[Music]hey I'm trying to find my way around the shore and I actually think that you live around here don't you oh great well I'm kind of hungry and I've been looking for a good pizza spot you think you can recommend something and I come pick you up okay uh-huh sure okay I'll see you soon all right thanks KRON welcome to partner carpool karaoke thank you so much for being my very first guest in the car today so as we're gonna go drive to get some food I'd love to learn more about Mainline RTP so tell me a little bit about when you started the company RTP right and then RTP was actually acquired by Mainline three years ago so can you tell me a little bit about that history yeah that's correct so it was 1993 so it's almost 30 years ago time flies yeah and uh we took an idea that we should serve as customers and treat them and innovate and bring technology to them I'm in a timely manner efficient manner I mean we could be as valuable working with partners and manufacturers versus working for a manufacturer directly um and we enjoyed a very good run for 27 yearsselling numerous Technologies the NetApp obviously being one of them and we had an opportunity of doing something bigger and better and we were required by Mainline Information Systems back in 2019. how long had you been using RTP you mentioned 10 years with was it digital equipment 10 years correct 10 years with digital Equipment Corporation and prior to that I started my career with Borough corporation which was one of two IBM competitors and Burroughs was significant competitor to IBM in the Mainframe space so my originally I started out working in sales for boroughs which became Unisys and then moved over to digital equipment before starting a founding RTC so talk to me you know three years ago you sold to Mainline what's it been like now with them so it's been a good marriage and it's been three and a half years now and we're going strong and the sum of the two corporations I think is a pretty good answer for our customers and it's helping us grow our business the amount of resources we have and the value we offer as a reseller is besides structuring opportunities financially and warehousing equipment for customers and staging is the resources you can bring to bear and I think with Mainline we've multiplied that times five in terms of the amount of people that we can bring to customers now and there's a lot more opportunities and customer situations that we're able to provide them with the solution versus saying no wedon't have the resources to do that so it's been a big help where's your strong suit I guess combined with uh with their powers as well so we'rereally a Data Center and infrastructure organization and data center is what we do very well and we provide Solutions around networking but primarily storage servers systems integration I think our services around data migrations data protection and storage management has played a key role and a lot of that stuff is done on the front end of working with customers on projects but I think delivering those projects and really close industry too it's we're into the very large Financial organizations a lot of the fortune 100s so we are across industry but every data center we ordered for some retail businesses and we find out that we found out that it's important to provide the customers withthe ability of saying I have choices and I think that's what Mainline offers today with us is we have multiple choices we see multiple Technologies and we're able to work with the best solutions for our customers I think that's another strong point right is your deep customer relationships yes we've built our business around that I mean the biggest thing a couple of the top items when we say hey what'simportant to your customers whatdo you want them to feel and experience I think first and forth foremost it's trust I think trust is the number one currencyin the world andwe built it on partnership and people think that partnership is if I give you money you're going to give me a product well that's really not what I view as a partnership yeah nor do I think any Main Line RTP employee has that same vision I think partnership is if you have a problem you have an issue we're going to make your problem go away we're going to be there for you and I can't tell you how many customers over 30 years it's not about spending money I mean that's important obviously for everyone but I think the point is people when they have a problem you're helping them and it's not if you're just spending money I'm going to be there to take care of you I think we've hung in there with a lot of customers and customers have hung in there with us and partnership goes both ways I think our customers understand that and they appreciate that so I think it's clearly around trust and partnershipand the value that we add is that we're there for you and we're delivering what we promise to so many other pieces around Innovation andtechnology and how do you bring new offerings to Market and I think working with NetApp has been key to that in a large part of our success and our customer success the ability of integrating into the cloud the ability to bring newer Technologies around backup and support and security and data protection and so I think those offerings and us being well versed on them understanding those and being able to provide services built around those Technologies it's been a big help for everybodyyeah that's a good point great partnership with you guys so I think you mentioned on one thing though and you said cloud and can you see a lot of your customers moving workloads to the cloud