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Introduction and Sponsor Message

Sarah Richardson: This episode is brought to you by VMware by Broadcom. From modernizing your IT infrastructure to enhancing security and multi cloud environments, VMware delivers solutions that improve healthcare delivery and ensure compliance.

Secure patient data, streamline Stream on operations and elevate your digital workspace with advanced technology designed for healthcare. Visit ThisWeekHealth. com slash VMware today and discover how VMware by Broadcom can revolutionize your healthcare IT strategy.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: I gotta say when I think of the possibilities of what the world can do, not just healthcare systems, but what the world can do with AI in general, it's super exciting to know the possibilities are there. How many problems we can solve for humanity, for patients, for us on a

Exploring VMware Cloud Foundation

Sarah Richardson: Welcome to This Week Health. We recently had the pleasure of attending VMware Explore in Las Vegas, hosted at the iconic Venetian, where we did a solutions showcase with two fantastic guests. We were joined by Michael Miller of Mary Washington Hospital and Marjorie Abdelkrim for VMware by Broadcom.

During the event, we explored key developments in healthcare technology, including the exciting new capabilities within VMware Cloud Foundation and how it's transforming hospital operations. Let's dive into that conversation.

Sarah Richardson: So good afternoon. We are here in Vegas at VMware Explore. Such an amazing venue here at the Venetian and so many fantastic conversations being had. And we're joined today by Michael Miller. He is the Enterprise Solutions Technical Architect Mary Washington Hospital. And also by Marjorie Abdelkrim, who is the U.

S. Healthcare Solutions Lead for VMware by Broadcom. Thank you both for being here today. Just kicking off one of the biggest events of the year, obviously here in Vegas, what are you seeing on the floor and what are you hearing in the hallways that has you most energized by where we are today in technology?

Michael Miller: So just going through the halls what I'm seeing is just a lot of people talking about, moving from how VCF or VMware Cloud Foundation used to be where you had pieces, parts moved around. with the announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation 9, and it moving towards a more single pane of glass.

Me, personally, I love that single pane of glass, being able to have that one stop shop, because I don't want to have 50 billion tabs open up on my browser. I'd rather have one, and being able to go wherever I have to and get everything there. And plus, it's a lot easier to train people on. Yeah, that's what I'm excited about, is that portion.

It's really cool. Being able to streamline systems.

Sarah Richardson: You've got a great background. I'm going to follow on that question of you understood this environment better than most because you've been building upon it for years in your organization. With the consolidation to VCF, what, beyond a pan of glass, is most exciting for you and your team?

Are you finding people latching on to new technologies and capabilities that may have seemed too big to consume in the past?

Michael Miller: Oh, yes. Talk about NSX. We have, so our networking team they're your primarily traditional networking, where it's switches, routers the cores the network closets. Being able to introduce them to NSX and virtualized networking. And being able to really control and lock down and secure our east west traffic or per VM traffic.

That's been a game changer. Opposed to you have your VLAN, which is your east west that. Not necessarily you can control everything in there, but now being able to, our networking team, they have definitely latched onto that, that they enjoy it. And it's really opened my eyes into that aspect of the world, too.

That's one of the biggest things. And also, coming from your traditional compute and storage environment, where we had a massive storage array and I think we had 40 or 50? Physical servers to run our environment. Essentially I had two full data center rows. Being able to consolidate down to four racks for my whole environment.

And then being able to control that through the VMware environment and being able to monitor performance and optimization. That's helped a lot. It's allowed us to do more with less.

Sarah Richardson: I love that.

Healthcare Technology Innovations

Sarah Richardson: Marjorie, can you give us a bit of an overview of The cloud foundation and also how it's changed, how the company has changed since the acquisition.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Yeah, so just to highlight on your earlier question as well, I think one of the biggest things that I've been hearing from customers as we were walking down the hallways and having breakfast with folks, they're saying the clarity of vision has been really impactful for them. To your question on what exactly is VMware Cloud Foundation, what has that meant for us from an acquisition perspective, It's really been about bringing that concept of enterprise private cloud to our customers.

