Video: How EchoStor Helps Eversource Power New England Region

I think if we were to bring everything in that they offer us inhouse it would affect everybody's rates and they would increase significantly right just to to put it back on how would the customers be affected because it would increase our costs significantly hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV I'm your host Katie boso today I welcome back the team from ecostore Technologies the IT services and solutions provider catering to Data Center storage and virtualization needs they're joined by customer eversource the largest energy provider in New England serving 4.4 million customers across Massachusetts New Hampshire and Connecticut we'll hear how Echo Store is helping eversource not only keep the lights on but innovate new ways to be proactive with drones and AI welcome gentlemen thanks for joining me today than for having me thanks for having us first of all Mark you are a part of what I said was eversource which for those who might be located outside of New England eversource is the largest Energy company in New England serving Connecticut Massachusetts and New Hampshire 4.4 million customers all getting either electricity Natural Gas and Water maybe all of that at the same time full disclosure everyone I am an eversource customer being located in Massachusetts I already asked for coupons Mark said no so please know that I am getting nothing for this podcast this is all for fun and for the industry so Mark I got to ask like first of all tell us about your job walk me through your day-to-day responsibilities at eversource what do you do first off got to put a little note out there that not only could I not give you coupons I don't get coupons myself that's always the first question anybody asks when they hear that we work for an energy company there's no discounts right there's no such thing as that so all the rate increases decreases whatever they are we're feeling the same pain back to the question my title it employee experience uh manager and UC to Computing so with that all the devices all the laptops desktops tablets iPads uh video conferencing devices anything really that affects the digital experience of our end users uh employees vendors you know generic IDs doesn't even have to be a human right my team manages the strategy behind those devices so the actual devices that are chosen how we manage them how we update them patch them all the way to how we recycle them and potentially resell them at the end of the day we control that entire endtoend process in addition we also own our productivity Suite so we manage pushing out those applications and their entire life cycle all the new features and and bells and whistles that we get out of those as well as all the troubleshooting and tickets that come in for that stuff too and uh for now the it Communications piece of it as well uh that's a piece of the team that I actually brought in and created it was a role that wasn't here at ever Source uh just a few years ago so that that fell under our it employee experience as well and we we deal heavily with the change communication pieces of it in general across the entire department so when we talk about 4.4 million customers obviously that is a ton of people what kind of infrastructure does it take to handle all of that data that is coming in from all of those people and from all of those accounts so from an end user side we have have in total and this is going to be a number of laptops desktops vdi as well virtual infrastructure we have a total number around 177,000 endpoints wow um 15 to 17,000 end points um so again not all of those are dealt with by humans some of it is automation some of it is Bots that interact with a a virtual session to you know perform something that takes a human repeatedly four hours a bot may do it in a half hour so we do have those sessions too but about 177,000 end points again that's just the end user side right Nick would have a lot more information on the backend side when we're talking infrastructure which would be you know we're we're involved in a cloud data center we have our own uh two data centers as well we have 80 plus major sites which we call them awcs area work centers where again we have humans infrastructure both endpoint and and server or backend at so we're really spread out geographically as well as numerically across uh all of our regions yeah and K the way we interact with the actual you know homes too right that's changed a lot I've been working with ever source for you know 14 15 years now so you there was a time where we all remember having like our meter swapped on our houses and there was the meter man who would come and read it on the house and that's kind of how the data would come back from a field ticket and those things then it's evolved to Regional data collection is you know a car could drive by and gather that data to you know now ever sources is cutting edge with these smart meters that are rolling out where not only can we get the information sent right back to us and collect it live or at least in every 15-minute increments but we can now see Trends and identify where there spikes in the grid and those things and so you know all of that's put I don't want to say a strain but an enormous onus on infrastructure to support the changes to be able to provide a better experience to the customers mark back over to you briefly can you describe your relationship your and eversource's relationship with Echo Store for those who who might not be familiar with the relationship that we're referring to today what do they do for you as a solution provider what did they do uh it's almost like what don't they do right they do a lot of stuff for us on on very many different aspects of our world they come in and they help us not only provide us with infrastructure like hard infrastructure right so we do purchase infrastructure through them they have incredibly helpful services that have been offered repeatedly Consulting on things like data center moves or installs Consulting