>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by NetApp. (upbeat techno music) Coming to you live from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, you're watching non-stop coverage of NetApp Insight 2017 on theCUBE. I'm joined this evening, it's almost over, with Brian Stuckey, VP of Infrastructure and Operations with Cerner. Brian welcome to the show. >> Thanks. Thanks for having me, Keith. >> So, you're officially now a CUBE alum. You've not be on theCUBE before, right? >> Brian: No, this is my first time. >> All right, so we'll go easy on you. You are a NetApp customer. I really appreciate you taking the time to come out and talk to us. It's been an interesting show so far. What have been the highlights for you as a NetApp customer? >> You know, just getting exposure to everything that NetApp's doing today, as well as all the supplier ecosystem that's part of the storage business. Learning the different areas of business that NetApp is wanting to take their core capabilities and expand upon them, and how they can really enable us with what we're doing with data within healthcare and what we're doing, across our solution set. >> So, healthcare has been a particularly interesting set of challenges in storage and data in general, with GDPR, all of the regulatory challenges that you face in health care. What has been one of the things that resonates with you most with the data fabric and data vision that NetApp has laid out? >> The tool set necessary to manage the volume of data is really where we need to be. Because the healthcare data is exploding, contingents explode, there's not real great guidance as to how long from a regulatory perspective ... Our customers and our clients really need to retain data. So, we wind up retaining data forever. Even if it's seven years you can look at seven years of an infant heart rate digital past their 18th birthday. We're sitting on that data for 25 plus years. So, as you can imagine, the amount of data is exploding. We have to be able to store. We have to be able to manage. We have to be able to tier that effectively. And then, have it available to our clients whenever they need it in order for them to run their business. >> So, let's talk a little bit about that tiering of data. What mediums do you guys use, to tier that data. Is it cloud? Is it mainly on-prem private cloud? What's the medium and methodology. >> Primarily, we're using on-prem media, anywhere from flash all the way to spinning. Thankfully, tape in our world for the most part has gone by the wayside. But we are aggressively looking at cloud for a number of use cases. And in looking at some of the promise that we can do with data, long-term, cold-storage, some of the things that were out there available from a public cloud perspective, and really looking at it as an opportunity for data mobility, data archiving, and all sorts of interesting opportunities kind of arise from that. But being in our industry, we have to be very sensitive to the type of data, how we go about that journey, and really recognizing, at least from our perspective, it's necessarily our data, it's our client's data. >> Keith: Right. They have to know where there data is as well as, at the end of the day, it's you and I's data as well, right? We're the folks at the end of those bits on the disk. So, from that perspective there's a lot of opportunities. We are looking at all of them. But we need to be very careful and calculated about how we go about that. >> So, the explosion of data. Can you talk more about the sources of that data? Is it traditional data coming off of imaging devices, medical devices? Is it IOT data? Where are those various sources of data? >> Brian: I think the sort answer to that is, yes. (laughs) It's coming from everywhere. We've got IOT data now that's coming from all the bedside medical devices that exist out there. You know, I mentioned the heart monitors, pumps, you name it. The land of healthcare is the land of IOT when we start to get out into our clients, hospitals, and hospital systems. You know, we look at the core databases that we run our business on. From that perspective, more and more data is being collected about the patients that are in the hospital, the wellness visits, out at the clinics and all of those things. All that data is growing. Imaging data has always been explosive, every time there's a new innovation in the imaging space. You know, you went from a x numbers slice of a CT scan to 120 sliced CT scan. And all of the clinicians are very happy like, "That's wonderful!" >> No one wants less definition. Get more definition. >> It's like the burst button on your iPhone, right? >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's wonderful. You just created thousands of more pictures just like that. So, all that data has to be stored somewhere, and we're the landing spot for that data, and we have to be able to handle it. >> You know, technology shrinks but it doesn't seem to shrink fast enough for storage. So, physical space, how have you guys managed. Like just from an agility perspective, having enough data center space to just accommodate the explosion of data? >> Well, it's an ongoing challenge we have. We're constantly looking at our growth projections, our storage projections. How can we use data services compression, ddoop, all the other capabilities in order to continue to reduce that data footprint? It's an ongoing challenge and battle. And we're really reliant on experts in the storage to kind of help us figure out ways in order to be more efficient with how we store that data. Challenging