, being performance based and being pay as you use type of solution. This is what Virtustream brings and that's what our clients want. >> How difficult is it to get your clients to think differently about technology and to get the buy in that you need to really, make this successful? >> This journey with Virtustream, started about a year ago. We've been visiting clients, we've been taking to clients. They're excited about what we can do. They want it in country. We've been providing many services for a long time. Our credentials, in terms of that, is not questionable. >> Rebecca: They know you're legit, yes. (laughs) >> It's good but can we do a thing? With the (mumbles), sometimes in hosting our solutions in Europe or elsewhere, it's a challenge for the clients. But having it local and us being part of the biggest network provider in South Africa, we can provide those services locally. That's what the client want. They want the data in country, they want to know, they want to be able to touch and feel even though it's a cloud solution yes. >> A year of conversation in country, what have been some of the major hurdles that you guys have had to go through to get this solution in country? Facilities, networking, what have been some of the, specific, victories? >> We have all the infrastructure. We have the network and we have the facility. We have the first two tier four data centers in Africa for that matter. So, there's only three at this point in time. We're ready for that though. The discussion with Virtustream, I think, was more about who will provide the service? Cause they were looking for a place to provide these services and we changed the discussion to, we will be providing their tools on their day off. Working with them for the last year, I think they've seen what we can do, what we can provide and yes, that's how the relationship was formed. >> This conference has been about digital transformation and adding value. You guys are talking about adding value at this infrastructure layer. Allowing customers the freedom to push investments somewhere else. What have been the interesting conversations you're taking away from this conference, here, in the US, that you're going to go back and have conversations with your customers potentially? >> I think there's obviously, a number of discussions. The innovation, it's so exciting to see what's being done. My background's closer to the data center, not the marketing side of the world. The innovation that we've seen, in terms of what gets done with the technology. It's the first, I mean, what I've seen so far. What's the message received from that point of view? I think we're close enough to the technology. In terms of what you do with that, it's a next level of interest I think. >> So Lawrence, any interesting customer use cases that you've seen here that you're excited to take back home? >> I think, for us, it's more about the vertical solutions that you can derive and we've got a big mining and manufacturing customer base so for us, the IoT solutions states and moving to the age of computing, I think, is one of the bigger opportunities for us as an organization. There's a number of those so we're very excited. >> Were is the South African customer in terms of having these distinct strategies? As you said, an IoT strategy, a data storage strategy, an AI strategy? Are they thinking about all these things as holistically as they should be? Is there anything that concerns you that you're seeing? >> No, I think the customer base is, definitely thinking about it. Whether we are at a point where the cloud adoption has happened as quickly as we had anticipated as an organization? Probably not. People are definitely, buying more (mumbles) solutions and wanting that security and ability to come and throttle somebody's throat (laughing) if the solution, really doesn't work. That remains key from a South African customer perspective. >> One of the other things we've heard about is technology as a recruiting and retention tool for companies. We've heard a lot of statistics thrown around about how people will leave jobs if they don't think the technology is all that. And CEO's view it as a real way to keep employees happy and engaged and excited to come to work in the morning. Is that as true in South Africa as it is in Silicone Valley and in Texas? >> To be quite honest, I don't think it's quite there at the moment. I think from a South African perspective, at the moment, companies are sweating a lot of assets so people are not investing that much in that type. They'd rather invest their money in the business critical applications and digitizing the organizations then looking to much at the work space at the moment. But I think that's something that will definitely, start changing as people start demanding it. >> You guys are offering a capability not previously available in South Africa. How do you see customers using this capability as a competitive advantage across the different industry's you serve, mining, industry? >> It's up to your vices. We have an advantage, partly with Virtustream offering the solution. It will take the client, pull it to a new level or new way to operate the environment and stuff like that. That's a client advantage that will be available now. >> As well as cost savings. I think there's a different cost saving benefit to our customer base as well as performance. >> When you talk about those two different and I don't know if they're competing priorities but there are two pressures that manage our space today. Keeping the budget but then also, driving optimal performance. Where do customers fit? What are they most concerned about? What are some of the things on their minds? >> I think it's a combination of both. It depends on which sector it sits in at the moment where the cost is a bigger driver From the retail perspective, I think cost is a bigger driver. Driving down costly innovation of putting a new technologies there. It's our business to go and make sure that we provide a value proposition to the customer to drive both of these objectives. >> And where do you think, in terms of innovation, in talking about, we were just saying about the conversations that you're having. The innovation that's taking place and how exciting is is and how we are seeing these industry's being completely transformed by AI and IoT. When you think about innovation in the work force and just in terms of how employees do their jobs every day. What is most exciting to you? >> I think it's the ability to work from anywhere. I think that's (mumbles) of being a national carrier, that's where our ability and having that connectivity available is their to provide our customers with that solution. It's, most definitely, there's a big move in South Africa towards working from anywhere to a bit more working from home. >> So, not many people do that in South Africa? >> Lawrence: Not too many people. >> Not too many, okay. >> In different industries, we-- >> It's, definitely taken hold, yeah. >> Definitely starting to take hold, yeah. We, ourselves, are moving towards a more mobile office environment and doing it ourselves as (mumbles) as well, yeah. >> One big thing on IoT in the edge. Mining, obviously, big challenges in the edge. You guys are now teamed up with a huge Telkom in South Africa. Where are the opportunities when it comes to the edge in providing new capabilities for the IoT in combination with the offering from Virtustream and BCX? >> I think it's about the different types of assistance that we provide. We look at the management execution systems for (mumbles). The ERP systems and looking at new technologies around how do you provide safety underground. Significance with underground mines, how do we provide worker safety in the underground. It's about how do we get that performance out of getting the data out quicker and being able to analyze and deal with any issues. >> Burtus, Lawrence, thank you so much for joining us. It' been a real pleasure having you on the program. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight along with Keith Townsend. We'll be back with more from Dell EMC World just after this. (lively music)