>> Announcer: From around the globe,
it's theCUBE,
with digital coverage of Red Hat Summit 2020,
brought to you by Red Hat.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's
coverage of Red Hat Summit 2020.
I'm Stu Minneman and, of course, this year,
the event is really happening globally where people are.
So, we're talking to Red Hat executives,
their partners, and we're always thrilled when we
get to talk to the customer.
So, joining me, from Buenos Aires, Argentina,
I have Maria Alehandro-Trosee, who is the
Deputy Manager of Solutions Architecture at Edenor.
Alejandra, thank you so much for joining us.
>> Oh, thanks to you, of course. I am pleased to be here.
>> All right, so we know we are living in
some challenging times right now.
Certain things become very important.
Everybody is working at home.
Of course, Edenor is energy.
So, talk about something that is essential.
You look at Maslow's hierarchy,
want to make sure everyone is healthy and,
pretty soon after that,
your company is making sure that things get running.
So why don't we start with a little bit, Edenor.
Tell us a little bit about the company,
and your role in the organization.
>> Yeah, of course, of course.
Well, Edenor is the largest electricity company
of Argentina with almost 5000 employees
and three million customers,
in parts of Buenos Aires city
and surroundings, too.
It represents a 9-million population.
And we have the residential, commercial
and industrial customers.
So, we bring electricity to homes,
to schools, to hospitals, to airport.
And well, of course, commercial and industrial customers
that are in our concession area.
>> Excellent. Great, and solutions architecture.
So tell us a little bit about your role there,
or purview of your group.
>> Well, I am part of the information systems,
of the technology information direction in Edenor.
And, as the solution architecture area,
we are helping to establish good architectures
for business objectives.
For the business to meet the objectives
in a very, or in the best quality,
and in the best way.
We are seeing how the trends, how technology moves,
how industries, (mumbling) industries and companies
are moving, beyond technology and architectures,
and we try to go this way for the company.
>> Great. So, just so I understand.
So is that this infrastructure piece?
Is cloud part of the mix?
Where is your connection to,
really, the business applications?
Any developers, you know?
>> Yes. I usually think about it as the glue.
As the glue that join our pieces together.
Applications, infrastructure,
and the business that makes a solution.
It involves software, but it depends on power,
it depends on infrastructure, security and so on.
There is an infrastructure area, a security area,
a solutions area.
In I.T. too.
Now our I.T., too.
And architecture is one of them,
and we try to glue all these pieces
to meet requirement.
>> Yeah. I love you give that analogy of the glue,
bringing things together.
>> (laughs) Yeah.
>> We know there, you know, the pace of technology
continues to change so fast.
The requirements of the business don't stand still.
So, bring us inside.
Help us to understand some of the integration
challenges you're facing.
What drivers of the business are
causing you to evaluate what you're doing.
And tell us a little bit about what you're using, today.
>> Yeah. Well, we have had a lot of challenges.
Some time ago, we had lots of integrations running.
And I think that I usually see,
see these challenges in several ways.
The integrations that we are running,
and we are having trouble.
We are having a a lot of issues.
Maybe issues in data, in quality,
and in performance or viability, too.
And, most of these issues were because of
online transactions that,
maybe started to grow, much more,
and started to add some complexity
to the system platform that was
almost for batch processing.
So we have a huge amount of LAN integrations,
that started to be big,
to be big in volume,
to be critical for the business.
Any maybe we don't have, we didn't have the right picture.
We had to do it, a lot of hand craft job,
with a lot of work force behind.
A lot of micro-batches and so on,
to keep things running.
But with a lot of effort behind that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, tell me.
>> Yeah. Just, you know, very typical challenges
that I am hearing from you.
Help us understand, you know.
How do you choose the technology
partners that you're working with?
You know, it is the paradox of choice out there.
There are so many companies, so many products.
You know, especially you company.
You've got the DevOps pieces.
I look at the DevOps tool chain today,
and it is more than any one person can comprehend.
So, how does Edenor approach, you know,
who you integrate with?
And choose the various pieces?
>> Okay. Well, the center of the evaluation,
or the decision, was integration.
Of course, the center of the evaluation process,
and the research, was about integration.
But we wanted an integration platform
or to be, as an architecture,
an integration architecture that
could solve all of the issues that I mentioned before.
All of the issues that we had.
But that could take Edenor to a next stage.
That prepare us for what, in that time,
we could see as the future of departments.
And nowadays, they are almost, actual departments.
But, at that time, two years ago,
we are some kind of future requirements,
like DevOps, micro services,
A.P.I.s, and the cloud.
Well, the cloud requirement
was one of the first that we managed at I.T.
The new concept, for Edenor.
And we had to manage all of that.
Some platform that prepare us
for all that were coming,
and for cloud or high-width architecture.
So, we started our research, and we found,
in Red Hat, an excellent technology.
But this is a technical aspect, and
the other aspects that we looked for,
were the experience in the region.
You know, maybe there are a lot of technologies that
could be great, but maybe unrepresented in our region.
It's not just a case of integration,
because integration platforms,
the biggest, or the best integration platforms,
I think they are mostly clear.
But, with many technologies, it could happen that,
maybe there are good technologies,
but not with some presence in our local region.
Adding that, I would say that
experience in similar industries,
and a presence and, most important for us,
I mean, was, pretty well, it works really well.
A supportive way of working.
That the company could support us.
Support all along the project.
Not just the (mumbles) support,
but also, support for all the journey.
All the learning process, all the implementation process.
We could find all of these in Red Hat.
Of course, that's why we chose it.
>> Absolutely. So, Alejandra.
Tell me, where are you with the roll out
of what you are using with Red Hat?
