Alison Biers, Dell Technologies & Keith Bradley, Nature Fresh Farms | VMware Explore 2022
hey everyone welcome back to thecube's day two live coverage of vmware explorer 2022 from moscone center in san francisco lisa martin here as your host with dave nicholson we've got a couple of guests here and we have some props on set get a load of this nature fresh farms produce keith bradley joins us the vp of i.t from nature fresh farms and allison beers is back as well director of marketing at edge solutions for dell guys welcome back to the program and thanks for bringing some food thank you so much so keith talk to us a little bit about technology from nature fresh farms perspective how do we look at at this farming organization as a tech company as technical we're something that measures everything we grow so we're 200 acres of greenhouse spanning probably three or four hundred acres of land everything's entirely environmentally controlled so the peppers that we have in front of the tomatoes they're all grown and controlled from everything they get from light to moisture to irrigation and nutrients so we do all that so should i be able to taste the dell goodness in these cucumbers for example i like i'd like to say a nature fresh slash delco okay so i mean connect the dots for us so you know let's go through that sort of mental exercise how are these end products for consumers better because of what you're doing in in it yeah so one of the things that we've been able to do and one of the transformations we made is we are now able to run our etls so analyze the data real time at the edge so making decisions which used to be only once a day based on analytics to now multiple times a day our etls used to take eight to ten hours to run now so extraction transformation and load okay so we consider it a party foul if you use a tla okay but you're but you but you get a pass because you're an actual and real person already i already had a claim later i'm sorry continue yeah so it just it allowed now the growers to make multiple decisions and then you start adding the next layer as we expanded our technology base we started introducing ai into it so now ai is even starting to make decisions before the grower even knows to make them based on historical data so it's it's allowed us to become more proactive in protecting the health and longevity and even taste of that plant and the product coming out to you that's awesome alison talk to us about from dell's perspective how is it helping nature fresh to simplify the edge which there's a lot of complexity there you talked about kind of the size of the organization but how do you help simplify it i think nature fresh had a lot of common problems that we see customers have so they had some really interesting ambitions to improve their produce and do it in a gmo free way and and really um bring a quality product to their customer but yet you know they were each solving their problems on their individual farms in different ways and so one of the ways that we were able to help was to consolidate a lot of those silos as they were expanding the scope and scale of what they really wanted to do from a technology perspective and then being able to do that in a secure way that's delivering the insights they need when they need them right there at the edge is really critical so can you give so again drilling down on um i think it's wonderful that we have the actual stuff here yeah because we often talk in these abstract terms about outcomes there's your outcome right there right right um but talk about this growing in the soil somewhere you have you have growers it's not an abstraction these are these are actual these are actual people right where does the technology uh organism interface occur here you have organically grown crops yeah where's that interface where's the first technology involved in this process literally physically physically yeah yeah yeah there's a shack with a server in it somewhere so we actually have yeah we have a core data center at the center of nature fresh set up basically where everything ends up we have our edge so we have computers right at the edge analyzing stuff but if you want to go right back to the grass roots of where it actually is is it's right at not dirt but a ground-up coconut husk that is what the plants are grown in and wow analyze the data right there because that is our first edge and and people think that's static for us the edge isn't static because the edge now moves we we have a plant that grows then we pick it and then we have to store it and then we have to ship it so our edge actually does move from area to area to area so statically one thing isn't isn't the same all the time so i know it's just it's a hard thing to say how it all starts but it's just a combination of everything from natural gas to everything okay that then are those um because you know we think of things in terms of like you know internet of things and these these these sensors oh yeah things are being gathered so you've got stuff happily growing in husks and yeah and then being picked is that aggregate what's the next step there where is that aggregated where does that go is that going is that all going straight back to your data center or are there or are there sort of intermediate steps in the process so what we do is we actually store everything at the edge and we do daily processes right there and then it aggregates that data and it drops it down from a large number to a smaller number to go the core got it and then that way at the core it does the long term analysis because again a lot of the data that we collect we don't need to keep a lot of it is the temperature was x the temperature was x the temperature we don't need that so it aggregates it all down so that way the the information coming to the core doesn't overwhelm it because we do store enough information and give you an idea of how our 1.8 million plants are living and breathing we actually estimated 1.8 million plants throughout our 200 acres at any moment yeah that's how many plants they're tracking and so that that real-time information is helping to make sure that they water the plants precisely with the amount that they need that they're fertilizing them and i mean you were telling me about how the life of a plant you're really maintaining that plant over the life of 12 months so if you make a mistake at any point along the line then you're dealing with that in terms of their yield throughout the life of the plant so but you aggregate a lot of that data right there on site so that you're not having to send so much back to the cloud or to the core so and you do that a lot with vxrail as well as other technology you have on site right yep yeah our vxrail is is the center of the core of how we process things it allowed us to even expand not even just for compute but gpus for our ais to do it so it's it's it's what we did it allowed us to mold how we do things alison question for you this sounds like a dynamic edge the way that you described it keith you described it so eloquently how does the partnership that dell has with nature fresh how is dell enabling and accelerating and advancing it its edge solutions based on what you're seeing here and this need for real-time data analytics we spend a lot of time with customers like keith and also across all kinds of other industries and what we see is that they have a really common set of problems they're all trying to derive real-time data right then and there so that they can make business decisions that impact their profitability and their competitiveness and all of their customers experience their product quality and what we see a lot of times is that they have a common set of concerns around security how to manage all of the hardware that they're implementing and at the same time they really want to be an enabler for the business outcome so people have creative ideas and they come to i.t hoping for support in that
