Monday, August 13, 2018

GDPR Forces a Rekindling of the People-Centric Approach to Marketing and Business

Transcript of a discussion on how GDPR impacts how customer data can be used, forcing marketers to rethink digital-only approaches to customer outreach and relationships.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re listening to BriefingsDirect.

Our next digital business innovation discussion explores how modern marketing is impacted by the General DataProtection Regulation (GDPR). Those seeking to know their customers well are finding that this sweeping new European Union (EU) law forces a dramatic shift in how customer data can be gathered, shared, and protected.

And it means that low-touch marketing by mass data analysis and inference alone likely will need to revert to the good-old-fashioned handshake and more high-touch trust building approaches that bind people to people, and people to brands.

Here to help us sort through a more practical approach of rethinking marketing within the requirements of highly protected data is Tifenn Dano Kwan, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP Ariba. Welcome, Tifenn.

Tifenn Dano Kwan: Thank you, Dana. Very glad to be with you.

Gardner: Now with GDPR is fully in place, it seems that we’ve had to embrace the concept that good privacy is good business. In doing so, it seems that marketers have become too dependent on data-driven and digital means of interacting with their customers and prospects.

Has GDPR done us a favor in marketing -- maybe as an unintended consequence -- when it comes to bringing the human relationships aspect of business back to the fore?

Marketing with soul 

Dano Kwan: GDPR is giving us the ability to remember what marketing is, and who we are as marketers. I think that it is absolutely critical, to go back to the foundation of what marketing is. If you think about the role of marketing in an organization, we are a little bit of the Picassos of companies -- we are the creative souls. We bring the soul back into an organization.

Dano Kwan
Why? Because we control the narrative, we control the storytelling, and we control the brands. Also, in many ways -- especially over the past couple of years -- we control the data because our focus is understanding the audience and our customers.

With the rise of digital over the past couple of years, data has been the center of a lot of what marketing has been driving. But make no mistake, marketers are creative people. Their passion is in creating amazing stories -- to promote and support sales in the selling process, and being, frankly, the voice of the customer.

The GDPR law is simply bringing back to the forefront what the value of marketing is. It’s not just controlling the data. We have to go back to what marketing really brings to the table. And go back to balancing the data with the art, the science with the art, and ensuring that we continue to add value to represent the voice of the customer.

Gardner: It must have been tempting for marketers, with the data approach, to see a lot of scalability -- that they could reach a lot more people, with perhaps less money spent. The human touch, the high-touch can be more expensive. It doesn’t necessarily scale as well.

Do you think that we need to revisit cost and scale when it comes to this human and creative aspect of marketing?

Balancing high- and low-touch points 

Dano Kwan: It’s a matter of realigning the touch points and how we consider touch points when we drive marketing strategies. I don’t think that there is one thing that is better than the other. It’s a matter of sequencing and orchestrating the efforts when we run marketing initiatives.

If you think about the value of digital, it’s really focused on the inbound marketing engine that we have been hearing about for so many years now. Every company that wants to scale has to build an inbound engine. But in reality, if you look at the importance of creating inbound, it is a long-term strategy, it doesn’t necessarily provide a short-term gain from the marketing standpoint or pipeline standpoint. It needs to be built upon a long-term strategy around inbound searches, such as paid media search, and so on. Those very much rely on data.

While we need to focus on these low-touch concepts, we also need to recognize that the high-touch initiatives are equally important.

Sometimes marketing can be accused of being completely disconnected from the customers because we don’t have enough face-to-face interactions. Or of creating large events without an understanding of high-touch. GDPR is an opportunity like never before for marketers to deeply connect with customers.

Gardner: Let’s step back and explain more about GDPR and why the use of data has to be reevaluated.

GDPR is from the EU, but any company that deals with the supply chains that enter the European Union -- one of the largest trading blocks in the world -- is impacted. Penalties can be quite high if you don’t treat data properly, or if you don’t alert your customers if their private data has been compromised in any way.

How does this reduce the amount that marketers can do? What’s the direct connection between what GDPR does and why marketers need to change?

Return to the source 

Dano Kwan: It’s a matter of balancing the origins of a sales pipeline. If you look at the sources of pipeline in an organization, whether it’s marketing-led or sales-led, or even ecosystem- or partner-led, everybody is specifically tracking the sources of pipeline.