on scenarios helping with the design or RFP for backup Solutions right and and uh you know they they more importantly dive in you know where where they're not asked to right I'll say that because it's not something that you see on on a resume or on any marketing material right they throw out cost-saving scenarios like co- terming agreements where we weren't aware of it um and say hey this may save you some money in the long run right so they really touch us as a company in a number of different ways not just from a hardware you know perspective but also from a Services perspective you know more importantly from a relationship perspective like Nick said right you you don't stay in a company for over 10 years especially as a vendor without establishing some really good relationships yeah 100% the biggest piece that happens at ever source is again with a large organization with all things happening at once is you're so much more valuable if you can understand the entire Mission overall and I think that if you're a point solution providing partner like that can be really hard because you know while the technology can drive a decision there's just so many more things going on I think our understanding of utility space in general but also like the inner workings of the company may actually be one of our biggest value ads and that is so important to that trust and that understanding of the the inner workings of a company and I do want to ask a follow-up related to that to you specifically Nick but Mark I do also want to touch on something you said where you said well what don't they do what does an Echo Store do for eversource but I think anybody listening to this who might be standing outside of the relationship would go well don't you have everything you need in house inside of the company so when it comes comes to the the kind of need that you have for an outsourced extension of your team with Echo Store why do you need that paint us a picture of what it would be like if you tried to take all of this in house really good question I'll put it in a way that hopefully I'm not you know jumping out in front of my skis or saying something that I shouldn't be saying but I I think if we were to bring everything and that they offer us inhouse it would affect everybody's rates and they would increase significantly right just to to put it back on how would the the customers be affected because would increase our costs significantly right we would love to bring everything in house and in an Ideal World We control everything and have all the knowledge that we need however you know we were talking you know just before starting recording here in the tech industry in particular everything changes so quickly we can't have a guaranteed knowledge of everything that's going on everywhere at every time we're not built for that um and with that we need to rely on our strategic Partners to bring in this knowledge when it's needed and one of our strengths is knowing we don't have this knowledge and again part of one of ecos store strengths is saying hey we have it you may not know it that you need it yet but we have this knowledge when you're ready we we'll be here for you so that just means I now have to start sending Echo Store Christmas card saying thank you so much for not increasing my electricity rate so thank you very much for that Nick and team but you bring up such incredibly important points Mark and that brings me back to my question about trust it's about not only outsourc sourcing to that that third party extension to be able to extend your resources it's about picking the right one so Nick tell me about your relationship with eversource I mean you you've known Mark I believe you said since before you even joined the company so why is it so important to you to be able to offer an experience of trust in this relationship to make sure that you're letting them know you know everything about their in-house capabilities what they need from you and what they do for their customers how do you set that up to be something that you repeat not only for the utility space but the healthare space and the other verticals that your customers touch to the first part your question too about you know how do we say and and work so hard during that trust I mean a bit of Chicken and the Egg but you know at my wedding three of the tables were ever Source people right I mean people who who held my kids and so there's a a very very personal connection at this point also but that's not how it starts right I think you know how it starts I mean the origin story I think is a good one too because it's all about the long game so you know initially eversource because of their size because of what their spend is they were buying direct from all the big Partners so for years we were doing work kind of around these very big large direct deals with manufacturer X right whoever attended to be and so you know obviously we want to earn credibility and that's where you start that's where all Partners start and so we bring in our people and we do a great job and we help design things and you know we watch the order go to that partner and then we try to support it where there's a problem and that went on for years you know we were kind of working around everyone else I think when the opportunity finally broke one of the big Partners all of a sudden several million dollars of equipment lands on a shipping dock you know there's not services to install it there's features that weren't enabled and you know we're standing there side by side with the customer saying how are we going to make it work and a thing we take a lot of pride in was you know we easily could have been like now's our chance you know years of working now we can finally sell our services and we can capture this deal and that just wasn't the attitude right we were like listen you guys are in trouble so we kind of scrambled the hilos got all the resources in there and did whatever we could to kind of help make it work and I think with that behavior and that mentality and acting as if we