 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, our first day of coverage at Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are joined by a customer of Dell EMC, Fernando Alameda, the head of infrastructure at Grupo Boticario. Welcome to theCUBE, Fernando. Thank you, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it. So you've been, as we were talking before we went live, an EMC customer, you're using VMware. This is your first Dell Technologies World and you picked a big one, 14,000 attendees, loud music, there's a rock band going on there. But just an orientation for our viewers of Grupo Boticario, the largest perfume and cosmetics franchise in the world. So it automatically started to smell better when you got onto our set. You guys have a presence in 1,750 countries, cities, excuse me, and producing 300 million products every year. So with that kind of size of an organization to be competitive, to offer differentiated products and a superior customer experience, and you think we've got to transform our business, where do you start? Yeah, so first time, first of all, thank you for inviting me here. Let's talk a little bit about Grupo Boticario, the company, it's a Brazilian company. It's, I think 20,000 employees around the Brazil present in 11 countries. I don't know exactly count, but we present in 11 countries. The Grupo Boticario have 4,700 stores around the world. Yes, the big, really big, it's the company's, I think it's, we don't have another companies, we tell you companies like us, you know, it's the big one, it's McDonald's or Avon, no, Boticario is the big, it's the big. It's like the retail companies start in 1977 and Grupo Boticario is holding responsible for five brands now. It's Candice Berenice, the Beatbox, the Odora, and now Vult is the new one. The Grupo Boticario start in 2010 when rolling responsible for five brands. It's the great company, it's the big one. It is big, yeah. So talk to us about some of the challenges, being that big, that dispersed, as IT infrastructure lead, people look at you to make sure that operation keeps going. So talk about some of the pressures as you guys are competing, you really don't, as you said, you don't have a peer, but you have to stay ahead. Talk about some of those pressures of competing on your team. Okay, so the most important to support this company, we need to stay aware with the technology and that will help us to stay aware with the IT transformation now. My challenge, the 2008 challenges, change the products, change the, put on IT technology the most products that they'll have or other providers because, you know, now when I see, when I see, do you guys know some C or know something like boot car stores, for example? When I go to the stores, we have a lot of lanes to pay. And now, after IT transformation, we don't have more cashier, for example. It's like Apple, for example. So you can come there and buy a product using my mobile phone. Exactly, exactly. This project, we use VMware products, Dell products, MC legacy products, now Dell technology. I think this is the big project in 2018. So let's talk about, you said over 4,000, I think maybe over 4,700 stores. So you have a lot of people expecting this seamless, easy experience, not just the consumers, but also the sales associates in the retail stores. Talk to us about the deployment model. As you needed to evolve IT to support that and allow your company to be competitive, from a technology standpoint, did you look at going from traditional infrastructure to converged, hyper-converged? Talk to us about the transformation of your IT infrastructure as an enabler of your digital transformation. Yes, good questions. Before a digital transformation, we had, we have us, you know, it's, you lost a sales. No, because a lot of lanes. You had a lot of customers like me. If there's a long, I can spend two hours shopping, long line, I'm out of there. Go to another, you know, it's crazy. After meeting with Dell with VMware, I saw the, let me, I can't remember the products that I use and watch. Yes, yes. And they show us and okay, it's pretty good to use here, take out the big store, to put these products and I see it. You know, at the different between store with cashier and the store without cashier, the sales like grow up like 15%. Wow, that's a dramatic improvement from the business bottom line perspective. Because the performance agility, 15%, just one store. Yeah, so that's an amazing story. So AirWatch, VMware, I have to give VMware credit when they bought AirWatch, I kind of scratched my head. One billion dollar business and AirWatch, yeah, one billion dollar business. So it's amazing watching the growth for AirWatch and hearing your story. Can you talk about, you know, Michael Dell talks about Dell technologies on top of Dell technologies are best. Let's talk about the back end. Are you guys using some of the products that we saw on stage this morning, VXRail, VXRat, et cetera? Yes, yes, yes. We started out using VXRail in this year, 2018, okay? In the past 2017, we changed the storage, for example. We had a mechanical disk, I don't know, I can't remember exactly model, but we changed for all flash storage. It's the performance, pretty good. It's amazing. We put all flash storage, VXRail, AirWatch, all Dell technologies