What we call the marketing mix includes the source of the pipeline and the channels of those sources. When you look at pure inbound strategies, you can see a lot of them coming out of digital properties versus physical properties.

We need to understand the impact [of GDPR] and acknowledge a drop in the typical outbound flow, whether it’s telemarketing, inside sales, or the good-old events, which are very much outbound-driven.

Over the next couple of months there is going to be a direct impact on all sources of pipeline. At the very least, we are going to have to monitor where the opportunities are coming from. Those who are going to succeed are those who are going to shift the sources of the pipeline and understand over time how to anticipate the timing for that new pipeline that we generate.
We are absolutely going to have to make a shift. Some readjustment needs to happen. We need new forms of opportunities for business.

We are absolutely going to have to make a shift. Like I said, inbound marketing takes more time, so those sources of pipeline are more elongated in time versus outbound strategies. Some readjustment needs to happen, but we also need new forms of opportunities for business.

That could mean going back to old-fashioned direct mail, believe it or not -- this is back in fashion, and this is going to happen over again. But it also means new ways of doing marketing, such as influencer marketing.

If you think about the value of social media and blogs, all those digital influencers in the world are going to have a blast, because today if you want to multiply your impact, and if you want to reach out to your audiences, you can’t do it just by yourself. You have to create an ecosystem and a network of influencers that are going to carry your voice and carry the value for you. Once they do that they tap into their own networks, and those networks capture the audiences that you are looking for. Once those audiences are captured through the network of influencers, you have a chance to send them back to your digital properties and dotcom properties.

We are very excited to see how we can balance the impact of GDPR, but also create new routes and techniques, to experiment with new opportunities. Yes, we are going to see a drop in the traditional sources of pipeline. It’s obvious. We are going to have to readjust. But that’s exciting, it’s going to mean more experimentation or thinking outside of the box and reinventing ourselves.

Opportunity knocks, outside the box 

Gardner: And how is this going to be different for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B)? We are seeing a lot influencer marketing effective for consumer and some retail; is it just as effective in the B2B space? How should B2B marketers be thinking differently?

Dano Kwan: I don’t know that it’s that different, to be honest with you, Dana. I think it’s the same thing. I think we are going to have to partner a lot more with what I call an ecosystem of influencers, whether it be partners, analysts, press, bloggers or very strong influencers who are extremely well-networked.

In the consumer world, the idea is to multiply the value. You are going to see a lot more partnerships, such as core branding initiatives that are going to rise. Or where two brands come together, carrying the power of their message to reach up to and join customers.

Gardner: As an observer of SAP Ariba and over the past several years, it’s been very impactful for me see how the company has embraced the notion of doing good and in doing well in terms of the relationship with customers and the perception of a company. I think your customers have received this very well.

Is there a relationship between this new thinking of marketing and the idea of being a company that’s perceived as being a good player, a good custodian in their particular ecosystems?

Purpose-driven pipelines

Dano Kwan: It’s a great question, Dana. I think those two things are happening at the same time. We are moving toward being more purposeful because the world simply is moving toward becoming more purposeful. This is a trend we see among buyers in both the B2C world and B2B worlds. They are extremely sensitive to those notions - especially millennials. They look at the news and they truly worry for their future.

The end-goal here is to remind ourselves that companies are not just here to make a profit -- they are here to make a difference.

GDPR is shifting the focus of marketing within companies to where we are not just seeking data to reach out to audiences -- but to be meaningful and purposeful when we reach out to our customers. We must not only provide content; we have to give them something that aligns with their values and ignites their passions.
The end goal here is to remind ourselves that companies are not just here to make a profit -- they are here to make a difference.

So, those two things are connected to each other, and I think it’s going to accelerate the value of purpose, it’s going to accelerate the value of meaningful conversations with our customers that are truly based -- not just on profit and data -- but on making a difference in the world, and that is a beautiful thing.

Gardner: Do you think, Tifenn, that we are going to see more user conferences -- perhaps smaller ones, more regional, more localized -- rather than just once a year?

Dano Kwan: I think that we are going to see some readjustments. Big conferences used to happen in Europe and North America, but think about the emerging markets, think about Latin America, think about Asia Pacific, and Japan, think about Middle East. All of those regions are growing, they are getting more connected.

