>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite brought to you by Cohesity. >>Good afternoon everyone. You are watching the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite. I am your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Stu Miniman. We are joined by Sean Gifford. He is the senior infrastructure administrator, administrator and infrastructure team lead at Illinois mutual. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. Thanks for having me. This is really fun. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about Illinois mutual. >>Sure. So Alou Mutual's a a life insurance company. We sell life insurance Dai and several other insurance products. We've been around for a little over a hundred years now. So, uh, not myself, but uh, you know, the company. Um, and uh, we are based in Peoria, Illinois, uh, about 200 employees. And uh, we're uh, mostly uh, based on one headquarters there with a couple of their uh, uh, one of their, uh, co located dead center. >>And you are a senior infrastructure administrator. Tell us, tell our viewers a little about what you do. >>Sure. So basically a infrastructure admin means you do just about everything now. Just seems that way sometimes. Um, so, uh, my team, uh, handles everything from windows system, ministration, um, individual systems like a, your exchange, SharePoint, you know, things like that that we would use on prem. Um, too. Also outside of the on prem side, any of our cloud management, et cetera. All right, so, so Sean, you know, this shows decades old and started out at the windows administrator and you know, what's now office or O three 65, uh, at its core. Uh, so have you been to the show before or is this your first time? Uh, on one time, watch. Never on before. Okay. So, but you know, I, I'd love just your viewpoint on Microsoft before we get into some of the environments. Cause of that, you know, Microsoft, you know, started out as people knew kind of windows and some of their apps, but now, you know, the sprawling company with, you know, apps everywhere in the cloud, the edge and the data center, uh, you know, such a big footprint is what they do. >>How you personally in Illinois mutual look at Microsoft? Well, Microsoft is definitely a major partner for Illinois mutual. Right. I mean, we are a very big Microsoft shop. Does that mean that everyone, uh, you know, thinks that Microsoft is the best that every product? Of course not, but, uh, they do a lot of things and they do them really well. So I mean, we obviously rely on them not only for our on prem active directory, but then replicating that out to, to as your, um, you know, I mean our email much just people like might not like to admit it is still one of the most essential pieces of the infrastructure. Um, and that's around on exchange. So I mean, honestly, uh, as much as a, you know, people might want to say Cisco networking is like the backbone of the network. Uh, my Microsoft technologies really are kind of the backbone as far as I look at it. >>Okay. So you still have exchange, you know, in your own shop. You haven't made the move. DOE Microsoft pressure in there. >> Yeah, I know, right? Um, so, uh, no. Yeah, we're, we're still on prem. Um, we have our O three 65 account and we're, um, full disclosure. So, you know, I've been in it for 20 some years, but, uh, uh, been into Eleni mutual for about four. When I was in consulting before only mutual. I did a lot of, uh, in a cloud consulting and getting people on. So it felt really weird to me, but that's, uh, you know, coming into Eleanor mutual where, uh, at the time they came on, uh, it was, the cloud in general was like a bad word. Um, so, and getting past that culture-wise has been a little bit of a struggle. >> Oh yeah. I would, I'd love you to just step back for a second. >>You know, you work for a company that's over a hundred years old, uh, so, you know, exchange in cloud and everything like that is, you know, been around for a very short piece of the overall company. So tell us some of the, you know, what are some of the changes, the pressures going on? Oftentimes there's M and a involved in pulling all those things together. So, uh, you know, Illinois mutual as a company, what are the, what are the drivers and stressors on, you know, your, your, your, your organization? >> Yeah, well first and foremost, data security, right? Um, getting it, uh, any data so that it's fully encrypted at rest in transit and all that sort of thing so that, uh, you know, and, and you don't have to worry about it, uh, leaving anywhere once it's on someone else's prem. Right. Um, it has always been a big part of it. >>Um, trust I mean in is really what it just comes down to. Uh, when you, when you're selling life insurance policies that, you know, go for the life of a human being, you know, that's a pretty longterm relationship. And, uh, going with something, uh, especially a technology like that, that is considered as you say, you know, new to the game, uh, has, has been a struggle for sure. I