What have you put into it?
Give us where you are so far.
>> Well, we started with an initial phase,
a pilot phase, where we chose some initial services
that were not so complicated, not so complex,
not so critical.
But, with a good sample of what we have,
in terms of protocol, in terms of patterns,
in terms of connectors with other systems.
So we started with a kind of sample of all of that.
And not, making some changes,
making changes in the way of working.
It's something like, well okay,
let's go and try the technology.
Let's put some first services, and let's learn.
One of the services was not-so-complicated,
but just had a lot of volume, a lot of transactions.
We have almost 800,000
events per day, with that service,
and was maybe the one of the most important,
of that initial phase, in terms of scalability.
And we could test it and see
the bright of the technology, with that pilot.
>> Excellent. And so what's been the result
inside the organization?
Has that impacted development time?
Is it something that your ultimate end customers
would have any positive results,
after you've rolled this out?
>> Well yes. After we started, or we finished the
initial pilot phase, we started another phase,
that consisted in a review, all the integrations, flows.
And we knew which ones were the most critical,
for the business, and have
a lot of issues in the (mumbles)
architecture, so we agreed
with the rest of the team,
solutions teams and business teams,
just where to start to making real changes.
So, another initiative started, that consisted in
implementing a trial methodologies,
in trying this on framework, for example.
And we thought that it was a great combination,
to try new ways of working, in this new phase
of integration, with re-engineering.
So, these new services, that we arrived.
We are about, we are between the outage management system,
the system that manages all of the technical reframe,
of the electricity service,
and the field management system.
That is the system that manages all the
work force industry, the logistics,
or distributes the work,
or in terms of priority.
So all these flow, all of these flows are,
increanals, are online flows.
We have to send data, in simultaneously,
just to change or to renew those priorities, all the time.
To make a new schedule, and repair things
better and faster.
So, the business. I could say that the business and I,
and our team, put a lot of increases in agility and speed.
We could solve issues faster.
For example, I learned about outages that could flow
in terms of seconds, rather than in minutes.
And, the development processes that fix.
We could fix problems in production, maybe in a day,
when sometimes we took weeks.
So, we could find things like that,
but with a new way of working, too.
That could take all of the technology could being to us.
>> Excellent. Well, when you talk about
integration platform, traditionally middle ware,
sits right in the middle between the infrastructure
side of the house, and all of the app,
you know, development pieces that you have.
So, I am just curious.
As you have rolled out the solution with Red Hat.
Have there been any cultural change?
You know, one of the things we have been looking at is,
You know. Can tooling help bring teams together?
You know. How much retraining do you need to do?
How much fear and uncertainty is there, from groups?
So, from an organizational standpoint.
How has this gone inside of Edenor?
>> Well. We have had a few huge changes.
And I can mention some of them, or the most important.
One of them was that we have to reorganize.
Many teams have to reorganize their activities.
Maybe it is not structural, or organizational chart
situation, but functional.
The way that the teams, maybe, organized their activity.
We started to build a team where we have a project owner,
a scrum master, Devs and architects
from different providers, all on teams.
And different specialties all working together,
in the same space, with kind of dedication.
I couldn't get full dedication.
But yes, with a great dedication,
that could give that team the autonomy,
and the communication, and the collaborative space
that we needed.
So the teams, and managers of those teams,
had to reorganize their activities.
And it was possible, thanks to that.
Thanks to them.
But, the other aspect was that we have to learn,
learn technology and learn
new ways of working at the same time.
And it's not just to have a training.
This is an important aspect, but
besides that, we have to incorporate
all of these new concepts.
This is a difficult, or the most difficult part,
because we could do training and take courses.
But we really, incorporate those new ways of working.
It's really difficult.
And we were, with you in the process,
the team, helping the team.
Just to, not to make a hybrid or something
that is not the genuine.
Because we wanted the genuine change,
in the way of working, just to see better results.
Then you, maybe we could get more flexibility, with time,
with some level of maturity.
But, in the first time.
We saw, and our experts tell us,
that it's better to attach to
the pure sense of the way of working.
A new way of working.
So we have to incorporate all of that,
to make a genuine change.
>> Great. Well Alejandra.
My final question, actually.
I want to talk a little bit about community.
So, you've been to Red Hat Summit before.
Many of the things that you were talking about,
and the change that you are going through.
Many of the companies that I talk to.
Of course, you know, the vendors are going to help you.
Red Hat. They're partners.
If you have a channel partner, they will help you.
But often times, it is the peers in the community
that are an important piece of this.
That you can learn from others.
You contribute back what you're learning.
So, the question for you is.
You know, this week, we're coming together
while being apart at Red Hat Summit.
So tell us how you engage with the community?
The importance of Red Hat's ecosystem,
and your peers in the community,
around using these sorts of solutions?
>> Well, I always said Red Hat people,
Red Hat group that are near me, here in Argentina,
and now with the U.S. guys,
that I am really thankful of all of the Red Hat community.
Because they've made real great things.
It's really amazing to see the great technology
that they could build as a community,
as a whole community, in all the world.
All around the world, people contributing,
and coding technology.
This is the biggest collaborative experience,
I think, that we could see, and we could learn of.
A very high collaboration,
remote and very spread around the world.
Really, a great inspiration for all of that,
all of this, all of us.
>> All right. Well Alejandra.
Thank you so much for sharing your story,
and all of the update with Edenor.
And wish you the best of luck
with the rest of the roll out
of the projects you are working on.
>> Oh, thanks to you for giving me this opportunity.
It's a pleasure to talk to you.
>> All right. Lot's more coverage from Red Hat Summit.
I'm Stu Minnamen.
And, as always, thank you for watching theCUBE.
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