In my organization, I am pushing for it. People don’t necessarily want to travel long distances to go to big conferences. They prefer local interaction and messaging. So regionalization and localizations – from messaging to marketing activities – are going to become a lot more prominent, in my opinion, in the coming years.

Gardner: Another big trend these days is the power that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can bring to solve many types of problems. While we might be more cautious about what we do with data – and we might not get the same amount of data under a GDPR regime -- the tools for what we can do with the data are much stronger than before.

Is there some way in which we can bring the power of AI and ML into a creative process that allows a better relationship between businesses and consumers and businesses and businesses? How does AI factor into the next few years in a GDPR world?

AI gets customers 

Dano Kwan: AI is going to be a way for us to get more quality control in the understanding of the customer, definitely. I think it is going to allow us to learn about behaviors and do that at scale.

Business technologies and processes are going to be enabled through AI and ML; that is obvious, all of the studies indicate it. It starts with obvious sectors and industries, but it’s going to expand drastically because it informs more curiosity in the understanding of processes and customers.

Gardner: Perhaps a way to look at it would be that aggregated data and anonymized data will be used in an AI environment in order to then allow you to get closer to your customer in that high-touch fashion. Like we are seeing in retail, when somebody walks into a brick-and-mortar environment, a store, you might not know them individually, but you have got enough inference from aggregated data to be able to have a much better user experience.

Dano Kwan: That’s exactly right. I think it’s going to inform the experience in general, whether that experience is communicated through marketing or via face-to-face. At the end of the day, and you are right, the user experience affects everything that we do. Users can get very specific about what they want. They want their experiences to be personal, to be ethical, to be local, and regionalized. They want them to be extremely pointed to their specific needs.

And I do believe that AI is going to allow us to get rapidly attuned to the customer experience and constantly innovate and improve that experience. So in the end, if it’s just the benefit of providing a better experience, then I say, why not? Choose the tools that offer a superior experience for our customers.

I believe that the face-to-face approach, especially when you have complex interactions with customers, still is going to be needed. And the face-to-face approach, the real touch point that you have, is going to be necessary in complex engagements with customers.

But AI can also help prepare for those types of complex interactions. It really depends on what you sell, what you promote. If you promote a simple solution or thing that can be triggered online, then AI is simply going to accelerate the ability for the customer to click and purchase.

But if you go with very complex sales cycles, for example, that require human interactions, you can use AI to inform a conversation and be prepared for a meeting where you have activated data to present in front of your customer and to support whatever value you want to bring to the customer.

Gardner: We are already seeing that in the help-desk field where people who are fielding calls from customers are much better prepared. It makes the agents themselves far more powerful.

How does this all relate to the vast amount of data and information you have in the Ariba Network, for example? Being in a position of having a lot of data but being aware that you have to be careful about how you use it, seems to me the best of all worlds. How does the Ariba Network and the type of data that you can use safely and appropriately benefit your customers?

Be prepared, stay protected

Dano Kwan: We have done extensive work at the product level within SAP Ariba to prepare for GDPR. In fact, our organization is one of the most prepared from a GDPR standpoint not only to be compliant but to offer solutions that are enabling our customers to themselves become compliant from a GDPR standpoint.

That’s one of the strengths [that comes] not just from Network, but also [from] the solutions that we bring to the industry and to our customers.

The Ariba Network has a lot of data that is specific to the customer. GDPR is simply reinforcing the fact that data has to be protected, that all companies, including SAP Ariba -- and all supply chain and procurement organizations in the world -- have to be prepared for it, to work toward respect of privacy, consent, and ensuring that the data is used in the right way. SAP Ariba is absolutely partnering with all the suppliers and buyers in the network and preparing for this.

Gardner: If you’re a marketing executive and you weren’t necessarily thinking about the full impact of GDPR, do you have some advice now that you have thought this through? What should others who are just beginning that process be mindful of?
Ensuring that GDPR is well understood by suppliers and agencies -- from a marketing point of view -- is critical.

Dano Kwan: My single biggest advice is to really focus on knowledge transfer within the organization. GDPR is a collective responsibility. It is not just a marketing responsibility; the sales teams, the customer facing teams -- whether it’s support services, presales, sales -- everybody has to be prepared. The knowledge transfer is absolutely critical, and it has to be clear, it has to be simple, and equipping the field within your organization is critical. So that’s number one, internally.

