 Hey, wikibon.org, and this is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's production of VMworld 2013. We've been here, this is day three. This is our fourth VMworld show. I'm here with Stu Miniman, my co-host, and we've got a segment with Williams and Fudge. Phillip Reynolds is here, and Phillip's is in the IT organization. Practitioner, Phillip, welcome to theCUBE. Hey, great to be here. So tell us a little bit about Williams and Fudge. We are an accounts receivable management firm, so we work for about 1,300 colleges, universities, and private financial institutions. We have about 400 employees, and around 320, 330 of those are actually in our call center. Okay, so focused on that vertical. Obviously got a lot of expertise there. Tell us a little bit about your, well, before we get into the IT environment, what's driving your business? What kind of changes, what kind of pressures is management and the line of business putting on you? So as the environment's changing in our industry, we're having to work the business harder and work our staff harder, and work then IT harder to be able to make the same return that we were a few years ago. So as our business is growing, we're also having to do everything that we've been doing a little bit more economical. Okay, so talk a little bit about your environment. Obviously your VMware customer, right? We are, yeah. Is this your 10th VMworld? No, this is VMworld number four, I believe, so we actually are located in a 150-year-old cotton factory in South Carolina, and so that presents some challenges in and of itself with the disaster recovery aspect and the risks there. So our data center is there in that building and we've got a VMware cluster for our servers. We've got about 60 servers, and then we've got a VMware cluster for our view desktops, and that's all backed by an EMC VNX array with Cisco UCS as the compute platform. Okay, so what was the driver? Were you there when you guys moved to the virtualization? I was, yeah. Four years ago, we woke up one day and said, hey, we have no disaster recovery, but at the same time, we also have 12 physical boxes in the corner of the server room. So what are we going to do to do this economically and consolidate, really? So that's when virtualization really stuck out, and we adopted a disaster recovery plan out of that as well by putting some, the same equipment at a DR facility. Saw that with a lot of customers, right? I mean, they had no DR and then VMware enabled DR, and so I presume you're, you continue to push that capability further and further, but before we go there, so you predominantly virtualize now, is that right? Yeah, every mission critical application that we have, and actually that's every server now, is actually virtualized, except for our phone system. Everything's completely virtualized. Okay. Yeah, Phillip, you said that you're doing desktop virtualization when you're doing the server virtualization, can you tell us, you know, what did you learn, server virtualization, desktop virtualization, how did that roll out happen, what did you learn? Well, we saw a lot of the aspects of server virtualization could carry over into the desktop space as we saw desktops being, you know, have the need for retirement. So I've talked about four years ago, is when we started this transition, and so we had 160 employees at the time, now we've got 400, and so by virtualizing our desktops, it allowed us to grow at a higher rate than I think it would without virtualizing our desktops, and we also didn't add any IT staff. Okay, so I know you said you have a call center, is part of it, is only the call center virtualized or are all your desktops virtualized? We're currently on the path to virtualize all of our desktops, but right now our sales force and client support area is virtualized, and about 60% of the call center is virtualized as well. Okay, so now talk a little bit about, when you talked about your DR plan, I wonder if we could dig into that a little bit. So I think you guys are using RecoverPoint as part of that. How do you use RecoverPoint, is it, that's how you determine what the RPO is going to be and you get data off site. Talk about from a business standpoint, let's start with the business impact analysis, the RPO and the RTO. Did you go through an analysis of that? How did you set sort of the RPO and RTO? Just sort of got feel it, did you talk to the business? Yeah, I mean it was really one of those things where the owner of the company sat me down with management and said, I had a dream last night that the building burned down. I'm not kidding, that's how this started. And so we sat in the room and determined that a RPO, RTO, that was very small so we did have continuous data protection. That's what he wanted and he was willing to spend the money to do that and to make it happen. And so we did. We've accomplished a RPO of about 15 to 30 minutes and an RTO of less than really five by utilizing Site Recovery Manager and RecoverPoint. You click a button and things happen. Yeah, so those conversations are always interesting. It's struck with like how much data are you willing to lose and the business person uses what? None, well it's, you know. Then you figure out how expensive that's going to be. Right. Okay, so have you had to do a recovery? I have not had to do a recovery. Thankfully we've not had a disaster but I have been able to use the RecoverPoint technology to actually move VMs from the Colo facility to the primary facility. So we used to have a split