 This is Stu Miniman with wikibon.org, here with SiliconANGLE TVs, live continuous coverage from EMC World, Las Vegas, 2012. We bring you all the greatest guests, we've tried to separate the signal from the noise and talk about all the trends. So we're going to have two segments here talking with customers. Wikibon was originally founded on allowing peers to share with their peers. So we're going to have a couple of mini case studies talking about some of the technologies that are being discussed at EMC World. First guest we have is Laura Mattingly from LG&E. Laura, welcome to the queue. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. Great, so maybe if you could just give our audience a little bit of background as to LG&E and your role there. Yes, so Louisville Gas and Electric is a utility company and we were recently purchased by Pennsylvania Power and Light and we are a gas and power company and as most utilities do, we're constantly facing the challenge of mobile workforce, storm restoration, being fast, providing good service and safety. So those are the challenges that we face for our business and then I am manager of client support services. I have been through all areas of the IT organization so I helped to lead our storage virtualization project and then have now migrated into what we now are calling the desktop virtualization project. So it's been interesting to see that entire data center transformation in our organization. Okay, so specifically you cover more than just the storage, right? What part of the stack do you own? Yes, so now in the role that I'm in, we're actually doing all the mobile, the all of the desktop virtualization. So everything that that covers, the Apple iPads, the iPhones, mobile devices, then clients, laptops, desktops, the whole thing. So let's talk a little bit about the desktop solution. How long have you been working on this and where are you in the journey towards kind of the BYOD solution set? Yes, so we started a year ago actually, we did a proof of concept on our existing infrastructure because we wanted to see if our clients would see the benefit of having a virtual desktop. We also wanted to understand what that would do to us from a support perspective. And so we engaged in that. We handpicked people from the IT organization and from the business who we thought would be, you know, good candidates to test it. They would actually give us good feedback. They would be reasonable as we went through this proof of concept. And we also targeted particular people that we knew would be on the investment committee. This is the executive team that I had to sell the business case to. So our thought process was if it went well, then these people would be, you know, more apt to buy into us moving forward this project. So we did that for a year. Through that process, we evaluated actual production solutions to see what we wanted to go with. So we looked at HP and then we looked at the EMC solution. And it's particular that the V-Block. Okay. So what we did is we went through our normal, what we'll do for, you know, going through this evaluation of which solution we're going to end up with. And I will tell you that the reason that we chose the V-Block solution was the all-in-one support model. Okay, so was this your first engagement with the V-Block or had you been using it in other parts of the business? This is our first engagement. Okay, so you chose V-Block specifically for a VDI. That's interesting. That is correct, yes. And so V-Block obviously has, we've got the storage, the compute, and the networking. VMware's your hypervisor for the desktop client. Are you using Vue or are you using Citrix? We're using Citrix. Okay. So as part of the proof of concept that we did, we took half of the people, gave them a VMware interface, and took half the people, gave them a Citrix interface. What we were looking for is which experience was richer for them. At the same time, we were also looking at, from a technical perspective, which was easier for us to support, which offered more capabilities, as far as when we're rolling this out. And at the end of the day when we did the survey, the people, when we switched and the people who used the Citrix interface liked it better. And of course we ended up liking that better from a support perspective because at the time, and as it is today, you can do a little bit more with Citrix. Okay, so I want to dig down a little bit more on the VDI. We've done a lot of research with the Wikibon community talking to the end users. And first of all, we've found that there tends to be not enough planning up front. Secondly, when it gets rolled out into a pilot, we tend to underestimate the performance requirements of our users. And there's also typically cost overruns when we try to roll that out. And going from the pilot to the production stage can be even more challenging. So what was your experiences? And it sounds like you're using it. So what can you share as kind of tips for practitioners to how to properly roll this out? Okay, so the first point I made about when you're doing your proof of concept in your pilot, whichever you call it, I highly recommend putting people on there who will be decision makers