>> I'm Stu Miniman with The Cube and we're here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Group, happy to have one of the users at the event, Hasan Barakat, who's the Director of Global IT at Cell Signaling Technology. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, Stu. >> Alright, so, Hasan, tell us a little bit about your organization, your role there, and you're local, correct? >> Right, we are out of Danvers and Beverly in Massachusetts. We employ about 450 people. We produce antibodies used in cancer research, they are manufactured here, in Massachusetts, and shipped all over the world. >> Alright, what are the uses for these antibodies? >> Mostly they're used in cancer research at universities, and as well as pharma companies. Organizations that are trying to cure disease, use our antibodies, which have a very good reputation in the industry, to further their research goals. >> Okay so, healthcare is highly regulated, going through massive amounts of change, what are some of the biggest drivers in your company's business today? >> So, speed is one. Quality is another, and we try to embrace change from a technology perspective and enable our users and scientists to be the best that they can be, from an IT perspective. >> Alright, what's the relationship between business and IT? What does that look like today? >> So we have a lot of labs, we generate a lot of data. We trawl through a lot of that data, so our users need robust IT systems and messaging and other sort of technologies to further our business around the world. We cover the globe, we're not just here. We're also in Europe and China and Japan. >> Alright, so we've really been looking at, it's been said probably way too many times, data is the new oil in many ways. Data is the new fly wheel for most businesses, the more you have, the more you can access, the more things you can do with it. What do you have to do from an IT standpoint to make sure you have data available, and can leverage that data, and maybe you can tell me what's kind of interesting how you use data today? >> Sure, we do generate a lot of data. In the old days, we did not probably generate as much data. Our systems do require a constant refresh, and scalability, and agility. So what we are trying to do now, is to embrace that change and be as fast as possible. We are looking to the cloud. We are looking to be as fast and agile as possible with all of our scientific data and also our business data. Our commercial data, our messaging. These are all challenges that create a lot of need for agility and speed. >> Alright, Hasan, connect the dots for us then. We're at this event, I look down to the expo hall, I see things like Dell servers, storage, hyper converge, hybrid cloud. What are you using today? How are things changing in your environment to be able to deliver all of those data solutions that you talked about? >> All of the above. And that's why we're here. We do have a lot of Dell servers on prep. We trying to build a hybrid cloud as much as possible. We leverage AW, starting leverage AWS. We have partners that, where our Enterprise Business Systems are, our commercial systems, our financial systems. We try and leverage these using Dell storage, Dell hardware, and also Dell endpoint products. So our users are now using a mix of Apple systems, Macintosh systems, as well as Dell laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, and everything else. Winslow helps us connect all of it together. >> How much of that do you architect? How much do you rely on a partner like WTG to help put all those things together? >> That's a good question. We're lucky in a sense that we have a good team, that we sort of know what it is that we're looking for, but whenever we run up against, ya know, some challenges that we don't maybe fully understand, road maps and things like that, what's coming out of Dell. Winslow's been a great partner to help us navigate through that mine field. We have compellent storage on prem, we have Vertech servers that are split into application clusters and database clusters. Currently we're basically looking at expanding our Dell laptop footprint as well. We placed almost 100 lab systems as well from ancient, aging XP machines to state of the art Dell XPS systems that are running Windows 10. >> Alright, Hasan, it sounds like you're going through a lot of change to reinvent a lot of the pieces in your environment. What kind of support do you get from your management? Here in IT, it's like, ugh, ya know, my budget's flat, my head count is flat to negative. To make these changes usually requires some investment. How do you accomplish that inside your firm? >> We have historically not invested as much in IT as maybe we should have over the years. So currently, we now have an IT refresh budget to bring out these systems and replace them with state of the art, ya know, it's all about change. The more static we are, the more aging, my boss calls these aging systems, Jurassic petting zoo. We're trying to basically get to a level of performance and reliability that gets our scientists and our users, and eventually our customers, and people all across the world, a fair shot at doing what they need to do. >> Alright, Hasan, you're working with a number of vendors out there. You have on your wish list, ya know, what would you like to see from those partners that would make your job and your company's business even better? >> Communication's always a good one. We try and make sure that we stay on top of change. Sometimes that's not always possible, we end up with systems that are not scalable. So if there's something I would like to see, everybody please provide scalable systems. As businesses grow, as data grows, scalability is incredibly important. Being static and stuck where we are, and not having to do forklift upgrades, and continuous migrations, if we can continue be, if these vendors could help us be scalable, and these partners could help us scale, that's really what we're looking for. We're growing at a fast clip. There are certain areas of the business, such as China, that are growing at over 30 percent year on year, in some cases. So that scalability requires flexibility from our partners. >> Hasan Barakat, really appreciate you joining, sharing with our community, everything happening in your space. I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching The Cube.