So many customers are going out and they're focusing on cloud first strategies. And they're like cloud first strategy, but I also need somewhat of a hybrid. I need to think about how do I bring private cloud to my on prem environment so that I can manage it, I can secure it, and I can have access to the data as easily as possible.

So that's been one big key component to our customers. This morning we also announced Several services that can bring customers that visibility from the cloud maturity assessment perspective, so they can go through that journey and really understand where they are in that process from a cloud perspective and how we can help them get there, not just in the cloud, but also on prem.

That's been one big area. The other one's been breaking down the silos. We always talk about how we worked as one company, one team. I've got to say, the acquisition has truly broken down those silos for us. I have never seen our product teams work so well together, quickly resolve product issues to bring that full story together.

It has been super powerful to many of our customers. I was just sitting in our hands on lab area with a customer and one of the team members within the healthcare team was whiteboarding just what the software defined data center looks like and all of the different components. And the customers like it.

We need to bring this to like more people. Like he's excited to bring it to not just his own company, but to his peers in the industry, which was super exciting to see.

Sarah Richardson: When you hear people talking about infrastructure as code and the ability to create better options from having a multi cloud environment, and it's not just the buzzword, you're solutioning with the business, with things that are provide better patient care.

Because you can design things specifically within an ecosystem that you've made that investment in. So I love that you're providing it, and your product teams are working together. And then, Michael, when you think about how that shows up in the boardroom, or you're getting your funding, or you're getting the group together for strategic planning, how does it become part of everyone's conversation versus, hey, let's just toss it over the fence to IT?

Michael Miller: Yeah, so it comes down to, at the end of the day, patient care. How is this system going to work? allow us to take care of our patients better, more efficiently, allow us to bring doctors into our organization, nurses into our organization. Really, I'm not here for me. I'm working for the patients. And that allows when we're going talking to our directors, my CIO, as well as the board, breaking it down instead of, Hey, we need this new thing.

Let's just get it, or let's send it over to IT. Being able to really break it down into how does it impact our patient care. And that's standard. That's really where everything comes down to is how can we take care of patients better, more efficiently and get them healthy. So then they can go home.

Sarah Richardson: Yes. So Marjorie, when you think about Having that partnership with your customers. And time and again what we hear today is making sure that the contracting is easier, the renewals are easier, the ROI perspectives, the case studies, all those things being built in. How are you seeing the operational efficiency of being able to support your customers from really the financial aspect more effectively than previous?

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Yeah, so simplicity of being able to position a platform to our customers of all of our products coming together without having to wonder is it an enterprise edition? Is it standard edition? Which version are you going to be using? So it was super complex. And I don't think many of us realize that until recently when we go down and we're like, we're just quoting a single line item for you, along with services or technical account managers.

So that's been fantastic for our customers. We've been having the conversation with a lot of our customers and they're like, tell me what exactly you're going to put in the quote. And I'm like, we're going to put cloud foundation. And they're like what else? It's all embedded. It's all included.

You don't need to worry about now I need to think about ARIA operations in one data center. You have a license. You can use it where you need to. If you choose that you don't want to in one specific area of your environment, that's fine. Obviously we'd like for you to be leveraging all of our components in every component of your environment, but customers have that freedom of choice to be able to do what they need to do.

within the licensing that they currently have today. So it's, quite frankly been fantastic.

Sarah Richardson: What issues and trends specifically are you seeing in the healthcare market today that's driving just some of the need for the modernization and simplification?

Michael Miller: I know I stated this earlier, but it's the do more with less.

So the post COVID world is a very different beast than it was before. We need to find where we can. Save the most money, but utilize technologies that we have to the best ability that we can. And being able to have this more simplified model, that's helping us out a lot. Where now I don't have to worry about, okay, for a budgeting and purchasing standpoint, can we add ARIA operations into our budget for this year?

Where it's just one line item. That makes one piece of my life a lot easier. And navigating that whole aspect before was very difficult from a customer standpoint. Seeing, okay, we have these 50 different line items. And then trying to figure out, okay, what is this? Am I actually using that?

And now going down to the more simplified model being able to use that is game changer. Where now I know this is what I'm getting, and now I can use this instead of, Hey, I purchased this enterprise license. I thought initially it came with something, but it didn't. Then I had to buy another license because I just, I read it wrong.

