>> From Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE. Covering WTG Transform 2019 brought to you by Winslow Technology Group. >> Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman, and we're at WTG Transform 2019 here in Boston, Massachusets. Happen to welcome back to the program the CTO of Winslow Technology Group. Rick Gouin spoke to the customers this morning, threw in a bunch of data points, got us all thinking about where we are today and where we're going tomorrow in the cloud. Rick, thanks so much for joining us >> Hey, thanks for having me. >> All right, so rick, you and I, we've known each other for a few years now, we have these great debates as to kind of where we are and where we're going. I attended a Nutanix event a couple years ago, and Nassim Taleb, who is the author of a number of books including Black Swan and Antifragile, he worked on Wall Street and he said look, we all try to make these predictions, but we think it's going to be a line, or maybe they'll be slow adoption, but the black swan that he said is something, just the quick thing is you've never seen a black swan, you'd think that all swans are white, and once you've seen a black swan, you're like, oh my god, everything that I thought I knew I have to think any questions. Predicting the future, especially in a never changing world where we don't have all the facts and when we can't predict, is really challenging. So understanding whether cloud will take 80% of the market or 30% in the next five years is a little bit of a complex thing. It's like trying to predict the weather here in New England where we're watching the clouds and the rain roll in and roll out. Start with us as to Winslow Technology, your customers, where they are with cloud, and how that conversation goes with them today. >> Yeah, so I think you make a great point about these statistics, these assertions, these predictions. We're getting bombarded with them without context, and I think that it leaves a lot of our customers feeling like they're behind the curve a little bit because have bandy about the, you'll hear 80% of cloud, of companies have a cloud strategy, and there's never the follow up to see did it change two weeks later, was it actually implemented. And so, I think what we can all agree on is that one, all of these technologies are going to continue to grow. Their adoption is going to continue to grow. We're going to continue to figure out different ways to extract value from those services, but the other part of this, and I think it's really where Winslow fits in, is that we want to help our customers position themselves to take advantage of that. So I want to help our customers transform what they're doing today. If we look out at that three, at that five year mark, we know that we're going to have a lot of workloads out there. I don't know what the percentage is going to be, I'm not going to throw a fake number out there, but we know that it's going to be bigger than the one today. And we also, I would assert, that there are things we can help you do in your on-prem environment today that will help you make you better prepared for that transition and allow you to attack that, hopefully, in a more strategic and well considered way. >> Yeah, absolutely. Well rick, I am very sure 87% of all statistics lie, and beyond that, I would poke and prod at any numbers that I see there because look, numbers are numbers, and as you said, things do change all the time. >> Context. >> When I look at some of the tailwinds that have been driving your business the last few years, hyper convergent infrastructure, some of the services wrapping around, help customers with their security journey, with their cloud journey. You've got a number of partners that are there. The bombardment that your customers get, it doesn't stop. If they open up, they open up the news today, it's like oh, AWS just unleased their latest on outpost, and VMware is partnering with all the clouds, and therefore you better be ready for it. The thing I'll poke a little bit at, I don't mind that customers think they're a little bit far behind because what they need to be doing is being that change mindset because the worse thing they can do is just say, well, I've got it the way I want it and I'm not going to change. And I think that that's something you would agree with and that Winslow's helping them to try to keep up because nobody can keep up by themselves, so they've got to be able to turn to partners like yourself to keep up. >> Yeah. I think one of the think one of the things that was telling that I touched on earlier today a little bit was the number three reason that we heard from our customers for why they weren't leveraging the public cloud was because they didn't know how. And I think that that's telling, I think that sort of response to the whole notion that they're feeling behind the curve, but I also feel like you mentioned hyper converged, you mentioned some of these other partners we work with. These guys all have some great stories that will allow our customers to take a first step. What we're not talking about is saying hey, customers, you've got to re-platform everything. You've got to re-write everything to leverage all these different cloud services and cloud platform. That's a big lift for a lot of our customers, but what might not be such a huge lift is leveraging some of those cloud services, cloud connectivity capabilities that are built into those platforms from those partners like Nutanix, like VMware, like Dell EMC. >> So rick, I really liked your line that most customers, many customers end up hybrid by accident. And unfortunately, I think that's where we are when you go talk to them, they might not understand hybrid cloud, multi cloud, they're just like oh, that's vendor terminology, but do you have SAS? Oh, absolutely, they've all got O365 and Salesforce, and a whole host of other ones. Three which probably IPO today. And are they using a public cloud? They definitely are. Most of them at least understand they're using it as opposed to five years ago it was like oh, wait, we actually checked all the IPs and we had three groups that we didn't realize that were doing the old stealth IT. So what is the advice, how do we make sure we get everybody talking in, what are some steps to move forward on that strategy to actually have a coherent cloud offering, not just the pieces that I put together because that's what different groups did. >> Sure, yeah. I think the hybrid by accident scenario is one that we're seeing more and more often from our customers and also just from other folks in the industry. And I guess just to kind of expand on that a little bit, what we're talking about there is when somebody that we're working with perhaps goes into a project, goes into a cycle with the notion that they're going to be all of one or all of the other. I'm going to put everything in the cloud or I'm going to put nothing in the cloud. And what happens is you find a workload that doesn't fit where your whatever your direction is. And so all of a sudden, if you're one of those people who say oh the cloud is just somebody else's computer. Next thing you know, you're on O365, next thing you know you're consuming Dropbox or who knows what. You've got all of these different public services and you have no integration between your on-prem environment and all these public services you're leveraging. And so, you find yourself in a scenario where you're in a hybrid by accident, and which means that you didn't build in the sort of management that would be able to consider these different silos of information. And so, what we kind of advocate is that when you're approaching these strategic decisions, recognize upfront that you may very well end up in hybrid scenario, at least in the next few years this is probably what it's going to look like, at least that's what I think. Recognize that upfront and build that into your plan. If you plan to end up in a hybrid end state, you're whole environment is going to be such much more cohesive, you're going to have that app mobility, you're going to have so much more flexibility than if you end up there by accident by moving half your workloads out, lift and shifting some things over here, some stuff gets left behind, different groups are managing different things 'cause they're different skillsets. If you plan to be in that state at the end, you're going to be in much better shape, but you're also going to be well positioned to continue to move things out as those services become more robust and as you can extract more value from those for your business. >> I think if you've looked at the history of IT, it's very rare that we get one thing to rule them all. >> Right. >> And it's like, well, Ethernet's done a good job at networking, and the mainframe had it's time there, but at the end of the day, five years from now, it might just be all my solutions are cloud, but it's just, as you said, that location matters a little bit less because by the way, it's not just public and private, that edge computing thing is a huge draw that most companies I talk to have some kind of IOT and censure strategy that they're picking out. How can users be data driven to get to the right things in the right place and really make smart decisions? >> Yeah. So I think that there's two facets here to being able to make data driven decisions. The first is that you have to collect the data. We have to put in the diligence, so certainly, that's one of the places that we're able to help our customers in collecting and in quantifying it, attaching dollars and cents. Here's what the services will cost, here's what the professional services, the re-platforming will cost. Let's wrap some numbers around this. If you're trying to make those decisions, if you're creating a strategy, and you haven't taken a look at what your costs are going to be, what your level of effort is going to be, that's a super incomplete strategy, and it's one of the frustrating things for me as a customer facing resource to walk into one of those situations where a customer is dead set on their strategy, but really doesn't understand it themselves. We really welcome the opportunity to help those kind of do their diligence to be able to create more informed and data drive strategies. Leveraging information from their own environments. >> All right. Rick, last thing is we know things are changing all the time. What's the last thing you want people to know about Winslow Technology 2019 that they might not have understood if they looked at the company a year or three years ago? >> Yeah, so I think that some of the big changes that have really come to us in the last couple years is we're adding technical firepower at alarming rate. Our growth is really focused on the services delivery, and the engineering talent we've brought in high end security resources, high end VMware resources. We're able to deliver those cloud connectivity capabilities from all those different products that you mentioned. We're able to deliver a fairly robust security portfolio today, not to mention, the highest level of VMware expertise that there is out there. So we put a lot of focus into the services, into professional services, into helping our customers sort of understand and make that journey, straddle that public, private, hybrid, multi sort of thing. And we think that services is going to drive a lot of this for us going forward. And so our capabilities are growing leaps and bounds, year over year in the services and engineering talent perspective. >> All right, well, Rick Gouin, CTO of Winslow Technology. Always a pleasure to catch up. My prediction, next year I think we'll be another five to 10% in our agreement as to what the future looks like. >> I like it. >> Just because it will be today as opposed to tomorrow >> Yes. >> in the viewpoint. Be back with much more here from WTG 2019. I'm Stu Miniman. And thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the queue covering W T. G transformed 2019 by Winslow Technology Group. >> Hi. I'm Stew Minutemen. And this is the Cuban W. T. G. Transformed 2019 here home game in Boston, Massachusetts, our third year. The event happened a