from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group welcome back I'm Stu minimun and you're watching the cube at wtg transform 2018 happy to welcome to the program two gentlemen from the Boston Architectural College to my left is Carl Jasperson who is the systems administrator and to his left is Jason O'Brien who's the director of IT gentlemen thanks so much for joining us thank you for having us all right so Jason why don't we start with you help us power up this conversation to tell us a little bit about the college so Boston Architectural college we started in the late 1800s it's a small design at school and we offer programs in landscape interior and traditional architecture yeah so I love that to talk to a little bit more about you know that the charter of the school and how IT fits into that so we we are a mission of the schools to provide excellent education to a diverse population technology factors in is very important and over the last ten years the Carll I've been at the school technology has use has increased immensely our students are using it more and more every year and meeting those needs has become you know difficult and it's a challenge we we strive to achieve every year well Design Thinking is is so important these days I I studied engineering as an undergrad in which I've learned more about design one of my favorite authors so I have an interview about a month ago Walter Isaacson you know the ones he studies are the ones that can take that design thinking and technology and bring them together Carles bring us up to speed on from from the IT standpoint you know how big of a team do you have what are you involved with I said you know things have been changing over the last few years yeah so I mean we've got Jason in addition to running the department he runs our online learning system I'm responsible for all the backend its infrastructure servers networking backup virtualization we recently hired a junior systems administrator to help me out we've got a web guy we've got a DBA to the woodshop is under IT because we have a fabrication guy so 3d printing laser cutting we have the help desk and the help desk manager who also does our purchasing and she and I will take escalations so it's there's not a lot of crossover you know skill crossover in the group but we managed to keep everything going yeah but as you said they've been you know woodworking not something you think of in Italy as you know an IT thing IT an OT or you know really converging a lot when you talk about manufacturing as you know we talk about sensors and IOT it's it's hitting everywhere yeah for us you know 3d printing and laser cutting and we also have a CNC router they all started as experiments at the school and have turned into a major factor in for our students it's a resource that they demand and the increasing use every single year and how we meet those demands is is becoming tricky to accomplish in our you know we're in the Back Bay real estate is very expensive and we have to make our space do amazing things Jason that's great points I mean I've talked to lots of higher education and even you talk to the K 2 through 12 it was you know what mobility has had a huge impact you know therefore stresses and strains on wireless you know how do I get devices into the classroom how do I manage it I had gentleman from bu who's here at the show last year we were talking a lot about MOOCs so you know it's that that role of i TS but it's expanding but luckily they're throwing way more money at you I'm sure well we've been flat headcount over the last eight years we lost someone last year and gain someone this year so you know we we basically have to do more with less every year like most IT departments so you know we've we redesign our spaces periodically to meet those our students needs you know and turn returning what was labs just computer labs into more flexible space where students are can move the tables around and you the computers are available sometimes there we have high end alien wares in a in a cabinet they pull out news or they can use it to make models we have they can put up their designs on a 3d TV they're using VR headsets to walk around their own designs it's really fascinating where the technologies okay I wish we could spend more time anywhere in VR stuff and everything like that our production crews gamers my son's into this stuff but but Karl I'm hearing things like space constrained we need to do more with less we need to simplify this environment wow that seems like a really good set up for kind of infrastructure modernization so how long have you guys been there about 10 years right yeah so it's a change don't want one in ten years so walk us back 10 years ago and give us that point when you went to modernize yeah well when we started there's no virtualization 3 server racks in a room in the basement for 10 years that we've been there there's been water in that room twice so that always gave us the warm fuzzies you're saying it wasn't water cooling I mean no we tried for that but it didn't you know it didn't work out last year we moved to Colo facility in Summerville so and by the time we did that move yeah we did we started virtualization with VMware like three five within a year or two of me starting and the racks got you know less and less full and now in the fall we rolled out VX rail and we're in a single rack in a data center and there's I think three physical servers in that rack that aren't the VX rail at this point so it's it's consolidation power savings stuffs in a much better physical location than it used to be moving that server room out we were able to free up that space for you