Or it was just purchased differently. Now everything is really all inclusive except for a couple add-ons here and there. But being able to see those add-ons and having a chart of what is included within the licensing schemes now. And that, it makes navigating licensing so much better than, other companies.

you get time

Sarah Richardson: to focus on the engineering and the architecture and the implementations versus just trying to get all the licensing figured out in the background now.

Michael Miller: Yeah. The licensing piece during my renewals that took weeks to a month or months to fully say, okay, this is what we want, where we're going.

Let's go with it. Now I can figure out my licensing in a couple days if I need it or not. That's allows me to really focus on the engineering aspect of it and getting it there to be able to keep optimizing and making sure that the lights are on.

Sarah Richardson: And so Marjorie, how are you ensuring that your customers are utilizing all of the tools that are in their toolbox now.

Because too often we buy something, we use one aspect of it, or we gravitate to the areas that we love the most. But you've got this comprehensive solutions available to your customers. How do you make sure they're optimizing their investment? And also thinking of innovative ways to utilize things maybe they haven't seen in their own environment, but you see it across the U.

S. And what does it look like bringing some of those ideas into other healthcare organizations.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Yeah, so there's a couple things that we've been doing. One is we've introduced workshops for our customers where we're going on site, meeting with their architects and engineers and saying, okay, let's look at your environment.

What are you using today? What do you intend to use tomorrow? And what are the different components that you're leveraging instead of VMware, right? So if you're using something else for storage or networking, let's talk about how we bring in VMware into that discussion. And we map out all of the different components of the journey And really help them understand what's the life cycle of the project going to look like.

Because it's not something that's going to happen overnight, right? We recognize that it's going to be a project. So we walk them through that. That's area number one. I think for a lot of our customers, it's also about understanding, what is the value that I'm getting of this new platform? And how can I look at the infrastructure that I have in place and look at the different components?

So again, a lot of our customers Storage is a big area. Networking is another big area where a lot of our customers are looking at that and saying, what is everyone else doing? So with customers like Michael and like other customers that we have we do set up these reference calls and say, let's talk through this.

And actually just recently we hosted a healthcare virtual community event. We're looking to host more of those in the future. And what that does is it allows the customer to hear from their peers Directly, how exactly is VCF being leveraged and how is it helping you drive that innovation and gets you out of focusing on the data center and lets you focus on true patient care, right?

That's been another big area and then obviously we're leveraging technologies to demonstrate the ability to POC it within their own environment so they can test it out and trial run it.

Sarah Richardson: When you think about what you have going on at Mary Washington, what are you most excited about right now?

You have the new technology, you have the new tools, you have the new ability to make a true difference in the organization. Saving money in one area, being able to allocate time and energy to another. What are some of the big projects you have on the plate for the organization right now that you know are driving stickiness for your positions, that are creating the market share opportunity for you, that have better outcomes?

Like, when you look at the true impact on your organization, especially with the future ahead, what Has you most enthralled with all the new toys that you have available to you?

Michael Miller: Oh yeah, right now the biggest thing, the biggest project that I'm working on is really solidifying and flushing out our full fledged disaster recovery.

Because of everything that you've seen in the news with other systems getting hit I don't want that to happen to us. I want to make sure that we're ready and We can be up and running immediately, so we can take care of our patients. That is, right now, the biggest thing that we're working on within our organization to help the doctors and nurses and ourselves is to make sure, if something happens, we are ready.

Sarah Richardson: We live in a world today where now you, it used to be like, You'd plan for your upgrades in your downtime. Take four hours overnight, and so the nurses would be like, I got this, I can just go add a few pieces, I can do the charting after, where you would come back up. And sometimes there would be like the eight hour component.

Then we get into spaces of four, five, eight, thirty day downtimes. If you think about your organization, how long could you be down before it was a catastrophic impact on your organization?

Michael Miller: I just want, to say, We never want to be down. So even when those 1, 4, 8 planned downtimes, that's still too long for the nurses and doctors and ourselves.

