>> Announcer: Live, from San Diego, California it's the Cube, covering CISCO Live US 2019. Brought to you by CISCO and its ecosystem partners. >> Good morning from sunny San Diego. Lisa Martin with Stew Menaman. This is Day three of the Cube's coverage of CISCO Live. You can hear all of the buzz behind us. Day three is just as jammed as days one and two. We're pleased to welcome, for the first time a couple of guests. We've go Muninder Sambi, VP of Product Management, Routing and SD-WAN & Switching and Neil Anderson, Practice Director of Network Solutions, WWT to my right. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. >> Thanks, thank you. >> So before we went live, Neil and Muninder, we were talking about the 20 year relationship CISCO WWT, each other's largest partners. As we look at the transformation that CISCO has undergone and all of the transformation of the network, there's so many expectations with 5G, with WiFi six, speed, et cetera, but security. Talk to us about how the relationship has evolved and what you guys are doing together with SD-WAN. >> I think, you know we've definitely had a consultative relationship where we saw the SD-WAN market emerging pretty early, for example. And we immediately talked with our CISCO counterparts, with Muninder and his team about what are the things we're seeing developing in our customer base and how do their products need to evolve to adapt to that? And so I think its been a really good relationship. >> Well actually, I mean it's 20 years of relationship. But we've known Neil for a very long time. And I think the SD-WAN market is evolving so fast, with cloud applications with applications moving to the cloud, with work loads that are changing. Customers expecting a very different branch experience. And Office 365 is an example, that is leading their experience. So much of the innovations that we have done so far has been towards the branch. We have enhanced like multi-layered security. We have enhanced application quality of experience. But recently what we have also announced, is the ability to extend SD-WAN beyond the branch. So, we just announced the secured cloud-scale SD-WAN, where you can now take the same orchestration platform, the same policy that you define. You can extend it from the branch all the way into your core location into the cloud. And this architecture that we talked about, could not have been done with the partnership with WWT. >> Yeah, that's absolutely what we're seeing in our customer base. As customers are adopting the public cloud more, adopting SaaS applications more in the cloud, there's a real need to extend the WAN fabric out to the cloud. And that's, historically its been more of a branch-to-branch, branch-to-headquarters technology, but we're really seeing that as branch-to-cloud is becoming almost the core part of the conversation for SD-WAN now. >> Yeah, Neil, wondering if you could expand on that a little bit for us. Give us that customer viewpoint because, you know for a bunch of years it was like well, SD-fying everything out there, what does that really mean? WAN's always been a complicated space. And it, what I've heard the last couple years, is SD-WAN is one of the critical components of customers when they do multi-cloud. But what I've heard a lot this week is more than just some of that networking piece, there's a lot of security aspects of it and there's a lot nuance and other features that are coming into the SD-WAN portfolio. >> Yeah and that's absolutely what we're seeing as customers are, you know, they need to find that comfort level I need to extend my connectivity out to the cloud, but how do I do that in a secure way? And SD-WAN makes it just very, very easy to do that. Whereas before it was tougher to manage. But with SD-WAN, especially with the CISCO V-Managed portfolio, being able to manage my security out there as well as the SD-WAN productivity. It just makes it easier for customers to finally extend their fabric out to the cloud. >> And we've also given choices. Traditionally, customers would have implemented security and WAN, they come together in the branch. But many customers are looking at regional hubs. You know, regional hubs where they can now have best-in-breed, the SD-WAN stack with security. Stitch it with other L4, L7 services. And we can offer this as a cookie-cutter part-type approach that they can buy. Or they can actually go and get it procured from WTT. >> So, walk us through, Muninder we'll start with you, for customers that have really nailed the branch from the networking perspective, but now you're offering this capability beyond the branch. What is that network transformation extension process like for customers to go through? >> What does, sorry I didn't hear the end part. >> Oh sorry, it's loud in here. What is that process for a customer who's got phenomenal networking within their branch, to now work with CISCO and WWT to go beyond the branch. What's that upgrade process like? >> So, the first process would be obviously getting with our partners, with our many services partners, getting your SD-WAN infrastructure in the branch. Deploying multi-layer security, applying application quality of experience. As they look at more and more cloud connectivity. They look at applications and workloads going to the cloud, they start to create these regional hubs or, and they want to be able to centralize many of the branch security capabilities in that place. And be able to do L4, L7 stitching. And for that