>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering Dell EMC world 2017 Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Welcome back to Dell E, Dell EMC world, I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Keith Townsend. We are joined by Fernando Thompson. He is the CIO of University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico. Thanks so much for joining us, Fernando. >> Thanks Rebecca, to you. >> So I want you to just set the scene a little bit for our viewers and talk a little bit about some of the biggest technology problems you were facing on your campus. >> Well, Universidad de las Américas Puebla is in the state of Puebla. We have around, less than 10,000 students. We have 1,000 employees. And we are full dedicated to research and development. And also bachelor's degrees. I used to work for the federal government and also for the private sector in television and entertainment. But I have never been in such a huge challenge, like, in a university because, you know, it is, it is so difficult to implement the governance but at the same time the freedom and, if you think, well for instance, when, when is a period of time where, where more appears in the world, it's on vacations where the students of the universities have enough time to build that kind of thing. Not very creative people, so in, in the sense that, well we live in an environment where you have to deal, to deliver technology, to protect to millennials that doesn't want to be protected and also, you know, they always ask for more services, no? And now is coming the generation C, so, it's going to be real tough for the next years. >> So, so, so set the scene and talk to us about the kinds of things that you are trying to deliver. Better products, better speed, better services to both students, perspective students, faculty and staff. Talk about what some of the needs were. >> Well, we have to think that, actually, technology is very important in the university because we have to prepare our students to give them the tools to face the future. The world is changing. And, in Mexico right now, we have a huge challenge because we're competing against China, Brazil, and India. We used to have an advantage with, with the price, and people that is very well prepared and with their salaries, but not any longer. So, we have to give this advantage to our students. So, nine years ago, when I arrived to university, for instance, we have the subscription system, and it was awful, no? Because it was very slow with the performance and not very reliable, so the people was really complaining, no? Because we're a private, private university. You always suspect, you know, good performance for a private university. And especially in subscription where your main customer, that is a student. So, we start to work to fix the main system and it take us years, years, no? So, we passed through availability and relability but bad performance. Now, performance, but since we implement XtremIO and we changed our data center with Dell products, this very year, in, in, in the spring, in the spring semester, we make a huge change cause the subscription system now became, you know, one of the biggest transformation tools in the service for the students. What happened was that, during the subscription, we announced on a special day, and a special hour, 8:30, and if you are okay with your administrative stuff and qualifications, you can get into the system and subscribe. Four years ago, that takes, like, one hour or 45 minutes. But with the change that we made, now it is a matter of two minutes. So-- >> Wow. It was a change of 100 degrees, no? What happened was that, yes, we changed the application, but also, you know, with this Flash technology, we use it because at the end, what we want to make was, you know, to impact to the student, in order that they can receive the schedule. He can take faster decisions. They move very fast with their computers and with their devices, so they needed the applications, so, we build it, we test it, and it worked fantastic. And let me tell you something, no? How I measure, I don't have a business analytic tool or a business intelligence tool. What I have was, you know, access to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. And, man, they gave us such a compliment, no? Like, hey TI finally did something well for us also and it was thousands of comments, no? >> Members was waiting. >> A lot of thumbs up. >> Yeah, yeah. Members was waiting, you know, to attack us, like, you shall not pass, and stuff like that. Like past years. But not this year. So, it was, it was, it was a successful story and now we are thinking to implement all these changes that we made in an ordered space itself, of the university. >> So let's talk about that a little bit. So that's, I think, is a great example of digital transformation. I don't need to ask you if you believe in digital transformation. That was a digital transformation to your business. Specifically, I'm interested in research. What type of research does the university do and how does your group play a role in enabling that? >> Yeah, basically, for instance, we have four programs of PSD with specialization in technology and also in environment, no? One of the top challenge that we are facing in Latin America. So we have to supply the technology that our researchers need. And it has to be at the same level of the United States. We belong to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in the United States. So, it's not United States soil, but we belong to that association. >> Reporter: So you have the same SLEs? >> Yeah, basically, basically, you know? And we have to supply, you know, all the bandwidth and performance because they're discussing, at the same time, with people in Texas or Wisconsin or Alaska or Brazil and they need, you know, for instance, high-performance computing, storage, cloud tools, and for them, have to be, you know, pretty clear and transparent. What I mean is that they don't care, and they don't have to care about where it's working, of it is expensive or not, no? Do you have, do you have to supply what they need? Let me give you an example. For instance, a fractal. If you send the information of a fractal, we don't have a super-computer in our university, but we have a deal with another university and they have this super-computer. So, what we do is to supply the connection of the computer to send information and to receive information immediately, in order than the graphic can have information in real time. And people are taking decision in different parts of the, of the country with that information that we're sending. Sometimes, could be, you know, if we're facing a hurricane or we're going to have a problem with water or if we want to avoid, you know, you know, something that can happen with an earthquake or something like that. And with that kind of information, now, our researchers certainly can know what is happening. So, we give the info, we give the technology for them. We make a mixture between cloud-computing services and also our data center. Then that a wonderful tool because with XtremIO and with our new servers, if you can go to our new data center, you will realize that it's only Dell and EMC right there, no? And something funny is that we have a wonderful data center, but to be honest with you, we only use, right now, only three racks. So, the space that we are using right now with this new disk is, the space that we are saving is amazing, no? Because if you can, if you can see our racks, you will see that we have, for instance, Clarion, and DMX and another technology. Right now, we shut down all those racks. And right now, we are using just like, 40 inches of disk. And, man, you know, I have more performance, I have savings on air, savings on electricity. The people think then, right, we are having, you know, more space with more racks and more this. But not any longer. So, I think what is going to happen with Dell and EMC in the future, I think that they are going to deliver, for instance, 100 terabytes in just in a USB or something like that, it's the future. So, there's not going to be need over that, that's good, no? >> Hit it on the head of a, on the head of a pin. >> Yeah. >> Fernando, thank you so much for joining us. >> No, thank you to you. Thank you Rebecca, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Keith Townsen. We will have more from Dell EMC world after this. (progressive music)