But from a catastrophic standpoint, I would say really anything over one week would be very detrimental. We have plans in place to be able to assist and make sure that our systems are up and running. Up and running to the point that we can still take care of patients. But then there becomes that point in time where, okay, everything is now on paper, or we have our backup systems.

When does the impact start happening on the patients where we really have to look into the historical records that they have that we may not have access to. Ultimately, I believe we could stay up and running for that 30 days. It will be very difficult. I do know that our leadership, our nurses, our doctors, and our IT department, we are always ready to support and keep going.

If we have to write things down on a piece of paper to make sure that a patient is getting that care appropriately, then we'll go that route. But I think we could survive most anything. And that's, I've been with the organization 12 years. I have high faith in my my leadership and the nursing team and the doctors.

That we'll be able to take care of our patients and keep going.

Sarah Richardson: It feels good when you can say, I literally built this house. And you've been there almost 13 years. And that risk and that likelihood of things coming together and happening, it's the if when for an event. And you're like, yes, and I've done all of these things.

We have done these things. And you continue to get the voice you need. from people that can help you make that difference. And when you make investments in things like VCF, you can confidently talk about how you are preparing for what could be a worst case scenario with the best case outcomes.

Michael Miller: We're constantly planning for that worst case scenario.

I've been joked at in my department a couple times that I'm Mr. Doom and Gloom, that I'm always thinking of what the worst case could be, because it's Looking at our counterparts and other organizations throughout the country and world, we look at them and we need to learn from what has happened.

Because if you're not learning, you're not going to make any type of progress, and you may suffer the same faults or consequences that others have had. It's a game of cat and mouse. You

Sarah Richardson: want the doom and gloom guy on the team, though. Everyone listening to this, you want people who are like, this is doom and gloom, this is what might happen.

Michael, I bet it's, fun to joke about that being part of your title to a degree. It's also more important that your organization is taking you seriously, and it sounds like they are, and letting you not only attend these types of conferences, but you're presenting like three times here. You've got multiple interviews, you're hanging out with us, so thank you for sharing those perspectives.

Marjorie, same on your end. You're getting to see the impact of these third party risk environments, the need for backup, the need for resilience, the need to be able to recover your infrastructure quickly. When you think about VCF today, how has it changed the dynamic of the ability for you used to be the guys in the basement, and maybe you're not even in the same location anymore.

How has it changed the ability to really support and potentially have to recover an organization as quickly as possible?

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Automation. It's the simplest thing I can say, right? Being able to automate a lot of the activities on bringing up an environment has been crucial for our customers. We also have other solutions within our portfolio that help drive recovery.

Bring up potential clean rooms where environments are needed to be able to recover from an attack. That's not just bringing down a system, but actually taking over an environment, right? Which we've seen a lot of in healthcare, unfortunately. I think that's been a big area for us, and obviously we focus a lot on the conversation around security with our customers.

What are you doing from a networking security perspective? How are you protecting your environment? How are you segmenting to make sure that you're protecting key assets? that you then need to bring up immediately if you need to, or you're not fully impacting in something as simple as patch updates, right?

So yes, there's a malicious aspect of it, but then there's the oops button got clicked and it went into the wrong direction, right? Or

Michael Miller: a configuration file was deployed.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Exactly. The oops button. We need to make sure that we're helping our customers think about all the variety of scenarios that they're finding themselves in.

That's not just a disaster, but the Basic human mistake that we tend to see.

Future of AI in Healthcare

Sarah Richardson: With all the innovation that your organization produces, that you're utilizing, what are you most looking forward to, say, in the next 12 months? What are the things that, when you've seen it here, you're hearing about it out in the environment, that you're latching onto and want to have that be a part of your organization?

Michael Miller: Oh, yeah. Generative AI. That is, I think, for the next 12 months, it's going to be a real big research in my area, is seeing how can that benefit our organization. How can we utilize a private AI to learn off of our data instead of having an AI that is someone else's up in the cloud learning off our data and it's not something that we're able to fully benefit off of and others might be able to get that data.

