>> Massachusetts, it's theCUBE!
Covering WTG Transform 2019.
Brought to you by Winslow Technology Group.
>> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman,
and we're here at WTG Transform 2019,
across the Mass Pike from Fenway Park
where we're hoping the rain's going to stop in time
for the game tonight where we have 189 users here
with Winslow Technology, digging in a lot of technology,
networking with their peers, and I'm thrilled
to have on another one of the ED users on the program.
Plamen Dimitrov is director of Information Technology
at Kiawah Island Golf Resorts coming to us
from South Carolina.
Thank you so much for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> All right, as I was actually telling you,
I'm familiar with Kiawah, my father is retired down
to John's Island right off of Charlestown, South Carolina.
You have a beautiful golf course there,
there've been professional events there,
we actually have one of our Cubeos, does some PGA coverage,
John Walls, so he and I have talked
about Kiawah a few times,
but for those of our audience that aren't as familiar,
haven't been able to enjoy it,
tell us a little bit about Kiawah.
>> Kiawah is a beautiful island,
over about 10 miles
of oceanfront,
side,
where the Kiawah Golf Resort is spread out.
We have different accommodations with a lot
of different activities for all ages,
starting with the Sanctuary Hotel,
which is a Five Star by Forbes and a Five Diamond by AAA.
Or you can choose any of our villas
from one to eight bedroom villas.
We have five beautiful golf courses,
which one of them is ocean course,
previously hosted Ryder Cup in 1991,
and PGA in 2012,
and we are also proud to be a host of the PGA 2021,
very exciting.
Apart of that, we are announced to be
Tennis Resort #1 in the world by tennisresortonline.com.
We have over 22 tennis course, different variations
from car course to clay.
On top of that, we have a lot of pools, swimming pools,
water parks, a lot of recreation, kayaking.
It can be a beautiful journey for any visitors.
>> Yeah, so, Plamen I know some of the IT
people listening to this are going to be like,
"Boy, he's got a tough job there!"
Sounds gorgeous, right on the ocean, so many things there,
bring us a little bit inside the IT, your world,
what that entails, and,
boy, there's got to be some different challenges
and opportunities that you face,
versus the kind of traditional business IT.
>> As every island,
we have all of our friends, like salty water
and all things like that.
And besides that, I've mentioned that the company's
spread out over 10 miles, we have a total of 23 locations,
and all they share the same systems and applications.
Our current challenges, from an IT standpoint,
are things that not all of the vendors that can keep up
with the current technology and the all new and moderns,
so we have some, what we call, old school applications,
they can't keep up, and then you have the new applications
that can be hosted on the Cloud, for instance.
In the same time, those applications need to
somewhat work with each other and have some interfaces,
so this is where we face the,
these days a challenge, a little bit,
and where our partnership with Winslow,
were able to help us determine
which is the best route for us.
And we determined that having a data center on island,
and they have another one off the island,
is the best for us to go.
They helped us go through the planning of
what's the right set up to be used,
and I think we're in the right direction.
>> Okay, great, so you have two data centers
and you're also using Cloud services, if I heard right?
>> Correct. >> Okay.
There's been a big discussion here, is like,
all right, what is the Cloud's strategy
and it is an ever changing world
and there is no one right answer,
so, when you look at yourselves,
what is your Cloud strategy today
and what makes you help determine
where you'll be moving in the future?
>> In one of the sessions, they mentioned
it's all about checks and balance,
and it's to be able to measure
how to apply your cash
in a way that it makes sense,
and one day, maybe,
for some applications makes sense to be on premise,
another day makes sense to bring it on the Cloud.
And I can give you an example, recently what we did was,
we were looking into switching to Office 365,
pretty much everybody knows about it,
and there's a good study that,
after you go over a certain threshold,
it's much easier to,
and much more cost effective, to have something on premise
versus going to a Cloud version.
Now, again, it depends on the size of the company,
it depends on the...
Your future projects and goals,
for some people it may be different than us.
But I think that the future more and more,
things will be what's called (mumbles) the Cloud,
which is mainly by other providers,
and we're going to have two called a key
that you can get to those applications from anywhere.
>> Plam, bring us inside a little bit
that the data centers, you said you have two of them,
what's your infrastructure stack look like today?
>> We've been looking at the various solutions,
hyper-converged, and
hybrids,
and with the help of Winslow,
we determined that sticking to the
3-2-1 traditional solution is the way we go.
We use their Compellent products, all flash erase,
very flexible and very reliable,
very nice speed it provides,
performance-wise they're a great product.
Then, after that story solution,
you have two data switches and then a number of servers.
We use, on top of that, the VMware as our hypervisor,
along with their VDI environment called Horizon
for some remote clients that they don't need much,
but that's basically our setup.
>> Great, and how long have
you been using the Compellent solutions?
>> The Compellent solutions, we've been using them
for a year and a half, since I joined the company,
but my relationship with Winslow goes far back,
since 2013 where I used to work for another company
here in Nantucket.
And the very first person I worked
with was John Cliffords from Winslow.
Very great guy, and he introduced us to the Dell world.
This is when we bought the first EqualLogic
and afterwards, I went to Belmont,
where we also bought (mumbles),
and we just keep going along.
>> All right, great, Plamen, last question I have for you,
what brings you to an event like this,
what were you hoping to get out of it,
and how's it been going for you so far?
>> Well, what brings me to an event like this,
most of the time is on one side
to see what Dell has to offer,
and some people attend, they'll conference,
but I think a place like this,
where you have smaller scale conference,
it's much more beneficial for me.
A, from a learning experience and
B, from creating connections, making connections
with other users, which this is the best
because sales rep can say, "Yeah, this is what you need."
But then, from a user perspective,
it's priceless to absorb experience.
>> All right, well, Plamen Dimitrov,
I really appreciate you sharing your journey,
and everything that Kiawah Golf Resorts is doing,
thank you so much. >> Thank you very much.
>> All right, we'll be back with more coverage here
from WTG Transform 2019, I'm Stu Miniman,
thanks for watching theCUBE.
(funky electro music)