capability that we're announcing is what we call internally is cloud on-ramp for core location. We also have cloud ramp for infrastructure as a service, which means you can extend that same, same technology, same solution into the multi-cloud environment. >> Is the on-ramp a set of services, consultant services or an actual product suite that customers can use or deploy? >> It is actually a product suite that they can consume directly from CISCO, or they can partner with WWT to consume it as a service. >> And the nice part about the capabilities that Muninder is talking about is that, it's built into the V-Manage platform. So its another, to the customer it looks like another SD-WAN note out there, it looks like another branch. Essentially through V-Manage. Makes it super easy for customers to figure that out because it is new to them. This concept of regional codal hubs, is very new. A little bit of a different skill-set required to understand and how to architect that, but what we're looking at is what the V-Manage platform and the capabilities they've put in with cloud on-ramp, it's just going to make it a very natural way for customers to turn that on and consume it that way. Because they're already familiar with V-Manage and SD-WAN. So we think its actually a brilliant move and it's going to simplify things for our customer base. >> It's a fully automated stack that's multi-talent. So for Neil, he can offer it not just to one customer, he can offer the same infrastructure to multiple customers. While providing security. >> Yeah, absolutely. If customers are not comfortable with that concept, we can manage it for them and offer it as a managed service as well. >> Yeah, so Neil you've got some long history with CISCO in, we've talked about simplicity a little bit. Can you walk through a little bit about kind of the role of a partner like WWT, today and maybe versus what it might have been five or 10 years ago? >> Yeah, I would say its definitely evolving, right? I mean, I think in the past we were a little bit more of the fulfillment side, right? We would come in and help the customer, they kind of knew what they wanted to purchase. We would help them figure out how they were going to deploy that across their 3000 branch sites. And we were very, very good at that. I think where its evolved to today is that, we're doing a lot more of that upfront consulting and design architecture work, alongside our partner CISCO to help customers figure out what is that next generation WAN need to look like from the start? And that's a new aspect of our business. Is really that upfront consulting and designing of the network itself. >> Yeah, I mean, if I could, I think before it was, a lot of it was, you know, boxes. How many ports and what do I need? And therefore, you needed to do more of the configuration when it got there. And rack it and stack it and do all that, as oppose to today, there's so many choices out there. Once we've chosen it and architected it, you've pre-built it, the roll-outs a little bit easier than it might have been in the past. Is that a fair statement? >> Absolutely and that's where really our services are shifting from that downstream service to more of that upfront service. The other thing we're doing is, my being able to consume to APIs from the platform. We can add new things on there that are specific to that customer that maybe aren't out of the box from CISCO. >> More software led sales motion as well. >> I was going to ask you about that. >> This has been a journey for all of us. I think we've also evolved, transformed as a company. Much more towards SDX stack, both on the campus, on the branch and the data center. And I mean, having partners with Neil, I mean, we were very used to, he has a new innovation and WWT, lets go position this with our customers. Now, it's more about what does the customer want to achieve? It's tying it back to their application workload. It's tying it back to their cloud-first strategy. Understanding that and up leveling how software can enable it, that's a big learning for all of us. And it doesn't go, it goes with code development. We have to code develop together, because the number of customers that Neil has access to, we get tons and tons of use cases and new information from it and we develop on top of those. >> Yeah, that's what I would say, Muninder is, you used to deliver products. Now you're actually delivering a platform, that partners like us can take that platform, actually layer software on top of it, if it's needed to deliver what the customer's really looking for, for their outcome. >> Yeah, so, Neil when I look at the SD-WAN space, there's still, it's not one market, there's the bunch of different pieces out there. Why CISCO for SD-WAN, what's kind of the killer use case for them and what differentiates them in the marketplace. >> Well, that's interesting. We had a relationship with the Viptela team prior to CISCO's acquisition. We felt very early that they had a lead on the market and they were going to do some very disruptive things, and we were very happy when CISCO acquired them. And the speed with which CISCO's integrated them into the portfolio is actually pretty amazing. But what we saw in them was, they were accomplishing a lot of things, right. They were able to have this balance of being able to support the deep-routing features that our big customers were looking for, but at the same time making that simpler to turn on and consume with the V-Manage platform. So, we had picked them pretty early as a big player in the market and we're really happy that, you know CISCO has integrated them into the portfolio, 'cause it's made it even better. CISCO's doing things with them that they could have never done on their own. >> Well, we'll be excited to see how the Beyond The Branch manifests with WWT and CISCO. Gentlemen, thank you for joining Stew and me on the Cube this morning on day three. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you very much. >> Oh, our pleasure. For Stew Minamen, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube live from San Diego CISCO Live Day three. We'll be right back. (upbeat electronic music)