know the students to be able to have it's a it's a meditation space now so it's it's been really interesting kind of going through all that great what I wanted you know we don't have a ton of time but let's talk about that VX rail was your team were you looking for HCI was it you know just time for a server refresh you know what what kind of led to that was there a specific application that you started with so this event two years ago we saw Brian from bu give this presentation on their tan and that really turns us on to the whole hyper-converged option we we worked with Winslow we actually talked to another vendor and we looked at Nutanix we looked at pivot three we looked at rolling our own you know visa non FX 2 and after kind of comparing everything and seeing the pros and cons VX rail made the most sense from management perspective and a price perspective our old cluster was coming up on the five-year mark things were going out of warranty we had ecologic sand with 7200 rpm drives one gig I scuzzy just flow for most of its life we were just doing lightweight servers and applications two years ago we needed to virtualize our database server and we threw her Knicks in there with 800 gig on VM e drives and that was a great stopgap but you know we we needed something more permanent more robust - that's how we got to be X ray from a management standpoint the hyper-converged model gave us more flexibility it's easier to expand and since we're small we're not talking about you know racks and racks working together ryote you started with just three hosts so from a overview standpoint it's easy for us as we grow to just add another node and we get the compute we get the storage and we get the memory all at once as an expansion so it's the model is just fantastic for our workload that we put on it we've got like 70 servers in there the only stuff that's not in there yet is our student file server and exchange and they're going in there in the next six months yeah yeah good great and that's so so it sounds like you're real happy with the solution you've been with Dell for four years so from an Operations standpoint was there you know a lot of steep learning curve or was this pretty straightforward and very easy I mean I was I was already really familiar with the VMware piece going into this so that you know that wasn't a big deal we were already on Ruby sphere 6 and we started in the it's row of B so 6px role manager is it's kind of a stupid easy interface you know you can go in you can see are there alerts is there an update you know can it see my hardware is all that good there's not a whole lot to learn from there if we were doing V San on our own my understanding is that some a lot more complicated to stand up once you have it going you're good until you try to make a change so the VX rail manager extract abstracts all that away and just kind of gives you the the VMware experience that you're used to yeah any commentary on the economic service you know we actually found it was very interesting because our original assessment of our own needs were there was no way we could afford all flash and we started we focused exclusively on hybrid solutions and after a certain point we saw I think a presentation from Rick on the external platform and we saw the VX rail as inline dedupe and compression with the all flash and we thought wait maybe we could make this work with all flash and so we actually had a very slight reduction in RAW storage in our new platform but the percentage that we're actually consuming is far less than on our old platform simply because of those gains and it is the performance is far far faster and it's a we've just been very pleased with the implementation from a cost perspective the all-flash VX rail came in under the hybrid pivot 3 and the hybrid Nutanix products so you know we it was a huge win from that perspective we were shocked we could be able to do it thrilled with it ok final word it sounds like you're real happy with the solution when it smoothly operates well economics were good what final takeaways would you give for your peers I mean I'd say the implementation was you know the VX rail platform the the installation is as advertised it was it's basically a wizard that walks you through the installation process the very few minor issues we encountered the winslow team and the is EMC no support support people had no problem solving for us it was really a pretty easy migration to the new platform and we were able to do it with essentially zero downtime yeah awesome well gentlemen thanks so much for joining that's the promise is to get that easy button for IT HD I definitely helping to move in that direction next time we'll get to talk a little bit more about cloud and everything like that be back with lots more coverage here from wtg transform 2018 I'm Stu minimun thanks for watching the Q