Welcome back to the program. Second time on the program in less than a year. Matt Kozlowski, Who's the vice president? Professional services, Winslow Technology Group. Thanks so much for joining. Thank you. Alright, uh, second tie I've had on the program, but first vest and cufflinks you like today. So, you know, showing your own individual style for, >> like, the Ted talk. Look, >> Absolutely. So we will keep this under 18 minutes. Okay? Probably be more like about 12 theirs and no slide. But you tell us a story of change and inspiration. Uh, you know, in all seriousness there what? I actually want to hear the story of change that we're seeing inside of Winslow attack. So, um, you know, question I asked, You know, some of your peers in the company is, you know, if I thought about Winslow attack, you know, just a couple of years ago, it's like, Oh, hey, great deal, partner. No, the pellet side, you know, picking up the servers and some of the other pieces. Yeah, Here, you bring it on Brook board on board. You know, professional services security. Uh, you know, tell us a little bit about you know what? What were you doing since last time we caught up? >> Sure. So if you think about years ago where we had not just winslow but like bars as a whole came from it was, like, way sell boxes and we sell things. And now we're transitioning where people are using cloud or the hybrid cloud models. And they're actually using software in infrastructure as services and way need, like professional services and consulting to help people on that journey. That's like the simplified version of it. >> Yeah, and just, you know, I want to play something back for you and see if it resonates with you. You know, if I go back, you know, let's say 5 to 10 years ago, it was, you know, we get the boxes and the bar gets it, and they've got to spend a lot of work to configure it and do all the pieces. And, you know, that kind of day. One roll out when we talked about OK, how many months from when the equipment got to the bar versus when we're up and running? When we rolled out converged infrastructure, hyper converged infrastructure and all this cloudy stuff, it actually shifted things backwards. Now, before it gets there, there's a lot of work that either the customer or the partner with the customer needs to do so. It shifted it because once it gets on site, well, there's less wiring and cabling. You configuration I need to do. But it just shifted where that engagement service happened. It did not eliminated that what you're saying? >> Yeah, so there's a lot in terms of like planning. I mean, even, like integration work that we do ahead of time. >> I would say things that have changed even over the last, like three or four years is like the complexity of everything is gone up like we're trying to simplify it. We're simplifying maybe the delivery of it and users. But behind the scenes, certainly it's It's more complicated, I would say, than than ever. >> Yeah, you know it. We're no longer just, you know, let's lock the door and Hafiz of Security and put the firewall in place. Right now, it's like, Oh, well, it's micro segmentation in all the places and my application spread out across. You know how many locations, how many services from and therefore write everything has become a little bit >> more and more >> complicated, eh? So how do we make sure we stay secure in 2019? >> So I think there's a couple areas they're so first is, like maintaining that same kind of sense of securing people, infrastructure and things along those lines that we've kind of been doing for a while now that your basic like firewalls and even vulnerability assessments and things like that. But I think over the last couple years and this as we move to like more of like distributed workforce, like people working from home, people working remotely, finding like the right people, there's gonna be more of a focus on like and point protection and, like protecting users at, like the end point >> or the mobile level on them than ever before. >> Um, >> a lot of talking the keynote this morning, amount cloud. Yeah, and you said, you know, where does that put things so, you know, give us from your standpoint. You know, obviously services were hugely important piece of it, you know, a CZ the box. And the location becomes a little bit less important, despite the fact that even when you have things like server list, we know that there's ultimately hardware sure runs underneath it somewhere. You know, what were those Winslow play today and in the future? >> Okay, so I'm gonna give you two kind of conflicting answers to that. So the 1st 1 is, if you look at reasons why people don't go to the cloud, it's there not comfortable in the security of it. I'll say in like the my like, real world, not in the academic or statistical version of it. One of the reasons people do go to the cloud is for security, right? Look a like a lot of health care organizations are goingto like cloud based electronic medical record systems. I feel like that in some ways has insulated or shifted >> some of the burden of the risk and keeping those systems secure to the provider that's hosting them. >> Which is probably better for us, his patients, right, And for the health >> care providers in general. In that case, >> yeah. You know, one of the things we know is that what you need to do as user is you can't just keep doing things the old way because your competition will move faster. Right? And we know from a security standpoint, my friends that aren't even security is like you need to be able to move fast. One of the great things about the cloud is you know, if I'm running on Azure eight of us Hey, that latticed latest patch in that security vulnerability did that get rolled out? Well, I'm not responsible. Yes, they absolutely right. I didn't have to wait for that roll out, you know? So So there's that piece of it. So you know, just how do I keep up obtained? I need to, as as user, do some updates, and therefore, I'm not saying everything goes in the public cloud, but how do I make sure that it's not? Oh, I update my software every two years, or it's I need to make sure that I'm closing those gaps and vulnerabilities of taking advantage of words. I >> think there's going to be like a shift in changing from like normal. CIS admits they're thinking about like patching Windows and patching Lennox and operating systems. But, like once we move information to the cloud and you think about it, more is like information security. So now data is in the cloud. I'm not patching the system's anymore because we'll just assume that, you know, eight of us Microsoft. They're doing a great job with that. But like once data say is in one drive like how my governing, like where that data's going, who's accessing it, who it's being shared with, how it's being backed up things along those lines. It's just a different mindset that people need to adopt, you know, in relation to securing information, not systems. All right, >> man, I'm trying to figure we gotta replace Patch Tuesday with some celebration or some battering event where we can try to tackle some of the some of these new challenges there, You know? What does that mean to some of the changing roles that you're seeing in the customers, though? I guess here here went to attack. You know, I was talking to Arctic wolf in a typical customer, you know, doesn't have their whole security team that runs 24 7 That's where your partner with that. So you know, we're just security fit in. The organization has said, If it was a large enterprise, you know, it's a four level discussion. You know you've got your sea. So where somebody like that, what does the typical kind of mid to small sized company security team look? >> Yeah, it looks like I'm gonna partner with someone. Or that's what it should look like because, like even if companies have like a managed provider, that's doing like patch management and things along those lines, there's something to be said for having like 1/3 party in another party party, like as your security partner, Because if the people that air like doing the patching, they're probably doing a great job at it. But, like you might not want them being the ones also doing like your vulnerability assessments. It's good to have, like different parties in there, So I feel like for smaller medium businesses, it's getting comfortable partnering on and using like professional services. Frankly, Tio to do that. All >> right, so it's really interest Matt next week. Actually, Amazon is holding a cloud security show here in Boston called Reinforced. So, uh, you know, Boston seems an interesting place, You know, the arse. A conference has always been out in San Francisco. Give us kind of the state of security here in the area. >> Okay, so I think I have a unique perspective on this because I'm not from the area. Like I'm from Connecticut. So I come up here. >> You really most people in the United States would be like Connecticut is a suburb of Austin. You know where you are? Yeah, that's that's the one you need to know. Where we are. You on the Yankees Red Sox line that goes down the middle of the state, right? Right around Hartford. >> Yeah, are are like, claim to fame is being in between both city. So yes, um, way do see, though, like Boston emerging as, like, a regional tech hub, if not like the tech hub of the East Coast. Frankly, so I feel like why not have it here? Like, why wouldn't we have it here? Compared to everywhere else? Like there's so many tech companies, and this just doesn't feel like a tech hub of the region's. >> Okay, Well, you know I'm all in favor of things where I could take the trainer drive to rather than have to fly around the president. Huge is part of you Give a session here on Talked about some branch somewhere Give give us so some of the key takeaways and thanks for the audience that they should be thinking about. >> So So in that session, I kind of invented a completely fictional account of a ransomware attack on a hospital. It was Bill on real world scenarios that I just kind of, like merged together. So I would say up front things that I would say that were important to talk about and that we're, you know, cyber security awareness training. I'm making sure people you know are understand. Like the risks involved with female security advance like modern and point protection. We kind of touched on that a little earlier. So, like older, signature based detection is just not not really effective anymore. Um, having a good tamper proof backup strategy is important, too. So let's say, like, systems get ransomware it. Everything's encrypted, like you need a way to restore that data without necessarily paying the ransom on DH like tamperproof backups >> are are the way to do that. Really? So >> all right, that I want to give you the final word. Uh, w t g transform 2019 gives a little inside some of the customers you're talking to. Some of the top of mine, diffuse or any. I don't work >> for me. A lot of the top mine issues around security seriously, but also like modernizing People's Data Center so that delivering on the hybrid cloud message of like installing hardware and software that not just provides, like data storage services on Prem but could do a lot of cloud tearing >> cloud archiving. Also >> because last, we really appreciate the updates. Thank you. Money for Sarah. We're all initiated. I want to thank our audience here. We've had a full day here. Got to talk to some of the users, some of the partners and, of course, our host for the event. Winslow Technology Group. Scott Winslow and the team. Great to see the growth. Always love to be able to dig in with the users and what's happening locally for myself, stupid. And want to thank the whole team here at the Cube for helping us to be ableto support these events and be sure to check out the cute dot net. You could do some searches there. You could find all the guests here and see previously what they've been talking about. See what future events were going out and dig their archive and is always if you have any questions, feel free to reach out myself, the rest of the team and always a pleasure to be able to share with you and thank you for watching.

