 Live from the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE at Dell World 2014. Here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Welcome back to Dell World, everybody. It's been a great day and a half, day and a quarter. Stu and I are really pleased to have Ray Sands here. He's the Senior Technical Analyst with Elmcroft Senior Living. We're going to have a practitioner discussion. Elmcroft is based out of Louisville, Kentucky. Ray, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. Thank you, sir. So, what do you think of Dell World so far? It's awesome. All the stuff here and everything that I've seen, it's really amazing what Dell's starting to do. Now, do you come pretty much every year? This is my first time. Oh, really? Okay, so this is what the third Dell World, right, Stu? And so, yeah, so why do you come to events like this? What other events do you go to? How does this compare? I've actually only been to smaller regional events before, so this is actually my first large event ever. So, but it's really impressive. It's great, isn't it? You get together with your colleagues. But what do you do here? You spend your time doing, learning. I was on the floor, show floor a lot, seeing all the, it's amazing how many different partners are here with Dell, and just looking at everything they have to offer. Isn't it unreal? I was walking around two nights ago when I first got here, and I was struck by how much stuff Dell has in its portfolio. It's actually quite amazing. From a practitioner's perspective, what do you think about that? It must get confusing sometimes, but at the same time, you pretty much got one of everything right here on the show floor. So, I wonder if you could give us a perspective on that. About how there's so many different things here. Yeah, does it sometimes confuse you or not? Does it comforting to know that you've got so many choices? It is. I mean, I've seen some really big name vendors here too that surprised me when we saw Citrix here, Presence, Samsung. You see a lot of the other partners here with Dell, and it's really interesting to see how many different companies are actually tied into Dell that you just never hear about on a day-to-day basis. Oracle. I saw Oracle in there. I don't know if you're in an Oracle shop, but you're in a Microsoft shop? Okay, so obviously Microsoft and Dell have a relationship that's renowned, but I saw Oracle. I said, wow, that's interesting. They're a sponsor here, that's kind of cool. So Dell's kind of one of those companies that's got its hand in virtually every pie. Yeah, Ray, I'm curious, do you, your relationship with Dell, do you have a channel partner that helps you through kind of the acquisition and services of that environment? We do, we have a Dell direct team, so we've been with Dell for a while now. So as a result, we have a Dell direct team that helps us out and they show us, they've been showing us and guiding us in all the different opportunities that are out there with Dell, but I had, even though they tell me all the time that they do all these different things, I just had no idea it was this diverse. Okay, yeah, so Ray, can you kind of sketch out for us a little bit about Elmcroft's IT environs? My understanding, it was a few companies that have come together now through kind of acquisition mergers and everything. So what's your IT environment look like and what do you cover? Where it started or where it is now? Yeah, just to paint for us the journey. Sure. So I've been with them before Elmcroft was actually founded. I was with one of the streams beforehand and back in around 2006, Elmcroft formed to make an assisted living company and we do long-term care and Alzheimer care around the country as well as some skilled care. Our goal is to focus on the patients, but when we had that, we had four separate, complete separate networks that we had to bring into one. So we had different hardware, different software, different networking, different firewalls, different IPs, it was a mess. So we brought it all into one location and we kind of jury rigged it. You know, and then as we went along, we started going, okay, this is working, but it's working poorly. So then we started saying to ourselves, how can we make this more streamlined? How can we go to the next level and prepare? Cause our company started growing. We started, you know, getting additional buildings. We started getting acquisitions and stuff like that. And so our infrastructure just didn't happen. So when we reached out to different vendors, Dell was one of them. We said, show us what you have to offer. And they brought to us the Force 10 was our first, you know, I guess major centralized networking project that we did. And we got the C 300 and we started converging our infrastructure and we converged down our firewall to the Dell Sonic Walls platform. And we eventually are now going to the M 1000 E cause we didn't have a bunch of two-use servers. So Ray, did you end up at your old network which was kind of hodge podge duct tape and, you know, bailing wire? Did that all get ripped out? Was this part of the 10 gig migration also? No, it was just a one gig migration at the time. We actually did a 10 gig migration earlier this year in February. We actually went to Dell's new S 48 10s. So yeah, we've seen the same trend I guess all the other companies have seen, right? Where we're starting to do all this virtualization, all the streaming and all the servers and we're like the one gig is not cutting it