But the positioning with the external contributors to your business is also critical. So ensuring that GDPR is well understood with the external suppliers as well as agencies, from a marketing standpoint, and then all the partners that you have is equally important.

Prepare by doing a lot of knowledge transfer on what GDPR is, what its impact is, and what’s in it for each constituent of the business. Also, explore how people can connect and communicate with customers. Learn what they can do, what they can’t do. This has to be explained in a very simple way and has to be explained over and over and over again because what we are seeing is that it’s new for everyone. And one launch is not enough.

Over the next couple of months all companies are going to have to heavily invest in regular knowledge-transfer sessions and training to ensure that all of their customer-facing teams -- inside the organization or outside -- are very well prepared for GDPR.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You’ve been listening to a sponsored BriefingsDirect discussion on how the sweeping new European Union law GDPR forces a dramatic shift in how customer data can be gathered, shared, and protected.

And we have learned how low-touch marketing will likely revert to include more of the good old-fashioned handshake and personal trust-building methods that bind people to people -- and people to brands.

So, a big thank you to our guest, Tifenn Dano Kwan, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP Ariba. Thank you so much, Tifenn.

Dano Kwan: Thank you very much, Dana.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect digital business innovation interview.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host throughout this series of SAP Ariba-sponsored BriefingsDirect discussions. Thanks again for listening, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: SAP Ariba.

Transcript of a discussion on how GDPR impacts how customer data can be used, forcing marketers to rethink digital-only approaches to customer outreach and relationships. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in:

Wednesday, August 08, 2018

Path to Modern PC Client Automation is Paved with Hyperconverged Infrastructure for New Jersey College

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of hyperconverged infrastructure and virtual desktop infrastructure are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user workspaces far simpler and cheaper than ever.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories.

Our next hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) use case discussion explores how a New Jersey college has embarked on the time-saving, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) modernization journey. We will now hear how the combination of HCI and VDI are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user devices far simpler -- and cheaper than ever before.

Here to help us explore the embrace of a new digital and data-driven culture from the desktop to the hyper-efficient core, are our guests. Please join me in welcoming Tom Gillon, Director of Network and User Services at County College of Morris (CCM) in Randolph, New Jersey. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Gillon: Thank you.

Gardner: We are also with Michael Gilchrist, Assistant Director of Network Systems at County College of Morris (CCM). Welcome, Michael.

Michael Gilchrist: Thank you.

Gardner: And we are here with Felise Katz, CEO of PKA Technologies, Inc. Welcome, Felise.

Felise Katz: Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: What are the trends driving your needs at County College of Morris to modernize and simplify your personal computer (PC) architecture?

Flexibility for all, always

Gillon: We need to be flexible and agile in terms of getting software to the students, when they need it, where they need it.

Gillon
With physical infrastructure that really isn’t possible. So we realized that VDI was the solution to meet our goals -- to get the software where the students need it, when they need it, and so that’s a top trend that got us to this point.

Gardner: And is the simplicity of VDI deployments something you are looking at universally, or is this more specific to just students?

Gillon: We are looking to deploy VDI all throughout the college: Faculty, staff, and students. We started out with a pilot of 300 units that we mostly put out in labs and in common areas for the students. But now we are replacing older PCs that the faculty and staff use as well.

Gardner: VDI has been around for a while, and for the first few years there was a lot of promise, but there was also some lag from complications in that certain apps and media wouldn’t run properly; there were network degradation issues. We’ve worked through a lot of that, but what are some of your top concerns, Michael, when it comes to some of those higher-order infrastructure performance issues that you have to conquer before you get to the proper payoff from VDI?
Get Your Gorilla Guide
To HCI Implementation Strategies
Gilchrist: You want to make sure that the user experience is the same as what they would experience on a physical device, otherwise they will not accept it.

Just having the horse power -- nowadays these servers are so powerful, and now you can even get graphics processing units (GPUs) in there -- you can run stuff like AutoCAD or Adobe and still give the user the same experience that they would normally have on a physical device. That’s what we are finding. Pretty good so far.

