>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas,
it's the Cube.
Covering VM World 2017.
Brought to you by vmware, and its ecosystem partner.
(electronic music)
>> And we're back, this is SiliconANGLE Media's production
of the Cube.
I'm here with Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman.
Keith, I don't know about you, but one of the things
that really excites me when I get to come
to events like this is talking to the users,
talking about the practitioners, what they're using,
how they're using it.
And so I'm really happy to welcome to the program,
first-time guest Brett Ruth who's the server, storage,
and virtualization supervisor at BKD.
Brett, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Alright so BKD.
I know you're big in your field,
but there might be some people out there
that aren't familiar with your organization.
Maybe just give us the thumbnail of the company,
how long you been there, and your role there.
>> Sure, BKD is the number 12 accounting firm
in the United States, 36 offices,
net revenue 564 million.
Tax audit, corporate finance, wealth advisors,
technology services, that's BKD in a nutshell.
>> Alright, and your role in the organization?
>> My role is kind of the server supervisor.
I have a team of seven assist admins who report to me.
We take care of anything on the Windows server
to Lennox server, to our Nutanix environment,
our Vmware environment, our IceLAN storage environment,
and all the applications that live on those.
>> Alright, so Brett, one of the things I'm sure you'll find,
your stuff doesn't change,
you don't acquisitions to integrate,
you don't have new technology
being thrown at you all the time.
If sure every year they just say how much more budget
and how many more people do you want.
>> Exactly
>> So bring us in the reality.
What's your world like?
What are some of the big challenges?
I'd say first if you can
from just kind of the industry standpoint,
and how does that impact what you're doing?
>> Sure, so BKD is a growth firm
so we look at business acquisitions when we can.
We look at those, we actually completed one
not that long ago in Chicago.
We expanded there.
So each one's always different,
you know different technology.
Some of those acquisitions are a couple servers,
some of them are completely cloud-based,
some of them are mixed in between.
So having a platform where we settle on with Nutanix
has kind of helped be able to make those integrations
a little bit easier.
But no, every year budget cycle comes around,
and what's the initiative the firm wants to do.
And every year it's different.
It's fun, you know it's challenging to have
different and new things we have to tackle every year.
>> So when choosing these platforms,
one, quick question around the organization,
a bunch of knowledge workers.
How many, what's the head count?
>> Brett: Around 26,000.
>> 26,000. So you guys and your IT organization,
you work for the bean counters of bean counters.
(laughing)
So they understand ROI, TCO.
When it comes to selecting these technologies,
how much pressure are you under to do less for more,
and prove that you're doing,
I'm sorry, do more with less,
and prove that you're doing more or less?
>> Sure, and that comes up during the budget cycles.
I mean there is a large amount of time that is spent of
what's next year's initiatives?
What does that server landscape look like?
You know, does there a new product that comes out
that requires a head count increase or not?
Or is it a new application we need to stand up?
And every year that comes around, and the questions come.
Well, maybe the firm didn't have a good year,
maybe the firm had a better year.
So we, you know, the budget gets adjusted based on that.
But more times than not, the firm recognizes that
putting money into IT does nothing but
help the business grow.
So as long as we spend it wisely, we usually can,
we can get accomplished.
>> Alright Brett, I want you to take us inside,
you know I hate to do it,
but the budgeting thing.
Cause one of the promises of, you said you're using Nutanix,
used to be okay this year,
oh it's time for the server refresh,
next year, wait, no, you don't have any server budget,
you know, we're doing some storage ad ons,
or things like that.
You might get some budget here or there if you need it,
or if there's an emergency, but you got to justify that.
The promise of a pool of resources should be,
well I'm consolidating a number of pools,
and therefore, I should be able to be more agile,
more flexible, I'm buying in smaller chunks,
rather than bigger chunks.
What's your experience been on kind of that
purchasing from that relationship with
the finance side of the business?
>> Sure, so when I started BKD,
I've been there about five years,
it was a traditional three-tier architecture
when we rolled into it.
And the firm was growing at such a rate that
we were running into those physical limitations
of the hardware.
And it's never a fun game to go ask the CIO
an unbudgeted SAN purchase you know.
Do that a couple of years in a row,
and it gets harder and harder to ask those questions.
So we finally came to a point as a company of
we need to do something different.
And, you know, through research and product I had,
and my team all had to do to accomplish it,
we landed on Nutanix,
and we landed on a hybrid converge infrastructure.
And what we can do is we build those
quote unquote lego blocks, so now there's not a
big, giant purchase of a SAN or a new set
of UCS Chassis or whatever the product might be.
It's a, I know this quarter I need this amount of nodes,
or I know for this project I'm going to need this,
and I can just build and add on when I need to.
So it makes the budgeting and those unbudgeted purchases
a lot more easier to take.
>> So much of the messaging from day one, day two
is aimed kind of at you.
You're on the ground, you have to deal with
not only the engineers that implement the technology,
but also the executives that approve the purchases.
So a lot of the messaging here has been for you.
How have you received it,
and what's your impression of Vmware's messaging around,
take your favorite topic?
>> Right, you know a lot of cloud talk's been happening here
and a lot of DevOps has been talked about here,
and a way to improve that.
BKD has an internal IT development team,
so a lot of those things I can take away here,
and try and see if I can help our Dev team however I can.
A lot of the messaging is just seeing where
the industry is going, not just Vmware,
but everyone on the solutions floor.