for us is it's not only that one set of data. Some of that data gets moved into hadoop clusters. Some of that data gets replicated for high availability in DR. So, what was once a single piece of data now is replicated many, many times. So, that explosion of data is also the different ways we have to consume that data. One of the biggest things that we can do or hopefully will achieve over time is how do we reduce that footprint of data? How do we make that data reusable for multiple applications, multiple capabilities without having to do the massive replication of all that data across our footprint? >> So, you've been a NetApp customer for some time, I assume? >> Brian: Yes. >> As they're transforming into this data-driven organization what have been some of the changes that you as a customer have noticed and appreciated the most? Well, I think what we've seen in NetApp tranform from what was traditionally their filer business, ten years ago that's what they're known for, and quite honestly that's how we enter into the NetApp relationship. And they've continued to progress with more interesting solutions that exist out there, not only for storage targets for us but things that they're doing from a cloud perspective. Things that they're doing as it relates to storage infrastructure management and data management in general. Those are all very interesting solutions that we're looking forward to continuing to take advantage of. >> So, hospital tech, usually or at least infrastructure doesn't move too quickly. >> Brian: Yep. >> You know, you kind of make an investment and you leverage that investment for a long time because stability is most critical for you. As you're looking at some of the new announcements either this morning or throughout the week and past couple of weeks, what has been some of the technologies or announcements that have excited you the most, that make you want to kind of push that envelope a little internally and say, "Yeah, you know what, it may be worth the migration or the risk of migration to go to this new platform"? >> Yeah, we're constantly looking at new platforms, and how do we get from where we are today constantly modernizing our infrastructure, making sure that we're providing the highest availability, the most performance solutions for our clients. You know, we're in a competitive space, they want to make sure that their systems are running optimally. And so, as we look at the announcements and things that NetApp's doing, you know, not only is it that actual, those new solutions that come with all the new bells and whistles. But it's the overall, how do we look at the entire storage footprint? So, the concepts around data fabric and NetApp and what they're trying to achieve from a visibility across your entire data footprint. Those are very interesting to us. And to me personally, and we'll continue to look at ways to exploit that. >> So, the data is ... George shared, NetApp's CEO shared a very personal story on stage yesterday of how data helped save his son's life. Being able to have medical professionals have deep data, and the ability to come up with just the right treatments for his unique situation. When you talk about competitive landscapes, what are some of the competitive attributes of healthcare, and IT in general, that are on your list of priorities to make sure that you guys are providing the level of service that your patients deserve while providing the level of efficency that operations requires to be an efficient competitor? >> Yeah, so a few items there. From a competitive landscape, I think it's not good enough anymore to have a digital platform to store and retrieve data. Our clients want to get insights out of that data, whether it be how they're delivering care, whether it be the efficiency of the various care delivery models that they're leveraging. They want to measure the effectiveness of their clinicians. And they also want to make sure that they are as the landscape of healthcare and reimbursement changes, there's going to be a lot more emphasis on making sure that they do not have a patient leave and then within 30 days come back. From a readmissions standpoint there's a lot of pressure in order to make sure that the right things are done for the first time. And leveraging the data that we have stored the analytics that we're able to provide, getting the right data to the clinicians at the right time, is really paramount to what we're trying to achieve. And from a competitive standpoint, unlocking some of those capabilities is really what we see moving and keeping us in front. >> So, what are some of your biggest take aways come from NetApp insight to your staff as you help them meet that mission of better healthcare? >> In my space and the data center operation space predominately, we have to maintain a very high standard of ability and performance. And it's paramount for us to stay on top of where the industry's going. Who are the leaders? What are the options? What are the technologies available to us in order to make sure that we are able to have a very capable platform that all the folks within Cerner then can build really interesting solutions on top of to deliver to our clients. >> Well, Brian Stuckey, VP of Infrastructure and Operations at Cerner. We really appreciate you coming on theCUBE, sharing your story about Cerner and how you guys are helping move forward your mission of providing better healthcare. That's it for this segment of theCUBE, Mandalay Bay, NetApp Insight 2017. Stay tuned for our closing statements and session. Thank you. (upbeat techno music)