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group hi I'm Stu minimun and this is the second year of the cube at what is now wtg transform 2018 and happy to welcome to the program Scott Winslow who is the president and founder of winslet Technology Group Scott always great to see you good afternoon still happy to be with you hey and Scott thank you so much you you not only brought us back a second year we've got a nice table here but I'm not tripping over myself saying that it's the you know 14th anniversary Winslow technology group Dell EMC user conference and lovely Boston Massachusetts in the background it was like ha it's literally wtg transform rolls off the tongue so thank you you were the inspiration for us to you your comments last year precipitated to change our name III know your team just looked at it and felt sorry for me because it didn't roll off the tongue quite as easily as as the new it was a mouthful yeah so Scott you and I did we bump into each other a bunch we'd say we tend to go to many of the shows the Dell show the Nutanix show let's talk about your show first here you said it is the 14th year its users one of the reasons Idol of coming here besides getting to talk to you and Rick and some of your partner's is users I will speak to more users in one day here than I do it some of the big shows I go to yeah I mean it's it's a great opportunity to thank our existing customer base you know we have a fourfold purpose for this event we like to educate our customers we hope that they can pick up some knowledge and maybe an aha moment that they have with they're looking at a hyper-converged solutions or all-flash solutions we've got a new Dell client display here this year that we've never had in the past so we're looking to educate we love to give them an opportunity to collaborate with other practitioners to compare notes the feedback I get from them is they really enjoy that piece of it we want to have some fun and you know it's a tradition that we want to keep rolling and they're helping you know to make it very successful so it's been a great it's been a great venue for us and a great event for so over 14 years now and Scott you couldn't have ordered a better day I mean New England you know it might change in an hour but right now temperatures in the low 70s it's mostly clear you know gorgeous backdrop here as you mentioned in the you open you know Sox have their ace pitching tonight and there are still in first place so yeah it doesn't doesn't hurt well you know we're in the customer service business right so you have to think of everything temperature starting pitcher and you know we try to make sure we've got a good agenda and there's a lot of good information for them here there to get customers to come out and spend a day with you like this is why there's a great event has going to be so biggest because year after year after year I feel like we've delivered and then we have kind of a continuous improvement process and we try to improve it every year here we are Scott one talk about your business you know first time we met you know winslet technology was one of the it was it was the Dell Partner of the year so you know been a long time dell partner the dell you know acquisition merger with emc it's been interesting to watch i know you've got some viewpoints but before we get into kind of the dell piece of it talk about your business as you know because we call you a channel partner and they're you know what's driving your business how's growth going how are things up here in new england and Beyond because yeah you're much more than New England yeah I mean well we've certainly evolved our business over the years with acquisitions being a big part of that initially we started out as a compelling partner then Compellent was acquired by Dell and then you know five or six years later after that we've the Delhi you see consolidation so I think we've had to learn to be flexible and and one of the things we've seen with that is we just each time there was an acquisition it allowed us to increase the size of our portfolio with more solutions that we can offer our end-users more services that we can provide you know along the way we've added a lot of other solutions too like the Nutanix solution and the hyper-converged space so our business is going great we're you know the highest employee count we've ever had our revenues were as high as they've ever been last year we had a record q3 record q4 in q1 we grew our Dell business by over 30% that makes Dell very happy and makes us very happy as well so you know as as this whole industry evolves and you know the digital economy progresses there continue to be the need for the services that we provide all right so let's talk about Dallas you said you've come from the compelling piece the the delicacy which the Nutanix OEM is something that I know your team is you know very involved with you know how is Dell and LEM see how they do and for the channel these days I think they're doing very well I think they you know tell likes to save they big ears and they listen well I think that they have proven that they put together a very good channel a partner program under the leadership of John Byrne initially and now Joyce Mullen you know I think that they incent you to work with them they try to incent the salespeople and sent the companies but they also put together very good programs for you to run marketing events like this so an event like this we couldn't do it without the support of Dell technologies and they've been you know very supportive of us you know they're providing speakers like Dave singer you've got all kinds of subject matter experts here we've got lots of hardware and software for folks through you know demo so I think I think overall the partner programs been very good great in Nutanix is this a you you get it through the Dell so I'm curious has it has the move as Nutanix is shifting more to really that software model does that have any impact on on your business or are you isolated from that since you've been using the Dell xcs yeah well I mean first of all we've been involved in Nutanix for you know three plus years now right before Dell acquired EMC our hyper-converged solution was Nutanix we've built together you know a very nice base with customers many of whom you know are here today so as they evolve to a software model I do think they're going to be less concerned about what or where platform it goes on because they're