(music) >> From Boston, Massachusetts, it's The Cube. Covering WTG Transform 2019. Brought to you by Winslow Technology Group. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and we are in the shadow of Fenway Park. It's the third year we've had The Cube at The Winslow Technology Groups user evert, which is now called WTG Transform and it's 2019. Joining me is the president and founder of Winslow Technology Group, Scott Winslow. Thanks so much for joining me and for the second year of Scott, I say do, thank you for making the name of the show simpler for me to say. WTG Transform rolls off the tongue. >> Our marketing folks were happy to accommodate you, Stu. But we're delighted to have The Cube back. You guys do such a great job watching the industry, observing the industry, asking the great questions. So delighted to have you here. >> Well, and thank you, we always love talking to the users and you've got 189 users here. The company, itself, is now 50 employees, 35% growth last year. So congratulations and give us a little bit about what's happening at a macro level that are driving some of that, the growth in your business. >> Yeah, thank you, it's been, it's been a fun ride. I mean, we're in the right industry first of all, right? The server storage, hyperconverged infrastructure, networking, hybrid cloud solutions it all continues to grow. Data growth is explosive, so I think we happen to be in the right industry. That's certainly driving the growth. Our partnership with some of the key partners here. Partners like Dell, VMware, Nutanix, Arctic Wolf, Aerohive. You know, I think we've saddled up with the right horses there. And we've really got really a great team, on the sales side, but pre-sales engineering, post-sales engineering. So when you combine all of those factors together, it's led to some nice growth. I put some numbers up. Privately held companies don't usually share those numbers. We do like to share'em with our customers. And, you know, we're a $37 million company last year. We're going to be 47 plus this year and we feel like on our way to be a $100 million reseller by 2022. So it's real exciting. >> Well once again, congratulations on that and what's really interesting to watch is, you know, you started out selling Compellent. And Compellent got bought by Dell a few years back. Dell bought EMC. Those are some of the big inflection points in your business. And you've had some great insight on, you know, especially the things I've talked to you the last few years when we first met you at Dell World and through this transition of, you know, Dell going from just being Dell to being, you know, a bigger player in the enterprise market. They've now gone, as you said, VMware, all the hyperconverge, all of these tail winds for their growth have been part of what's been accelerating your growth. So give us the state of the state when it comes to Dell. How are they doing with the channel? How are they doing with the product, the solution, the innovation that Joe Batista talked about this morning? From Dell, how is that trickling down to you as a partner and, ultimately, your customers? >> Yeah, I mean, we first got involved with Dell back in 2011, as you referenced, when they acquired Compellent. We were concerned about it, at the time. We wondered how we could fit into the ecosystem of this, at the time, $60 billion company. Little did we know, it would be the best thing that ever happened to us, cause we were really, kind of, a boutique shop selling storage and now we've got the full line. And they've got the widest portfolio in the industry, you know, servers, storage, networking, hyperconverged solutions, obviously VMware. And so it's been a great relationship for us. You know, I think their relationship with the channel is good. I wouldn't call it simple. It is at times complex. They do about 40% of their business through the channel. You've got direct sellers out there that are very good that sometimes want to take the business direct, but you looked at the growth numbers that we have and we've accomplished that as a Dell-centric partner. So at the end of the day, and I think this is Michael's argument kind of to the partner community, is that we've been able to grow our business. Some companies will have a ceiling and say, okay all this business below a certain amount is partner business. You know, Dell doesn't have that. You have to kind of navigate your way through the system, but if you develop the kind of relationship that we have with them where there's some trust, they see our capabilities to, you know when you're driving 200 end users to an event like this, you know even large OEMs like Dell, take notice cause it's the ability to drive new logos for their business. So we think the relationship has been really good. I'd give'em, you know an A-. I'd say in terms of their portfolio, I'd give'em an A. In terms of the channel relationships, you know we have squabbles now and then, but in general, I think the relationship is very good. >> Well the thing we know in the industry is that there is no thing as perfect. >> Right. >> And that there needs to be change and growth along time and sounds like they're listening and working with you know, you, your peers in the industry to work that. I know there was a little bit of concern, you know when EMC came into the picture. You're in EMC's backyard here. >> Right. >> And there was some really big EMC channel partners and what would that mean to the companies that had been with Dell and it seems like you're navigating that quite well. >> Yeah, we've been able to find our niche in that ecosystem. You know it's, I'm not saying it's always been easy, but you know we're really starting to sell the PowerMaxes and Unitys and IBPAs and Isilon and getting away from just being that sort of, Compellent-centric partner. I think a couple of the benefits that came out of the merger, one is if you look at Dell's server business and I referenced this in my opening comments, over the last eight quarters they've taken six or seven points a share in the server market from their competitors, HP and Cisco. And that's really the result of the merger and having that additional sales bandwidth. So that's been fantastic for our business and for theirs. I think if you look, like at Dell end user compute, that was never a big part of our business. We kind of got into that over the last four or five years, really at the behest of the Dell sales team. And that's been a big win for us, surprisingly enough, particularly with the Windows 7 to 10 migration. Our end user compute business it through the roof. I gave our sales team too low of numbers on that, they're all about 160% of quota. (laughs) So going to have to fix that next year. >> All right well always tip to the sales rep, if you have a good plan (laughs) max it out because they will adjust it later. >> Exactly. Exactly, pay back is a you know what. (laughs) >> So Scott, one of the biggest changes I've seen in your business, in the last year is, you know you've been deep with Dell for many years. And with the Dell XC, which is the Nutanix OEM, is something that you were on early. You were a strong partner there, Nutanix. Still a strong partner, but today it is a mix of both the Dell XC and the VxRail from Dell EMC. So talk a little bit about, you know why that changed. How that's going, you know, how customers are seeing things these days? >> Yeah, I mean absolutely, we were on very early with Nutanix and we very much believe in their product and the software solution set that they've put together. I can remember Alan Atkinson, from Dell, standing up and saying, "This is our HCI solutions, could be Nutanix on Dell compute." And you know, we've got, you know 55+ really happy customers out there and we continue to sell that solution. And we've got a lot, very good customer satisfaction. That relationship's not going away. Despite what some people may say in the industry. The fact is they've got 35,000 units out there. There's a billion dollar pipeline of XC series. And there's a gentleman that runs the server business at Dell that wants to make sure that doesn't go away cause that's one of the reasons that Dell is doing so well in the server business. Now having said that, you know our take on it has been, hey let's have two of the best products in the industry in our quiver. That being XC series Nutanix and VxRail. You know initially when VxRail first came out, we didn't think that it had some of the capabilities that it needed and as it's evolved, we think that VxRail's gotten a lot better and it's a lot more competitive. Certainly in a VMware environment, a very strong player. And if you look at the numbers, they're doing very well with VxRail and so are we. So right now, we've got the one and two horse in the industry. We think it's great for us to be able to go our customers. We give our AEs and our SAs in the field the ability to evaluate the opportunity. What are the requirements of the customer and do we think that either XC series Nutanix or VxRail will be the better fit? And we feel like either way, it's a win for us and a win for the customer. >> So Scott, feedback we heard at Dell World is that, you know the Dell team is really trying to put their thumb on the scale. To really incent the field to sell VxRail. The XC is there, as you said. You know, Ashley and the server team, you know, they want to sell servers, but you know all things being equal, they're not equal. They want to sell the full Dell stack. So is there any of that that impacts what you're doing or you know pretty much from your standpoint, it's customer choice. We understand there's never one best solution out there and it is often differentiation in there. Obviously, one is only VMware. One has multi-hypervisor including a you know, built in hypervisor, there. There's definitely, it's tough to line these up and compare them. There are differences there, but what's the impact of kind of Dell's positioning and you know, what customers, how do they determine what to use? >> At the end of the day, the rubber meets the road at the customer. I mean we've got to, we always say within our company, we have to be aligned first with the customer. What do they want? What's the best fit for the customer? Now internally, inside the inside baseball, within of our what we say is we've got to grow both businesses. We've got to grow our Nutanix business, which we did significantly last year. And we have to grow our VxRail business, which we did. And that way we keep both groups happy. And we're able to offer a nice portfolio. So I think that's the best way to approach it. >> All right Scott, why don't I give you the final word, is this the 16th year of your event here? >> It's 16th year of the company, 15th year of the event. >> Okay. All right, so give us the final takeaway. I know you've got a lot of meetings. Got a lot of activity. >> Yeah. >> Give everybody the final takeaway from Transform. >> Well it's been a great event, thus far. We've got, you know more breakout sessions to go. We got the ballgame tonight. Chris Sales is on the mound, so that's always exciting. We got a lot of winning ball teams here in Boston, but for us it's just growth. More customers are here, more partners. We've got more going on in the hands on lab. Our expo hallway, there's more product there. More subject matter experts. You know we have a lot more going on in terms of security this year. With Arctic Wolf being here, our VP of PS, Matt Kozlowski's going to walk through a little cyber security case study. And so I think we're doing more on security. And certainly we've just got kind of more of all the solutions that we offer. And we're delighted to have an even bigger group here this year. So onward and upward, I guess, is the final word. >> All right, onward and upward. Scott, thank you so much again for sharing the updates on your company, as well as what's happening with all your users. And we always love those user stories. So, I've got a full day of coverage here at WTG Transform 2019. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching The Cube. (electronic music)