anymore. So we're having to go to the 10 gig. All right, great, how did that upgrade go? Smooth, we did really well with the 10 grid migration. And now our entire backbone at our main office is actually completely 10 gig. Yeah, and I have to imagine not only virtualization, but if you start adding things like flash in, you know, that's got to put more strains on your network. Yeah, we started out, our first piece of non Dell server hardware equipment was actually the ecologics box. And we did ecologics for a while and we got to the point where we needed something more customizable. And then lo and behold Dell said, hey, try out compelling. We did evaluations, we got them and we actually went all in. So we actually do have a hybrid array. So we have several terabytes of 200 and 400 gig SLC disk, 10K and 7K all in one array. Performance is amazing. We have not come anywhere close to capping out what it can do. So I wonder if we could talk about your business a little bit. Sure. And what's happening in the health provision and health care provider business? What are the big drivers? What are the big trends that you see that the business lines, if you will, are asking you to deliver? We're always focused on patient care. I mean, that comes foremost to Elmcroft. You know, we do want to make sure that the patient's taken care of. So to say to that, I mean, we're doing a lot of paper today, but we're starting to converge. So we're starting to have to look at business drivers like EMR, we're having to look at clinical applications that we're going to have to start doing. And we're starting to integrate our software in the background that we've used for years to make them start talking to each other so we can actually help take care of the resident better. So the EMR piece, I mean, everybody in healthcare talks about EMR. It's early days for you guys you were telling me off camera, but what does it mean for the IT practitioner? The business is sort of paper based, moving to electronic medical records. There's meaningful use behind it, which helps you get paid. What does that all mean from the IT shop? I mean, I know you guys haven't figured it all out, but what's your initial thinking? I think it's going to be a little bit of a redo again of our network. I think we're going to have to make sure that we're geared for 24 by seven shop, because like I said, all the stuff we've talked about so far for us has been financial based, right? So we've been focused on how do we keep the business going? How do we keep things moving along smoothly? And right now we're starting to switch to the clinical side. So now we're having to go from a 24 by seven model. So we got to actually make sure that if we, as we make this jump from paper that our IT is up 24 seven. Now we haven't had troubles before, but we got to make sure we have backup plans in place. Right, okay. So, and that's related to the sort of drive to EMR? The drive for EMR is actually back to what I said before, so it's resident care. So the residents themselves, we can catch diagnosis as sooner. If we're charting stuff electronically, you can actually have software programs that say a trend in the health of the patient and can then go, hey, maybe the doctor should look at this and it can help give information back and the exchanges and everything else. What are your thoughts on cloud generally and public cloud? I presume like many practitioners you're learning from the watching the hyperscale guys. The companies like Dell are bringing technologies in to allow you to sort of duplicate, replicate if you will, mimic the cloud environment. I wonder if you could talk about, what used to be a bad word inside of IT, cloud, everybody rolls their eyes, maybe you still do. But I think generally it's becoming an accepted sort of way of doing computing. I wonder if you could talk about your evolution, your attitude toward public cloud and what you guys are doing within your own premises. Sure, let's start off with the public cloud. Right now we're a little hesitant to go towards the public cloud. We are healthcare, so there's regulations on us to make sure that the data is secure and private, trying to follow all the government regulations. And I've talked to a lot of my peers and a lot of them seem to be also equally like, we're not really going to ready to take that step and to go there so much. So for us it's been more of, we're building our own cloud internally. And Dell's helped us centralize everything. So we used to have redistributed, right? So we had stuff that was out in the field, servers out in the field, stuff like that. We've done all the centralize. We're using one of Dell's partners, Citrix. We're getting all the virtualization in place. So we're building our own infrastructure that's cloud based. So people always talk about, and we've talked to a lot of practitioners and they'll say what you just said around, well, we're just not comfortable with it yet. I want to unpack that a bit and understand what that means. There's obviously security, there's compliance, there's HIPAA in your world and privacy. All things that all the public cloud guys say they're dealing with. What is it about those things that makes you more comfortable doing it yourself? Is it like when your teenage kid wants to drive and you say, I got this, because we're kind of in a rush today. I just don't trust you quite as much, even though they can get through it. But is it a sentiment? Is it actual technical data that you have? Is it a feeling? Is