 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live in Las Vegas, day two of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, my co-host, and we're excited to welcome to theCUBE for the first time the CIO of TGen, Translational Genomics, James Lowy. James, welcome to theCUBE. Ah, thank you so much. It's great being here. So, Genomics, really interesting topic that we want to get into and understand how are you making IT and digital and WordPress transformation real in it? But give our viewers an overview of TGen. It started out about 16 years ago as a very collaborative effort within Arizona and really grew. Talk to us about that. Yeah, absolutely. So, TGen is a non-profit biomedical research institute based in Phoenix, Arizona. As you mentioned, we've been around about 16 years. The inception of the institute was really built around bringing biomedical technology into the state of Arizona and we're fortunate enough to have a really visionary and gifted leader in Dr. Jeffrey Trent, who is one of the original guys to sequence the human genome completely for the first time. So, I don't know if you get any better street cred than that when it comes to Genomics. And you mentioned, before we went live, give our viewers an overview of what it took to sequence the human genome in terms of time and money and now, how 15 years later, how fast it can be done. Yeah, so we've moved from a point where it cost billions of dollars in so many years to complete the first sequence to today where it takes a little bit over a day and about $3,000. So it's really the democratization of the technology is driving clinical application, which in turn is going to benefit all of us. James, Genomics is one of those areas when we talk about there is the opportunity of data but there's also the challenge of data because you've got to, I have to imagine, just orders of magnitude more data than your typical company does. So, talk to us a little bit about the role of data inside your organization. Well, data is our lifeblood. I mean, we've been generating tera-scale, then peda-scale for many years now and the fact is, you know, every time you sequence a patient you're generated about four terabytes of data for one patient. So if you're doing 100 patients do the math or you're doing 1,000 patients, we're talking to just an immense volume of data and really, you know, data is what drives us because that information that's encoded in our genome is nothing but data, right? It's turning our analog selves into a digital format that then we can interrogate to come up with, you know, better treatments to help patients. Can you bring us inside when you talk about the infrastructure that enables that? You know, what I was teasing at with the last question, it's not just about storing data. You need to be able to have access to that data. You need to be able to share data. So as the CIO, what's your purview? Give us a little bit of a thumbnail sketch as to what your organization looks like. Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's great. So we've been a long time Icelon customer. The scale out storage is what really has enabled us to be successful. Our partnership with Dell EMC has spanned many years and we're fortunate enough to have enough visibility within the organization to get early access to technologies and really that's really important because the science moves faster than the IT. So, you know, having things like scale out, super fast flash, you know, having new Intel processors, all these things are what really enable us to do our job and to be successful. How have you been with TGen for a long time now? You've been the CIO for about three years. Talk to us about the transformation of the technology and how you've evolved it to not just facilitate digital transformation and IT transformation, but I imagine security transformation with human genetic data is of paramount importance. You know, that's a really good point. Security is always on my mind for obvious reasons because I would say there's nothing more personally identifiable than your genome. There's the laws around these things still have not been totally codified. So we're sitting at a point today where we're still uncertain to how exactly best protect this very, very important data. But to that end, we tend to fail in the closed state of doing things, you know, everything is encrypted. You know, we are big believers in identity management and making sure that the right people have access to the right data at the right time. You know, we've utilized secure works, for instance, for perimeter logging and to get their expertise. Because one of the things that I've learned in my tenure as CIO is that it's really all about the people and they're what drive your success. And so I'm fortunate enough to have a team that's amazing. These folks are some of the best people in their field and really do a great job at helping us, you know, protect the data, you know, get access to the data as well as, you know, thinking about what the next iteration is going to look like. Yep. When you look at just as a whole the security and data protection, you think about everybody if they get those home kits or things like that, how does that evolve the last few years? I'm curious if that impacts your business. Well, I think it does impact our business insofar that it creates awareness. And you know, I think it's really fantastic when I attend a cocktail party or something and people come up and ask, you know, should I get the 23andMe or Ancestry, you know, and they're really engaged and interested in wanting to learn about these things. And I think that's going to spur questions to be asked when they go in to get treated by a physician, which is really important. I think I'm a believer that we should own our own data, especially our genomic data, because what's more personal than that. And so we have a lot of challenges ahead, I think, in IT in particular, in protecting, storing, and providing that data to patients. Just a quick follow-up, I'm sure you secure stuff. What's the cocktail answer for that? If you know, should I get that? Can I trust this company or my insurance company and everybody else going to get that? What do you advise the average consumer? I would say read the terms of use agreement very carefully. So the theme of the event, James, make it real. Few things are more real than our own data or our own genomes. What does that theme mean to you from an application perspective? How are you making digital transformation real? And things like the alliance with city of hope to impact disease, study, and cures. What's that reality component to you? Yeah, I really like the make it real theme and I think it's something that we are doing every day. I think it just speaks to taking