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts It's theCUBE, covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE media. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer 2019. We talk about virtualization, we talk about cloud computing. In this segment, we're going to talk about cyber security. Absolutely a hugely important to every user out there and if it's not hugely important to them today, I don't know I want to do business with 'em. Helping me to dig into this conversation-- >> (laughs) >> Is Matt Kozloski who's the Vice President of Professional Services at Winslow Technology Group. Matt, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Alright, so I set it up. >> You did. >> Cyber security. >> Yeah. >> You know, what I said, Matt, in my career, I remember back, you know, 15, 20 years ago, security would be top of mind, kind of bottom of budget. >> Yep. >> It got great lip service, but when you looked at the project, if you look what's going off, it was like, I didn't do it. Now, that security project that I've been putting off for years, it's a board level discussion, you know, everybody needs to be paying attention to it, so, there's got to be no better time to be in the cyber security business than today, right? >> Well, you would think. So I would say a lot of organizations are taking the right steps that they need to in their budgeting and preparing for, you know, incidents or protecting themselves, but a lot of organizations, still, are just not taking the right steps to protect themselves and their, you know, patients or just their organization's information. >> Yeah, it's challenging, 'cause they say while it gets more attention, there's huge-- >> Mhmm. >> Emphasis on it, many companies are doing it, boards do care about it. Dave Vellante, one of our hosts of theCUBE, something he said many times, he said, okay, do I feel more secure now than I did last year and, you know, we've been doing this program for nine years and every year it's like, oh my god, it seems scarier now than ever. >> Yeah, that's a great, yeah. I mean-- >> So, you know, how are we doing as an industry? >> Yeah, I think technology continues to get more complicated, which is part of it. Another part is just the way that technology's integrated into everyone's lives, whether it's their smartphone, their smartwatch, their, you know, smart everything now. And the software behind the scenes is just incredibly complicated, too. So, things are getting more complicated. We rely on it a lot more and it just gives more opportunity for, you know, hackers to do bad things. >> Yeah, so my background is in network-- >> Mhmm. >> And virtualization technology and it used to be, you know, you talk about security products. >> Yeah. >> It was like, oh well, I've got the firewall-- >> Yeah, the thing. >> Or I've got something in, you know, the virtualization layer-- >> Yeah. >> That does things. I heard, the line that I hear that resonates with me is security is everyone's responsibility. >> Sure. >> And where does it go? The answer is yes, everywhere. >> Yeah. >> And everything from, it can go down to the chip level to absolutely at the application level and everywhere in between, but boy, that sounds complicated. >> It is. >> So, is it, you know, I need to have a security practice more than buying security products and security mindset. Is that what you hear and what you recommend to clients? >> Yeah, it's a practice or program. So you have to think of cyber security as that, like a program. It's about people, policies, the technology in place. I mean, one of the, you know, most common ways that malware gets into organizations is through a phishing attack. That's all social engineering. That's not exactly the most high tech thing around, right? So, there's an example of it on the people angle. >> Okay, so Matt, tell us a little bit about your background, you know, what you've been doing and maybe explain, so Winslow Technology Group, we're familiar, hopefully people have watched some of the videos we've done because they, you know, offer products that are made by other people-- >> Yes, yes, yeah. >> So you know, Dell, VMware and the like, Nutanix-- >> Yep. >> And things like that. So tell us your background and what, say how security fits into that. >> Sure, so my background is in supporting enterprise, you know, environments in the past and then I became, you know, a consultant and now at Winslow. Winslow, yes, is a reseller of products, but we also do services, which is kind of my role there too. So, in a way, the services is Winslow's product. >> Right. Yeah, absolutely. So, is it consulting, is it, you know, helping to bring in various products? >> Yeah. >> Is it doing, you know, a comprehensive analysis? >> It's all of those things. >> Yeah. >> So it's the comprehensive analyis, that's usually where things start, where we do a gap assessment and we figure out, like, hey, even if you're not HIPAA regulated or fall under PCI complaince, maybe you just want to look at NIST as a framework to start with. That's a government standard for cyber security, right? So we can do a gap assessment against that and then figure out, well you're deficit in awareness training or, you know, that firewall is not effective for what you need it to do, things along those lines. >> Okay, so you know, I mentioned earlier, security can be lots of places. Is this a holistic approach do you have? Are you, you know, data center, SAS, public cloud, all of the above, everything in between? >> I think all of the above. >> Yeah. >> It really starts with security as a philosophy and a way of doing things and then figuring out how that pipes down to the individual app components and infrastructure component. >> So, you know, I hear statements sometimes that it's, you know, it's not a question of if you will be hacked, but it's usually how soon you'll find out that you have been hacked. >> (laughs) Yeah. >> Is it that dire, I mean, I feel like the weather is, you know, appropriate for what we have today. There's fog rolling in, the rain is pouring, there's no sunshine here, you know, give us some sunlight in-- >> Yeah. >> How we can disinfect, you know, some of these challenges. You know, what are we doing well-- >> Yeah, people are doing well in that they're actually talking about it now. I do see a lot of people doing things like awareness training and it's actually really become part of what people consider, even in, like, mergers and acquisitions, right up front, people are asking, like, are they secure? How about we don't just connect their networks together and hope for the best, right? There's firewalls put in and even here today at VTUG, you see a lot about microsegmentation and what we're doing to containerize apps and secure, you know, software and applications from each other and, you know, have like, almost a zero trust policy on the inside of the network too, not just on the perimeter. >> Well, that's great, 'cause yeah. You know, I think back, you know, five years ago it was, the general conversation was, oh wait, I shouldn't do public cloud because it's not secure and now it's like, look, we understand. In many cases, public cloud is more secure-- >> Way more secure, sure. >> And many times just 'cause they update things. >> Yeah. >> You know, much more often. They have thousands of people focused and working on it as opposed to, how many people do you have-- >> Exactly. >> Maintaining and watching your environment. >> Yep, mhmm. >> So yeah, maybe, what are some of the hot segments? You brought up, you know, containerization-- >> Yeah. >> You know I remember, you know, can containers be secure? I have gone to, you know, the Docker Kan show, the group entities show and it seems like it's still a major issue, just shove it all into the-- >> Yes, yeah. In some ways too, I wonder if we're creating a problem in certain circumstances that way too because now we're giving more power and more scale in different ways that, and it just could be used in different ways that we didn't intend, I guess, right? I think in terms of segments, though, where we see, like, the cloud adoption. One example is in medical space, right? So medical records are incredibly important. When you think back to, you know, there's a server in the closet that the private practice I go to, my PCP's office, you're like, how are you securing that? Like, you're doctors, you know, you're good at keeping me alive, but what's going on there? A lot of private practices, just an an example, have actually migrated to cloud-based systems for patient management and I personally feel like that's more secure because doctors, in that case, can focus on what they're good at and they've offloaded, not necessarily all the risk, but a lot of the care and feeding and like, all of the security to people who know what they're doing and they're good at it, so that's like, an example. >> Matt, Matt, have you talked to doctors? They know how to do this. >> (laughs) >> Absolutely. They totally understand and have taken every, you know, thing to make sure that that absolutely is true-- >> (laughs) >> But, yeah maybe sometimes they understand that bringing in an expert that focuses on that more than the, you know, one hour every couple of months. >> (laughs) >> Would be there. >> Yeah. >> So, good to hear. What then, what would you like to see from the vendor ecosystem out there to, you know, is there more training, is it, you know, improvement of the products? >> I'd like to see some standardizations around the way products work with each other a little bit more. I mean, I think like, you know, you have vendor A, vendor B, vendor C, creating all these really great products and there's a lot going on from, you know, network monitoring and like, deep analysis to different technologies on the endpoints themselves, so like, traditional malware isn't, I mean it's a thing, but we're talking about more advanced protection, but really, like a framework for all of these products to talk to each other, 'cause that would, you know, allow, you know, cyber security consultants and engineers to really see all of this without being locked in to some proprietary system as well. >> Yeah, ransomware's been, you know, a hot topic the last couple of years. Are we getting a good handle on that? >> The studies that I've read recently say that it's relatively leveling off. So it's not necessarily getting any worse, but it's not getting an better either, so yeah. >> Excellent, so what you're saying is, you will not be put out of a job anytime soon, right? >> No. (laughs) >> Alright, want to give you the final word, Matt, you know, 2019, you know, what's interesting you, what are some of the, you know, top initiatives that your customers are going to have going forward? >> Yeah, so just in cyber security in general, just putting these programs together, doing the assessments they need. Enterprise customers are really interested in containers, we talked about that a little bit. So, me this year, I want to do a little more, you know, investigation and figuring out, like, cyber security as it relates to containers and how enterprise environments can secure the containerized apps. >> Alright well, Matt, really appreciate you-- >> Thank you. >> Helping bring us up to speed on some of the state of cyber security here at 2019 and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of VTUG Winter Warmer 2019 here from Gillette Stadium, home of the AFC Championship New England Pariots, going off to Super Bowl LIII in just a week. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group you're watching the cubes coverage of wtg transform 2018 happy to welcome back to the program fresh off the keynotes page where he discussed the specter of clouds Rick Cowan who is the chief technology officer of window technology group Rick great to talk to you thanks for having me - all right yeah thank you for having us here so we're talking about this whole cloud thing and you and I've been talking about this for a couple of years gives it gives your viewpoint you talked a lot of customers we can talk about architecture but you know the average customer when they hear you know cloud you know there's some puffy things up in the sky but you know what what does it mean to them sure yeah so I think one of the things that we're advocating as it relates to sort of starting that cloud journey is to do some homework ahead of time make data-driven decisions and we don't want you as our you know customer base to get into a situation where you're kind of backed into a corner right where you move something you decide you need to bring it back or or or anything like that so we're a big advocate of you know running some analytics and making some intelligent decisions you know try and start with that low-hanging fruit where you can kind of ease your way in and and the stuff that doesn't require re-platforming and you know get your toes toes in the sand a little bit before you wade all the way out there yes so if I step back for a second just immersed and point one of the things I liked in your keynote is so many times we think about technology it's like oh well it's a new server or it's you know something I swipe a credit card and I go using the cloud cloud really we need to think about the operating knowledge as it's the policies and the people that are as important if not more important than the okay what's the pipe price per CPU and things like that right right yeah yeah and one of the things that we talk about a lot is that when we're talking about cloud we're not talking about a place we're not talking about who owns it we're not talking about any particular public cloud provider we're talking about a way of doing business a way of bringing your services to your internal customers and a way of kind of transforming your IT infrastructure to more efficiently consume those resources right and that's that's a change in operating model that's a change in sort of way of thinking not just from you know this whole cloud thing but also towards delivering IT more as a service yeah and you spent a lot of time talking about applications which I really like because I'm an infrastructure guy by background when we talked about virtualization when we talked about converge and hyper-converged a lot of times we're talking about you know boxes and cabling and networking and things like that the role of infrastructure is are on my application they're all the applications to run my business right that's the big theme we've been hearing for years is you know IT your role isn't to be this thing off on the side and it's not necessary you know dollars in headcount and all that are important but if you don't serve the ultimate business and what they need to do to keep us running we're all out of business right yeah this whole transformation is all about aligning right those business requirements with IT and starting to deliver services that are tailored towards what the business needs as opposed to what I can offer what my capabilities are right those need to be more in synced and that's what this whole operating model is all about right is aligning those services to the business and and creating the infrastructure so that the business can consume it more easily yeah and you gave