it just the cloud's not ready? Are there performance considerations? I wonder if we could unpack that a bit. So I think it's a little bit of almost everything you said. So part of it is cost. So actually going to the cloud, I think would actually cost us more. I really believe that. Because renting is going to be more expensive than owning. Renting is going to be a lot more expensive than owning and not only that, but something that people take for granted is bandwidth cost. I mean, when you buy from the carrier, it's not cheap. I mean, you're paying thousands of dollars for pipes that are dedicated coming into your building. And then that's an additional cost per month that we just don't have today. And because when we're all internal, we don't have to have that same type of bandwidth to be outside. Right. Are there some applications that you would consider over time? Let's say the next three to five years that you might grow up with. I mean, we do have some vendors that host for us. And so that's kind of like ADPs, an example. Yeah, so they're all online. We use them and it works fine. So there are some that we do, but there is, like you said, that hesitation of at the end of the day when the regulations come down, it's Elm Prof that's responsible for the data. So even though they're telling us they're secure, it's that extra burden on us because we actually have to go out and verify their network. It's a lot easier for me to verify my own stuff than someone else's. And a lot of times the public cloud guys won't let you verify. That's correct. I don't think so to do it indirectly. Right, I'm wondering if you could talk about the role of data in your environment. Obviously you have government regulations you need to follow. You said you're getting into the clinical side. How much are you leveraging kind of the information that you guys create inside? And are there any new data sources that you tap into that would help that your company do its job better? Yeah, that's more on my applications guys side of the house, but they're actually doing an awesome job. They're actually having someone who's actually dedicated at Elm Prof just to project manage that piece. So we've had several different people that are, or companies that we, vendors that we deal with the clinical, you know, also the financial, and they're trying to merge those streams together. So we have several applications that we're trying to build connectors between companies to do exactly what you say. So we can get a better picture of you of what's happening in our company. All right, so how do you make sure that your infrastructure and the kind of the IT you're putting in place can support all of those new applications? Currently I'm actually leveraging Dell. You know, as we're going forward, I've actually been able to talk to the Dell engineers and stuff like, and take advantage of the fact that we're not, we're not at the forefront here. You know, like you mentioned, we're just at the beginning of EMR. So we're at the beginning of a lot of this. The hospitals have really paved the way for us. So we're not the first one trying to, you know, build the building blocks here. We got road maps. So we're taking advantage of the Dell engineers and their expertise at seeing how other people have done it. And I've had the ability to take care of my peers and say, where do I need to be in five years? You know, in networking to and infrastructure and servers and anything else, to be able to support this. Do you utilize Dell services? We do. Pretty extensively or? I would say we do it as needed. So if you had to take the advice pie and break it down into internal, your own, yourself and your own people, your peers and the vendor community, how would you split that pie in terms of contribution to your strategy? That's an excellent question. I'd say there's a lot of weight on the peers. Probably the second most would probably be hearing from all the different vendors because, you know, you always take the fact that vendors are biased towards their own product. But if you talk to multiple of them, you get a good picture of what's going out there. And normally when they're introducing stuff, they're also introducing the latest trends and ideas. And then probably the last for me is my peers. Because sometimes, you know, your peers are either behind you, beside you or in front of you. And they may not have the exact same environment, but they can kind of give you a good idea of what to do. What should vendors not do that like really bothers you? I always love to ask practitioners that question. What should they stop doing just to make your life better? Emailing daily. No, I think vendors have by and large done a really good job of reaching out to us and educating. I think sometimes they need to focus more on just the education part because, unless on the sales, you know, because they are always out there going, hey, look at this, and it's just for the sales. And they might actually have a good product that's not, they're not trying to focus on right then. That would actually be more beneficial for us. How do you gather information? I mean, do you, I mean, like everybody, I'm sure you read a lot of publications and so forth. Do you use social media? I don't use social media. I use the web a lot, searches. I look up the public websites a lot and look at the product lines and read stuff on there. And then I read the, the closest I get to the social media is the comments that you get to read online for like, for the