were employees now we're seen as employees almost and I think that was the beginning of what's become a very long relationship where again we sit there like it's our money I mean back to saving money on the grid I mean we treat it like it's our budget like it's our money like it's our responsibility and and Mark made a comment before that I he said it for the right reasons but I also do delve in for the wrong reasons I act like I'm an employee you know there's times where we disagree there's conversations where me and some of Mark's co-workers like we get into it and it's it's in the best way like we disagree because we all believe so strongly in what's good for the company and I think you got to earn that place but I think it's an important place to be to have a great Mutual partnership and when I did come to Echo store right I I was caring ever source for a while when I came to ecostore you know this is how we conduct ourselves this is what we believe and we met with the echos store team that's how everyone here operates as well and so you know when I changed you know and moved to this company several years ago it was the easiest transition of my life because everyone we all operate like this so you mentioned before our healthc care vertical our financial services teams you know everyone out there is for lack of a better we're fighting with our customers to do what's best you know and and just living it I think that's a really big differentiator for us it's easy to capture deals and capture wins it's hard to really take it on and believe it and take a sense of ownership and what's going on in the companies something you said in a meeting that we had prior to coming on the recording was both of you share that mentality of of not just subscribing to the status quo you don't like the idea of this is how it is so this is how we're going to do it and both of you seem to really connect on that mentality and with that said uh Nick I wonder if I could persuade you into retelling that story where it really is a great example of trust where you were able to go and solve an issue very quickly over at the Source headquarters in your flipflops would you mind sharing that with us I think it paints such a great picture of trust yeah happy to yeah so we you know obviously we're badged we work on site we're in and out of the data centers you know we're constantly doing projects nights and weekends and so you know it just the way the job was there was a random Sunday afternoon I was having a barbecue at my house and actually uh Dave not Angelo my Pier was at my house as well our kids were in the pool and we get the alert that one of the big backup systems had gone down you know and that the teams were trying to triage it remotely they couldn't get into it you know the system was physically down you know the data Center's 15 minutes from my house so we're sitting at the house we're on a picnic table you know with everything cracked open our laptops just trying to like follow along what's going on to see what the issue is we assume the manufacturer who supported would be there first or the outsourcer and suddenly we start hearing like hey the manufacturer can be there tomorrow the outsourcer can be on site in four hours and so everyone's on these calls and now we're joining out of obligation because we love our source we're there for it Mark his co-workers they're there because they have to be so all of our friends and family at ever Source they're on these calls all weekend right and we're acutely aware of that so Dave and I were like we're badged like we can go in the data center like you guys want us there and so we we got in the car we drove over and it's kind of funny because we walk by the security guard a thousand times you know we go in every other day we're checking in whatever but like there was definitely a second and a third look when we're there and like bathing suits and like a Corona tank top and flip flops whatever and but anyway fin security guard agrees that we are who we say we are we get inside we go and we're able to reset the systems to give the remote teams access to take a look and you know while we're standing there waiting for the handoff for the next team you know I've been in data centers hundreds of times maybe many hundreds of times you don't realize how cold it is until you're there again like a bathing suit a Corona tank top which is long gone by now but and flipflops standing in a data center waiting for your handoff to be able to give them the project over there but I mean that's the level of trust we have we're on a call with them they're like yeah go in if you guys can get in there go in there and that's the most sacred place that there is for an IT department in addition to that awesome story I I want to turn back to you Mark and talk about some of the innovations that you're currently working with EO store to bring to eversource whether it's ones that you've done already and you hang your hat on or ones that you're working with them right now give me an idea some of the projects that you're working on together to to bring to eversource we're looking at various things from you know potential data center moves to new backup Solutions new Storage Solutions uh potential we call it an innovation lab type of sandbox environment right so all these different things that require infrastructure structure require architecture require services to get us to the next level of where we need to be Echo stores right there by our side it is always funny because it's like a lot of the projects are very unsexy right you know really critical things but I mean I always say depends on who you're asking depends on who you're asking exactly the most important things are always the foundation right I mean those those are the things we're trying to build under the you know behind the scenes whatever else but I think one really sexy project Mark and I are working on is the you know the Drone Imaging the the AI project right and again AI is sprinkled across everything right now you know I'm a big believer