(funky upbeat music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Barcelona everybody we're wrapping up day one of Cisco Live! Barcelona CUBE coverage. I'm Dave Vellante, he's Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Donnie Williams is the IT Director at Scott Equipment out of Louisiana and Eric Herzog is back. He's the CMO of IBM Storage. Gentlemen, good to see you, welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. So tell us about Scott Equipment. What do you guys do? What's the company all about? >> We're a heavy equipment dealer, so we've been in the business for 80 years, privately owned company. And so we started out in farm implement 80 years ago by the founder Tom Scott which is where the name Scott Equipment comes from. And so we transitioned over the years to construction equipment and we're now, so back in 2014 we sold all of our, the farm stores that handle all of that equipment, and now we're strictly servicing the construction industry and petrochemical industry. >> So you're a dealer of large equipment. And you service it as well, or? >> Yes we service it. We're primarily a rental company first. Then we also sell what we rent. We service it and it also parts as well. >> So we're talking massive? >> Yes big. If you think, one of our main clients is Volvo which if you've seen the show Gold Rush, that Volvo equipment that you see there, that's what we sell. >> It's incredible machines. >> Yeah, yeah they are I had a chance to play with one. I went to a Shippensburg Pennsylvania where their North America office is and had a chance to play with their largest excavator. That was fun. >> So is a lot of you IT centered on sort of the maintenance business and the service business or? >> Yes. Mostly Mirror is like a car dealership. So like I said, we do sale service, parts, all of that. >> So the business flow starts after the sale is made, obviously. >> Exactly, yes, we sell, yeah, exactly. We get the equipment out there in the territory and then the revenue continues to come in. >> So what are some of the challenges, the external challenges that are driving your business? >> So really, our, the whole heavy equipment industry is, is kind of behind the times in my, from a dealership perspective. From a manufacturer perspective. They're somewhat up with technology, especially Volvo, but from a dealership, they're mainly privately owned, so they're not, there's not a whole lot of resources in technology. That's not a focus for them. They're focused on the business side of it, so. When I first started at the company 10, 11 years ago now, there was one guy servicing 600 employees. And it was-- >> One IT person? >> One IT person. So, as you can imagine, it was a nightmare. I mean it's not the guy's fault. I don't blame him at all. It's just the way that they had done business and not changed. >> He was a bummed out IT person. >> Yeah, right exactly, yeah. >> Now how'd you guys find them? >> So they're a customer of ours for the verses stack. We have a partner that they've been buying their IBM and their Cisco gear from, and then when they were doing a modernization effort, the reseller talked to Scott and said, Donnie, what d'ya think? How about doing this converge infrastructure. Easier to employ at sep-tor. So it all came through their existing channel partner that they were using for both IBM gear and Cisco gear. >> So you wanted a solution that one guy could run, right? >> We've now at least grown that, our company to, now we have six total in our department. So we've changed a lot since I started 11 years ago. >> And what are they spending their time doing? >> Primarily, we do a lot of help desk, assistant administration, we do mostly, my focus is to make sure that our employees are satisfied so they can take care of the customer. And that's the primary goal and along with that comes systems administration, as well, so. >> But you know, a full stack like this. I mean the joke. You need more than one person. >> Right. But it's going to be simplified, you know what you're buying, >> Right, exactly. >> It's predictable, and therefore, you shouldn't need to be seen on a day to day basis. >> Yes, I like keeping things simple, simple as possible. So, that makes my job easier, it makes my team's job easier, as well. >> So what kind of things are you driving? Is it, ya know, data protection? Is it, what sort of, you know, use cases do you have on your stack? >> We're from our, we're servicing on our, with Cisco, I'm sorry, verses stack. It's mostly it's all private cloud. We're servicing applications that supplement our core ERP system. So, we have reporting solutions. When we first bought the verses stack, we were considering moving to another ERP system, and we would have that infrastructure in place to migrate to that. So we still have that, actually, element table as an option for us. >> The migration to a new ERP system? >> Yes. >> We should talk afterwords. >> We're avoiding that all costs. >> Right, well, of course. You don't want to convert if you don't have to. Yeah but sometimes it's a business case. Sometimes it's hard to make. We'll talk. >> Exactly. >> Cloud in your future or present? >> We're doing some-- >> SAS stuff, or? >> Yeah a little of that. I mean anything. I mean things that make sense for us to do cloud. Security services. We're doing, of course, probably the most common is hosting email. We're doing a lot of that. Share point. That type of solution in the cloud. >> How long you've been with the company? >> 11 years. >> 11 years, okay, so, thinking about the last decade, I mean a lot has changed. >> Yes. >> What are you most proud of? What's like your biggest success that you can share with us? >> Really building the IT department and bringing our company into the 21st century from a technology perspective. I mean, like I said, we had one person that was handling it. It was really impossible. I mean, you couldn't depend on one person and expect the company to survive long term. >> Yeah, that one person had to say no a lot. >> Exactly, right. He just couldn't get everything done. >> So, really that modernization and that's kind of where you guys came in, right? >> IT modernization play. The verses stack is heavily used for that and, you know, as we've said on the earlier interview, we had a CSPN. We've also used it to go to the next level from an IT transformation to the future. 