I'm trying to find a solution that it remains with us, that it's HIPAA compliant, that secure. So really the next 12 months that's going to be a big research topic of mine is that, as well as really at the current moment, I don't have ARIA automation in place, but I am spinning it up to start finding these use cases where I can automate more to get rid of those manual tasks.

So then my engineers can start to focus on Building out, optimizing, creating new things instead of having to really focus on the mundane day to day. I'd rather have something automatically happening and we just check in. Hey, did it work? Yes. Okay. Being more proactive in the environment than reactive.

That's really the next 12 months. It's

Sarah Richardson: the problems you're avoiding versus the ones you're having to fix. So I created a metric in a previous lifetime of all the things that we took care of before anybody knew they happened. Because you can do that in these environments today. When you have infrastructure as code and you have your single panes of glass, you know ahead of time what didn't happen.

And being able to share some of those stories is really powerful. What did we avoid? Because most people, it's like IT is supposed to work, and yet you get into some of these nuanced environments, like you start digging under the covers of cloud foundation, it's complicated for someone who hasn't done it.

for their career and it's easier to learn than it ever has been before. When you're having a layman's conversation, you can now actually have those conversations in real time with anybody because what's happening today out there, especially in the cyber world, it's happening personally too. How many letters did you get this year about breached data or information?

Several, from places you wouldn't have expected it. And so now you're at the forefront of being able to, stave that off in your own environments. So Marjorie, I'll ask you one final question as we close out. And When you realize the power of the ability to provide the AI, the ML, the generative, the task automation, the different perspectives, there's multitudes of ways we can think about AI and environment.

If you think about what Michael specifically just said, it's I want to harvest my own data, I want my own language models, I want a safe location that I can think about. How exciting is that, when you think about what you can help create, knowing that the trusted data source is something that you are helping to create.

evolve within an organization.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: It's super exciting. I gotta say when I think of the possibilities of what the world can do, not just healthcare systems, but what the world can do with AI in general, it's super exciting to know the possibilities are there. How many problems we can solve for humanity, for patients, for us on a daily basis, right?

Basic tasks that we just do repetitively, or even the constructive thinking that sometimes We find ourselves in a rut in, go into your system, ask it a question, like how should I be thinking about this specific problem based on how you've done it before or what it's seeing in your environment.

It tells you, hey, think about the following three bullets, right? Super exciting to know what the possibilities are, and in my mind, they're endless. And I love that we are a part of that story from a technology perspective in helping our customers solve some of those problems.

Sarah Richardson: What I love, too, is you think about where you sit in your organization, Michael.

You can do those things now. You have the foundations down. You've architected them. You operate them. Your team understands them. You have a partner who is there with you. So things that may have felt out of reach in the past are now literally right in front of you. And it's a conversation of, what do we not do?

Because there's too many options. You have to hone in on the two or three things you know you can really focus in and do well. And what an incredible seat to be in right now.

Michael Miller: Yeah. And the change between last year and this year it with AI just in general I wa it wasn't even a thing in my mind last year.

I knew that it was coming with the VMware aspect and the private ai. But really it just, it wasn't something on my radar last year. And now that it's more fleshed out, I can actually look into it more and really. Get that sense of, hey, this is real, this is coming, , how can we utilize it to help us as a, tool to help augment.

So

Sarah Richardson: if I had to put a tagline on the conversation we've had, I would say that VCF, or the VMware Cloud Foundation, is allowing their customers to lead with confidence, and lead with solutions in a format and a way that they weren't able to do before. Bringing it forward to everybody. Make it accessible and make these conversations something that is not just the IT team anymore.

Thank you both for your time, for your insights, for your expertise, for the application of all these new amazing things that keep coming forward. And I look forward to the next conversation. A year from now, Mike, I want to hear what did you do with AI? What happened in your organization?

And then, of course, Marjorie, continuing to make sure that all of these tools are in the hands of full utilization. Thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to hearing about the rest of the conference. I look forward to how we meet up a year from now and talk about the different ideas. And certainly not waiting a full year.

It's as this journey continues throughout, it's These next few months, really understanding the impact of what's being delivered for patients, which is the goal of what we do every single day. So thank you both so much. Thank you.

Marjorie Abdelkrime: Thanks for coming.

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