[music] Hi, I'm Phoebe and I am joined today by Derek Elbert from Worldwide Technology, one of our favorite partners here at NetApp. So, nice to see you, Derek. >> Nice to see you, Phoebe. >> So, firstly, what do you do at Worldwide Technology? So my technical role is a technical solutions architect, part of the global solutions and architecture team at Worldwide. Um what that really means is that um I'min charge of all cloud data management um and on a global scale, right? So I'm not tied to a ne a specific customer or region. I'm spec tied to a specific um technology. And it just so happens that NetApp cloud portfolio plays very nicely into that technology that I cover. >> Yeah, sure. Cloud data management spans so much about our customers, you know, their needs and what they're trying to achieve. And definitely, I'm sure at Worldwide Technology WT, you've got customers who are trying to use AWS and use the cloud to its fullest potential. Tell me, what are you excited about at AWS reinvent? >> So really, it's about, you know, at Worldwide, we work with a ton of different vendors, right? And we have the ability to integrate those vendors with what our customers need, right? and that's a solution right to their problem and a lot of them have mandates or directions to go to the cloud and a lot of them are traditional customers and they don't know how to do it and so I think the biggest thing that I'm going to get out of reinvent is you know those connections to those other technologies that can help us right like yes NetApp's a huge piece of the puzzle but I think if we can help solution uh for the customers then that'll be the best direction >> yeah it's all about the big picture and the endto-end solution and WWT obviously has that experience. What kinds of problems are you seeing that customers are trying to overcome in the cloud? What challenges are there? >> Yeah. So Imean the ideal place to be from a customer lens, right, with their data like if we just focus on the data. Um if every single customer could take their applications and refactor them and all the data land on S3 like that would be ideal. The reality isthat the customers don't have resources to do that. And so that's where like we can help because there's other solutions such as FSX for ONAP, right? Um where they can take their traditional file systems that they're running on prem and move them into the cloud andwe can help them do that. You know, thereis that migration journey and that's where we come in and help. >> Yeah, for sure. Once customers get into the cloud, what kinds of data challenges are you seeing them um addressing? >> Yeah, so I mean once they're in the cloud like it'susually performance specific, right? So you still need to get performance out of your workload, right? And that's where, you know, keeping the application close to the data and making sure that it's running on the most performant architecture underneath it. That's where, you know, that's where we try to help customers get into that position where they're being cost effective, but then they're also getting the performance that they need from those critical applications, right? I mean, everybody puts a lot of focus on the application, but I think that more focus could be put on the data because where the application goes, the data has to follow, right? And at the same performance levels, which is hard to do when you're moving data around. >> Yeah, for sure. Are you seeing some of those workloads that were in the data center moving successfully and maintaining that performance and the cost effectiveness in the cloud? >> Yeah, I think they are and there's certain technologies that can do that, right? Um, I'll give you an example. So we had a customer very much a traditional customer and they were moving applications and a lot of their applications were tiered applications right or containerized in some aspect right and so they were moving certain segments of the application to the cloud and it was landing on EC2 but the data needed to stay both onrem and in the cloud right so we helped them draft a solution based around ONAP um utilizing flex cache to help keep the data um on prim and also cache a copy of that data in the cloud to help bridge that gap. Right now there are there were workloads that they were moving that they could just you know snap mirror replicate across but for this particular application they had to have two copies of the data and that's where a technology like flex cache came into play.>> Ben why WWT what does worldwide technology bring to customers who are looking to move into the cloud and how can NetApp help with that journey? We have our what we call our advanced technology center that has every single vendor. So there's hundreds of vendors in the data center and we can take any of the customers problems and replicate them or mimic them in our data center and then help draft a solution around it. Right? AndI think that that's the beauty of being a large systems integrator like worldwide is it's not, you know, one tool to fix the problem. You can use multiple tools. And so that'swhere worldwide can help. Um when you look at the NetApp portfolio, NetApp plays very well because every single cloud provider, right? Like it doesn't matter wherethe customer wants to go, NetApp has a play for it, right? So it could be AWS um or any of the other cloud providers as well. Andto me like that's what makes NetApp so attractive for customers that are moving to the cloud is that they have solutions that or products that are capable of doing anything across any of the hyperscalers cuz the reality isthat all customers are um multicloud today, right? Likeno C one customer is sat on a single cloud provider and so the ability to move data easily between cloud providers is key. >> Wow. Thanks for joining me today, Derek. It was great to hear from your experience and of course from that of worldwide technology as well. Enjoy the rest of reinvent. >> Thanks for having me, Phoebe. >> Stay tuned to more great content from NetApp at AWS Reinvent.