Gardner: Felise, as a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Platinum Partner, you have been through this journey before, so you know how it was rough-and-tumble there for a while with VDI. How has that changed from your perspective at PKA Technologies?

Katz: When HPE made the acquisition of SimpliVity that was the moment that defined a huge game-changer because it enabled us, as a solution provider, to bring the right technology to CCM. That was huge.

Gardner: When you’re starting out on an IT transition, you have to keep the wings on the airplane while you’re changing the engines, or vice versa. You have to keep things going while you are doing change. Tom, how did you manage that? How did you keep your students getting their apps? How have you been able to swap things out in a way that hasn’t been disruptive?

Gillon: The beauty of VDI is that we can switch out a lab completely with thin clients in about an hour. And we didn’t realize that going in. We thought it would take us most of the day. And then when we did it, we were like, “Oh my God, we are done.” We were able to go in there first thing in the morning and knock it out before the students even came in.

That really helped us to get these devices out to where the students need them and to not be disruptive to them.
That really helped us to get these devices out to where the students need them and not be disruptive to them.

Gardner: Tom, how did it work from your perspective in terms of an orderly process? How was the support from your partners like PKA? Do you get to the point where this becomes routine?

Gillon: PKA has the expertise in this area. We worked with them previously on an Aruba wireless network deployment project, and we knew that’s who we wanted to work with, because they were professional and thorough.

Moving to the thin client systems deployments, we contacted PKA and they put together a solution that worked well for us. We had not been aware of SimpliVity combined with HPE. They determined that this would be the best path for us, and it turned out to be true. They came in and we worked with HPE, setting this up and deploying it. Michael did a lot of that work with HPE. It was very simple to do. We were surprised at how simple it was.

Academic pressure 

Gardner: Felise, as a solution partner that specializes in higher education, what’s different from working at a college campus environment from, say, a small- to medium-sized business (SMB) or another type of enterprise? Is there something specific about a college environment, such as the number of apps, the need for certain people and groups in the college to have different roles within responsibilities? How did it shake out?

Katz: That’s an interesting question. As a solution provider, as an owner of a business, we always put our best foot forward. It really doesn’t matter whether it’s an academic institution or a commercial customer, it always has to be done in the right way.

Katz
As a matter of fact, in academics it’s even more profound, and a lot more pressured, because you are dealing with students, you are dealing with faculty, and you are dealing with IT staff. Once we are in a “go” mode, we are under a lot of pressure. We have a limited time span between semesters -- or vacations and holidays -- where we have to be around to help them to get it up and running.

We have to make sure that the customer is enabled. And with these guys at CCM, they were so fabulous to work with. They enabled us to help them to do more with less -- and that’s what the solution is all about. It’s all about simplification. It’s all about modernization. It’s all about being more efficient. And as Michael said so eloquently, it’s all about the experience for the students. That’s what we care about.
That’s Right for Your Needs
Gardner: Michael, where are you on your VDI-enablement journey? We heard that you want to go pervasively to VDI. What have you had to put in place -- in terms of servers in the HPE SimpliVity HCI case -- to make that happen?

Gilchrist: So far, we have six servers in total. Three servers in each of our two data centers that we have on campus, for high redundancy. That’s going to allow us to cover our initial pilot of 300 thin clients that we are putting out there.

As far as the performance of the system goes, we are not even scratching the surface in terms of the computing or RAM available for those first 300 endpoints.

When it comes to getting more thin clients, I think we’re going to be able to initially tack on more thin clients to the initial subset of six servers. And as we grow, the beauty of SimpliVity is that we just buy another server, rack it up, and bolt it in -- and that’s it. It’s just plug and play.

Gardner: In order to assess how well this solution is working, let’s learn more about CCM. It’s 50 years old. What’s this college all about?

Data-driven college transformation 

Gillon: We are located in North Central New Jersey. We have an enrollment of about 8,000 students per semester; that’s for credit. We also have a lot of non-credit students coming and going as well.

As you said, we are 50-years-old, and I’ve been there almost 23 years. I was the second person hired in the IT Department.

I have seen a lot come and go, and we actually just last year inaugurated our third college president, just three presidents in 50 years. It’s a very stable environment, and it’s really a great place to work.