I mean that's a lot of my time here is research
and seeing what products that I know we have to complete
in the next fiscal year or two,
and then what products are out there that I can just buy.
>> Alright, can you bring us into your application portfolio?
What sits on the Nutanix platform, what doesn't?
I hear you said you got a scale-out NAS platform also.
You talked about some developers there.
I'd love to understand how you figure out what goes where,
where you are in building that out.
How many nodes you have if you can share?
>> The IceLAN is six nodes in each data center,
the Nutanix is 26 nodes in each data center.
We're probably 99.9% virtualized.
The only thing I think we don't have virtualized is
we still have a physical domain controller outside of both
just from shear, if everything is off,
I have one point I can get back into, right.
But exchange, sharepoint, our sequel is all virtualized.
The IceLAN is really kind of the unstructured file pool
that we can put map drives, we can put blob storage
from our sharepoint environment lands onto it.
Flat files from our sequel land onto it.
And, yeah, everything runs on our Nutanix.
>> So going into that developer relationship,
you know Nutanix, I've talked to these guys before
about their ideal of being a cloud company.
So developers, when they hear the term cloud,
what's the impact of you, on your role,
when you have Nutanix, a cloud company,
and your developers asking for cloud?
>> It's a interesting question
because we try and phrase it as
BKD, we now have an internal cloud,
we have an enterprise cloud,
you know the term private cloud.
And we can provide those instant resources to DevOps
when they need it depending on if they have a new set of
QA boxes that need to be stood up.
But you know there is some projects that we're looking at
of is it AWS or is it Azure or is it Google's cloud.
Are there things that make sense to go out there
versus keeping 'em in house?
And those come up as an as-need basis.
>> So DevOps, so (laughing)
When we talk about DevOps,
what are the pain points that you guys,
cause that's a big topic.
Do I go all the way as far as Netflix
and DevOps all the things that we say,
or what have you guys targeted to say,
okay, here's where the value add is in the enterprise?
>> I think we're still, that's still of of those things
that our development team's looking at.
I think it really depends on the application
and what the business is looking for.
I mean there's been some products internally
that the team's released that makes sense to stay on Prim.
The next project I find out a month from now
might be something that's perfect for the cloud.
I think they just take that on a kind of case-by-case basis.
>> Alright, Brett, you've got a portfolio of partners
that you're working with here.
What's on your list of to-do's for them?
What are you looking for from the ecosystem
to make your life easier and help?
>> Always looking for more stable code releases.
I think any engineer would love stable code releases.
You know for the most part everybody gets that.
We're always going to have issues.
>> Anybody you want to call out
for not giving you stable code releases?
(laughing)
>> I can say everybody because, I mean everyone will do that.
No, I think it's continuing to improve the product,
continuing to make it.
It's that do more with less right?
I can't have two or three dedicated people
working on the virtualization environment.
They have to be multi-skilled you know.
My team that I have, my seven assist admins are all great,
probably some of the best guys I've worked with.
We all have to wear multiple hats,
even sometimes maybe we don't want to.
So having those products come into the environment
that make it easier for them,
and then just seeing how those code releases come out,
that would just make our lives even better.
>> Just real quick, can you say whose hardware
your Nutanix is on?
>> It's Supermicro, it's from Nutanix.
>> It's the basic things.
This morning the keynote got a big laugh talking about
some of the coope-tition that goes on just between
Dell, EMC, Vmware in some of their partnerships.
Some of your partners get along better than others.
Is that something that impacts you,
something you think about at all?
>> It's definitely, being a Nutanix guy
coming into VM World this year
has definitely been an interesting experience.
It's that cohabitation that happens between the two.
But at the end of the day, I still have severs to run,
I have an environment to maintain for BKD,
and you know, if I need something done,
I know I can go to them,
and they'll help work with me on it.
>> So the show floor this year,
Vmware just as massive as it's been all--
>> Yeah.
>> Vmware is all about the ecosystem.
How important is this large ecosystem to your
everyday operations of you environment?
>> I mean it's the never knowing
what the next project that comes out,
or the next scene the business wants to do,
or the next acquisition comes up.
Maybe there's a product that I don't have in house
that needs to take care of it.
And then having this many vendors that I can
go and talk with over these couple days has been great
because I can now go back to the team and go,
man I didn't think about this,
and this product would help solve that.
Or two months from now something comes around,
I go oh yeah I talked to these guys,
and go flip through the business cards and the paper stuff
we take home and call 'em up.
>> I love that even as a Nutanix customer, the Vmware,
the coope-tition, that you still find value in the overall--
>> Brett: Oh yeah absolutely.
>> Brett, any either announcements
or kind of new things coming out in the market,
anything catch in your eye?
You said you were bringing that back to the office.
>> Forgive me but I can't remember the name.
The malware kind of virus scanner
that Pat was talking about yesterday.
That kind of really was a,
being able to use that AI to figure out
at a base level what milicent code is and isn't was,
it would be an awesome game changer
if it works out how it looks to be.
>> Absolutely, no shortage of new things to look into.
Brett Ruth, BKD, really appreciate you sharing
your viewpoint everything going on inside.
Really appreciate you coming on.
>> Thank you guys.
>> Hope to catch up with you sometime in the future.
For Keith Townsend, and I'm Stu Miniman,
we'll be back with lots more coverage here
from VM World 2017.
You're watching the Cube.
(electronic music)