 from the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2016. Brought to you by Nutanix. Now here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Welcome back to Nutanix .NEXT. NextConf, hashtag NextConf is the Twitter action, all going on there. I'm here with Stu Miniman. This is SiliconANGLE's theCUBE. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. SiliconANGLE's a media company. This is our flagship product. We call it our game day. Glenn Allison is here as the vice president of Enterprise Architecture, a tractor supply company. Glenn, first time at theCUBE. Welcome. Great to see you. Dave, thanks for having me on, Stu. It's great to be here. So .NEXT, you know, growing. Were you at Miami last year? Were you down there? So this is my first time at .NEXT. So it's a good vibe to it, right? Yeah, it's exciting. And there's a lot of energy here. From what I understand, I've talked with Howard before. I mean, there's more than double the attendees from last year. So very clearly growing. Yeah, close to triple. So tell us about Tractor Supply Company and what you do there. Sure. So Tractor Supply is the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States. We've got over 1,500 stores. Last year, our revenue was approximately 6.2 billion in sales and we're growing. We're continuing to add stores expanding throughout the US. And in essence, Tractor Supply, a little bit about the store, the brand, our customers, they typically live a rural lifestyle. They're landowners. They have animals. They typically do it yourselfers. And they count on Tractor Supply. They come in for expertise on products. Our team members, we hire our customers. And we have the products that they need to live that lifestyle. And they're small to large retail stores? So we've got over 1,500 stores, varying kind of footprints. To some degree, we've got over 1,500 unique stores just in that we ensure we have the right products in those stores for the community. So community is something that's really important. Tractor Supply is involved with 4-H as an example. We're part of the community. And so in terms of the footprint and what's in a store, it's constantly evolving. And it's listening to customers and understanding what they need to make sure we have that. So it varies, though, right? You'll essentially have a store that's built for that community, right? It's not a, my writer, is it just sort of like Chipotle model? It's not a Chipotle model. It's not a Chipotle model because we have one in my town. It's a small, far-meaning kind of. Yeah, we're a unique niche. We support the rural lifestyle. In terms of the footprint, you'll see some similarities across each of the stores in terms of some of the products that we have. I'll give you an example. 4 Health Dog Food, one of our fastest-growing brands, multi-million-dollar brand. You're going to find that in every tractor supply store. Everybody has dogs. And you're an enterprise architect. I actually just got a puppy, the Allison House, a few weeks ago. Awesome. What kind of puppy? It's a mix. It's called a golden doodle. Yeah, yeah, cool. And it's part poodle and part golden retriever. Awesome. Puppies are great above them. When you get a puppy, it's like having a baby. You have to go in. There's a lot of different things that you need to get. We're in the store quite a bit. Pets can be like your infrastructure, especially puppies. If it's not put together well at the beginning, boy, you've got a lot of messes to clean up. You've got to care for it. Well, with the Enterprise Cloud Platform, I know we're here at .next and all that. But generally, our infrastructure is invisible. So the thing that keeps me up at night is generally the puppy now. That's great. We had one of the users at .next last week last year who said that when they put Nutanix in, they got their weekends back. And so it sounds like you've got a similar experience. We've filled that time back up with the puppy. With the puppies. So you use that term invisible, which ties into the messaging. And I want to unpack that a little bit. So as an Enterprise architect, you're responsible for the entire infrastructure of the organization? Is that right? Yeah, so I started with Tractor Supply a little over a year ago. So I moved from Chicago to Brentwood. And it's part of my role. So I'm responsible for enterprise architecture, infrastructure engineering, so things like our servers, storage, networking that support our 1,500-plus stores, our data centers, as well as IT quality assurance. All the testing and rigor that goes into ensuring our applications are deployed with quality. And then there's an IT solution delivery organization, which is made up of our project management. So talk about the apps that you're supporting. I mean, obviously, you've got all these stores around. You've got to keep those humming. Describe, sort of, paint a picture of what it looks like. Sure, so as you can imagine, it's one of the largest, or the largest, rural lifestyle retailers, when you go in a store from a technology perspective, like Point of Sale, all the systems that go into supporting a customer transaction. So think about pinpads and credit cards as an example. Right now, a big focus is EMV and chip and signature for retailers. Things like wireless and mobility is another example. OK, so what's your infrastructure look like? Servers and the storage, the Nutanix product. Maybe paint a picture for us. Sure, so we've got multiple data centers. We've got hundreds of different applications that we have to support. And I would say the data center footprint's been evolving. So a little over a year ago, we did an assessment of each of the different applications, the underlying infrastructure that supports those applications. And it was abundantly clear that there were some opportunities to just greatly simplify our architecture at the time. Things that you might expect that are common with most companies. You had multiple different types of systems for compute and storage and networking and varying levels of complexity to support all of that infrastructure. And we worked with several