Gardner: I understand that you have had with this newest leadership more of a technical and digital transformation focus. Tell us how the culture of the college has changed and how that may have impacted your leaping into some of the more modern infrastructure to support VDI.

Gillon: Our new president is very data-driven. He wants data on everything, and frankly we weren't in a position to provide that.

We also changed CIOs. Our new CIO came in about a year after the new president, and he has also a strong data background. He is more about data than technology. So, with that focus we really knew that we had to get systems in place that are capable of quick transitions, and this HCI system really did the job for us. We are looking to expand further beyond that.

Gardner: Felise, I have heard other people refer to hyperconverged infrastructure architectures like SimpliVity as a gift that keeps giving. Clearly the reason to get into this was to support the VDI, which is a difficult workload. But there are also other benefits.
The simplification from HCI has uncomplicated their capability for growth and for scale.

What have been some of the other benefits that you have been able to demonstrate to CCM that come with HCI? Is it the compression, the data storage savings, or a clear disaster recovery path that they hadn’t had before? What do you see as some of the ancillary benefits?

Katz: It's all of the above. But to me -- and I think to both Tom and Michael -- it's really the simplification, because [HCI] has uncomplicated their capability for growth and for scale.

Look, they are in a very competitive business, okay, attracting students, as Tom said. That’s tough, that's where they have to make the difference, they have to make a difference when that student arrives on campus with his, I don’t know, how many devices, right?

One student, five devices 

Gillon: It averages five now, I think.

Katz: Five devices that come on board. How do you contend with that, besides having this huge pipe for all the data and everything else that they have to enable? And then you have new ways of learning that everybody has to step up and enable. It's not just about a classroom; it’s a whole different world. And when you’re in a rural part of New Jersey, where you’re looking to attract students, you have to make sure you are at the top of your game.

Gardner: Expectations are higher than ever, and the younger people are even more demanding because they haven’t known anything else.

Katz: Yes, just think about their Xbox, their cell phones, and more devices. It's just a huge amount. And it's not only for them, it's also for your college staff.

Gardner: We can’t have a conversation about IT infrastructure without getting into the speeds and feeds a little bit. Tell us about your SimpliVity footprint, energy, maintenance, and operating costs. What has this brought to you at CCM? You have been doing this for 23 years, you know what a high-maintenance server can be like. How has this changed your perspective on keeping a full-fledged infrastructure up and running?

Ease into IT

Gillon: There are tremendous benefits, and we are seeing that. The six servers that we have put in, they are replacing a lot of other devices. If we would have gone with a different solution, we would have had a rack full of servers to contend with. With this solution, we are putting three devices in each of our server rooms to handle the load of our initial 300 VDI deployments -- and hopefully more soon.

There are a lot of savings involved, such as power. A lot of our time is being saved because we are not a big shop. Besides Michael and myself, I have a network administrator, and another systems administrator -- that’s it, four people. We just don't have the time to do a lot of things we need to do -- and this system solves a lot of those issues.

Gilchrist: From a resources utilization standpoint, the deduplication and compression that the SimpliVity system provides is just insane. I am logically provisioning hundreds of terabytes of information in my VMware system -- and only using 1.5 terabytes physically. And just the backup and restore, it's kind of fire and forget. You put this stuff in place and it really does do what they say. You can restore large virtual machines (VMs) in about one or two seconds and then have it back up and running in case something goes haywire. It just makes my life a lot easier.

I’m no longer having to worry about, “Well, who was my back-up vendor? Or who is my storage area network (SAN) vendor? And then there’s trying to combine all of those systems into one. Well, HPE SimpliVity just takes care of all of that. It’s a one-stop shop; it’s a no-brainer.

Gardner: All in one, Felise, is that a fair characterization?
Get Your Gorilla Guide
To HCI Implementation Strategies
Katz: That is a very, very true assessment. My goal, my responsibility is to bring forward the best solution for my customers and having HPE in my corner with this is huge. It gives me the advantage to help my clients, and so we are able to put together a really great solution for CCM.

Gardner: There seems to be a natural progression with IT infrastructure adoption patterns. You move from bare metal to virtualization, then you move from virtualization to HCI, and then that puts you on a path to private cloud -- and then hybrid cloud. And in doing this modernization, you get used to the programmatic approach to infrastructure, so composable infrastructure.