products, you know. Because this now, we have 20, 25% more performance. It's really good for us. I think this is a big challenge for us and the big project when I see, when I talk about IT transformation. One of the things that we hear often, and especially since the acquisition of the EMC Foundation Federation a couple of years ago, is IT leaders want to have, samelessness, simplicity, agility, those are all key words, everybody needs to have them. But they want to have one stop, a one stop shop like Dell technologies considers themselves to be able to enable, to make digital transformation real. So you were using EMC products before the acquisition, VM were as well. With Dell technologies, is that allowing you to have this one stop shop location to be able to facilitate the transformation to it sounds like really ultimately neat, neat customer demands that are improving revenue and sales. No, we was, before Dell technology, we have EMC products, of course, but now we have, when I look, my point of view, the customer point of view is better after the change, after the merge because we have just one company and a lot of products. I just talk one person to buy a lot of products. It's more easy. It's more confusing, it's more commitment. I think the portfolio right now is much better than before the merge EMC Dell. Now I think it's better, much better. So let's talk about some of those sales and architecture meetings that you're having with Dell technologies directly. What's different about that? Because EMC would always come in and say, oh, we have VMware, we have RSA, we have Pivotal. Of course, they didn't have a server group, they didn't have a desktop group. Much, much bigger organization. One of the fears is that they would become like their competitors and you'd go to talk to a Dell technologies rep and there's just too much technology and they wouldn't be able to solution because that doesn't sound like that's been your experience. Oh, well, before merge, we use just EMC storage only because I think the principle products in EMC, this is my opinion, I think the better products that EMC have in the past before merge is the storage. And now when I see Dell technology have keep the storage, but we have hyper convergence, we have VMware together with this company, it's one company, you know. For customer, I think it's much better because you just talk to one person like say a few minutes ago. But I think when I see my environment in the Group Portugal, I have a lot of challenges in this year because I need to say more, you know. I need to put technology on my stores to say more. I need to offer for my final customer great products and agile performance. If you have this, we have more say. We have more stores. Yeah, one of the things too that I was reading about getting ready for this show is, you know, we're going to hear a lot about digital transformation, IT transformation data. The volume continues to grow and grow and grow and we have new technologies, emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, IOT. How are you and how are you going to be able to leverage all of this data that you have across all of these stores, data about customers buying habits and things like that? How are you envisioning in the future, leveraging and emerging technologies to be able to, like you said, increase the number of stores, increase sales and ultimately delight your customers. Surprise, I can't talk about, it's really surprise. But you know, we have a great challenge when I think artificial intelligence and other products, hyper convergence, blockchain, for example, you know, but it's a secret. I can't talk. It is a tough challenge to, we hear the buzz words, but I think I agree that it is a competitive advantage. That can take the stuff, stitch it together and come up with a solution that's actually competitive and helps you to outsell your competition. So I can appreciate that. So just one quick question about speeds and fees. Global company, a lot of data, as you sell a lot more data, Michael said, you know, as you grow, the data grows as you enable better use of the data, it feeds upon itself. What are the building blocks of your data platform? Like what technologies specifically are you using within Dell's storage portfolio? We use AirWatch, like I said again. We use all flash platforms. We use, I'm not a pro at this man. You're also using some VI analytics. VXRail, now Isilon too. Now you use Isilon for support the stores. Of course, the most important for support the stores is Outflash stores, storages and AirWatch. So to sum up, you've already made big improvements to sales, to the customer in-store experience, to performance internally, as you mentioned, switching to all flash arrays. So you're well on your way in this digital transformation. We won't ask you any more questions about the secret sauce of using emerging technologies, but we look forward to hearing maybe next year what you're doing there to delight your customers. And we want to thank you for stopping by theCUBE, Fernando. I appreciate it, thank you. And you've been watching theCUBE. We want to thank you as well. We are live day one of Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm Lisa Martin from my co-host Keith Townsend. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break.