sort of data center and we had some live in one place and the rest live in primary. So I actually used RecoverPoint one Friday afternoon and moved six servers over 15 minutes later. It was all done and I could go home. So Phillip, my understanding is also you've really deployed a private cloud now. Can you walk us through your move from just generally being virtualized on the server and desktop to private cloud and what those differences are in the management that you use for it? Sure, I mean I think the management is the real key there because we've not added that IT staff. So there's no extra burden on me or our service providers to provide this high uptime availability of the system. So the next things that we're looking at is hybrid service, you know, or some cloud based DR plan is that what's going to be next in our future and maybe. But we really also don't need that automation because we're a small medium business and maybe spend one or two VMs up a year but it's not really something we're taking advantage of. What tools are you using from the management side? Yeah, definitely using vSphere and I'm using the EMC plugins for vSphere and that's huge. Okay, not vCloud director or any of the pieces. Are you looking at things like vCloud hybrid services from VMware? You know, I think once those services become compliant we have to abide by the PCI compliance and we're looking at federal government compliance. You know, once those pieces are compliant then sure, that makes sense to use that and at least explore it. You asked what services we're using and I'm also looking heavily based on the conversations that I've had in some sessions here at VMworld looking at the compliance suite that VMworld's been working on the operations management suite that seems to have some real value for our business. So you guys are growing pretty fast. We are. You know, that's always a challenge. So how about things like Flash? Where does it, we talk about all the time in theCUBE how Flash is totally disrupting the traditional spinning disk business. What's your experience been with Flash and how are you using it? Are you using any kind of data migration, EMC's fast or any kind of similar tools? Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so we decided to do the Flash-first technology with EMC. So we have about 27 terabytes of data which is, you know, small but compared to some other companies but it's still a significant amount of data. So we are using the fast technology with the tiers of storage. So we've got the Flash, we've got the SAS drives, we've got the SATA drives and that's for our servers environment and that's perfect. We don't have any latency on SQL or SharePoint or email. It's just, it just flies and it screams. And but for view desktops for the replicas we're using just a set of solid state drives. So we may have about 10 Flash drives out of the 28 terabytes which is about six racks of drives. Okay, so it's not overwhelming but it's not insignificant either. Okay, so you eliminated your boot storms for your VDI. And when you said it screams, you know, you're happy with the performance. Can you quantify that a little bit or talk about how do you, you know, compare that? You compare it to what it was before, how do you measure it? So the nature of our business, it is a, I lost the word, we work in collections. So whatever the agent is able to do, that's what's going to directly. You break it up basically, no. Yeah, no, no, no. So that's what they're going to bring home. So if someone can't work, then they're not going to be able to bring home their commission, right? Commission is the word I was looking for. Yeah, yeah, okay. So, it is key. So, you know, we were always under the, strategy to not replace desktops every three years. We didn't really see it as something that we were going to do is to keep our commissions higher, right? And attract a higher caliber of employee. So, we started ripping out old desktops and putting in virtual desktops. And when someone gets a brand new desktop every day and they're ready to go in a minute, compared to 15 minutes a day before with maybe a three or four year old regular PC or even some that are less old than that, it makes the employee really happy. A happy employee that can get on the phone and make money is happy for me. So you're able to replicate the laptop or desktop experience now with your virtual desktop, is that right? Right, and we have to be fully compliant too. So, our sales people that are traveling are accessing their virtual desktop in the data center through their iPad with the RSA two-factor authentication all integrated into one. So, we're solving the compliance problem too. So, that day has come where you can replicate that experience. There's not, you're not getting complaints. It used to be like the graphics weren't as good. Right. Performance wasn't as good. You just, it was a little off. You know, there was some conveniences, but it wasn't the same experience. No, we've even got our marketing person on the virtual desktop as well. So, the users don't even really know. No. Other than the good things, the benefits that they got. They know the benefits. So, what were the benefits to the organization? I mean, other than the user pieces, I mean, overall, you know, the infrastructure we were able to cut costs, or go ahead. Right, I mean, I think it's made our business more agile. We're looking at some new markets to grow into as any business does, and we don't really even have to question our compute