 Thank you very much. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Dave Vellante. José Luis Cuevas. Nice to meet you, José Luis Cuevas. Hi John. Pleasure. So you are a Dell Ecologic customer, I understand. Yes. How's that going for you? Fine. Actually, one of the main operations, the mission critical, is running on our ecologics. Ah, okay. It's working fine. Talk about your organization, your role, why don't we start there. I'm the marketing manager for the largest hotel company in Latin America. We are the operator of 115 hotels. 115 hotels? Yes. Okay. Throughout South America. In Mexico, mainly in South America, we are the name of the company's group of posadas. And we are operating this large number of hotels, properties, and also franchise. And we're growing pretty fast. And my job is to support the operations, the tactical strategy for data centers, and the standards that we have for each hotel, and the corporate headquarters. So what's driving your business? Talk about the business guys that are asking you. So it's hospitality. Hospitality. It's service. Right? We're a service company. We have different line of business also, but the main is hospitality. We have this number of hotels, and also we have loyalty programs, vacation clubs. We also have a call center line of business. We attend like 20,000 calls per month. We have selling these services to other companies also. So that's one of the best companies in Mexico. So what are they driving you to do? So it's services oriented. They want faster service. They want more services. No downtime. No downtime. Right? No. In our call centers, we have 24-7 operations. We cannot avoid to answer a call. What are the kinds of calls that you're getting at the call centers? These are from guests, or these are from what? From guests for companies that make events like this from around the world. So all the calls came in, the inbound calls came into that call center. So we cannot accept any downtime. It's 24-7, 30-65. Okay. So what does that mean for your infrastructure? To actually take us back to how long you've been an ecological customer? We've been three years ago. So take us back three years ago. What was the environment like before you brought in Equalogic? Give us a description, name names if you want or don't if you don't want to describe it. So we're cool with the cube. We can open discussion. Whatever you're comfortable doing. But tell us what the situation was like before the project, if you will. We have a big sand, a couple of terabytes that we start to grow in fast, but the main challenge three years ago was how to run faster with agility, flexibility, run faster. And the amount of data that we were growing was exploding because of the visualization. Because of what? I'm sorry? Virtualization. I will tell you later about the virtualization that we have. Yeah, we'll talk about that. We need to grow. So in that moment, with the other companies, we cannot at all. Because our storage processors were at it most, we cannot add more storage. So they'll actually bring us with this new solution of the Equalogic, which gives us the agility and gives us the opportunity to grow faster and to meet the needs that we were facing in that time. What was the constraint to your growth? That particular storage could not grow anymore. Is it out of storage? No, it cannot. Out of capacity? Out of capacity? I cannot add any more. Good scale. Yeah. It's on the limit. And that's it. If I need to grow, I need to buy $200,000 equipment. And for an organization like yours, $200,000 is a lot of money. It's a lot of money, but most of that is where we were facing challenges in the go-to-market. So if we cannot go-to-market fast with the agility that we were expecting, we need to do something else. So the solution was to buy this Equalogic arrays and keep growing, keep growing. So Ecologic at the time was a little startup up in New Hampshire? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I don't know if you can ask my data reps, but maybe we were one of the first companies in Mexico to have Equalogics. Okay. And did you go up and visit them? Or did you... Well, you were already... This was after the acquisition by Dell. Oh, what? Right. Oh, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that was in 2000. Wow. Time is just flying. Yeah. Well, it was after that. It was after the Dell. So you weren't nervous about the small startup thing. Right. You weren't worried about working with a small startup. You had Dell mistaked it. Yeah. Yeah, all the time. Yeah. I mean, the solution that... Would you have purchased Equalogic if they weren't part of Dell? Would you have taken the risk on a small company? Yes. You would have? Yeah. Why? Because the technology would have made that much of a difference. And also because these guys know how to sell it, but they know their business. They know that the risk that they were taking, like this morning Michael Dell said, it works. I mean, this company doesn't invest in other companies unless they have a challenge to advance. Is it important to you that Michael Dell was here speaking to this audience? Yes. I think that that gave us, well, you know, to know him and also a certain feeling of confidence. But what's happening, the first couple of minutes that he was talking about the beginning of his company make a sense of, okay, we're in the same world. We're in the same page. We're growing together. And even though I'm an end user, it showed me that the company is with the client. And I think that this conference, I've learned a lot