mean, we're, uh, just to give you an idea, we're a still on mainframe and, uh, we have now to be, to be fair, we have a sizable, uh, uh, project for getting, uh, things moved off of the mainframe, but that, you know, is 40 plus years old. Getting, getting that moving, uh, to, you know, try and hop just into the end of the 20th century, let alone the 21st is always a little bit hard. >>So talk about some of the specific challenges of managing legacy infrastructure, managing tape and, and sort of what, what you do as more of a on the Vanguard of technology in terms of how you're leading your organization to make changes that are, that are much needed. >>Yeah. Uh, so yeah, when, when I came in on, in fact until just a few months ago, you bring up the example of tape. I mean, uh, we had been doing tape off to a, on off-prem, a site that, uh, had been just the way they did it, right. And, uh, um, as a joke, when some people an earlier, um, as the new crew came in, uh, one of the things that we instituted is a, uh, that's how we always done it. Jar. Um, and, uh, instead of people having a swear jar, right, they'd have to throw money in a anytime. They didn't say, I can't do it cause that's how we've always done it. And that's always been just that struggle, you know, with tape, you know, why is it that we're sending our tapes, why are we sending tapes at all? But why are we sending them to this place that's a, you know, three miles away from our place and calling that disaster recovery. >>Um, so I, I, that has been one of the major struggles for sure. Um, getting through that. But, uh, I've been really impressed, uh, culture-wise with the fact that, uh, people are really starting to, to get in line with it. You know, they're seeing the, the advantages that we're bringing. Um, w when you have a cloud strategy that's well thought out and, uh, isn't, uh, at least inherently a, you know, tied to a given vendor as your AWS or whoever it might be. Um, and, and you're not making decisions for cloud just for the sake of calling it cloud. It makes a big difference. I think. So, uh, as you, as you started to embrace cloud, uh, how did things like data protection and security, you know, what stayed the same? You know, what, what things did you need to rethink as you roll those out? >>Data protection changes completely, right? Um, first of all, uh, you know, everyone had that, uh, idea that if it's in cloud, of course it's completely protected, right? It's not right. And so getting people to understand that, uh, as they say, Oh yeah, we're going to, you know, do this new sass offering. It's totally, you know, they take care of everything, the applications on them. You don't have to touch it. Right? Well, no, that's not really the case. You know, that they can lose a data just like anybody else. So getting through pieces like that on the, on the cloud side is, has been a struggle. But, uh, getting into just even normal or excuse me, newer, um, on-prem technologies has, has meant changing completely the way we're doing a lot of things. Um, the, uh, it was becoming harder and harder, especially as we moved data sets off of the, uh, uh, mainframe side to keep up with a lot of those replication timeframes and things like that because, uh, it, as you push more data through what is still a small pipe and it's never big enough, um, it, uh, it became everyday nightmares. >>So it's been a struggle. >>So when you are, when you, when you come to the conclusion that you need to make a change and you need to look for other kinds of solutions, how do you go about finding the right vendor for the problem that you're trying to solve? How do you find the best in class? Right. And that's, >>that's been an interesting piece with w with alimony mutual and, and, uh, having spent time at VARs for the first part of my career, I was used to, you know, answering things like RFPs and whatnot. Right. Um, and we don't necessarily do it within an RFP process, but, uh, honestly conventions like this one and stuff is how I like to do it. Um, you know, we get really stuck in the day to day doldrums and stuff like that too, right? As much as you're trying. And your goal might always be to, you know, get things to at least the cutting edge if not the bleeding edge. Uh, you really need to, you know, be at a places where you can learn about new new technologies now. So when it comes to us, we end up finding a lot of our vendors like that. And, uh, you know, cause we don't really want her to necessarily rely on, you know, the sales people or, or even really our, our, you know, sales people from a VAR or anything like that. >>It's about trying to find, uh, that, that third party knowledge to, to really understand what's the best thing for the needs and the, uh, pain points that you're having. And that's Sean, can you bring us in through, can you tell us, you know, which solutions you were, uh, you were deciding between and how you ultimately came to your final decision? Yeah. So, uh, so we looked at, uh, several different