>> theCUBE presents Dell Technologies World
brought to you by Dell.
>> Hey everyone,
welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage
of Dell Technologies World, 2022.
live from the Venetian in Las Vegas.
Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante.
This is our second full day of coverage of theCUBE.
Lots going on, lots of announcements.
We always love talking to customers,
hearing the voice of the customer
and we have a couple of guests,
one from Dell customer Lowe's John Dabek is here,
the Senior Director of Infrastructure.
Ali Biers be also joins us Marketing Director
of Edge Solutions at Dell Technologies.
Welcome to the program.
>> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for inviting us,
appreciate it.
>> So John, let's go ahead and start with you.
Let's talk about what the heck is going on in retail.
Tremendous change, tremendous transformation.
>> Yep. >> Lot of pressure.
The last two years have been quite influential.
Talk to us about some of the trends
that you're seeing in retail
some of the challenges that are going on.
>> Absolutely.
So COVID has put everything on steroids
in terms of the omnichannel experience.
So we no longer think of digital as something
that's separate.
It's all integrated with the store experience.
So interestingly enough,
two thirds of our customers shop online
before they come into the store.
So that shows you're the power of having the digital working
in harmony with the store.
>> So how does that affect your technology strategy?
What changes to this?
>> That's a very good question.
So we've had to accelerate a number
of our new technologies
to really create that frictionless experience
for the customer.
So for example, I'll give you a great example
of a technology that we deploy today called Pickup Lockers.
So you order online
and then there's a set of pickup lockers
right in the vest of your old store
you go up and you scan it,
the locker opens and then you can take
your merchandise and go on.
So it's a great experience as to how
the technology has changed
and everything from utilizing
the mobile applications where customers
can now text us when they're in the parking lot
we can deliver their merchandise.
Michael Dell put it very well in terms of the strategy
in his keynote yesterday.
What he talked about was today it's the public cloud,
it's the private cloud
within the data centers and it's the Edge.
And the Edge has become very, very important for us
because that's where we want to put all of our technologies
in the store, closer to the store.
>> Ali talk to us about from an overall,
from a Dell vision lens perspective
the challenges overall that you're seeing in retail
and where the Edge is really advantageous
for organizations to be competitive.
>> Yeah, I mean really what you're seeing is
you've got these incredibly savvy customers
who really want to have an experience
when they go into the store.
And on the other hand you have the retailer
that wants to develop that loyalty
but yet they're dealing with tremendous complexity
in their footprint as well as just the pace of change.
So trying to modernize and do that at a really fast base
just like what John was talking about
and still stick to all the imperatives
like being secure and manageable at scale.
It's really a big challenge.
>> Yeah and when you talk,
Ali about modernizing at a fast pace,
the first 600 stores that we did with VxRAIL
and we'll go into a little more detail
I'm sure about that.
We did in three months with the help of Dell Technologies,
>> 600 stores in three months?
>> In three months. >> Wow.
>> And the key was zero disruptions in the store.
Now we're talking about
a hundred thousand plus square foot stores.
So we're talking big stores
and we have a very short window.
We can go from midnight to 5:00 AM
because 5:00 AM the contractors
are there to pick up their materials
we have to be open and ready.
So we'd miss a beat.
>> So that's interesting.
I heard your CEO the other day talking
about how you guys really focused on the contractors,
especially during COVID. >> Absolutely.
>> So that was also another shift.
I mean the volume from contractors probably increased
'cause we give them such you know great focus.
So there's this concept of the intelligence factory.
Is there a similar one with the intelligent store?
>> Oh without a doubt you know.
So I'll give you an example,
we have 140,000 mobile devices deployed
in our stores for our employees.
They can do everything
from find merchandise, talk, receive calls to
you're going to the store to pick up mulch, right?
And they can take the device
and do a checkout from the device
instead of you having to come into the store
and then go out to pick up your mulch.
So you know it doesn't get better than that.
>> I love that example 'cause that one's so relatable
and I think like once you start thinking
about how all this technology
in the store can really help.
So, all of a sudden you know
where your customers are spending their time in the store
you can position your customer service people
to help in the aisles where people are getting stuck.