infrastructure or our data center infrastructure because we know if it's desktop or server expansion, we don't really need to worry about it. So, I can help business focus on the operational goals for the new market strategies instead of having to worry about what, how many desktops and provisioning and all that kind of thing. How do you, I mean, I imagine a lot of IT practitioners, you get pulled in on many different directions. You got to keep costs down, right? You got to make sure you don't lose data. You know, you got your DR initiative and other just high availability requirements. So, don't spend money, but make sure we never go down and oh, by the way, we need to, we're growing really fast and we need to be agile in offering new services and our sales guys need to get their commissions and they need access to their data. So, speed is key. Those are sometimes conflicting objectives, but they're your objectives. That's how you get measured. How do you manage those conflicting objectives? I think always doing your research is super key. So, I'm out always looking for the new solution that's going to solve multiple problems at once. That's why we don't really have a compliance, you know, management suite right now because I'm still looking for what's going to be the best option for us out there. So, constantly doing research and allowing the technology to work so I don't have to worry about the day-to-day technology has really been what's helped me to help the business grow. How do you do that research? I mean, obviously the web, you go to conferences, but do you have a particular approach or method that you can share? Yeah, I mean, I think as an IT staff person, it's really key to go to conferences, talk to other people, go to the user groups. They're in almost every major metropolitan area and just talk and see what other people are doing and of course, don't forget about social media. I learn a lot just by following people and keeping up with the community in general and social media. You know, when I look at the architecture that you have, you've got a lot of the pieces that would put together from EMC, you know, the converged infrastructure like the V block or more of the more reference architecture. Did you look at those? And especially if you look at something like VDI, you know, how was it to put together the pieces and how did you reach the solution which wasn't a converged solution on your side? Right, I mean, I think by looking with the EMC solution with VMware, you see a lot of integration and that's something that you don't necessarily see with other vendors. At least when we were doing this two years ago, things have definitely changed since then but it's really the best solution that solves lots of our problems. So I can mix VDI with disaster recovery and it's just all kind of one tight knit solution. Yeah, okay, so it sounds like maybe you might have fit in like a V specs but that didn't exist two years ago. Right, okay, right. Phillip, I was just checking out your LinkedIn profile. I see you're on there with Pat Gelsinger and tell Pat who's also a CUBE alum now. You see your CUBE alum, you're in the club. Oh, nice. You're in the inner circle. Nice. So talk about your relationship with EMC. Obviously you're a fan. Why? What makes EMC so great? EMC has never really failed us from a service of support or new product delivery options. So if there's something that I need that's gone wrong with the system, then EMC is normally proactively telling me that there's a problem before I even know it. I've got someone replacing it and their support has never failed us and I can't say that about all of the tech vendors that we've had to deal with before. But EMC has also got a wide array of solutions for any business size and I think that that's really what's helped us work with EMC is we've found exactly what we needed. So it's the service and support, the high touch capability. Right. I mean EMC is renowned for that. Thinking about how many vendors do you manage? Dozens? We've got about 25, 35 vendors. Where would you put EMC in the spectrum of quality? I mean, they're definitely right at the top. Yeah. The best? I would say so. You would say they're the best? I would say they're the best from the service support tech offerings. They're really probably the best vendor we use. So maybe this, okay, but so I always ask this, what's on there to do this? What could they do? I mean, even though they're up toward the top, what could they do to make your life better? How about I'll put a free network engineer in the office to do some stuff I don't want to do. That'd be great. Send me a bag of money. That's right. I'll put a small bag of money in front of you. Awesome. So Phillip, a quick question. We're talking about vendors. There's some discussion out there, kind of the relationships of Cisco with VMware and EMC. Does that hit your radar? Is that something you look at? You know, it's something to talk about. It's gossip, so to speak. But really, what it comes down to is who's providing the right solutions and who's working with each other. So whoever's providing that, then that's all that matters to me. All right, Phillip, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck with everything, and congratulations on your success. Keep truckin' and balancing. All right, keep it right there. Thanks, Stu, for sitting in. We'll be right back with our next guest. This is Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. We're live from VMworld 2013. We'll be right back.