>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone. It's the live CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2018, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We got two sets. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Stu Miniman. Our next guest is Adam Rasner, who is Vice-President of Technology Operation of AutoNation. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Yeah thanks for having me. >> So you guys are a customer of all this virtualization stuff. What's going on in your company? Tell us what's happening at AutoNation. What are you guys at now with IT operations? Where you guys going? How you guys building into the Cloud? What's the strategy? >> Sure, so AutoNation is exploding. We have 280 new car dealerships. We have 80 collision centers. We just launched our own precision parts line. We're also looking at other technologies to automate the car buying experience. So we want to make like an Amazon-like car buying experience online, so that requires a lot new technology and digitalization. >> Yeah, talk a little bit about that. 'Cause I know, I've looked at cars in the last couple of years and now you know, I do so much of it online. I feel like I could do the whole experience from my phone if I wanted. So how much are you a technology company? And how much of that's cloud? And what are those dynamics that you've been going through the last couple of years? >> Yeah I think the millennials this day, they're willing to go online and do the whole car buying experience end-to-end, from the buying of the car to the financing of the car all online. And we can roll a flat-bed up to their house, and deliver a car, and they sign on an iPad, and they're good to go. And I think that's where things are going. So to do all that requires a lot of technology on the back-end. So we have a lot of on-prem infrastructure. I'd say we're still 90% on-prem, 10% in an Azure, AWS infrastructure. But that's going to change in time as a lot of these new applications are written. >> As you guys are doing the digital transformation, and it sounds like there's a lot of action going on, new things happening, you're in the app business. You got to build apps for user experience. So you've got to make the infrastructure work for you, and make it be failover, fall-tolerant, all that good stuff, recovery, how do you look at that? How do you run at the speed you need to run at? What are some of they key things you guys have to do to keep on that treadmill, but yet not drop the ball in delivering apps to the users that drive the business? >> I think there's a few things. I think one is, we have to be able to keep the lights on with our existing infrastructure, our existing apps while we build these next generation of applications. We have to be able to scale up as needed and scale down, be able to support some of the new mobile platforms that we're going to be working on. So there's a lot of work going on and DR is a big part of this too. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Because data is at the core here. So, can you tell us that role of data, and then you say data protection. How is that changing, what was it like before you went through this transformation? Then we'll of course get into what you're using. >> Sure, so we actually, were using an old Microsoft data protection manager product and just didn't scale the way we needed to, we were having some performance issues. And so, data protection, while not very sexy, it's something you have to do. It's table stakes in IT. It doesn't innovate, it doesn't make me sell more cars, it doesn't help the business sell more cars, but it's something we have to do. So we looked out there at what I call the legacy players and also the nextgen players and went through a full proof of concept with several of them. >> All right, and what were you looking for? What was kind of the key objective you said? Data protection doesn't make you money, or didn't make you money. We've talked to some customers, that's like, wait, might do some cool snapshotting, I can leverage that data, I can do some more things with my developers, and everything. So what was the goal of this transformation and then what was the criteria that you went through to make a decision? >> Yeah, so the data protection was the initial piece and we just needed a rock solid backup and recovery solution. And we started off with just a simple, hey, we wanted an integrated hardware software solution, we wanted something that could scale infinitely, we wanted a predictive cost model. And so a lot of those older legacy players don't play well in that space, they're expensive to support, eventually you hit a wall on hardware limitations and you have to use forklift upgrades. So we wanted something that was a little bit more nimble and then down the road, as we got into it, once the backup and recovery piece was kind of under control we started using our new solution for other things and secondary storage which was an added bonus. >> So you haven't mentioned, what is the solution that you chose and what were the key things that led to that? >> Yeah, so after going through several POCs with you know, NetBackup, Rubric and Cohesity, we ultimately chose Cohesity for performance, cost, ease of implementation, ease of the user interface, ease of management. >> And what was the comparison, on the floor here you see Rubric and Cohesity next in the huge booths. What's the difference between those two? >> Yeah, so we actually put them side by side in our data center, full blown POCs, and there was some performance differences, there were some technical challenges that we had with some of the other products. And ultimately the team, our engineering team felt most comfortable with Cohesity after spending six or eight months in a really in-depth POC. >> Big bake-off. I love the bake-offs. It's the only way to have the answer like that. So when you look at the solutions, are you guys mostly interested in the software side of the business that they had? What was they key piece of it? >> I think we're interested in the whole thing. I had been at other places where we had done the NetBackup and data domain story and you know, you're having a problem at three o'clock in the morning and you got the finger pointing, is it a software issue, is it a hardware issue? We wanted the one throat to choke kind of solution, and so, you know, that was a requirement right off the bat. Whatever we chose was going to be an integrated hardware software platform. >> Adam, walk us through from the deployment to the day two action. How did it go? What surprised you? What, you know, thrilled you? You know, what challenges did you have? >> Yeah, we've been a customer for- I think we were very early customer, probably almost about two years now. So, there's a lot we didn't know. There was a lot