So it really just puts so many more insights in the hands
of retailers to be able to action and make decisions.
>> It's funny sometimes,
people when they really talk to people in IT,
technology like ourselves say,
you know you guys always talk about oh, permanent changes.
Nah, it's going to be the same.
You watch in a few years.
Here's an example.
There's no way we're ever going back.
>> No. >> No.
>> You know, it's permanent.
>> It's permanent.
And you know what all the bad things about COVID
and the pandemic, the great thing is it really accelerated
that omnichannel journey.
It forced many retailers to do that, including Lowe's.
>> Silver lining but it also,
from a forcing factor perspective it was critical.
From a competitive standpoint.
I mean, we have these expectations as consumers
that we can have this consumer experience everywhere
which means I want to be able to do my transaction
in real time.
I want to go onto the website
and make sure that they have what I want,
inventory wise and real time.
Real time we learned in the pandemic,
not a nice to have anymore.
>> No, absolutely.
>> That is a competitive advantage
for every industry, especially retail.
>> Yeah and if you think about it,
we have a mini data center inside the store
with the VxRail.
So it was very important for us
because we were not able to leverage
the new application development on the old platform.
So we absolutely need the power of the new platform
to enable the stores.
So it's very, very (indistinct).
>> So paint a picture of what it's like inside of a store.
I mean, what's the infrastructure look like,
the apps that are running, the data flow.
>> Yeah, so if you picture
a dedicated room for the technology,
unfortunately in a store
you don't build a data center.
So it's a concrete floor, as you can imagine.
But through the help of Dell,
they've really helped us harden the environment as well,
to put in technologies
that help with intelligent power distribution units
and other types of technology
because we're making such a big investment
that we don't want to have power be a disrupter.
So we get you Six Nines on our network,
Six Nines on our compute infrastructure.
We don't want power to be an impact.
But in terms of the apps,
everything that you need to run a store
from a POS perspective runs in the environment, okay.
And it's being enhanced every day
because now the communication
from the mobile device of the consumer
to what happens in the store is integrating
so it's really requires a lot of compute power.
>> What I really like about the way you guys have done it too
is that you guys have really thought about it
in terms of planning for the future.
So you thought about how to create that foundation.
That's really going to scale over time.
>> Yeah, and Ali you've brought up a good point
because one of the things that we didn't anticipate
when we started was
the fact that we would need GPU's in the future.
And the power of the GPU was required
for things like video analytics, AI
and it came to light as we had
one of our innovator person in the lab saying,
"Hey, in the test system,
we want 300 gigs of memory to do a test."
And we're going like,
"Oh my God, this would never run in production."
You know so that's when we got
into the whole concept of GPU.
So all of our stores are GPU enabled.
So as we need them, we can add that to the store.
But thanks for bringing that...
>> For what that's really interesting.
So for what, security, other use cases, AI, you're saying,
how are you applying that, dig into that?
>> It could be security.
So think of having cameras in the store
that watch what people do
from a checkout perspective.
And it's tied in with the system
so it knows the weight of an item.
It knows the cost of an item you know
and it's able to spot potential frauds and alert people.
But to do that, you need video analytics.
And that requires a lot of processing power.
>> How much of that data do you persist?
>> We could talk about that for another hour.
>> Yeah, okay. >> With respect to that.
But generally we utilize the data
to handle what we're looking to accomplish.
We do capture other data
for AI and other analytic purposes as well
and a bit more important.
>> And Ali I think I interrupted you.
>> Oh, no worries.
I think one of the things about the Edge
is people have a tendency to go build a technology stack
to address the business problem
that they're trying to address in that moment.
And it's usually driven by the people
that are working in the store.
They see an opportunity for advancement
but all of a sudden if you have a lot of those
how now are you going to deploy it, secure it, manage it
and do them all separately.
So I think what you're talking
about is you've really figured out a way to do that
across all those different use cases.
>> Yes.
>> And maybe even for the ones
that you don't know exist yet so,
>> And that's the good point is that
we don't know what exists.
Because we have to, as we build it,
we have to build the business case
for what makes sense, to put into the stores.