some really good pointers I want you to give us the you know your customers because when I heard things like oh well you know let's say I'm using a public cloud well I need to understand how availability zones work and how I spread things out which you know if I'm used to you know H a on VMware or you know your hypervisor Troy some of those things I got used to it because things work they were built for the enterprise now it's you know well it's distributed but you need to think about things from that application level a little bit more right yeah and so that's something that we're trying to educate our customer base on is as we move forward and as we start to move workloads into various you know clouds public/private what-have-you we have to start considering some of those availability aspects that today we don't even think about right almost everybody who is still sitting in that traditional infrastructure they're all having their availability provided probably at the hardware level they have you know multiple controllers and clusters and all this stuff so they put a they drop an application into their environment and it's already gonna have pretty good availability when we as we move forward we have to start pushing that availability up the stack and thinking about it more at the application level and so when we're deploying workloads into different cloud environments we may be sponsible for providing our own high availability and that's something that in some cases requires a fair amount of expertise to to you know get that architecture right so that we do have the same level of high availability out in these cloud environments that we have in our on-prem infrastructure all right so Rick inside your customers you know who are the people you're talking to that kind of get this you know we lived through the transformation of like well you know the storage guy was doing this thing we need to kind of have the virtualization person own more you know cloud architect has been a title that's been you know expanding quite a lot over the last few years who are you getting at the table who's making these architectural decisions when you're working with your users yeah so we feel like it's something that we have to get the entire team on board with it's something where it might be an initiative that we start to address with the CIOs and the IT directors but it's important to get the entire organization's IT staff on board with the transition because each one is going to have a part to play and in sort of moving forward into that IT as a service sort of an organization great so you know when it looked at some of the things that wtg is doing you know obviously you know Dell EMC Nutanix VMware your biggest partners you know what's what's kind of you know the the big you know big push team today from the majority your customers and what are some of the you know more advanced customers getting excited about yeah so I think you know you listed off those those partners and when we look at them a common theme there is adding this built-in sort of cloud interoperability connectivity and feature set so when we're thinking about all the characteristics that we look for in a cloud operating model we're seeing things like self-service portals things like you know the ability to measure multiple tenants and things like this and so what we're seeing across all those partners is more and more of those features come as parts of the infrastructure solutions and that's reducing the burden on our customers to be able to deploy something that you know operates in that cloud sort of IT as a service offering and so you know some of these customers are getting really excited about that capability to write out-of-the-box deploy a self-service portal deliver these these capabilities straight to their in colonel customers without having to do a bunch of development or or you know build complicated systems to deliver them so it's a self-service portals it's the built-in cloud connectivity to be able to archive things and and send dr out to you know third-party service providers so those are some of the things that our customers who are on this journey and you know maybe they started last year the year before they're moving forward those are the sorts of things that they're starting to point out you know one of the big challenges when we talk about this rather dispersed world we're moving towards you spend some time talking about SAS absolutely SAS is the biggest piece of you know if you call public cloud some of it doesn't live in one of the big clouds or can live lots of places data right data protection a security are something that no matter where I go I need to worry about that it's there's there's no way actually in your definition you're like oh if I do SAS I don't need to worry about the data no no no great - well I think you took somebody's slide there but you know there are some people that mistakingly oh well I ran on a pass I don't need to worry about security no you do containers any of these things data protection my data and you know security I need to worry about that everywhere and that brings a whole new set of challenges yeah and and you know so you make a good point because on for example I'm a security side of things it's continues to be just as much of a concern as it ever was but it's an entirely different way to think about it you know likewise with data protection it's just as important as it ever was but it's an entirely different way to think about one of the things though that I thought was really interesting about security is that when I'm talking to these CIOs and IT directors across our customer base in the past you know if I go back rewind this thing three years they would say I can't go to the cloud because of security right now we're you know were a little bit more mature and in our cloud understanding and and starting to you know transform a little bit and they now that lists that as one of the reasons they want to move to the cloud and I think that was one of the most startling sort of realizations as that shift in my chair yeah absolutely we actually did did some surveys there was a big survey we were attached with called the future of cloud computing and you're right if I hadn't dipped my toe in I was worried about it but once I got there I realized I kind of looked in sighed and said oh my gosh what did I be doing interesting analogy I've paired sometimes is you know the autonomous vehicles and things like that I'm worried about this self-driving or even the braking or things like that that challenging have you looked at most drivers most people you know oh my gosh they're checking their tax they're you know doing all sorts of stuff there it is a bit of a mind flip as done how you think of these things doesn't mean it changes overnight or that there's there's never a silver bullet night day but you know it's some of these viewpoints that we need to change and think a little differently yeah yeah I think that's a great analogy I'm probably SD laughs all right Rick what's exciting you these days your CTO you know you're here there's you know Boston area love if you've got you know anything about you know cool things in the area or just cool tech in general yeah I think you know and and I dressed a lot of this in my keynote earlier today but I'm really high on an analytical approach to a hybrid cloud I want to start to get customers thinking about you know how we can make this a transition as opposed to a you know just jump in right in the deep end it doesn't have to be this this big jarring event as we sort of transform this is something where we can take baby steps and and start to move ourselves forward and so you know we're getting really excited about those technologies that allow us to integrate our existing infrastructure with various other you know cloud services whether they be you know platforms infrastructure and software offerings things that allow us to take the investments that we already have and you know sort of integrate and make use of these cloud services that we know can deliver value to our organization that's what we're most excited about is you know getting more out of what we have yeah you mentioned analytics I mean here in Boston you had in the opening video there was some of the I think it's the Boston Dynamics robots you know right across the river here yeah in the area when I talk to people like in the storage world we talk about intelligence but their eyes light up because we've been talking about intelligence storage for decades but no really now that with all the cool technologies yet we can really put this in here and it's not about you know getting rid of the admins it about really supercharging and be able to deal with you know we've got way more data we've got way more devices we've got way more things I'm going to have to do so you know we need some help with all of these machines to be able to pair the machines with the people to make them do their jobs better yep yep couldn't agree more all right we're going pleasure to catch up with you and thanks again thanks so much for having us here be sure to check out the cube net for all of the content here and all the shows will be back with lots more coverage thanks for watching the Q

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group hi I'm Stu minimun and this is the second year of the cube at what is now wtg transform 2018 and happy to welcome to the program Scott Winslow who is the president and founder of winslet Technology Group Scott always great to see you good afternoon still happy to be with you hey and Scott thank you so much you you not only brought us back a second year we've got a nice table here but I'm not tripping over myself saying that it's the you know 14th anniversary Winslow technology group Dell EMC user conference and lovely Boston Massachusetts in the background it was like ha it's literally wtg transform rolls off the tongue so thank you you were the inspiration for us to you your comments last year precipitated to change our name III know your team just looked at it and felt sorry for me because it didn't roll off the tongue quite as easily as as the new it was a mouthful yeah so Scott you and I did we bump into each other a bunch we'd say we tend to go to many of the shows the Dell show the Nutanix show let's talk about your show first here you said it is the 14th year its users one of the reasons Idol of coming here besides getting to talk to you and Rick and some of your partner's is users I will speak to more users in one day here than I do it some of the big shows I go to yeah I mean it's it's a great opportunity to thank our existing customer base you know we have a fourfold purpose for this event we like to educate our customers we hope that they can pick up some knowledge and maybe an aha moment that they have with they're looking at a hyper-converged solutions or all-flash solutions we've got a new Dell client display here this year that we've never had in the past so we're looking to educate we love to give them an opportunity to collaborate with other practitioners to compare notes the feedback I get from them is they really enjoy that piece of it we want to have some fun and you know it's a tradition that we want to keep rolling and they're helping you know to make it very successful so it's been a great it's been a great venue for us and a great event for so over 14 years now and Scott you couldn't have ordered a better day I mean New England you know it might change in an hour but right now temperatures in the low 70s it's mostly clear you know gorgeous backdrop here as you mentioned in the you open you know Sox have their ace pitching tonight and there are still in first place so yeah it doesn't doesn't hurt well you know we're in the customer service business right so you have to think of everything temperature starting pitcher and you know we try to make sure we've got a good agenda and there's a lot of good information for them here there to get customers to come out and spend a day with you like this is why there's a great event has going to be so biggest because year after year after year I feel like we've delivered and then we have kind of a continuous improvement process and we try to improve it every year here we are Scott one talk about your business you know first time we met you know winslet technology was one of the it was it was the Dell Partner of the year so you know been a long time dell partner the dell you know acquisition merger with emc it's been interesting to watch i know you've got some viewpoints but before we get into kind of the dell piece of it talk about your business as you know because we call you a channel partner and they're you know what's driving your business how's growth going how are things up here in new england and Beyond because yeah you're much more than New England yeah I mean well we've certainly evolved our business over the years with acquisitions being a big part of that initially we started out as a compelling partner then Compellent was acquired by Dell and then you know five or six years later after that we've the Delhi you see consolidation so I think we've had to learn to be flexible and and one of the things we've seen with that is we just each time there was an acquisition it allowed us to increase the size of our portfolio with more solutions that we can offer our end-users more services that we can provide you know along the way we've added a lot of other solutions too like the Nutanix solution and the hyper-converged space so our business is going great we're you know the highest employee count we've ever had our revenues were as high as they've ever been last year we had a