journey if you're managing everything as a snowflake it becomes really hard and untenable so i think one of the things that we have as our mission is to help customers simplify their edge so that they can be that the enabler that's helping the business to transform and modernize one of the things i really admire about nature fresh farms is that they decided it from a full organization perspective so you know everybody from the operational technologists to the it to the business decision makers and leaders at the company they all decided to modernize together and so i think from a partnership perspective too like that's one of the areas that we try to work with our customers on it's really talking about total transformation and modernization so it sounds like there was an appetite there as alison was saying for a digital transformation and it transformation talk to me a little bit about from a historical perspective how old naturefresh is and how did you get the team on board it sounds so eloquent how did you get the team on board to go this is what we need to do when technology needs to fuel our business because it's going to impact the end user consumer of our fabulous english cucumbers so it's actually really neat our our owner p quiring when he first started out he really wanted to embrace technology and this is going back right to 2000 2000 when we first had our first planting and he was actually a builder by nature he actually was a builder and fabricator and he built greenhouses for other companies but he said they're getting a little bigger and it's the labor amount and the number of growers you needed for us a range is getting exponentially higher so he was one of the first ones that said i'm going to put a computer right in the middle and control this 16 acre range it's a pretty visionary view when you really think about it he's trying to operate his farm yeah right operationalize it it's really cool yeah so he it was a neat concept and it was actually very much not a normal concept then go back to 2000 people weren't talking about internet of things they didn't talk about automation it wasn't there and he basically said this is the way to go and unfortunately he thought i'll sell it to somebody i'll grow up i'll put a produ product in for a year and i'll sell it and then guess what happened he didn't sell it he says that's not big enough i'll build another phase two and then he said his comment to me was after he built the fourth phase he says i guess i'm in the pepper and cucumber business now and he said that's what he's just grown but he said it was a great relationship we had and it's a great concept and it even goes back and i know we talked about before is the computer allowed one senior grower to control large number of acreages where before you need multiple growers that know exactly what to do because they'd have to manually change all these things now from a single computer they can see everything that's going on in the entire range you mentioned um you mentioned temperature and water and this is kind of out of the blue question but how have global circumstances and increases in the cost of fertilizer affected you or is that fertilizer that's not the type that you use in your operation do you have any insight into that yeah it it everything has the global change in cost has changed everybody i don't think there's anybody that's exempt from it um the only thing that we've been able to do is we're able to control it we don't need to rely on i guess you can say rely on the weather to help us do things we can control how much is and we recycle all of our water so what what the plant doesn't absorb today for nutrients we'll put it back in the system sterilizing wait when you say 200 acres it's all enclosed yep 200 200 acres of greenhouse 200 acres of greenhouse energy there is there is not a single portion of our greenhouse that's actually gets exposed to the outside and if you ever see a picture of a greenhouse and you see one of these lovely plants here wet that's not true that's just a nice make it look better spray it for the photo yeah spray it for the photo but actually everything is dry that water goes directly to the roots and we monitor how much we put in and how much comes out and then we recycle it we even get so much recycling we run natural gas generators to heat the water to heat the greenhouse we take the burn off of natural gas the co2 and funnel that into the greenhouse to give it natural stimulant so this is starting to remind me of the martian i don't know if you read the book or if you saw the movie oh yeah but you know planting the potatoes inside the hab yep and the little ones grow with that next ones but yep we recycle everything that we do and that's amazing that's amazing and all that information at their fingertips i mean really i think what technology is enabling you all to do is focus on what you all are good at which is focusing on your farming operation and not necessarily the technology so one of the places i think we deliver some value is invalidating a lot of the solutions so that customers don't have to figure that all out themselves yeah because i'm not a security expert i don't always understand the true depth of security but that's where that relationship is we need this and we need that and we need a secure way to let those communicate and we can hand that off to the experts at dell and let us do what we do best what have been some of the the changes in the last couple of years we've seen the security elevate skyrocket to a board level conversation ransomware is a is a when not if we get attacked how does dell help you from a security perspective ensure that what you're able to do ultimately gets these products to market in a secure fashion so that all that data that you're generating isn't exposed so like i said i really understand it's not a matter of if it's gonna happen it's when it's gonna happen so one of the things