So you'll see a lot of continued innovation
with inventory, aids to help stock shelves,
applications that help the customer journey.
I saw some deployment of some new apps
in the stores where we can tell where people
are located real time in the store.
So wouldn't it be great if you know that
you can dispatch customer service personnel
to that area and great opportunity
to plus sell in that environment.
>> I can't wait for my next trip to Lowe's.
This is going to be so fantastic.
But John, I got to ask you
you're sitting here with the marketing director.
I'm a marketing girl myself.
Future-Proof, it's a term that is always interests me
because it can mean so many different things.
You're working with Dell,
I've been working with Dell for a while.
How is what you've architected
for the connected store,
intelligence store, excuse me.
How do you feel like when you don't know what's coming
but do you really feel like we've got
a Future-Proof architecture capabilities
and a partner that's going to allow us
to scale and grow. >> Absolutely.
>> As things obviously we couldn't have predicted
what happened in the last two years.
>> Yeah, so not too recent in the past
where you would primarily have appliances
in stores and single purpose servers, separate storage.
So now with the VxRail technology
you have hyper converged infrastructure.
So things are virtualized.
Your storage is virtualized.
Your server host infrastructure is virtualized
and the power of the VXRail
is that as we grow and have different needs
we can change out the processor.
We can add memory, we can add storage
all while we're still running in a store.
>> Bring a GPU in if you need to.
>> Bring a GPU in.
So it was architected to handle
the growth and the simplicity of running the store.
So we only have a handful of people that manage the stores
from a technology standpoint and thanks
to the technologies that are provided.
>> So you could scale it
and it's, you got the blueprint
what's the network look like.
>> So, and that's some good advice
for folks who are looking at this
you have to address the network first.
So we deployed a software defined network
that gave us the capacity
and the future growth capacity and the backup,
we're transferring from 4G to 5G for backup purposes.
And we're trying to figure out
what's the role of 5G in the future.
'Cause it gives you tremendous flexibility.
But remember the VxRail and the Edge can run independently.
So if the network goes down, we operate a store.
>> And you had that frictionless experience
which as consumers, we all had this expectation
that it's going to be frictionless.
It's going to be seamless.
I'm going to be able to get what I want.
>> Absolutely.
>> Not quite 24 by seven.
Well, yeah with online yeah.
>> With online 24 by seven.
>> So last question as we wrap up
and I wish we had more time to dig into this.
What's next, what are some of the future directions
as hopefully things return back to normal in air quotes.
What are some of the things that Lowe's
and Dell are going to do next together?
>> Well we're going to, we have to finish the stores.
We'll be done by October.
And by the way we're experiencing supply chain issue
but not with Dell, right.
We're having trouble getting network switches
but last week we had a breakthrough
and right now we're on track to finish all
of the stores by October of 2022.
But what's next continuing
to now leverage the platform that we've put in place.
To bring the applications
and to start working with our innovators
to experiment with the GPUs
and put it into effect.
And I'm sure Ali is got some great things planned as well
on the Edge with the technology
which we're look to take advantage of.
>> Yeah, I mean our goal is really to help customers
to simplify their Edge because it's incredibly complex.
They're dealing with an ecosystem
of partners, software, hardware, networking.
So really being that partner that they can rely
on having that broad end 10 portfolio
and being the person and the company that can architect
and bring all of that together in a way that you can
and life cycle manage it over time.
>> And the great thing is by being software defined
it's all seems very complicated
but it's simple to manage.
And that's the key and that's the power
that Dell brings to us.
>> Simple to manage, famous last words,
John, thank you.
Ali, you as well for joining us sharing what Dell
and Lowe's are doing together
to really enable this intelligence store.
I really can't wait for my next trip.
>> Hit the multpile, right? >> Thank you so much.
>> I got, yes.
I got to hit the multpile
want them to bring into my car its too heavy to carry.
Guys, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
We appreciate the story.
>> Thank you.
>> For our guests, and Dave Vellante
I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE Live
from Las Vegas at the Venetian.
Day two of our coverage of Dell Tech World
continues right after this short break.
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