of them. Is this your first time to? In the storage form? Yeah, to the storage form. Okay. Yeah, it's okay. So, and Michael, I started off by saying, you know, I began as a storage company making external storage for PCs. And then Maryetta came in and said, hey, can you sell us that PC that you used to format the drives? That's how I got in the PC business. That was his story, right? Yeah. Well, John, you and I know it all started with storage anyway. Those paradigm shifts are the ones that transform everything. Yeah. So they did the ecologic acquisition, which is a huge acquisition for Dell at the time. They did a couple of smaller acquisitions with Aksanet and Ocarina. But then they made another big acquisition here. Yes. So what was your reaction when they bought Compellant? Honestly, what was your reaction when they bought Compellant? And because you made a big bet in a different platform. And Compellant was around at the same time that you were making a decision on buying Ecology. Well, let me tell you this. If Compellant was bought before I make the last acquisition, I certainly think twice. Okay. Because the timing wasn't the right for Dell or for us, I don't know. But particularly with this learning that I am grasping here, make me think twice what I bought. So there's this saying that, how is it? Is he migrating to Compellant? Okay. Are you going to migrate to Compellant or are you going to stay on Equalize? I'm learning. You're learning a lot. Actually, this parallel shape shift that is being done here, I was telling the rep that even let me think about what I'm doing with the backups. The backups, the information how it lives in the storage, different things are coming to my mind. Okay. What are you doing with backups? We use regular traditional backups. To tape? To tape. Before to tape, but now we're doing... You're doing just to just to tape? This to this. We are deduping with our semantic, which is a great solution for us. We backup from different locations. Our hotels are in different parts. So it's software-based dedupes. Correct. That's for that. And it's working. It's working now. And you dedup it before you replicate it to a site? You have two sites? Multiple sites? We have three sites. We're not replicating between them yet. Okay. But with Compellant, everything seems to be... You might be able to replicate using Compellant. Yes. Yeah. Compellant, everything's easy. It says it all. It's true. It's too good to be true. I need to taste it. Interesting. So now we're talking earlier about virtualization. Server virtualization. Yes. What are you doing there? Can't you just paint a picture for us of what you have installed? Okay. I need to tell you about the consolidation before. I faced the challenge of having a legacy data center nine years ago when I got into the company. And this project becomes a big challenge for me and for the company to have new infrastructure, consolidated space from tower servers to rack servers, applications. But now we are moving since four years ago to the virtualization. So we use Beamware, our solution, and we actually also break some paradigms and break some expectations from the vendor also, because they were so conservative, you cannot put more virtual machines than these ones. Oh, we got to hook them up with a guy from Indiana University who likes to run beta stuff fun. Yeah. I find this is true with people and, you know, whether it's in a, maybe they like to have their hands on stuff or they want to test the limits, test the edges because they're under some constraints and they want to, you know, so let's test the edges. You say I can only do 10, but I am going to do 12. No, actually. For 20. What? And we have now like almost 300 virtual machines. And how many physical? Four many physical. Wow. Four physical servers. Four, you have 300 virtual machines on four physical servers with ACOR? No. Those are quad core and dual core. And we're on their critical missions. Wow. Revenue. Okay. So what percent of applications? What percent of your applications are virtualized? 60 percent. 60? And from the whole infrastructure of the main data center is 75 percent. What's your main database? Is it SQL server or Oracle? Oracle. So you're virtualizing Oracle? No, yet. Not all. Not the main database, but we're doing something. Are you going to? Yeah. Yeah. It works. What's your feeling? It works. We know it works. We have a lot of practitioners in the Wikibon. We have all the applications having the right people, the right decisions, making the right decisions. But Oracle is not so friendly toward VMware in terms of supporting, and I'll use that term loosely. Certainly they won't certify. They're going to certify it a lot. A lot of clients will say, unless you're able to. Is that right? Is that right? Okay. They will pay, in the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, they'll certify, but you got to pay them a lot of debt. So otherwise, if you don't use Oracle VM, they won't certify it, and they will support it, but they'll drag their feet in if you have a problem, and I don't blame them, actually. They'll say you have to go to the physical. Huh. Right? Yeah. Okay. You say? You say? And the time will talk. So some customers would say, well, then forget it. I'm not going to do it. Others would say they'd dam the torpedoes, and I think the majority are going to say, you know what, the benefits of virtualizing Oracle outweigh is outstanding. The issues. Yep. And that's you. Do you see going in that direction? No question. Yeah. We're going there. We are early adopters of technology, like virtualization. We are now in the engagement of virtualized storage, and we virtualize active directory exchange. We virtualize our weblogics, our open source technologies. Are you a big user of Linux as well? Oh. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We have our critical mission comes to almost 70% of those. Of your critical applications, yeah. Our Linux. Our Linux. Okay. And our virtualized. So. Yeah. Yeah. Your Oracle stuff is running on Linux, right? Yeah. Okay. What about, you mentioned a lot of data coming in. Are you, there's a big, a lot of buzz around big data, and what are you doing for Enterprise Analytics, Enterprise Data Warehouse? What do you do there? We have different solutions from QlikView. For instance, for B, we have, there's some other solutions I cannot remember. Is that not infrastructure that you support? Yes. Yes. That's okay. But the name of the solution, it goes to... Data Warehouse, obviously. Yes. And that runs on equal logic as well? Yeah. Some of them. And also in the EMCs that we have. Yeah. Okay. Which was from Dell? Yeah. Yeah. You bought from Dell before? Yeah. Yeah. Dell has been with us 8 years. So you're a mixed shop, EMC, equal logic. What did you think about, so obviously I described it, Darren Thomas was on before. It's like your first love, you know, EMC and Dell and your great girlfriend. You're a member forever. But, you know, time came that they had to go in different directions. And Darren said, yeah, that's true, but the customers, you know, both are companies and I believe it because EMC is maniacally focused on the customer and Dell as well. They'll take care of the customer. Yes. But are you nervous about that at all? No, no, no. I think as long as we have the right people doing the right decisions, making the right decisions, it will work. And now it's working fine. I think we need to improve. Everything can be improved. So I had a question for you. We like to get to the practitioner, right? Because they can give us the truth cut through the marketing, right? So every vendor says, oh, our products are the best and our products are, you know, different from us. Is there really that much difference between, say, for example, the EMC products and the equal logic products? At the end, they do the same, but I want my weekends. I want my weekends. I don't want to worry about outage. I don't want to worry out of control that a backup cannot be restored. So we need to... So who gives you your weekends back? Dell. Dell does. With all the solutions. With all... Okay. Then we have... Dell gives me my weekends back. Is it good for a book, a title for a book? How about desktop virtualization? Yeah. This is another... That's another... It's a great topic, right? Yes. Why don't you even call it desktop virtualization? The topic is... Actually, last week we were talking about with Dell, with the solution that they have, they have leading us to approval concept of the VDI. We came from the success of our data center, the virtual data center has been very good. We have... The roy of this virtualization is 1,300%. So we want to do that in the desktop. But you haven't done it yet? Not yet. Not yet. Because the solution we are asking for is very specific. It's voice over IP. They have different protocols. They have PC over IP. They have working on that. Different beamware, C-tricks, and other vendors. But they are working on our solution. So you haven't determined which direction you're going to go yet? Not yet. Not yet. But... Horizon, C-tricks. So, you know, a lot of people look at their server virtualization and say, oh, well, I'm using, let's say, VMware, so I will use them for my desktop virtualization. But they're different worlds, aren't they? Yes. Yes. So, with beamware, you can do both. But for us, we need to make the right decision. Bring in not only the PC over the network, but also the voice. How about mobile? Yeah. All the mobile ones, that's another story. Yeah, let's start with the mobile. So how's that affecting your business? Our sales folks are on the field. If they have their device, whatever device, they can do their job, they can sell more. So we're going in that path. Does that mean you lose your weekends trying to secure all this stuff? Well, I'm curious, because you're obviously getting great support from Dell. Dell has been in the desktop, laptop business. Moving into the, there's the Dell Streaks 7 Android tablet. Are you looking at those kinds of technologies? Or do you think, are you going? Our corporate. Smartphones? Well, yeah, but the policies of our corporate is straight. We have standardization on mobile devices. We are not jumping yet to the different infrastructures. So what do you guys use for a mobile device? Blackberry. You're still on blackberry. Yeah, iPhones. You got a standard, but it's flexible. The answer to your question was yes. All the above. So you support both? What about Android? What are your thoughts about Android? It's not yet into the market a lot with us. In Mexico. Yeah. Because every market is different. A lot of times people in the United States forget that technologies are adopted at different rates, and in some countries it takes off faster than it does in the U.S. Easy adoption. We are in a global world, so it's adoption. It's a matter of time. Yeah. Okay. All this time. Jose, I'm sorry we have to let you go. We've got another guest on, but thank you very much for coming on the tube and sharing a great story with us. It's a pleasure meeting you. Thank you. Great to meet you.