that we've actually done is we started to use the dell solution the power protect data manager to back up our solutions on the vxrail and it it actually did twofold for us it allowed us to do a lot of database manipulation from restores and stuff like that but we're now actually even investing in the cyber recovery vault that gives us that protection and it allows us to now look at like how long will it take us to get back up and we're doing some tests right now in the last test we did is we're able to get back up going as a company from a full attack in about an hour wow like we've actually done a few simulations now so we are able to recover what our core needs are within an hour which is a very different metric than simply saying oh the data's available yeah no no no no no no we you get you get zero credit for that yeah we need our operations to be back up and running yeah even even that hour is stressful to our growers sure it's a it's a variable within a variable because if you go in the summer where it's super hot they'll be like very stressed out with an hour and then you've got a nice calm weather day it's not as bad but the weather can change and how they have to close the vents and you're not just closing one vent you're closing 32 64 100 acres of vents and you're changing the irrigation cycle you need that automation to do it for you how do you let people eat these things after all the care that goes into it i'm going to feel it i'm going to feel mildly guilty for just about a second and a half before i sink my teeth into the cucumber oh but that's the joy of it that's what you think you know this is this is serious you're proud of this aren't you oh yeah you know what it's not there's not a single person at nature fresh that isn't proud of what we do each day we enjoy what we do and it's a culture that makes us strive to do better every day there's it's just a great feeling to be there every day and to just enjoy what do what you're doing yeah and see it's real it's this is real isn't it great isn't it great to be a part of you know my background's in economics i think of these things in terms of driving efficiency yeah and this is just a beautiful thing you know when you control those variables you leverage the technology and what's the end result you're you're essentially uplifting everything yeah yeah in the world not just you get philosophical on yet right and and feeding the world especially during the last couple of years that access one of the things we learned in the pandemic one of many is access to real-time data isn't nice to have anymore it's essential so true and so i mean you the the story that you're telling here the impact to the growers enabling them to focus what you were saying allison on what they do best dell technologies vxrail enabling nature fresh to focus on what it does best ultimately delivering food to people during the the last couple of years was huge yeah yeah and allowing even at a reduced labor number for us to keep growing and doing things by automation you know we still need labor in the greenhouse to pick prune and do stuff like that but again we're looking into technologies to help offset that and but again it was one of those things that we just had to be efficient at everything we do and we drove that through everything we have well and you guys haven't stopped right you're continuing to figure out i mean he was just telling me a little bit about what their next step is so just getting more and more accurate more and more intelligence as they grow so it's it's the possibilities that's what's exciting to me about edge you know i think this example is great because it's so relatable everybody can understand what the edge is in this context and it's really driven by the fact that you can put compute into so many different places now it's more though a matter about how do you gather it how do you do it in a way where you can actually understand and glean information and insights from it and and that i think is what you all are really focused on yeah yeah information is key it is key what's next from dell's perspective at for edge computing technologies what are some of the things you guys got cooking yeah i mean we're going to try to help keep customers to continue to simplify their edge so to deliver those insights that they need where they need them to do it in a really secure way i mean i know we talked about security but to do it in really a zero trust fashion and to help customers to do it also in a zero it fashion because these in this example you know it's the growers that are out there in the fields or in in your greenhouse in a sense like helping people that aren't necessarily i.t specialists to be able to get all the benefits from the technology so so do you think that vxrail technology could be used to optimize say the production of olive oil because i'm i'm looking here and we have the makings of a of a pretty good salad yeah there you go now obviously does it just apply to food production yeah i mean it really goes across the board whether we're talking about manufacturing or retail or energy putting technology right there at the point of data creation and being able to figure out how to manage that inflow of data be able to figure out which portion of the data is really valuable and then driving decisions and making um being able to understand and intelligently make decisions for your business based on that data is really important keith what's next give us as we as we wrap up this segment here what's next from a technology perspective you mentioned a couple things you're looking into yeah so i think automation is really going to change the way we do things and automation within the greenhouse is is truly just becoming a reality um it's funny we go back and we say can we do this stuff and now it's like oh even three years ago we i don't think we're quite ready for it but now it's right there so i see us doing a lot more work with other with vendors like dell and to do automatic picking automatic scouting all that stuff that we do by hand do it in an automated fashion and at scale right that's the important part i think when you're managing a snowflake you can only do it to some level and to be able to automate it and to be able to break down those silos you're going to be able to apply it to so many parts of your business yeah wide applicability guys thank you so much for joining us sharing the nature fresh dell story bringing us actual product this is so exciting we we congratulate you on what you're how you're leveraging technology in a really innovative way and we look forward to hearing what's next maybe we'll see at dell technologies world next year sounds great thank you so much all right our pleasure guys thank you for our guests i'm dave nicholson i'm lisa martin you're watching thecube live from vmware explorer 2022. dave and i will be right back with our next guest so stick around [Music]
2022-09-03 20:10