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group I'm Stu minimun and you're watching the Q's coverage of wtg transform 2018 happy to welcome to the program got a CIO in the house Russ Roderick who is the with chin bro that's correct how you doing to be here excellent so third year for yourself at the show first first impressions at the show what brings you back yeah third year I've really enjoyed it each of previous years I skipped a year last year travel related issue but I think the layout I like the naming convention change I like everything about it I think this is an excellent program that technology excellent they felt pity on me when they did the name change if you heard because saying the whole user group Dell EMC winslet Technology Group was a bit of a tongue twister but that's you know first world problems so Russ wrote for people that don't know tell us a little bit about chin bro yeah so Tim bro is a construction company headquartered in Pittsfield Maine we're nationwide where we do our projects we're in numerous markets from building infrastructure oil gas chemical industrial manufacturing we have a lot of projects done every year in the hundreds range and we were a little under a billion dollars got about 2,500 team members across the country okay and is the CIO you know how BIG's your team how many locations do you manage and you know tell us yeah let's go there for sure yes so I have 30 person team we have everything from application development to help desk to data analytics business intelligence teams I have infrastructure organization I have field support business analysts and we're a full-service organization all right so restless first start with with chin bro would you know what are some of the biggest challenges you're facing into business what does that term digital transformation resonate with with with your world it does the construction industry is very interesting it's a low margin industry right and so as a result of that we're always always looking to save money we're always looking to be lean we have a major initiative in the company around lean transformation some of that is digital related you know getting off of paper moving into paper forms into electronic forms and then not having to touch the data too many times so we have been moving too for quite a few years now so it's not new to the organization but it is a big challenge okay so absolutely we see that a lot what is the role of IT to the business these days so we have gone from being the elevator music as I like to call it like we're in the background you know we're kind of there to a strategic partner and I've reported from finance and I've moved to into the up to the CFO from CFO excuse me into the CEO role and it's been a great challenge there's some other organizational changes that we're looking at but we're no longer that background music we're very strategic in what we do we actually run several committees for the company looking at project prioritization workflow prioritizations and helping the organization to build an application roadmap new strategy yeah I love that I mean when you talk to us organizationally it says a lot you know under the CFO your call center we are moving under the CEO your strategic to the business right all right you talked about application so let's go there first because that's you know that application modernization is big challenge when I talk about modernization I always say you know application is a long pole in the tabs so what what does that mean to you what what kind of transformations are you going through inside yeah again our industry is dealing with a lot of fragmented software and it's a it's a problem a lot of industries face but ours I feel is we're on the very tail end of the industries that have moved to digital that have moved to modernization of our apps a lot of our products are on-premise our ERP system we've been on for 20 years for example and they've they've modernized we're getting it to mobile our imaging and workflow systems are starting to get more modernized but they're their legacy products and it's difficult when you have to deal with infrastructure that we have in the construction world we don't always have connectivity so we have to have a lot of offline we do all work with Citrix and it can be very problematic yeah you've been doing with the issues that we talked about with edge computing and IOT is you know something you've been living with for years right absolutely so IOT is one of those transformational pieces for us as well you know we have a lot of equipment that's one of the parts of our business you know 25,000 pieces of gear and heavy iron and we don't have a really good solution in place today that we're monitor all of the the meters and the performance and the of those devices so