what has been your experience so far in kind of embracing this next wave right in the industry so it's uh arguably one of the largest topics that everybody's facing and it's cost driven clearly it's around cost and the financials is one big piece of it I think there's three different camps around cloud and clearly there's the smaller businesses and the companies that data isn't as important to them as it might be through a large organization or Enterprise account and I think they're going a little cloud and I think that's happening and it's there and they don't have the Manpower and the resources and the cloud has been a terrific answer for them and I think second is the mix of customers that are trying it they're using it for certain applications and they're really picking what's the best the cloud versus having their own infrastructure and data centers and the third obviously is the customers that are trying it or using it but still need to hold on to their data for security purposes and for all the important reasons that are obvious around financial data and the fact of knowing that they're liable for their business operations and they're liable for their technology use and I think those customers are still they're trying it and using it when they can and they have to and I think the other times that they're keeping it in-house or maybe doing some integration with in-house and on-prem as well as the cloud combined so overall I guess Mainline you guys are really you know integrated with your customers you're understanding their needs where they want to take their business if you had to give somebody two key takeaways to really remember Mainline and Mainline RTP by what would you say that those two key takeaways would be that's a very good question you know I think the first question for the first answer would be what we talked about initially was the trust I think the takeaway is that I've had many customers tell us to manufacturers and to other customers and just people in their own communities is the fact that we deliver on what we promise we don't over commit and I think our success is based upon as I mentioned that they trust us they believe in US and they know that we're doing what's best for them and not just best for the businessin today's world it's very simple to have selfish gains try to monetize situations that I think only come back to haunt you and something that has a negative impact to a business so I think first and foremost the trust piece islarge and the second piece is around Innovation and Technology offerings ability of bringing resources in a cost-effective manner understanding your business having been around such a diverse group of customers for such a long period of time I think understanding their business working with them and then bringing Technologies like NetApp to the Forefront to integrate into their environments is critical to you know our success and customer success it's good over here okay hit it so you know you gave me a lot of really good background for MainlineRTP but I'm curious so what year did you guys actually start selling NetApp geez it had to be uh right after the financial uh meltdown that uh 2008 2009 we'd always been in the storage business with one or two other partners and we just got tired of watching NetApp being successful and having some offerings that tied heavily into VMware andbuilding you know hybrid servers and storageconfigurations and uh so we got trained on it we trained a few uh sc's onthe products and we made an investment once we decided to go with NetApp what we found was that the whole executive team was very supportive of us and of their partner Community they were very protective and you invested together and you know we've worked on opportunities with customers and we invested collectively and we really gave our customers a lot more value than just either one of us bringing the solution to the table partnership it was a true partnership and we experienced that um and we enjoy that partnership with other manufacturers obviously too but in terms of getting started with NetApp we've had a great run with them but yes we invested together and we've brought a lot of solutions to the table they continue to innovate they continue to have best and free products the software has become first class the support organization so it's really been uh we hope to continue that and we hope NetApp continues going in that direction so I want to thank you so much for this really great ride oflearning more about MainlineRTP and the history the background as well and you know how you got started in the industry and founded RTP yourself with Tony and Paul and also I'm a little bit hungry so what do you say that we go grab some food now I'm totally good with going to I love Italian food I love the car your driving was great I was expecting a Jay Leno experience but it turned out to be a little safer a little calmer so a little safe appreciate that we try and keep it safe on the roads if you want to get in touch with you guys what's the best way if somebody wants to you know reach out and find out more about Mainline RTP what's the best way to do it your website or through the website or I think we're pretty well known and how to reach us yeah so I would say through the website and we'd love to work with new customers and bring some of our capabilities to those people as well so amazing well thank you Ron for coming on Partner carpool karaoke and let's go eat here we are yeahall right okay so we just got Denino's Pizza and let's take a look at it can we try and open it [Music]beautifulcan't wait to try it [Music]