of things in the product that actually weren't fully mature when we first started the POC. And so we went through a full, a full blown bake-off, and one of the things we noticed it was much easier to implement, we didn't require any professional services to get it up and running and the technical support we were super impressed with. So I think, you know, the team, after going through the motions, really felt like this was the product for us. And again, really mainly around backup and recovery, but ultimately decided that we were going to use it for other things too. >> Adam, I was walking through the hallways yesterday, Stu and I were both checking out the booths. And I hear a lot of conversations and it comes up around the Cohesity, Rubric, all these different cloud solutions. Some are rinsed and repeat old models that just have, you know, not mostly those guys are, but the customers are concerned about I don't want the old way, I want the new way, I want to be cloud native, I want to work with cloud, One choke to throw, I need software, I need to have agility, and I need to have auto, you know, healing, all this kind of stuff. How do you sort through that? I know you've been through the POC but your peers that are out here at VMworld, they're squinting through the noise going okay, I got to really dig in here. What's your advice to those guys and gals? >> I think it's really challenging for the people that are, you know, neck deep in some of these other legacy products because it's a little bit hard to move. You know, it's costly, it's expensive, and it's a significant effort. I was in a rare position where I was able to start net new, and so that made it a little bit easier. But I think you start with a slow migration, start setting up your new infrastructure on a nextgen platform and then slowly migrate off. These next, these legacy players are very expensive, and they don't scale very well. That's probably one of our biggest challenges. >> One of the things you said, you started with a couple of use cases but you're now doing a bunch more. Talk about that, what more, what are the new things you're doing and what's the road map look forward at AutoNation? >> Sure. So we had a, a lot of apps, that we're probably not needing. Tier one, NetApp, all SSD, high performance SAN. I call it my Cadillac of storage, you know. It's our highest performance applications and we were having some apps that the hardware was starting to, you know, just go bad. And so the only place I could put it was either on my NetApp, or I didn't have any place else. So the story changed over time. Cohesity became not only our backup and recovery data protection appliance, we started landing some of our tier two storage on Cohesity. So moving things that we would normally put on NetApp, putting it on Cohesity for 40 percent of the cost and it's a win-win. >> All right, so, Adam, I couldn't help noticing you've got the Drive Pink pin on. >> Yes. >> So, maybe tell our audience a little bit about the, you know, AutoNation Drive Pink initiative and you know, do you have relationships with the suppliers here? Pat Gelsinger this morning talked about you know, we need to be as a technology community more doing good. It's foundational to what we're doing. >> Autonation, it's one of our core charities is cancer awareness. I think we've donated almost 30 million dollars. Every car that you buy, we try to put the Drive Pink license plate. And I think not only for business, I think in IT we also have to have a lens to some of these charities and some of these things that need our help. >> Issue driven businesses are doing well now, people expect that. Not just for profit, but the people involved. >> Yeah. >> Anyone can work anywhere these days, talent, it's also good. I mean, it's one of those things. >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. >> All right, so, takeaway from this show, so far, your impression as a practitioner in the IT footprint space, looking at a cloud on the horizon, we just had Andy Bechtolsheim just on, been part of the early days. Cloud's coming fast, networking's got to get better, you got to, you know, seeing what solutions, integrating well together. How do you make sense of all this content coming out of VMworld? >> Yeah, I think what I get out of this and kind of AWS, all of these conferences, is that everything we buy has to be extendable to the cloud. You know, we still have a lot of on-premise infrastructure but everything we implement has to be cloudable, it has to be able to be used in our future use cases. >> I would love, we're talking a lot here in the keynote this morning it's like, right, this move, we know it's going to take time and Amazon's doing some things, VMware's doing some things, how's the industry doing, how do you see the progression, what would you like to see them do more better if we come back in a year, if I kind of give you that magic wand? >> Yeah. You know, I always leave a lot of these conferences and I feel like I'm behind the eight ball, in our cloud migration, but, companies like us that have a lot of legacy apps, they're slow to move. And so, I leave the conference, I feel like I'm behind the eight ball, but I get back and I talk to my peers and many of them are in the same situation I am. They're still maturing, but I think, yes, I think the net new generation apps that we're going to build are going to be in the cloud because the capabilities to autoscale and so I think that anything we buy, anything we implement we have to have a lens to that going forward. >> Well, thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate, sounds like you're happy with Cohesity? >> They've done a great job, we're really happy customers. >> How long was that bake-off by the way, that you ran that? >> We did it about six months. >> That's pretty good and long. >> Yeah, we actually had some, again we were very early to the game so there were features in the product that we needed that they didn't have yet and our agreement was we'll proceed after you can meet these requirements and they did. >> Yeah. And Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jassy on the stage, one of the things Andy Jassy, who's been on theCUBE talks about all the time is listening to customers. Sounds like they're listening to you guys. >> Absolutely, absolutely. You have to, it's such a competitive environment now. You know, if you can't meet the customer's minimal requirements, there's somebody else that can. >> You got to be cloud compatible. AutoNation breaking it down here, here at Vmworld bringing the practitioner perspective, the customer perspective, all of these suppliers try to bring cloud and on-premises together. It's theCUBE bringing you all the action here at Vmworld 2018. I'm John Furrier. Stu Miniman. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break.