truly creating all their revenues you know from the software side so they're very they're they don't care really what you know what hardware platform is being used so you know we feel like we've got the best two solutions in the hyper-converged marketplace between the portfolio of Dell solutions you know visa and VX rail vce and then Nutanix with the Nutanix solution typically with Nutanix we tend to put that on a Dell server platform that's where we lean we think Dells got the best server technology in the industry that's a nice way for us to bridge that gap between the two companies so a lot of times our customers are putting a new tannic solution on a dell platform you know key themes I heard your talk rick's talk david singers talk this morning and what i hear from customers digital transformation and hybrid cloud are those top of mine with your customers today absolutely yeah I think you know Rick alluded to it in his talk a lot of customers are coming to us saying hey help us with our cloud strategy and so we're going in and saying tell us about your applications you know these are applications that we think belong in the public cloud that makes sense and the public cloud and you know that could be disaster recovery could be backup it could be office 365 and these are other applications that we think might be more well suited for an on-premise solution so that could be active file transfer and so you know we think that leads naturally to a hybrid cloud discussion we've got a customer here today a financial customer from New Hampshire and their CIO called me I had known him previously at a famous sneaker company in town he went to a financial institution and he said hey we wanna we want to move everything to the cloud can you come up and consult with us on that and we ended up putting in a hybrid cloud for him you know featuring a hyper-converged solution that had the cloud integration that he needed so I think that's the kind of activity we're involved in today yeah you use the word conversation that and the customers I've talked to they like they they need advice and they want someone that's not just oh well here's the solution that you're going to buy it no no it's a conversation there's lots of decision points and as you build out that hybrid cloud yes it's going to be made of by definition multiple pieces it's not necessarily going to be one company that's going to do it all but you know your team helps them that journey absolutely I mean you can't go in with a cookie cutter approach at sea you know you've got two years in one mouth we tell other salespeople you got to use them in that portion so you really kind of listen to the customer as I said try to understand what their applications are you got to understand what their biases are if it's a Microsoft shop you know as your might be their choice for you know public cloud or they might be interested in AWS so you got to kind of work through those you know scenarios and then build out a solution that's gonna work for them we and we rely on our solutions architects Brian veenu runs our sa team and he's got a group of five essays that we think are very adept at you know putting those solutions together yeah Brian's actually not not far from I said here you've got the new hands-on lab is one of the new things that you added here and anything from that or from other things at the event that you won't want to highlight as we wrap yeah I think I mean the hands-on lab gives you know customers the opportunity to come in and play with kind of structured and scripted demos and I see a number of customers in there using that so I'll talk to our team after the event and find out how it went we always try to look for you know improvements along the way but you know there's opportunity in there to play with those demos in terms of storage in terms of hyper-converged in terms of Dell OpenManage essentials which is the software that manages your entire server farm so I think that's been a good addition I'd say the other addition is this year is we were planning it we said hey our people are really good we need to get our people up in front instead of relying so much on the OEM and they're great and they provide great resources but I know that our people have so much to offer as well particularly because you know we're out there you know you're putting solutions together for customers and I think that breadth and depth you know comes through so that's been a nice addition this year where it's not just been Rick out on myself but we've utilized a number of members on our team Ed Palmer is the moderator for a customer experience as an outcome session this afternoon that we're really excited about because at the end of the day is a solution provider that's our job is to produce results and outcomes for our customers that's how we're going to be judged that's how we want to be judged so I'm really excited about that session because we've got em privada and Boston Architectural College they're going to present up their respective deployments and they were different of hyper-converged technology so I think the voice of the customer we really want to make sure we're continue to bring that back to this event so well Scott always a pleasure to see you thanks so much for taking the cube back to this event and thank you for all the customers we get access to we always loved to talk to the customers by the way if you're looking to get a customer on the cube that's we were always looking for customers so we look at the events or we do have a Boston area studio and a lovely Palo Alto studio so reach out to the team be happy to talk mom's to minimun thanks so much for watching the Q