record q3 record q4 in q1 we grew our Dell business by over 30% that makes Dell very happy and makes us very happy as well so you know as as this whole industry evolves and you know the digital economy progresses there continue to be the need for the services that we provide all right so let's talk about Dallas you said you've come from the compelling piece the the delicacy which the Nutanix OEM is something that I know your team is you know very involved with you know how is Dell and LEM see how they do and for the channel these days I think they're doing very well I think they you know tell likes to save they big ears and they listen well I think that they have proven that they put together a very good channel a partner program under the leadership of John Byrne initially and now Joyce Mullen you know I think that they incent you to work with them they try to incent the salespeople and sent the companies but they also put together very good programs for you to run marketing events like this so an event like this we couldn't do it without the support of Dell technologies and they've been you know very supportive of us you know they're providing speakers like Dave singer you've got all kinds of subject matter experts here we've got lots of hardware and software for folks through you know demo so I think I think overall the partner programs been very good great in Nutanix is this a you you get it through the Dell so I'm curious has it has the move as Nutanix is shifting more to really that software model does that have any impact on on your business or are you isolated from that since you've been using the Dell xcs yeah well I mean first of all we've been involved in Nutanix for you know three plus years now right before Dell acquired EMC our hyper-converged solution was Nutanix we've built together you know a very nice base with customers many of whom you know are here today so as they evolve to a software model I do think they're going to be less concerned about what or where platform it goes on because they're truly creating all their revenues you know from the software side so they're very they're they don't care really what you know what hardware platform is being used so you know we feel like we've got the best two solutions in the hyper-converged marketplace between the portfolio of Dell solutions you know visa and VX rail vce and then Nutanix with the Nutanix solution typically with Nutanix we tend to put that on a Dell server platform that's where we lean we think Dells got the best server technology in the industry that's a nice way for us to bridge that gap between the two companies so a lot of times our customers are putting a new tannic solution on a dell platform you know key themes I heard your talk rick's talk david singers talk this morning and what i hear from customers digital transformation and hybrid cloud are those top of mine with your customers today absolutely yeah I think you know Rick alluded to it in his talk a lot of customers are coming to us saying hey help us with our cloud strategy and so we're going in and saying tell us about your applications you know these are applications that we think belong in the public cloud that makes sense and the public cloud and you know that could be disaster recovery could be backup it could be office 365 and these are other applications that we think might be more well suited for an on-premise solution so that could be active file transfer and so you know we think that leads naturally to a hybrid cloud discussion we've got a customer here today a financial customer from New Hampshire and their CIO called me I had known him previously at a famous sneaker company in town he went to a financial institution and he said hey we wanna we want to move everything to the cloud can you come up and consult with us on that and we ended up putting in a hybrid cloud for him you know featuring a hyper-converged solution that had the cloud integration that he needed so I think that's the kind of activity we're involved in today yeah you use the word conversation that and the customers I've talked to they like they they need advice and they want someone that's not just oh well here's the solution that you're going to buy it no no it's a conversation there's lots of decision points and as you build out that hybrid cloud yes it's going to be made of by definition multiple pieces it's not necessarily going to be one company that's going to do it all but you know your team helps them that journey absolutely I mean you can't go in with a cookie cutter approach at sea you know you've got two years in one mouth we tell other salespeople you got to use them in that portion so you really kind of listen to the customer as I said try to understand what their applications are you got to understand what their biases are if it's a Microsoft shop you know as your might be their choice for you know public cloud or they might be interested in AWS so you got to kind of work through those you know scenarios and then build out a solution that's gonna work for them we and we rely on our solutions architects Brian veenu runs our sa team and he's got a group of five essays that we think are very adept at you know putting those solutions together yeah Brian's actually not not far from I said here you've got the new hands-on lab is one of the new things that you added here and anything from that or from other things at the event that you won't want to highlight as we wrap yeah I think I mean the hands-on lab gives you know customers the opportunity to come in and play with kind of structured and scripted demos and I see a number of customers in there using that so I'll talk to our team after the event and find out how it went we always try to look for you know improvements along the way but you know there's opportunity in there to play with those demos in terms of storage in terms of hyper-converged in terms of Dell OpenManage essentials which is the software that manages your entire server farm so I think that's been a good addition I'd say the other addition is this year is we were planning it we said hey our people are really good we need to get our people up in front instead of relying so much on the OEM and they're great and they provide great resources but I know that our people have so much to offer as well particularly because you know we're out there you know you're putting solutions together for customers and I think that breadth and depth you know comes through so that's been a nice addition this year where it's not just been Rick out on myself but we've utilized a number of members on our team Ed Palmer is the moderator for a customer experience as an outcome session this afternoon that we're really excited about because at the end of the day is a solution provider that's our job is to produce results and outcomes for our customers that's how we're going to be judged that's how we want to be judged so I'm really excited about that session because we've got em privada and Boston Architectural College they're going to present up their respective deployments and they were different of hyper-converged technology so I think the voice of the customer we really want to make sure we're continue to bring that back to this event so well Scott always a pleasure to see you thanks so much for taking the cube back to this event and thank you for all the customers we get access to we always loved to talk to the customers by the way if you're looking to get a customer on the cube that's we were always looking for customers so we look at the events or we do have a Boston area studio and a lovely Palo Alto studio so reach out to the team be happy to talk mom's to minimun thanks so much for watching the Q

>> I'm Stu Miniman With The Cube. Joined here by Ed Palmer who's the COO of Winslow Technology Group. We're at their Dell EMC User Group. Ed Thanks so much for joining me. >> Thank you. >> Alright so Ed, we talked to Scott earlier and Scott gave us a lot on the history of the company. You recently joined Winslow Technology Group, >> I did >> but you have history with Scott. So, tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you over to WTG. >> Sure, so as Scott may have told you we worked together earlier in our career and I was a System Engineer. He was the Account Exec. We worked very effectively together. And we've reunited later in our careers. >> Alright and tell us a little bit about your role as a COO. You were an SE, I believe that's a part of what you have in your work. >> Yes So, the way we've defined my role. I have responsibility for sales operations, for professional services, solutions architecture, and marketing. >> Alright, so luckily things aren't changin' that much in the industry at all. Wait do you know, do the companies you're working with they haven't open acquired since you came on board right? So what is this, the pace of change and the breadth and depth of what's happening in the industry, how does that impact your organization? >> Great question. So Obviously the industry is changing all the time. It's a very dynamic industry. And obviously that has an impact on our operational effectiveness. So one of the things I'm interested in is how do we streamline operations? How do we work more effectively with our partners? How do we fully maximize the partner programs and fully leverage all of the eccentrics? >> Yeah, gosh, I have to think. We were talking to Jeremy Burton earlier and said you know you don't want to do five year planning. You can maybe do two year planning. And really it needs to be much more on a granular level. Every company they're dealing with they have different financial years. Their incentive plans change all the time. What's kind of the north star for your team? How do they make sure they kind of have a steady push on things but are flexible and can act with the changes that happen? >> Sure. So let me start by saying the Winslow Team has experienced phenomenal growth over the past three to five years. And we're looking to continuing to extend that growth over the next three to five years. What we do is we put together business plans and we put together plans by partner. And to your point, those plans are forward looking, but they're also broken out by quarter. So we're actually quarterly driven and we drive our demand generation activities around those plans. >> Alright Ed, talk about the skill set and how do you keep up with training for the organization? >> That's a great question. So as a Dell EMC Titanium Partner, it is quite a challenge to keep up with all of the training certification requirements. We actually got a jump on it earlier this year and we've defined our entire training plan for the year. In fact, I would say we're about 80% complete with those plans. They do require a lot of time, but they're important to maintaining titanium level. >> Yeah, So, there's the requirements that you have from your partners, but then, Winslow Technology Group usually is pretty early on a lot of technologies. Scott in his opening remarks this morning, talked about Compellent, Hyper-Converged, Hybrid Cloud, being some of the early edges. How does your organization play a part of that and how do you kind of do the communication with the field and the customers to know not only what to jump on but how to get your whole team embracing and pushing those items? >> Sure. So what we like to say is we are not trying to be all things to all customers. And I would say we are differentiated with our approach. So what we look to do is define game-changing technologies. You may have heard Scott talk about that. And what we look to do is provide deep expertise in those technologies. So that drives our training certification plan and we're looking to fully develop our Pre-sales Solution Architects and Post-Sales Professional Services Consultants to be experts in those technologies. >> Alright and I'm curious Ed, What's your hiring plan like? Where do you find good people? How do you maintain and keep some great people? >> Sure. Most of it, quite frankly, is through word of mouth through our employees. And I would say the majority of our employee base are through referrals. So that's typically how we're finding great people. >> Alright. We've talked earlier about how there's no shortage of change going on there. What's exciting you about what's happening in the industry and anything that concerns you about what's happening? >> Well we've talked about the dynamic nature of the industry, the constant change. I think what's really exciting is the whole move to Hyper-Converged. We've seen a lot of interest in Hyper-Converged Solutions. The move to Cloud obviously. We've seen a lot of interest in point technologies like software-defined data center, software-defined networking, and I think what's exciting for us is working with our breadth of partners to really understand how those technologies and solutions address the business needs of our customers. >> Alright, Ed want to give you the final word. What were you hoping to gain and when you come into this event and as you look at the customers, what are you hoping that they take away from this event? >> Sure, for me personally, this is my first Winslow Users Group Event. I think it's phenomenal. And I think for our customers it's an opportunity to be exposed to the technology, to ask questions of our subject matter experts, and I think come away from the event thinking about how the technology can be implemented in their environment to maximize their business. >> Alright, well, Ed Palmer, welcome to your first event. It's our first time here. Thank you so much for having us. We'll be back with more coverage here from the WTG Dell EMC User Group. You're watching The Cube.