for whether you get funding for your project down the road. Because if they like it, that's gonna help you. So that's the first thing. Secondly, iPads. Now you don't have to have an iPad to have VDI or vice versa, but I will tell you that I really think the fact that we had iPads in the hands of some of our mobile workers, our corporate communications people, people who are out in the field a lot for us, and then gave those particular people VDI, that combo also helped to show the value of a VDI solution. So were you giving them iPads or is this that they brought their own? We funded it out of our... So this is really the carrot to get them to say, hey, we go to VDI and here, corporate iPad, that's excellent. Now I will tell you, one of the challenges we're facing now, because we are now in production, I'm happy to say, and we're starting to move people over, now we had the challenge of people getting this mindset that, oh, if I go order an iPad, I automatically get VDI, or if I get VDI, I automatically get the iPad. So now we're having to kind of step back and make sure on our internal approval processes they understand that one doesn't necessarily mean you get the other. But as far as selling this technology and showing the business value, it was, I would highly recommend that. Okay, and how many users do you have on VDI today? Okay, our current plant, well right now in production, we just started, so we've got a hundred on production, but by the end of the year, our plan is to have 500 on our V-Block in our one data center and 500 on the V-Block in our second data center. And how large is the organization overall? We have approximately 5,500 people, as far as to our region for LG and E. Now you add PPNL on top of that, you know, that doubles. So are there plans to scale to more of the organization or is VDI for a specific use case? There are definitely plans to scale. One of the things that we did to sell it, and I would recommend this as well, I've read all these different approaches that people have used to try to sell VDI to their company, and there have been a lot of let downs, I've noticed. RCO and I, we just decided, we said okay, we need ROI going in there, hands down. So we said we would delay tech refreshes. So if you think about that, most every IT organization has a bucket of money to refresh laptops and desktops every three to four years, whatever the case may be. But we said we'll just delay X number this year, X number the next year, and the next year. We went out three years for the business case. That's hard, ROI capital savings right there. I mean, and really, that's easy to accomplish if your production environment's working well. You should be able to delay some tech refreshes and show savings from a capital perspective. Okay, so you're giving users, they're going to be able to have a new experience, they're going to have the iPads. Are there any other kind of transformational new features that you got to use when you rolled out VDI? Yes, some of what we've done is we're trying to sell people on making sure that they understand they can run this from their home laptop. And if you think about our customer call centers being a utility, we are constantly, it's very important, we compete in these JD Powers awards for customer experience. So we wanted to be able to say in the event of a storm or disaster, how could we better get everyone online? So VDI combined with our Unified Communications Project is going to be the answer to that. That you could have stay at home reps, basically taking calls in the event of a disaster. So that was one thing. I've got people who support our SAP environment, developers who we put on who are telling me that they were at dinner the other night, one guy at eight o'clock with his wife and solved a party one SAP ticket from his iPhone because of his VDI. And so, you know, and the iPads, definitely for our mobile people in a storm situation, being able to get to their applications when they're remote out in the field where they don't have access to all of the things that they have when they were actually at their desk. So these are the areas that we're seeing value for them. Okay, and so the V-Block itself, is it only being used for VDI or do we have other applications now on that? Right now it's only being used for VDI, but the interesting thing is, is they have really seen the value in it so much that we just recently got funding to take away our existing Citrix Farm, which runs, you know, GIS, our small world system, which for us is utility is critical. And a few other critical systems, and we're going to basically retire the existing Citrix infrastructure and put that on the V-Block. So we have money already funded and approved for next year to do that and expand our user base in the company. Okay, and can you talk about what was your experience in rolling out the V-Block from kind of decision to order to delivery and up and running? You know, how did that go and how long did that take? Okay, so BCE obviously, this is a partnership between them VMware and Cisco and EMC, so they told us that basically they would be engaged from the very beginning and that once we had made the decision that basically the setup was pretty