we're looking to IOT to help us get a better picture of that at an aggregate data level okay so I love we started up the stack with the applications let's come down a little bit tell us about your infrastructure what what are you using today how long you been using it for Winslow's in in the mix there's o windows absolutely in the next Dave we've moved from the traditional data center I had a lot of servers and racks and and moved to a V block and the X block with the X rail and our disaster recovery center out in Chicago and we did that because we had you know all the traditional problems of maintenance and and patching and licensing and everything and we never really had to deal with any of the power and heat and energy problems were up in Maine so we don't we're not an issue with cooling but that was a challenge for us having to manage all that stuff so we worked with Winslow and Dell EMC to figure out how do we get into the hyper converge to move away from all those server for administration and management and we did that project a little over a year ago implemented a little year ago and we've seen tremendous opportunities and for how we how we provision equipment and how we manage that need for the applications you know standing up new environments virtualizations really helped us do yeah so did you roll up the VX block and the VX rail together or the were those two sever they were slightly delayed so we did the X block first and then a few months later we did the the VX ray okay so the V block and the VX block after it been around for a number of years that you know 8 10 years at this point VX rails a little bit newer there's some people out there that are like oh wait HCI takes over the whole market tell us why each of those solutions and you know what was it an application price thing what what how did that go yeah we looked at it wasn't necessarily that we were in you know any position where you had to have this massive return on our investment right we built our business case around disaster recovery we our data center our primary or secondary were in the same town you know so we had all those elements of disaster recovery that were a problem for us so when we looked at the solution we wanted to be able to replicate our data more effectively get away from the traditional tape backup models and really help provision the equipment as quickly as we could in the event of you know a disaster and get ourselves recovered business continuity wise so it was a financial decision obviously that we had that we had thing had to pay for itself in which it did but we didn't spend a lot of time really kind of honing in on it has to be an ROI and a payback it was it was really about performance and disaster so is the VIX Bach in the primary and the BX rail and the secondary correct okay really cool on any you know what would you sell your peers is you after you've rolled us out any learnings that you had or the things that you'd go back and you know adjuster tweak no actually we had a really incredible experience working with with Winslow they were able to help us work through all of our any of our production issues very quickly we did replication through zurdo so that's moving our data very efficiently and my my IT team feels very confident that should and we're doing a test later this year but should we have a production incident we'd be able to recover lessons learned you know I think it's it's more about planning your work you know making sure that you've got your activities planned and that you're looking at the operational performance of the applications great all right Russ last question I have for you as a CIO how things been changing yeah you've been in the role for seven years you've moved inside the organization what are some of the things that are changing and some of the things that aren't yeah so the CIO role I believe personally is really kind of gearing towards more of a strategic element you know being part of that business making sure that we're not just providing those generic services of you know ping power and pipe right we're there for the business to understand what their business processes are all about and how they run their workflows and use their applications on a daily basis most of my conversations with my vice-president peers and and business leaders isn't around the technology that's being used yeah they're interested in iPhones and tablet devices but they're really geared at how do I help them solve their business problems and that's where IT is really evolving and the CIO role is doing a lot of that it wraps around that you know the teams you have around you and the strategic elements of the organization and just to follow up on that to do the SAS applications that your business using following under you is there any public cloud in there - what we do we have we have a hybrid cloud solution so we do a lot of on-premise solutions but we have several cloud and they're they're growing as needed but we have a business model that basically says let's look at our infrastructure internally first as a as an employee-owned private company we tend to gravitate towards keeping in-house but we have several business solutions that are in the cloud that are providing value all right well rust pleasure to meet you take so much for you to us and Congrats on everything that Kimbrough is done thank you very much back with lots more coverage here at wtt transform 2018 I'm Stu minimun and thanks so much for watching the Q [Music]