vendors. Um, when it came to our, uh, data protection, uh, analysis, we had looked at a beam for awhile. We had looked at rubric. Um, we had, we had looked at, uh, uh, of course, uh, you know, trying to continue things along with our current vendor at the time we should have been con ball. Um, and we did, uh, we did an M U a you right. a utility attribute analysis. Yeah. Uh, and we, uh, set that up and, uh, just tried to really compare and, uh, uh, you know, what are the actual things we really wanted, what were the selection criteria we have and grading each vendor on those things. >>Um, and ultimately that's what it took to be able to get it through to, you know, to our executives and, and whatnot, uh, building an algorithm that, uh, that, that looked at all those pieces and then, you know, as really address the pain points we were having, you know, uh, not just as a Jeep cause yes, as always a big thing. Right. But is it gonna replicate in time? Is it, is it going to, uh, reduce our overhead, uh, that we're in, that we're experiencing right now? Am I going to have to keep on a full time contractor just to, you know, do my data protection. So, all right, so you ended up choosing Cohesity. So what was it about Cohesity that separated it from, uh, from, from all the others? Yeah, so Cohesity, um, I had pretty given up, uh, when I did the analysis I was talking to you about a couple of years ago. >>Um, I looked around and nobody could quite fit the square peg into the round hole that I was trying to make it work. Right? I wanted a lot of things and nobody had exactly what I was looking for. Can we sit? He was the first one that could really do most of what I wanted to do. Uh, as an example. Um, being able to replicate your data, but while keeping it encrypted on both ends and but still having dedupe and compression and all those things built in, into the platform and, and weight, it's actually searchable wallets in those States, right? I can do like a Google type search and be able to find exactly what I'm looking for. Made a huge difference and it cut it down. Uh, you know, time wise, not only on the administrative effort but also when I had to do a restore and we had a major project just a, a month or so ago where, uh, I had my DBA doing a backup, uh, during a rollout. He accidentally set at the backup to go with the wrong side at the wrong data center. Everyone was kind of freaking out, right? What are we gonna do? We restored it across data centers, across the handling, kept within our timeframes. I was, that's the type of thing, type of thing that really makes it different stuff. So, >>so, so talk about some of the results that you've seen since implementing this. >>Yeah, so replication, um, that I brought up a couple of times, but, uh, it was a really big problem that we would take. For instance, um, I'll take SQL as an example, right? Our SQL data, we would do a data mirroring, right? So it replicated across our wind line for that. We would, uh, we would do a, uh, primary storage replication. So in this case, a nimble Sans that would replicate across with snapshots and then our actual data protection. Uh, so the same exact data would have to replicate across one tiny land line three times for every a replication. Um, since putting in Cohesity, we have experienced an actual, I was blown away when we actually calculated the results, but it was actually a four times increase in replication efficiency. Uh, it just allowed us to do a whole lot more without buying more land bandwidth. So this is a big deal for us. >>So, in terms of this show, as you said this, this is really helpful for you to go and meet different kinds of companies that you might not even know exists. There are new entrance all the time. So what are you going to bring back with you when you go back to Illinois mutual next week? What are some of the things that have stuck out to you, resonated most with you? >>Yeah, so I'm, I'm really encouraged and even with just Cohesity, for instance, I've talked to a, I'm actually met up with a couple of the engineers that I've talked with them, um, who had one of them and even put out a, uh, a new, uh, feature request for us. And he was telling me before lunchtime about some new features available that I can start to change up some of my jobs. I've, I'm really excited. I was texting my, my, uh, data protection, uh, you know, secondary admin, uh, uh, you know, texting furiously to them, we can do this. And, you know, I'm really excited about that. But, uh, honestly on the other side, is these your side? I'm, uh, really, uh, excited to learn about some of the things that we can actually implement, uh, even with older infrastructure, uh, in trying to pull some of those things, uh, into a cloud platform in ways that actually make sense and aren't gonna lose us money in the longterm. So I'm happy with that. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. Thank you very much. It's been fun. I'm Rebecca aid for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of the cube.