straightforward and could be done within a week, if it went really well within like two days, anywhere in that week timeframe. And the reality was? The reality was it was more challenging than that a little bit. We had some issues with stuff being shipped that wasn't correct. But I will tell you that all the players involved, definitely stayed involved to make sure that our situation got corrected. And when was this? Was this recently or six months ago, a year ago? Let's see, I'm going to go back. It's been within the year. Okay. So yeah, it's been within the year about six months ago. You know, in general, we've done a lot of testing with the community and we've found that the first V-Block that a customer does, sometimes there are some of those fit challenges but once they get the first model down, it seems that they kind of, you know, lather and repeat pretty well. I expect that. I think a lot of the challenge too is when VCE engaged with us, they then were growing extremely fast. And sometimes you will see that where all of a sudden this attention that they had hoped to be able to give you through your implementation is challenged by the fact they're bringing on more and more customers. So the great thing about them though, I will say this is that they've adjusted and we and I have the attention that I'd originally had thought we might have up front. So it's gotten better. And I would expect that going forward, it will be fine. But the solution itself has proven to do everything that we expected it to do. It is performing lightning fast. I mean, that is the feedback I'm getting even from the people that were on the pilot that were moving over to production. You know, they've been running on the pilot for almost a year. They're like, what'd you do? You know, it's half the time they don't really understand. We're like, what would? So was your pilot on the V-Block? No, our pilot was just on existing infrastructure that we were throwing together. And that's another challenge we found is usually if you go from the pilot to production, the experience isn't necessarily the same. So, but it sounds like it's better. I think you're okay. No, no, I mean, absolutely. That's great feedback for the community. Yeah, one thing we did, I will say this too, is I told you we had IT people and business people on the pilot. When we started moving people to production, which was just recently, we moved IT people first. We moved them over and let them run for a few weeks just to make sure that experience that we were expecting was actually happening and now we're moving over the business people. Okay, so we've talked about kind of the block and what you're doing there. I believe you also are doing something, scale out on the NAS side? Yes, so one of the things that we did was we had made a decision, probably almost two years ago that we would take NetApp out of our environment as our third tier storage. Yup. And so what we did with this project and in general is we started looking at our different tiers of storage. You know, everything's getting better and better. And we basically replaced it with Isilon. Okay, so was there limitations on the NetApp or what was the deciding factor there? For us, with NetApp, there were a couple things. One, we didn't feel like we were getting the attention that one would expect to get for the investment that we made. They weren't really partnering with us. You know, like EMC's in, EMC's partnering with us. They understand our business, they're meeting with us, we see them. That was not happening with NetApp. NetApp, regionally at least in our area went through a lot of changes. I mean, it was like a year and a half to two years where we didn't even see anyone. So it's hard to partner when you don't know what the company's doing. Yeah, and to be clear, it's my understanding. You're not 100% an EMC shop today? That's correct. We have a lot of HP as well, okay? And so with Isilon for BDI, what we've got on there are the file share for photo redirection and the profiles are on there. So, and it's working great for us. Okay, so do you see yourself moving towards, well, VCE's not 100% EMC, but sounds like you're growing your EMC portfolio. Yes, we are. Is that kind of a strategic direction for your company? That is. We look at, you know, we take the big picture into effect here and EMC's been outstanding about putting in more technical people. We've got new sales force involved and they're engaged with us now. You know, there was a period of time where we didn't see that. And so that has shifted now. You know, and I think our CIO, coming from Comcast, had a lot to do with that as well. He liked EMC, and so when he came, that helped us to take another look at EMC too. Okay, well Laura, we really appreciate you coming on theCUBE, sharing everything that you've done in convergence and scale-out architectures. Good tips for practitioners to make sure they really understand their environment and work really closely with their users. Sounds like one of the main tips there. So, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. This is SiliconANGLE TVs, live continuous coverage from EMC World 2012 in Las Vegas. We will be right back after this quick commercial break.