Do you feel that this progression is helping you modernize your organization? And where might that lead to, Tom?

Gillon: I do. With the experience we are gaining with SimpliVity, we see that this can go well beyond VDI, and we are excited about that. We are getting to a point where our current infrastructure is getting a little long in the tooth. We need to make some decisions, and right now the two of us are like, this is only decision we want to make. This is the way we are going to go.

Gardner: I have also read that VDI is like the New York of IT -- if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. So what next workloads do you have in mind? Is this enterprise resource planning (ERP), is it business apps? What?

Gillon: All of the above. We are definitely looking to put some of our server loads into the VDI world, and just the benefits that SimpliVity gives to us in terms of business continuity and redundancy, it really is a no-brainer for us.

And yes, ERP, we have our ERP system currently virtualized, and the way Michael has things set up now, it's going to be an easy transition for us when we get to that point.

Gardner: We have talked a lot about the hardware, but we also have to factor in the software. You have been using the VMware Horizon approach to VDI and workspaces, and that’s great, but what about moving toward cloud?

Do you want to have more choice in your hypervisor? Does that set you on another path to make choices about private cloud? What comes next in terms of what you support on such a great HCI platform?

A cloudy future?

Gillon: We have decisions to make when it comes to cloud. We are doing some things in the cloud now, but there are some things we don't want to do in the cloud. And HPE has a lot of solutions.

We recently attended a discussion with the CEO of HPE [Antonio Neri] about where they are headed, and they say hybrid is the way to go. You are going to have some on-premises workloads, you are going to have some off-premises. And that's where we see CCM going as well.

Gardner: What advice would you give to other organizations that are maybe later in starting out with VDI? What might save them a step or two?
Get yourself a good partner because there are so many things that you don't know about these systems.

Gillon: First thing, get yourself a good partner because there are so many things that you don't know about these systems. And having a good partner like PKA, they brought a lot to the table. They could have easily provided a solution to us that was just a bunch of servers.

Gilchrist: Yes, they brought in the expertise. We didn’t know about SimpliVity, and once they showed us everything that it can do, we were skeptical. But it just does it. We are really happy with it, and I have to say, having a good partner is step number one.

Gardner: Felise, what recommendations do you have for organizations that are just now dipping their toe into workloads like VDI? What is it about HCI in particular that they should consider?

Look to the future 

Katz: If they are looking for flexible architecture, if they are looking for the agility, to be able to make those moves down the road -- and that's where their minds are – then they really have to do the due diligence. Tom, Michael and their team did. They were able understand what their needs are, what right requirements are for them -- not just for today but also going down the road to the future.

When you adopt a new architecture, you are displacing a lot of your older methodologies, too. It’s a different world, a hybrid world. You need to be able to move, and to move the workloads back and forth.

It’s a great time right now. It's a great place to be because things are working, and they are clicking. We have the reference architectures available now to help, but it’s really first about doing their homework.

CCM is really a great team to work with. It's really a pleasure, and it’s a lot of fun.

And I would be remiss not to say, I have a great team. From my sales to my technical: Strategic Account Manager Angie Moncada, Systems Engineer Patrick Shelley, and Vice President of Technology Russ Chow, they were just all-in with them. That makes a huge difference when you also connect with HPE on the right solutions. So that’s really been great.
That’s Right for Your Needs
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We’ve been exploring how a New Jersey college has embarked on a time-saving virtual desktop infrastructure modernization journey. And we have learned how the combination of HCI and VDI is making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user devices far simpler and cheaper in practice than ever before.

So please join me in thanking our guests, Tom Gillon, Director of Network and User Services at County College of Morris in Randolph, New Jersey. Thank you, Tom.

Gillon: Thank you.

Gardner: And Michael Gilchrist, Assistant Director of Network Systems at County College of Morris. Thank you so much, Michael.

Gilchrist: Thank you for having me.

Gardner: And Felise Katz, CEO of PKA Technologies, an HPE Platinum Partner. Thank you.

Katz: Dana, thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story discussion.

I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews. Thanks again for listening. Please pass this on to your IT community and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how the combination of hyperconverged infrastructure and virtual desktop infrastructure are making the task of deploying and maintaining the latest end-user workspaces far simpler and cheaper than ever. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in: