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>> Commentator: From the CUBE studios
in Palo Alto in Boston,
connecting with thought leaders all around the world,
this is a CUBE conversation.
>> Welcome to this CUBE conversation.
Lisa Martin here
with one of Dell Technologies customers,
and what a great time to be talking about a candy Company.
Clifton Dorsey joins me
the VP at Warrell Corporation.
Clifton, welcome to the CUBE.
>> I want to thank you.
I appreciate being here.
>> So I know Warrell Corporation does more than candy.
But you know, here we are approaching the holidays.
And I think all of us
could just use a feel good story about candy.
But I know you do more.
Tell our audience
a little bit more about
Warrell corporation standpoint.
>> Sure.
Warrell corporations been in family
or in a family owned business for 50 plus years.
Were a co Packer co manufacturer.
So you won't really see a Warrell candy bar out there.
But we really help bring to life,
a lot of innovative ideas around the candy
and the good for you products
for a lot of our partners.
>> So talk to us about
you're obviously working with Dell Technologies.
>> Give us a,
an insight into your data center operations,
your IT environment before
the solution that we're going to be talking about.
What was that like
physical on prem cloud?
>> Well, our data center
kind of falls right in line
with the same time of year as a horror story.
When I first came here
and got on board,
a lot of outdated equipment,
disparate equipment separated, our backups were
they were few and far between the equipment was so old
that some of it wasn't even supported anymore.
We had antiquated systems.
But the biggest thing is the confidence level.
You have zero confidence that your system stay running
your backup.
It was an everyday occurrence
just to try to get a reliable backup
for just a piece of the data.
Let alone all of our
all of our data and information that we have.
>> But competence factor is table stakes.
And especially now it's
if a company can't have confidence
that their data is secure and protected.
That's, you know,
folks that can't might not be around tomorrow.
But talk to me a little bit about
from a workloads perspective,
what were you protecting
VMS, ERP systems?
Give us a slice of that data
in terms of its impact on the business.
>> Well.
In you're correct,
having that confidence level in the systems
is what you need.
Our SQL databases are in there
are ERP systems in their file servers.
And at the time, even our email server was in there.
So any one of those goes down,
it's a business impact.
You have to look at
what can't you do
when that happens.
Or our manufacturing floor, we're collecting a lot of data
coming back off the floor
for all of our folks
and purchasing and procurement
and our runtimes
to make sure that we're hitting our our dates on time.
So even our shipping and receiving team
needs to know how the floor is running,
to know if we're going to hit those ship dates
and when to schedule the truck.
So it literally all correlates and all comes together.
>> And I mentioned also
not just does that involve every aspect
of world's business internally,
but relationships with the partners
that you are helping fulfill, right?
>> That's correct,
because we're making their product.
If they can't have the product on the shelves,
that impacts them.
So we really have to do everything that we can
to make sure our systems are up,
make sure everything is running,
and really fulfill their order and get it out there.
So you can have that product.
>> Yeah, that's why often we talk about
data protection and brand reputation go hand in hand.
So talk to me.
When you came into Warrell,
you must have seen nowhere to go but up.
Talk to me about some of the things that you said,
we have got to.
For example, aging physical infrastructure.
We've got to replace that.
We obviously have to be able to have
reliable data protection,
because we have to have the competence
that we can enable our teams
and our partners.
But what were some of the things that you said?
All right, let me kind of get a phased approach here.
What are we going to change?
And why are we going to do it with Dell Technologies?
>> Sure. So looking at our business continuity plan,
you don't have a good DR.
So you have to start looking backwards of
where do you start?
So, we have zero backups,
our data is not protected,
we have zero confidence in it,
we go back a little farther.
Our systems aren't really there for us to back up.
So it really started at the appliance level
on our server level,
to get rid of all of the old information,
get a new subset of servers in.
So we have a new VX rail environment and
it integrates great with the integrated appliance.
Ties directly into it.
So we have backups.
We have everyday backups.
We have fast and speedy backups.
Then we can offer those to an off site.
So we now truly have
a full business continuity plan on a DR,
Disaster Recovery situation.
>> That's critical (indistinct).
I was reading your case study
and where there was no DR before.
Talk to me about the ability to
to leverage the clouds of now
with what you've implemented,
and the power protect series.
You've now got the ability to
from a DR perspective,
I just want to understand that especially here we are,
you know towards the end of 2021,
There's been such a shift to remote operations.
What's that cloud benefit like from a DR standpoint?
>> It's been great.
We were old tape backups.
So someone had to be here to switch out the old tapes.
And hope that how do we get them off site.
Who's taking them home?
What vault are they living in?
You know, with the remote aspect,
all of that worry goes away.
Everything is offloaded.
Everything goes into a cloud.
If there is a situation,
we just work through our cloud environment.
We can reinstate business,
literally a click of a switch.
>> Yeah, I was looking at some of your statistics,
and it looks like about a six second reduction
in your backup windows
and a huge reduction in your physical footprint.
The Data Center also imagined more green.
Tell us a little bit about it from that perspective.
>> Sure.
A couple points you hit there,
I mean, our deduplication and compression rates
are higher than what we're expected by far.
So that's been a great spot
as far as we don't need as much physical storage
to hold all of that.
Well with that,
we were able to take our racks,
we had three server racks.
We went down to half of one server rack.
So your heating and air conditioning
your heating and cooling cost comes down.
Your power cost comes down.
All of that soft costs
that stretches around this environment,
really has a benefit for us.
>> I'm also thinking to in this time of everything shifting
and data protection becoming business critical.
Your team's productivity one,
we talked about the backup.
Big reduction and backup windows.
But your team must be much more productive.
And also, I imagine from confidence,
from a reputation standpoint,
your executives, your senior management
probably now has the confidence.
Because you have the confidence in the data secure.
>> Yeah, Lisa that's true.
And even done to our user level.
When I first got here,
I mean, our users were complaining about
not being able to print a Word document.
I mean, not being able to print a document
that's fundamental stuff.
Started diving into it.
And our systems are just old,
disparate and weren't configured the best.
So, our team has really been able to revamp all of that,
redo all of that.
And the confidence level around the organization
has just really improved.
And it's great to see,
we now have a lot more time to work on tomorrow
than living in the trenches of today.
>> Which everyone needs right now
since its pivot after pivot after pivot.
I'm curious. So how long ago did you come in?
Like, how many years ago
did you find this antiquated system?
>> Yeah, I've been here a little over two years now.
>> Okay, so fairly recently.
What were some of the things that you think
where I was stuck in?
Was it cultural?
Was it operational? What was it that you helped influence
in terms of, we have to make a change now?
>> True.
One of the things for me is one of the old phrases,
I think is the worst phrases,
well because we've always done it that way.
You know, so getting a fresh line and a fresh look
on something was able to really help out.
The innovation that Dell brings to the table
falls in line with the innovation that we bring for candy.
So let's look at what they have.
Let's look at how they tie together.
But we had to do a full forklift
of our infrastructure
in our data center.
You want to look at the integrated systems and
how you get that best
performance and the best bang for the buck
when it comes to the budget.
Because you know, if they're on budget dollars,
you really got to get every dollar to stretch farther.
And looking at the VX rail
with the integrated appliance.
And with the CDRA to offload to a cloud site.
It was a perfect package.
It was the perfect pairing for what we needed.
>> But going from you talk about you know,
we've always done it this way.
And you're right, we hear that a lot.
And it's, well why?
You can do it so much differently.
Can you imagine that they were still doing it that way
in the era of COVID.
But thinking about
this big switch from
a big physical
footprint to going to hyper converged infrastructure,
how was that transition that you helped drive?
How did it shift the culture at Warrell?
Because I imagine its
50 year old company it must have right?
>> Yeah, I believe it did.
I believe that help everyone kind of just
look at everything and say,
just because it works to get us here
is it's going to work with get us to tomorrow.
So everybody really started looking at
different situations and different things.
When we sat down with our users,
we changed the entire desktop experience.
You know, we have new laptops,
we have new operating systems,
we have the way things are working better.
So it really changed the culture,
through and through.
So, when you go to work, you want systems to work.
When you come in, the last thing you want to deal with
is always a computer's going to be down.
Do I have to call IT today?
So getting that scalability was great.
But getting that reliance
from the user and from the keyboard
the whole way back to your edge
was a huge win for us.
>> And let's look at
your team now having more time to be innovative.
Especially I'm curious
what you've been able to do
the last six, seven months
that you now have this reliable infrastructure.
Data secure internally,
people can print things,
they can check their emails without having to bother IT.
What are some of the new,
maybe strategic areas
that you've been able to get involved in,
because you have the time to focus on?
>> We're really getting involved with more of the plant.
All the equipment on the floor,
trying to collect that data
and correlate all that data coming off the floor.
And now we're able to have a little fun of
how do we get the data on the floor
real time collection back into the system?
And how can we have technology help drive
that innovation on the floor?
When our R&D department comes to us about,
we have a new product that needs to run,
where do we run it?
I know, it'll work with the
manufacturing manager and say
that type of product runs best on this machine,
and here's the data to support that.
That's really the fun of what we can do for tomorrow.
>> So is this now
enabled you to become data driven?
Whereas before maybe not so much?
>> I agree, yes
very much so.
And it's good data.
It's not hypothetical data
that someone put on a piece of paper
and thought through it.
It's really good data that we can correlate and collect.
>> And that's critical.
Especially right now as everybody wants everything,
real time and the consumer demand is changes every industry
and I can think is probably going to be a pretty big demand
still this year for candy.
I know.
That sounds pretty good right about now.
I'd love to get your advice
for men and women in your position
coming into maybe a legacy business
that has an antiquated infrastructure.
How do you recommend,
how do you advise
that they go about approaching leadership and their teams
to do a complete transformation?
>> I think it starts with a good partner.
You've got to have a good partner
and able to put things in order.
I like to call it a one handed high five.
You have to have that good partner to fall back on.
You build a good solid solution.
And then you look at your budget can do.
But it's all about the culture.
If you can find out
where your culture is suffering,
because people are upset when they come in,
because something doesn't work.
What's the root cause of that?
How do you get that out of play?
Work with your folks.
I always say I want people to drive in happy.
I want people to drive home happy.
How do we make sure that is?
and I know it sounds weird coming from the IT guy.
But you have a huge impact.
So when you can look at everyday experience
of sitting down, coming into your office
and sitting down at your technology.
And it works.
It's just one level of stress that we no longer have.
>> I said it's a huge level of stress that you don't have.
And I think that's,
that's an important point that you bring up.
You want people to come in happy
and leave happy.
But you also
really challenged them to get out of your comfort zone,
just because we've always done it this way,
doesn't mean we should still should.
And actually if we do,
there might be a competitor right behind us
that's ready to come in and take over.
This is a competitive differentiator,
and especially in the time of
this dynamic environment in which we live.
The status quo,
the comfort zone,
probably going to be a factor in determining I think,
the winners of tomorrow.
Do you agree with that?
>> I do agree with that.
What we actually found
is when we've asked people
to kind of think outside of their box
and step back from it.
We found that they were doing something as a band aid.
Why have to not do it this way?
And it just became status quo.
When we pulled that band aid off,
we kept going back, kept going back
kept going back.
Found out
you're doing something because it wasn't fixed
for processes ago.
Let's fix that.
Now it's not even a thing.
So it just leverages on more time to think
more outside of the box.
And how do I better this situation?
And they can really look at everything they do,
how do I make it better?
Down to how the orders come in,
how we process the orders,
to even how we ship them out
and how we package them up in the truck?
>> Well, when you're talking about band aids,
like band aid on band aid, on band aid,
I just think inherently complexity.
>> Yes.
>> So talk to me on last question here as we wrap up here.
From a simplification perspective,
how has Dell Technologies helped transform
and simplify the environment?
>> I don't know whether I have the word.
I've been thinking for that.
How is that?
Because it's been so monumental,
what they've done for us.
I mean, down to.
we've been able to revamp our data center.
And I know that that sounds odd.
Wants just to be extra or it's just, it's not.
It's being able to simplify
all of the stuff we had
down into five, you have Rackspace,
allowed us to clean up our data center,
clean up that complexity,
everything's running inside of there.
We no longer have
a tape drive sitting somewhere else.
We now have more man hours and the soft cost.
We have more man hours to do
a lot more of the tomorrow world.
So the complexity,
we can add our own level of complexity when we want
for security or anything else.
But we're not we don't have a whole spiderweb
of stuff going on that we have to work through
just to see where we need to start.
>> And that's really as you said.
What's the word, it's transformative.
But, it sounds to me like what
you're doing as a leader yourself.
And with Dell Technologies
is really enabling the organization or has enabled it
to get out of its comfort zone,
embrace modernizing,
take out complexity where it's not needed
and focus on business outcomes,
which at the end of the day
is the most important thing.
>> It is and,
we have our own research and development team here for know,
what's the next candy you're going to see on the market?
We have our own innovation team.
I challenged every one of the departments that I work with
to think the same thing.
What's next in your world?
How can you re-innovate what you have?
what haven't we thought of?
And the whole thing is,
no idea is a bad idea.
Let's put it on the table.
Lets vet it out,
let's see if it works.
But then also working with the other departments,
the other departments are now able to collaborate.
Why didn't know that you needed that?
Yep, that's the date I need.
Oh, that's easy.
Here you go.
And it has really streamline processes start to finish.
>> That collaboration is essential.
Well Clifton, thanks for sharing
what you're doing with Dell Technologies,
the new DP series,
great work there.
We look forward to hearing more
of what's to come from Warrel.
>> I do appreciate.
Thank you so much for your time Lisa and the Dell team.
The appliances and everything has been great for us.
So we appreciate everything Dell's done.
Thank you.
>> Excellent. I know you have that competence
because you talked about it.
Alright guys (indistinct) Clifton Dorsey,
I am Lisa Martin.
You're watching this cube conversation.
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