(loud click) >> I'm Stu Miniman and this theCUBE and we're here at The Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Group. Happen to have with us Rick Gouin, who is the CTO of WTG. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> Alright, tell us a little bit about, as CTO of really a channel partner for a lot of technology vendors, we talked to Scott earlier about the solutions that you help put together, what's your role inside the organization, how long you've been there, what's your background? >> Sure, so I started at the Winslow Technology Group four years ago, at this event, actually. Prior to joining Winslow, I was at Dell, as a Enterprise Technologist. Came to Dell via Compellent, and prior to that, I was on the customer side, a technology director at a large insurance company down in Hartford. >> Okay, so obviously, Winslow Technology Group started very much with Compellent, has gone through the maturations of Compellent into Dell, Dell now into EMC, so, tell us a little bit about your role, what kind of things do you look at to help pick what technologies and expansion that you go into with the organization. >> So, obviously, Dell has a very broad portfolio and there's just not enough technology expertise to know everything about everything, so we have to spend a good amount of time keeping an eye on the market and sort of focusing in our resources on what we want to gain expertise in and what we want to really bring to our customers. So it's a lot about where we feel like these different market spaces are moving and we deal with a relatively specific segment in that our customers fall into a couple of different profiles and we really have that in mind when we're looking at the various technologies. We're really trying to picture this group of people that's here, and what do we think they would get excited about? >> So we're in an interesting state of the industry today. On the one hand, there's no shortage of challenges for storage. Storage is always one of those things that we need expertise, we need to fix things, yet on the other hand, companies want simplicity. They don't want to think about it, I'm deploying hyper-converged or cloud environments where storage is in there, so how do you look at that especially with your background and WTG's background, as it fits in the entire picture? >> Yeah, so coming from Compellent myself, and coming from a strong Compellent reseller, we're obviously a little bit biased when it comes to storage. With that said, as we continue to talk to different customers and they come to these inflection points where they've got to make a decision about refreshing a traditional storage environment versus taking a look at a hyper-converged environment, we're finding more and more customers are willing to take that chance on a hyper-converged environment and like you mentioned, a lot of it comes down to the simplicity. A lot of it comes down to a specific skill set that they see you have to have for a storage environment that you might be able to not worry about anymore when you go to a hyper-converge environment. >> Storage has always been not only complicated at the individual level, but you look at a company like Dell and they've got a portfolio, and it's because no one solution can fit everywhere. There's price points, there's scalability, there's featured functionality. How do you look at where we are in the market today, how do you help simplify that portfolio beyond just kind of HCI? >> Yep, and you've really pinpointed I think a big part of the value we provide to our end customers, cause you see this huge, broad portfolio, lot of different things that do the same thing, and so we really try to guide that decision-making process in a couple of different ways. We think that, like you mentioned, there's a different fit, all of these different technologies have their place, no one is right for everyone, and there's room for all of them. We don't think hyper-converge is going to completely replace midrange storage, we think that there's room for both, different customers are going to want different things. A lot of the decision making comes down to one, where are they in their life cycle of the gear they have? Switching platforms, say, to hyper-converge requires replacing perhaps some storage, perhaps some servers. Where are they in their depreciation cycle? Are those things least assets? All those different things really come into play, so it's not always a purely technical discussion. There's a lot of different things that factor in. But we feel like, every time it makes sense to look at all the options, and a vendor like us, like partnered with Dell, we can provide a solution in the traditional infrastructure, that you're used to using today. We can give you the pricing for it, and what the implementation would look like, and then we can give you the same thing on a hyper-converge infrastructure. Tell you how the implementation would go, let you compare those costs, talk about the pros and the cons, and then you can make a really informed decision. And we feel like, without taking a look at both, and doing some actual metrics-based analysis of the two options, you're not going to be able to make an informed decision. >> Rick, over the last decade or so, virtualization has really been one of those waves that's driven a lot of the technology discussions we have. It feels like, well, of course Vmware and virtualization are by no means going away. The new wave of cloud in all of its forms, there's containerization, all of these new things kind of bringing on this next generation. What's exciting you and what as a CTO do you look at and say, "Oh, boy. Here we go again! "We're going to have to go fix all these problems "like we did last time?" >> So two things you said really jumped out at me. First, I hear from a lot of my customers a push to get everything into the cloud. At the same time, I'm starting to see the other end of that curve with things coming back in. I think a lot of our customers are finding a sweet spot in hybrid cloud solutions, whether we've got an on-prem component coupled with some cloud storage, or some off-prem components. We think that's the sweet spot, and that really allows us to take advantage of the key...really, the key thing for cloud infrastructures is that elasticity, right? It allows us to put our elastic workloads out there, and then once they settle down into a predictable sort of state, we can bring them back on-prem, where we really want them, anyway. So, we think, we see a lot of our customers settling down into a hybrid sort of scenario. Luckily, whether it's Dell Nutanix, VxRail, they've all got great solutions for on-prem coupled with off-prem stuff. The other thing that's really interesting to me is these alternate hypervisors. I love seeing the adoption of options, I think we've seen a marketplace that has been dominated by an 800 pound gorilla for a long time, and it's a great, super powerful portfolio, basically ubiquitous. I love seeing a couple different options that can bring some actual different business value and making customers think about, maybe I don't just go status quo here, here's an opportunity to maybe do something a little different. >> Rick, really appreciate you sharing with us everything going on in your environment and we'll be back with more coverage here from the WTG Dell EMC User Group event. You're watching theCUBE. (loud click)

>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, with theCUBE, and we're here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Group, and happy to have on the program multi-time guest of theCUBE, Scott Winslow, who is the president and founder of Winslow Technology Group. Scott, thanks so much for having us here. >> Good to be here, Stu, good afternoon. >> Alright, so, you opened up the event here, I think you've said you got between 150 and 175 users, and, if I remember right, your first user event was actually here, and it was like, what, eight users? So, you know, great location here in Boston, you know, Fenway right behind. You're taking your users to the game. Tell us a little bit about the history of the company, and this event. >> Yeah, when we started the user group 13 years ago, it was here at the Hotel Commonwealth, and it's been a great venue for us. Really it started with eight customers around a conference room table, we had Marty Sanders, the CTO from Compellent, Phil Soran, one of my mentors is the CEO of Compellent and founder, and I think we were talking about, how do we improve the GUI on the Enterprise manager for Compellent, and that was how it started, and kind of last minute, we decided to go to a ball game afterwards, and that was kind of the roots of this event, but you know, it's changed over the 13 or 14 years, but we try to provide really good education for our customers, give them some things to think about in their infrastructure and their environments, we try to be a thought-leader, and it's kind of evolved around that theme for the last 13 or 14 years. Obviously a lot bigger now than it was. We've grown up; the challenge for us is how do we continue to have our customers have a white-glove experience, as we continue to grow, but we're really excited about, where Compellent took us to Dell, and Dell led us to Dell EMC, and you know, here we are. >> Yeah, so, Compellent to Dell, Dell to Dell EMC, and we're still talking to the storage industry about making their user interfaces better, right? >> (laughs) We are, we are. Well, I mean, we are in one sense, but in another sense is you move into hyper-converged, you know, that really is kind of the backdrop for that story, right? Because, as you get into hyper-converged infrastructures, you're talking about, you know, one-click upgrades of server storage networking hypervisor, so I think it really is kind of a good backdrop, and we've seen that evolve over the years. >> Yes, Scott, when I look at your portfolio, it started out very much storage, you now have server storage network hyper-converged, the PC and mobile cloud, you know, how many people do you have in the company now, and how do you manage that kind of change and expanse of your portfolio without getting a mild wide and an inch deep? >> Yeah, we've got 37 people in the company now, so we've added six this year already. I think we try not to go too wide in terms of number of vendors. We've tried to focus on a few key strategic partners, so for us that's, you know, Dell EMC, it's Nutanix, it's VMware, and try to really specialize in those areas. We think customers are looking for a partner that's got deep technical expertise, really good sales acumen. I guess a fair criticism of us would be, "you don't go wide enough, you're not partnered "with Cisco or HP," but we'll accept that. We think it's led to 35% growth over the last three years, and we think it's been a good strategy for us. >> Yeah, no, strong growth absolutely. What are you hearing from your users, you know, how much does this digital transformation, pulling them along, and driving them to kind of that breadth of solutions that you're offering? >> Yeah, I mean we're having conversations with them every day, and in the conversation, often times, is do we continue kind of down the path we've been? We're very comfortable with a 3-2-1 solution, for us, a lot of times that's a Dell server, Dell networking, Dell Compellent, we're very comfortable providing that, but you know, as they look and say, "Hey, we built this wonderful car, but it's probably "going to run out of gas at some point," do we move into more of a hyper-converged solution? Do we look at, you know, a cloud solution? And, you know, how do they continue to evolve their environments? And that's provided a great role for us to consult with them, in that regard. >> Yeah, all of your partners, Dell, Nutanix, VMware, all trying to figure out how they live in kind of this hybrid or multi-cloud world. How are your partners doing, what you as kind of the voice of the customer, do you want to see from them to kind of mature these solutions even further? >> Well, I think we've seen it already, if you think about like at .NEXT, you know, Nutanix announces cloud integration with Google, I think we're looking for solutions where we can provide a really good on-prem solution for some of the data, but then you have to have the ability to go off-prem and have cloud integration, and if I look at Nutanix, Dell EMC, VMware, I think they're providing that. If you look at, like, an NSX solution from VMware, for example, you know, we've seen the virtualization of, with VMware we've seen the virtualization of storage with products like Compellent and others, and now you've got a virutalization layer and abstraction layer in the networking with NSX, and that provides some real benefits in terms of what can be done around operating efficiencies of networking, microsegmentation, etc. So, we see those vendors providing those kinds of solutions. >> Yeah, so, NSX is going to be one of the critical components when we get VMware on AWS, I'm curious whether that, Microsoft Azure Stack, or Jeremy Burton was talking this morning about Virtustream being able to go on-premesis. Those solutions, do they excite you, do they excite your customers? You know, what do you say? >> They do, they do excite our customers. I would say right now, I don't think they excite our CFOs much. We're having a lot of conversations with customers about the things like NSX. I wouldn't say it's been a big revenue driver for us. We're still driving a lot of revenue through some of the traditional, you know, server storage networking hyper-converged solutions, but I would say, as it relates to like an NSX for example, it's a topic that customers want to talk about, security's very much top of mind, and it hasn't translated yet into a lot of revenue, but it's definitely a part of the building blocks that our customers are looking at. >> Yeah, you bring up your CFO, and I'm curious, how does the customers looking to kind of change Capex into Opex, how does that affect you, are service providers in the public cloud, are those an opportunity for you, for partnership? Are they a challenge for the kind of the channel's business model? >> Yeah, it's a good question. I think we've seen a lot of the partners that we work with try to provide an operating, Opex model, and try to be more cloud-like in their solutions, so if you look at the Nutanix's and VxRail's, you know, having a solution from Dell EMC or from Nutanix where you can present it up almost like a cloud solution where they only have to commit to maybe 40% of the overall payment, or they can grow it very quickly like they would a cloud solution. So we're seeing a lot of that type of activity, I would say, you know, and at the same time, we're reaching out to the cloud providers, the Amazons and the Azures, to figure out, can we be partnered with them, and what does that model look like, and it's certainly not going to be a lot of margin working with those types of providers, but you can build a big consulting practice around it. So we're heavily engaged in those kind of discussions. >> Alright, Scott, last thing is, your users, as they walk away from this year's event, what do you want them to think about, their relationship with you, and kind of their big takeaway from the event? >> Yeah, I mean, for us, we try to be the trusted advisor, right, that's our role. You've got a number of OEMs out there. We're putting solutions together, that's why we call our engineering team the solutions architects, because we're piecing it all together for them. I look at the manufacturers kind of like as a big aircraft carrier, and they're good aircraft carriers, but we're a little speedboat, right? We can go back and forth, we're very nimble, we can demo stuff quickly. So I want them to think about us as a solution provider, as a trusted advisor, and to think about some of the new technologies that we presented up today. They're so busy working through day-to-day problems that, in one afternoon, to be able to come out here and here about, like, a cloud solution, like Virtustream, NSX, to hear about what's going on in hyper-converge, what's going on in managed security market, I'm hoping they'll take away some of those ideas and think about how it might apply in their business. >> Alright, well, Scott, really appreciate you bringing theCUBE here, looking forward to talking to a lot of your customers as well as some of the partners and, you know, everyone here at the show. I've been Stu Miniman, this is theCUBE.

(click and snap) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman with theCUBE, and we're here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Group here in Boston in the shadows of Fenway Park. Happy to have with me Mike Franco, who's the principal solutions architect with Virtustream. Mike, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you Stu. Thanks for having me, and this is a terrific event. It really is. I mean to be here with one of our first channel partners, and by that I mean Winslow Group has been part of Dell for many, many years. They now sell the whole Dell EMC platform with the acquisition last year. And Virtusteam, we opened up a channel partnership just a few months ago, and they were one of the first to join. And here I am in front of hundreds of clients. This is a great opportunity. >> All right, that's great. So we've talked to Scott Winslow, his organization, some of the partners. So, I understand a lot about the Dell relationship. How WTG has been kind of expanding into cloud. Virtustream. Tell us why there's a channel partner now. What that means, and what you look to for somebody like Winslow Group. >> Well, Winslow Group opens up a lot of clients for us, okay? And we need to sell through those partners. Most of these clients are running operations, maybe in the small midsize business, which are really perfect candidates for what we do. Virtustream provides a managed cloud. So unlike the Amazons, the Googles, and the Azures which are great solutions, we're finding clients and saying, "Hey, that was good." But as we start moving to these mission critical applications. The applications that are running my business. We need a managed service. We need performance. We need IO type of critical workloads to be run in a more secure and performance- laden type of cloud. >> Yeah, Jeremy Burton gave the opening remarks. The CMO of Dell. The Dell family really has a large portfolio. I look at kind of the hybrid and multi-cloud world these days, and from a Dell standpoint, you know, VMware has a number of solutions, including VMware on AWS. Dell was working with Microsoft on the Azure (mumbles) solutions. How does Virtustream fit into the overall portfolio? How do you help position, you know, where that fits, okay? Get the mind share and (stutters) the users? >> Great question. I mean, back in May, we announced a connection, okay? So our Cloud Connect, which is vRealized into our stream based clouds. Extreme is our cloud management platform, and a technology that we use to run our off prem clouds. So clients now have the capability through vRealize automation to recognize our cloud into revision, and to modify and manage their workloads through that. We also announced in May, a partnership with our sister company Pivotal. Okay, on their Cloud Foundry. So we now have in Virtustream Enterprise Cloud, the capability to run Cloud Foundry in a managed fashion. Okay, again, Cloud Foundry is a technology that a lot of developers will be using to build applications, but it also runs those applications. And now that those applications are becoming stateful and a critical part of their business, they're looking to somebody to manage that. And now we have the capability. And then we talk about the rest of the EMC portfolio, where Native Hybrid Cloud is a package solution that's built on vRacks or vRails, right? Dell's converged black forms with the Native Hybrid Cloud or Pivotal Cloud Foundry, lay it right on top of it with the tools to be able to manage it. That's sold directly to a client, and we have the capability as Virtustream to manage those. So now the client can have these on-client premise solutions, as well as being able to tether back to our enterprise cloud. Our Virtustream Enterprise Cloud. >> Yep. Mike, we saw in the storage industry, there's lots of different solutions, because there's lots of different needs. I find there is no typical cloud strategy when it comes to most companies. But when you're talking to users, whether it be at this event or you know, out talking to customers, you know, why are they coming to Virtustream? What are the big questions they're asking you? What are the challenges that they see, and how do you help them? >> So, I see most of the time they come to us is because at these types of events, they are clients that are delighted with Dell EMC technologies, right? Dell EMC is a leader in almost every product that they sell, okay? And not only that, but the customer satisfaction, the client care service that Dell EMC provides is second to none. We're an extension of that, okay? We have the ability to manage either on prem, or of prem, and that gray area in between in helping them enable to get to the cloud. So, it really has opened up a lot of doors for Virtustream, and yes the solutions are endless. But we had the capability to manage that for them on their prem, and we've been very successful doing it. >> Great. Mike, we know SAP was one of those solutions that really Virtustream made its name on. Well, I know you continued to work on that. Can you give us, you mentioned Cloud Foundry. What are some of the applications? What are some of the big use cases that your customers are having success with? >> So in June we announced the Virtustream Healthcare Cloud. Okay, so what is that? That's our enterprise cloud, now tailored specifically for the healthcare compliance. So it's HIPAA compliant. And also, we're managing some of the more critical applications. The healthcare environment is not cloud native, okay? It's still based on the platform too, right? They virtualized the client server, the three-tiered architecture database, web and app server type of environments that the systems have reckoned, okay? We're expanding into electronic medical records, EMRs, critical client patient care, some analytics for medication. So we're moving into those other areas that's complimenting the SAP work that we're doing. >> Okay, well Mike, appreciate you giving us the updates on Virtustream. Thanks so much for joining us here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Conference. (click and snap)

>> I'm Stu Miniman with theCUBE. And we're here at the Winslow Technology Group Dell EMC User Group and happy to have another user here at the event, Wayne Dunn, who's the SVP and CTO of HarborOne Bank. Wayne's, thanks so much for joining me. >> Happy to be here. >> All right, Wayne, tell us a little bit about HarborOne Bank, your role there, how long you've been there, what you work on. >> Sure, HarborOne Bank is the largest state-chartered cooperative bank in New England. I've been there about ten years in my role as senior vice president and chief technology officer. I'm responsible for all of the on-premise technology, as well as managing our hosted solutions that provide services to our customers. >> Yeah, I think back. I'm not a native New Englander, but when I moved up here, all the banks I belonged to eventually got merged into megabanks and things like that. So talk about yours. >> We actually started as a credit union. We're almost 100 years old, actually. We started as Brockton Credit Union and became HarborOne Credit Union. And then back three years ago, we became a bank. >> Okay. >> And now we're actually publicly traded on the NASDAQ. That happened a couple of years ago. >> Well, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> That's excellent. So the financial industry, undercompliance issues... >> Tremendous. >> Security is a major concern. You've been there ten years. Give us a little look back. What do you think about what you do today versus even five years ago? >> Sure. Going back five years ago, the main mission was really just to deliver those services to our customer. Of course, security was already a big part of what we did in terms of protecting customer information. But given what's happening in the cyber security realm these days, it's become a full-time job just focusing on cyber security, alone, and information security. It's a major part of what we do. >> Yeah, so it's interesting. I've talked to some very large financial institutions and they're like, "We're becoming software companies." And I was at the Amazon Show. There's a very large, well-known bank that gave away the Alexa Dots and they're doing skill sets. What's the role of technology in your company? How does all this digital transformation impact you? >> Really, it's providing a new level of service in the digital domain to customers that aren't traditional go-to-the-branch customers. We do have a large part of our customer base still wants to go into that branch, they have a personal relationship with that banker. But as you can imagine, we have younger customers that, they really just want that same level of service, but they want it provided through mobile banking, online banking. And they expect, as I said, that same level of service. So really the challenge today is to provide that level of service through our mobile application. And one of the nice things about the way technology has evolved is that in the past, only large financial institutions could provide the types of services that you see. Whereas today, because of the way technology's progressed, we've been able to provide that same level of service, those same types of technologies. And again, the examples are mobile banking with mobile deposit, or being able to instant issue a debit card for our customers in any one of our branch locations. >> Yeah, Wayne, can you give us... What's the dynamic between the business and the technology in your organization? >> Before I came to HarborOne Bank, I was in the consulting world in the technology consulting world. And one of the approaches I always took, as many people do in that world, is you need to have the business' stakeholders, they need to have ownership whenever you do any technology project. You can't do technology for technology's sake. It has to serve a business goal, a business mission. And I brought that same approach to HarborOne. So at HarborOne, when we approach technology, it's all of the stakeholders at the table, there's a business purpose for what we do, and the business, as well as the technologists, are driving the implementation, whatever it may be. And again, a good example of that is when we started to introduce our paperless account-opening process. We had people from our operations division, our retail division, as well as my technology division, sitting in a room and really going through what that meant. The interesting thing about the process was it became a process where it wasn't just about online account opening and instant issuing a debit card, it was about, "Hey, now that we look at this technology, we actually can use this technology to do account maintenance. Or we can take the paper processes we used to do, and we can change those over to an electronic process." So it really is always a collaborative effort with the business and with my technology group. >> Yeah Wayne, what brings you to this event? >> Well, first of all, the Winslow Group has been a big partner of HarborOne for many, many years. In fact, we were one of the first organizations that rolled out the Compellent SAN technology with them. One of the things I always try to do, along with my team, is to get out and explore, not only what's happening with technology that we use in terms of the road map, it's also about learning about new technologies and what we might be able to leverage as an organization to improve customer service. Right now, it's about taking a hybrid approach between on-prem and hosted solutions. That's something that we're really exploring in order to become more nimble, in order to be able to provide the support the business needs at any given time without having to ramp up or do a tremendous expenditure in terms of on-premise technology. So really, we're taking a look at how can we blend our solutions with hosted solutions to provide a better level of service. >> Yeah, so Wayne, understand, public cloud sounds like it isn't too much in the picture for you. But the service-provided hosted model, what do you look for? >> Mostly private cloud >> What are the challenges? >> And again, the challenges are really not so much around being able to provide the application or the support that we need. It truly is more around security, information security. As you know, here in Massachusetts, we have the Massachusetts data security laws. And any company that we deal with in terms of being a hosted provider, whether they're in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or somewhere else in the country, they still need to assure us they comply with that same level of security when we deal with them. It's around making sure that they have the same protections, the same level of business continuity and data recovery, things of that nature. So those are the things we have to look for in a cloud provider. >> Yeah Wayne, I'm curious, as a CTO, how do things like, really, the digitization of money impact what you're doing. I think not only things like blockchain, but these days I know I'm using my phone to purchase things more. Cash seems way less in use. So what is that impact? >> And again, we're providing a lot of those technologies that allow you to do that. Our biggest challenge is that a lot of our competitors aren't banks. >> I know. >> They're not regulated the same way we are. So they have more flexibility in terms of, not only how they can market, but how they provide these services. So really it's more, the challenge is really in the competition. And technologies allow that as well, so. >> Alright Wayne, really appreciate you sharing what's happening in your business and how technology is impacting that. Loved digging in with all the practitioners here at the user group where they're learning from their peers. This is a WTG Dell EMC User Group and you're watching theCUBE.