in kind of baby steps on some things but but this one is a is a pretty fantastic use case so when there's an outage as a utility company and you need to find out about it there's this app OMS right outage management system that's where you and I if our poers out we go online on our phone we can type it in that all comes to us we know where something's going on the grid can kind of figure it out so when it comes to like residential power outages and even businesses it's not necessarily that hard to isolate where it is so you can send a crew to go a look what's always been a pain for the business is these distribution lines like the major lines going between states or even going to Canada in areas like that so you have these huge industrial like the big tall power towers that you see that kind of run off through the woods very very rural areas so historically it would be people either helicopters would fly by and do looks or people on ATVs would kind of go out and Survey these areas and check them out which is okay for kind of proactive work it's very expensive and slow for reactive work right we have a major incident as a pole lets down or a tower is damaged in some way from a tree or whatever it's hard to figure out where that is because it's like a light in your house it's on or it's off you don't know where it's necessarily broken so the the compan is kind of evolved to saying all right great we're going to have these helicopters do regularly scheduled visits we're gonna have people on ATVs driving by we can kind of get a better handle of things well when drones came out the company did a great job of adopting drone pilots and we have pilots on staff flying drones taking pictures up and down these power lines and like everything in it and business you create one solution you create another problem right after you don't see it suddenly Mark's team now is drowning in all these images that are filling up SharePoint to try to store what's going on and these images are coming in by the thousands so it's nice because now we could see okay great here's a live picture we don't need a person there we can see pretty quickly what it is there's a team of people now who have to go through these images and kind of track okay look there's a tree that fell that damaged this line in this way let's send a crew to this place here's how we can fix it well quickly when looking at that our Microsoft team was incredible on the AI side what they were looking at and they saw an opportunity where they said all these images in SharePoint like we can create a way to scan across this you using some the power apps what we can in that space to say hey look like let's identify an anomaly or something that's strange an image right and kind of start to figure out ways to be these are reactive Solutions but we can save the people time so instead of clicking through the images can we tell them where to look that's the first stage so again crawl walk run so crawl is hey image analysis team at least you know where to look then you can make your own determination and what to do from there the next phase that's coming out after that becomes hey like I only can we tell you where to look let's tell you what it is and what the recommended course of action would be so we see this tree down this car hit this infrastructure unit this flooding caused this damage right things we're seeing in the news all the time I mean there's a lot of damage that happens that you don't see it's far away and it doesn't necessarily make the news so there's that part there the next phase is going to be really interesting where we can say hey let's use some proactive pieces and say we're watching vegetation grow into these big distribution lines we have 11 months 12 months until we need tree work there let's work that into the tree work schedule so instead of having emergency reaction emergency work we can have this as part of our regular schedule guarantee better up time pay less for maintenance and less for work again translating back to us paying lower electric bills which would be really helpful in the end but it's a really exciting project that's on the radar all the way up in the organization drones are very cool and and I will give one extra uh shout out to that team there's actually in town a brush fire that started up last week it's over a 100 acres in size and that engineering team actually is helping look at the containment right look at the edge of that fire right now by live streaming back to you know its handlers its pilots and the firefighters to try and understand where to I send the helicopters to drop water right so incredibly important nonrelated to electricity and and ever Source at all but volunteering their their time and resources to go help with that effort but back to your your original question one thing that ecostore helped greatly with was actually something that we're trying to get off the ground yet not not officially approved meaning we're not officially part of this strategy yet but what they did was help us quite a bit with a theoretical exercise in determining kind of looking more at our strategic data center efforts and ecostore really brought a lot of expertise to the table in that conversation to help guide us to make a decision I'm not going to say what decision we made just yet but I will say that ecostore helped quite a bit in terms of shaping our Enterprise vision of what we should be doing to kind of take us into the next you know I won't even say the Next Generation but like the next 50 years of where our data centers could and should live we're just getting started come back on Tuesday for part two thanks to Nick and Mark for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch on youtube.com/ Channel inssider newws and Trends you can also listen to us as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform come connect with us on X or LinkedIn at Channel Insider or with me at Katie boso and of course like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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