'Cause in that case, as you know, that was a CSP who uses it to service, you know, hundreds of customers all across the UK in a service model. And in this case, this is more of a IT modernization, take the old stuff, upgrade it to what it was. They even had an old IBM blade servers. That's old this stuff was. Old XE6 Blade servers that must've been 10 years old before they went to the verses stack. >> How many people in the company? Roughly? >> Right now, we've actually sold off side since I've been with the company, we've sold off some of our nonperforming business units. We're probably roughly around 550 now. >> Okay. >> So I mean, we're actually more profitable now than we were 11 years ago. We have less employees, but our profitability is actually exceeded. >> Theme of simplification. >> Exactly, right. >> So what's the biggest challenge you face as the head of IT, today? >> The biggest, probably the biggest challenge would be me wanting to implement technologies that are not ready. I want to have the competitive edge of the industry. I want to be able to be ahead of the curve. And that's probably the biggest challenge. >> And you're saying you can't because the tech isn't ready? Or it's a skills issue? >> It's just the industry. Just trying to work with vendors and getting them to be ready for, I say vendors, manufacturers. They're our vendors. To get them to, and know their dealers as well. To all be acceptable to the technology's that's been there 20 years. >> What would you say is the top, number one, or the top things IBM has done to make your life easier? And what's the one thing they could to do that they're not doing that could make your life easier? What's the, start with what they've done. You know what the success is that have helped. >> Really, we've been a longtime IBM customer. We have not just the verses stack, but we also have the power system, which actually runs our core ERP. >> Ah, okay, so. >> So I mean, we've had long standing relationship with IBM. Reliability is there. The trust is there, as well. >> Yeah, long term partnership. Alright, what's the one thing they could do? If you could wave a wand and you said, IBM will to X, what would x be to make your life better? >> Cut the price. >> Ah, here we go! (all laughing) I should've prefaced that soon! Besides cut the price. Alright we'll leave it there on that topic. But you know, the power system thing brings up, you know, our friend Bob Piccano's running the cognitive systems group now. You guys doing some stuff with AI. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> So what we've done is two things. First of all, we've imbued inside of our systems AI all over the place. So for example, we tier data which can do not only to own array, but literally to 440 arrays that have someone else's logo on them. It's all AI done. So when the data's hot, it's on the fastest tier. So if you have 15,000 RPM drives and 7,200 RPM drives, it goes to 15,000 when it cools off. AI automatically moves it. The storage admin does nothing. You don't set palsies AI takes care of it. We have Flash, and you have hard drives. Same thing. It'll move around. And you could have an IBM array talking to an EMC array. So all sorts of technology that we've implemented that's AI in the box. Then on top of that, what we've done is come up with a series of AI reference architectures for storage as one of the critical elements of the platform. So what we've done is create what we call a data pipeline. It involves not only our storage arrays, but four pieces or our software, spectrum scale, which is giant scale off file system, in fact, the two fastest supercomputers in the world have almost half an exabyte of that software, storage with that software. Our spectrum discover, which we announced in CUBE 4, which is all about better management of metadata. So, for AI workloads, big data analytic workloads, the data scientist doesn't prep the data. They can actually talk to what we do, and you can create all these metadata templates, and then boom, they run an AI workload on Thursday, and then run an analytic workload on Friday, but all automated. Our archive, and then our cloud object storage. So, all that is really, think about it more as an oval, because when you're doing an AI system, you're constantly learning. So the thing you got to do is, one, you've got to have high performance and be able to handle the analytics which you we do on Flash. 'Kay, so the Flash is connected. You've got to be able to move the data around and part of the thing with the Spectrum Discover is that we can talk through an API, to a piece of AI software, to piece of analytic software, to a piece of big data software. And they can literally go through that API, create templates for the metadata, and then automatically suck what they need into their app and then munge it and then spew it back out. And then obviously on the archive side, want to be able quickly recall the data because if you think about an AI system, it's like a human. So let's give you my Russian example. So I'm old enough, when I was a kid, there were bomb shelters in my neighborhood that people dug in the backyard. Then we have, you know, Nixon lighting up the Chinese. Then we have Reagan and Gorbachev. Next thing you know, the wall comes down, right? Then the next thing you know, there's no longer a Soviet Union. All of a sudden, ah, the Russians might be getting a little aggressive even though they're no longer communist, and now you see, depending on which political party, that they're totally against us, or they're totally helping us, but, you know, if they really were hacking systems, whatever political party you're in, they really were hacking our systems trying to manipulate the election. Pro or con, the point is that's kind of like a cyber attack. And that's not a good thing. So we learn and it changes. So an AI system needs to understand and change, constantly learn, if all of a sudden you have flying cars, that's going to be different than a car with tires. Now a lot of it may be the same. The interior, all the amenities, but the engines going to be different, and there are companies, including the big three, four, five, auto, who are actually working on flying cars. Who knows if it'll happen, but the AI system needs to understand and learn that and constantly learn. And so, the foundation has to heavily resilient, heavily performant, heavily available, last thing you want is an AI system going down on you. Especially if you're in healthcare, or big giant manufacturing, like Volvo, his customer. When they're building those cranes and things, they must cost 50, 60 million dollars. If that assembly line goes down, it's probably a big deal for them. So you need AI systems that always keep your other systems up and running. So you have to have that solid foundation of storage underneath. >> Awesome, alright, we got to leave it there. Give the customer the last word. Donnie, first time in Barcelona, right? >> Yes it is. >> How are you finding the show and the city? >> Oh it's awesome. This is my fifth Cisco Live. First time in Europe, so yeah. Enjoying it. >> Good, good. Well thank you guys for coming to theCUBE. >> Great thank you for coming. >> Thank you! >> Really appreciate it. >> You're welcome. Alright keep it right there everybody. We'll be back to wrap day one Cisco Live! Barcelona. You're watching theCUBE. (techno music)