technology, applying it for meaningful use, to actually make a difference, and to do something that has real impact. And I think that at TGen, I've been empowered to build systems that can do that, that can help our scientists and ultimately help patients. You mentioned city of hope. We're, our alignment with them is amazing. They have just hired a chief digital officer as they go through a digital transformation of their own and we're on board and striving to help them go through this process because as you might be aware, it's like everything's about the data and that's where we have to focus. James, if you go back, you talked about that your scale out architecture with Isilon. How do you report back to the business as to the results that you're doing? Do you have any hero metrics or things that you point out that says this is why we're successful, this is why we've made the right decision, this is why we should be doing this in the future? Well, I think we're especially fortunate that we can measure our success in people's lives. So meeting a kid who's in full remission from brain cancer, who is treated using drugs that were derived from being sequenced and run through our labs and then our computational infrastructure and having them say thank you I think is pretty much a metric that I don't know how you can beat that. Talk about making it real. That's where it's really impactful. I'd love to understand your thoughts as you continue to evolve your transformation as a company. We've heard a lot about emerging technologies and what Dell EMC, Dell Technologies is doing to enable organizations and customers to be able to realize what's possible with artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT. What are your thoughts about weaving in those emerging technologies to make what TGen delivers even more impactful? Well you just said three of my favorite things that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. Artificial intelligence is going to be absolutely is required to interrogate the vast amount of data that are being created. I mean this is all unstructured data so you have to have systems that can store and present that data in such a way that you're going to be able to do something meaningful. IoT is another area where we're spending a lot of time and energy in what we believe is like quantitative medicine. So basically taking measurements all the time to see about changes and then using that to hopefully gain insight into treatment of disease. Machine learning and some of these technologies are also absolutely going to be critical especially when we start building out drug databases and being able to match the patient with a drug. James bring us inside to your organization a little bit. What kind of skill sets do you have to have to architect, operate, a theme of this show, they've got Andy McAfee speaking who's from MIT we've spoken to. It's about people and machines. You can't have one without the other. You need to be able to marry those two. How does an organization like yours get ready for that and move forward? Yeah that's a really good point. I think the technology enables the people and you have to have the right people to help make the decisions and what technologies that you get and apply. And I think that the skill sets that we look for is generally people who have a broad view of the world. People who are particular experts at least in the IT side are of limited use because we need people to be able to switch gears quickly and to think about problems holistically. So I'd say most of the IT folks are working several different disciplines and are really good at that. In the scientific side it's a little different. We're looking for data scientists all the time so if anybody's watching and wants to come work for a great place, T-Gen, look us up. Because that's really where we're headed. We have a lot of biologists, we have a lot of molecular biologists, we have people who do statistics but it's not quite the same as data science. So that's kind of the new area that we're really focused on. All right so James one of the things I always love to ask when I get a CIO here is when you're talking to your peers in the industry how do you all see the role of the CIO changing? What are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing? So yeah that's a great question. I think the role is changing towards being empowered in the business and I think that has to be part of the transformation is you have to be aligned completely with what your objectives are. And we're fortunate, we are and I feel that very lucky to have a boss and a boss's boss who both understand the importance and the value that we bring to the organization. I also see that in the industry, especially in healthcare that a need for folks who are focused beyond just the EMR and daily IT things to really start looking beyond maybe where you're comfortable. I know that I stretch my boundaries and I think that in order to be successful as a CIO I think that's what you're going to have to do. I think you're going to have to push the envelope. You're going to have to look for new technologies and new ways to make a difference. So last question, big impact that Tijan has made to the state of Arizona. So I read on LinkedIn that you like building high performance teams. What are some of the impacts that that this has made for Arizona but also maybe as an example for other states to look to to be inspired to set up something similar? That's really a great question. I think Arizona made an investment and the way that it's easy to measure is if you come down to the Tijan building and realize that that building was the first building that is now surrounded by buildings including a full on cancer center that's all in downtown Phoenix. And it's almost the if you build it, they will come. But it's not just the infrastructure. It really is about the people and identifying the right folks to come in and help, you know, build that to invest in them and to provide basically the opportunity for success. You know, Arizona has really been fortunate, I think, and being able to build out this amazing infrastructure around biotechnology. And, you know, but we're just getting going. I mean, we are. We've only been doing this for about 16 years and I look forward to the next 16. Well, thanks so much, James, for stopping by and talking about how you're applying technologies not just from Dell EMC but others as well to make transformation real, to make it a real across IT, digital workforce, security, and doing something that's really, literally has the opportunity to save lives. Thanks so much. Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Stu Miniman. We are live day two of Dell Technologies World. We'll be back after a lunch break. We'll see you then.