partners, like in examples. We worked with CDW to help develop our strategy, the roadmap, and then set out on a journey. We had some strategic conversations with Nutanix, particularly around the Enterprise Cloud Platform, and then over a period of several months, I mean, we did a phased implementation as, in essence, moving workloads from those legacy three-tier architectures to the Enterprise Cloud Platform. And so we've decommissioned racks and racks of legacy equipment, compute, storage, networking, and the data centers evolving. So we've significantly reduced our power, our floor space. But at the same time, we're adding capacity to support growth. And for tractor supply growth is essential. We're adding 120 new stores per year. We plan to grow to 2,500 stores over the next several years. And it's essential that we've got the systems, the processes in place to support that growth. Yeah, Glenn, I mean, something we've heard from users for a long time is they used to build their infrastructure on a per-application basis. You kind of had this bespoke silo that you built for the requirements, and then you tweaked and optimized that. Sounds like you're making that shift to be able to create almost a platform for it. Can you talk about what applications fit on that? Are there any applications that don't fit on that environment that you're using the Nutanix? Sure. So from an enterprise architecture perspective, one of the things that we've been working on is just an integrated roadmap across applications, infrastructure, security. Obviously, security for retailers is incredibly important. So we've got an integrated roadmap across each of the different functions in IT that's looking out three to five years. In terms of the types of workloads that you can move towards an enterprise cloud platform, our initial waves, anything that was running, windows or Linux, we targeted for the implementation early on in the transition. Where I would say where we're now and looking forward in the future is looking at some of the more complex workloads like high IO database workloads as well as big data analytics. And so we're working together with our partners and just making sure that's a good consideration as part of our roadmap. Nutanix made a bunch of announcements, things like bare metal support for some of those environments. Does that fit into the picture of what you're looking at? Exactly. And so we've been working with partners such as Nutanix providing feedback. I would say one of the things that's really good about the partnerships that we have is they listen to their customers and are responsive to the feedback. So I think a lot of the announcements that were done this week, which there were some big announcements today, are in response to customer feedback over the last several months, which we deeply value. That's important. So and Nutanix powers all this stuff, all the apps, all the? So we've migrated the majority of our workloads. There's some exceptions that we're working together with our partners to evaluate. But essentially most of our workloads have been migrated now. Predominantly a Nutanix shop, if I can use that phrase. Is that true? Yeah, I would say the majority of the workloads are on the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud. And you're running VMware? VMware, yes. OK. And then there's also, I mean, there's a lot of announcements this week around Acropolis. And we're looking at expanding our usage of Acropolis over time. Are you doing anything with Public Cloud? Yes, so I'll give you a couple examples. And really, I would say we have the best of both worlds when it comes to Enterprise Cloud Platform. So we've got the majority of our workloads are within our data center. And we get the benefits of Cloud with the Enterprise Cloud Platform. But then with Public, we're able to kind of leverage the scale that we get with Public Cloud. So as an example, like our e-commerce environment, we have the ability to rapidly provision additional systems to support busy periods throughout the year. So like day after Thanksgiving as an example, for most retailers, there's very busy time of year. We leverage the Public Cloud to help scale up for those periods. Cole, you mentioned a number of announcements today. We got a wrap, but I'll wrap there. And then I have one final question. What's your favorite announcement? What in there is exciting to you as an IT practitioner, as a doer? We like to call you doers. There was so many announcements today that are big wins, I think, for customers. Certainly the work that's going on with Acropolis, I believe, will be very disruptive for the industry. There's going to be a number of benefits for customers. I mean, in as example, is virtual desktops. That's essentially a turnkey solution now for customers. So I mean, I thought that was an important announce for customers. You welcome that disruption. I think it's going to be good for customers in the long run. Having choice. And then the enterprise cloud platform also, because it supports different hypervisors and gives customers choice, I think that's a win for most customers. So put the exclamation point bumper sticker on .next, your first .next impressions, takeaways, I mean, now it's early, but things that you learn or hope to learn? So there's no doubt, I mean, you look around. There's a lot of technology. There's a lot of flashing lights. There was a lot of big announcements in terms of new features and capabilities. For me, I think it's the people. So here, I got the opportunity to meet with other customers. As an example, we spent some time in the customer advisory board yesterday, meeting with a number of other customers across different industries. We were able to share some of our experiences, also influence where the direction is going to go with Roadmap. We've gotten visibility with our partners, which have been invaluable through this transformation effort. And also the Nutanix team members. OK, sorry, leg cramp. All right, that's a wrap. Glenn, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. We'll be right back right after this word. Great to see you.