public sites. So if you think about the past 10 years, how has your sort of buying process changed or information gathering process changed? You must be, it's like us buying cars now. We're way more informed than we used to be when we go into the negotiation. Is that analogy apply for technology? Yes, it definitely does. Before, you know, when a lot of stuff came out, it was kind of basic course, right? I mean, you've seen it with Dell, you've seen it with all the large tech companies. It was really basic when you looked at stuff. You know, you wanted a server, you got a server. You know, you wanted a PC, you got a PC. But now everything is starting to converge. And you know, like even here at Dell World, they had that system where they have a 2U box where they're putting it all together in one box and they're saying, oh, by the way, it doesn't ever go to the switch anymore. It stays in, so yeah, it's totally changed the landscape. It's hard to keep up at times. Do you find that Dell is easier to do business with than other vendors, or is that just sort of a misperception that I have? I do find Dell a lot easier to do business with. More transparent with pricing, sort of hiding the ball. I found most of the time, and it's true, not everyone, it's not true all the time, but I find that a majority of the time, probably 90% plus, that their first price to me is their lowest price, and that's refreshing. There's not a lot of, all right, can you go back and tweak? Can you go back and tweak? Can you go back and tweak? You don't have to spend a lot of time wasting time trying to get a price. Yeah, it's got to be grueling as a buyer to have to grind down the vendor community, right? You really, you want them to make some money, because they got to fund R&D. Yes. But at the same time, you want to get a fair deal. Yes. And I think, I feel like, and talking to practitioners, that it's changing someone. I think vendors, many vendors anyway, some slash many are starting to understand that getting a fair deal upfront is going to help their cause, not necessarily hurt it. But I don't know, I wonder if you can comment. I agree, and I think one thing that is starting to be lost in the art of dealing with the vendors and stuff is the art of the relationship. So what I mean by that is, it used to be more, more common for a vendor to get to know the client and actually spend time at the client, understand what you do. And I find that a lot of people just want to come in and say, hey, here's our stuff, here's our solution, here's why it would fit, and they don't actually take time to know us. That's one thing Dell's really done well. And that's one of the reasons why you partnered with them so extensively is because what they have done is they've actually sent their people in our building and sat with me on probably a monthly basis at times or on the phone and say, what does Elmcroft do? What is Elmcroft wanting to do? What are you wanting to accomplish? And they'll take that back, find out what's needed, and then make suggestions. I find that a lot of vendors just don't take the time. You know, they're in, they're trying to get in, they're trying to get their sale, they're trying to get out. They don't actually sit there and try to understand. More transaction based. Yeah, more transaction based, less relation based. And I find that the relations based is much better for the company as a whole because you get a better product at a better price. Do you find that say like a private VC backed company will be more, I mean, I'm making a big assumption here, but I'm going to test it. The private VC backed company who's trying to whether get an exit, do an IPO or whatever, maybe more focused on that transaction than say a more larger established vendor might have more resources, maybe think about the accounts more strategically or is it not necessarily, it just sort of varies vendor by vendor? It varies vendor by vendor a lot. I know that some of the vendors that I have are awesome. You know, I mean, they're just always there, always doing what I mentioned. And then other ones that I have to try to bring along and they try that they struggle at it. So flip side of my earlier question, what kinds of things do you want vendors to do and you've sort of touched on it that make your life better? Again, it always comes down to, they're actually doing it now. They come in, they find out, my vendors, I'm kind of blessed. We have a great team. They come in, they look at us, they find out and they make good solutions and they give me the best prices. I mean, you really can't ask more than that. And then the last thing that they do constantly for me is they do help train. So in IT, as you guys probably know well, we're constantly busy. We're constantly doing something someone's trying to constantly do their attention. We have to balance our time for our job with the time of learning. So one thing that's been helpful, especially here at Dell World, is the opportunities to get the chance to just sit there and learn about everything, to actually explore all the different avenues out there because sometimes we just kind of get stuck. Well, Ray, we really appreciate you taking time out of that sort of learning experience to come share your knowledge on theCUBE with our community. Thank you. And thanks for coming on. Thank you. Good segment. All right, keep right there, buddy, Stu and I will be right back with our next guest right after this world. We're live from Dell World 2014. This is theCUBE.