Transforming Technology with DXC Technology’s Chris Drumgoole

Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to text Trump tv. I'm really happy.

You know, I, I get excited when I meet people who are based down here in South Florida with me. When I moved down here 22, 23 years ago, it was like a desert. And now I, I, you know, frequently meet people who are based down here.

Let me introduce you to a fellow South Floridian, not native, but who is, uh, Chris Rumble. Chris is the president for Global Infrastructure Services over at DXE Technology. Hey, Chris, welcome to Tech Drunk tv.

How are you neighbor? I, I am great, and thank you so much for having me. Absolutely.

So, Chris, besides being a, a transplant at South Florida, if you wouldn't mind share a little bit of kinda your journey with our audience. Absolutely. And well, I am a transplant, my kids call it home now, so we've been here long enough.

Me too. My, my, well though mine, both mine are gators or graduated, uh, UF and one's up in Boston, one's in Texas, but who knows where they'll wind up. There you go.

They're all over the place. But again, thanks for having me. So yeah, I'm Chris and, and currently I, I, um, I run DXC, which, you know, hopefully we can talk a little more about, but by way of personal cred, uh, kind of my background, uh, I actually came to this world from the CIO side.

So I was the CIO of of ge, uh, before coming here. Uh, so I, I had the opportunity to lead that organization and really in my heart, grew up a network guy. But if I'm really honest, uh, you know, my, my joke is like Most of us, Yeah.

I started my career as a software developer with IBM and, and my running joke is that luckily I realized I was a very bad software developer before IBM, uh, and then I moved into networking and kind of grew from there. And then eventually, you know, I had the, the, the pleasure of, of leading it for all of GE globally and then, and then came over here to DXC where I now look after about half of DX C'S business. That's excellent.

Excellent. So, you know, we were talking off camera, Chris, there's so many companies, three letter acronyms and, and people think they know, but they're not sure or they don't give, let's assume our audience is not familiar with DXC. Yeah.

Make familiar. Yeah, a hundred percent. And, and I wouldn't blame them not for being right, because the, the number of vendors in our spaces, and to your point, every, everybody's got the letters and everybody wants to know what they stand for.

And, and, you know, by, by definition DX C's also, you know, we, we joke here, and I'll get into what we do, but we joke, they're a little bit like the electric company in that, uh, you really actually don't think about us if everything's running right, because we, we are by definition in the behind the scenes business. So what we really, we're a global company. Uh, we operate in more than 70 countries with more than 140,000 people count most of the Fortune 500 as a customer in some way, shape or form and, and thousands of customers beyond that.

But where we, where we really specialize in is helping our customers with complexity and transformation. So we are the reliable operators behind many of the world's biggest companies. So, again, I hate to say it this way, and, and our, our marketing team gets upset when I do because they want it to be more flashy, but we're kind of the folks behind the folks.

So, uh, when you go to pretty much check in on almost any flight in the United States, when, when that agent is kind of tapping that screen and, and working that system, keeping that system running, that's the XC when you swipe a credit card, when you walk into a doctor's appointment, unfortunately, when you pay your taxes, um, or you know, frankly, if, if you're a citizen service and you're, you're, you know, when, when an intelligence agent is, is gathering information or going to, you know, unfortunately some places that they're going now around the globe, typically that's DXC behind the scenes. So we really, our job is taking that massive complexity that's kind of table stakes for today's CIO. It's not the thing that gets them hired, it's not the thing that gets them in front of the board unless it's broken.

That's, that's where we thrive. That's kind of our space. So again, you can't blame people for not knowing the name because no one really wakes up one every morning and says, Hey, the electric worked really well today, but what they do wake up is saying the electric's not working today, and Then no one hell breaks loose.

You know? So, you know, Chris, my background is security and it's the same thing in, and this is before we called it cyber. Yeah.

But it's the same thing in security. When nothing happens, you did your job. Right?

Right. You really only notice those people when something happens. Correct.

And, and then, and then it's not pleasant. Right? Um, but it, it is, but you know, star, right?

We've both been around a little bit. We used to call it the plumbing. Plumbing has to work, the plumbing has to work, you know, you gotta take it for granted.

I used to call plumbing all the time too, and then I was coached by my marketing team that I should use electric instead because it's a better metaphor, but Okay. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll defer to the marketers. I, I absolutely call, I, I absolutely call it diploma.

And, and you know, listen, I'm also to, to be very fair, so DX c is a very big business, and I really spoke about just half it. Now. We do have an entire other half of our business that really does do some amazing stuff.

So, you know, for example, if I talk about airlines where we're running that system, we also have another half of our business that's helping that airline use AI tools to make their app run better and communicate with the customer. So we do really have kind of the whole suite covered. Uh, but the part I run is, is that core infrastructure piece that we spoke about.

Got it. So this would be like, uh, that this second half of it is sort of modernization, transformation type of services. That's, that's exactly right.

You know, one of the examples we use is, uh, and, and I don't wanna say the name, we have marketed with 'em, but I don't know what the rules are. You know, again, one an an airline that anyone in the United States has flown, has a, an award, has an award-winning app, they get a ton of credit for it. Um, does great things like, instead of just saying, Hey, your flight's delayed, it uses AI to actually tell you No, your flight's delayed because this is happening.

Here's what the next step's gonna be in, in very plain English, right? Um, that app, you know, our team, you know, that airline decided to write that app, but our team is part of that transformation. We help develop it, we help it talk to everything else, live in that ecosystem, and then help them deploy and run it.

So, you know, they view it as a real competitive game changer for them. And we're a big part of making them, helping them execute that transformation. And then our side of the business comes in and helps 'em run that kind of day to day.

'cause think about it, once you're counting on that app to tell you what your flight is, it better work, right? The, the impact is gonna be felt real fast if it doesn't. I, I love it.

I think I know the app, and I'm not mentioning names, but what I like about it too, not only does it tell you why your flight's late, it, it serves up options. Correct. And it gives you the reasons.

And, and in great plain English, it doesn't just say weather. It says, Hey, whether, no, No, no, your Flights here. You're gonna hit it.

This is what's gonna happen here, here are the choices. Yep. Love it.

You know, it, it, it's, it's interesting times we live in Chris, right? I mean, I, it's funny, I I I told you I had a, had a doctor's appointment this morning. I was talking to the doctor.

I, I coached his kids in soccer down here, uh, 18 years ago. So I know him a long time and we're talking, and he was talking about the impact that AI is having. He's a cardio a cardiologist.

He's talking about the impact that AI is having. I showed him something Microsoft just came out with, with diagnosing. I mean, it's, it's a very, in every vertical, in every area we go in, it seems like technology.

You know, we've talked about technology revolutionizing not evolutionized industries forever, but it really, like he said to me, he said, I never would've thought in my lifetime I'd see this. We're starting to see those kinds of things happening in our lifetime. Right.

And a lot of it is quiet behind the scenes, just very just matter of fact, this is the way it's going now. This is the way it works. com.

Yep. You can learn everything about us there. Again, we have, you know, uh, over 130,000 people in 70 countries.

So we're a pretty big operation, but that's a great starting point to, to learn more about us and what we do and if we can help in any way. Absolutely. So, Chris, turn back to South Florida.

I wanted to talk about a recent win that DXE was talking about. You guys have been selected by Carnival Cruise Line, uh, to power their technology infrastructure and, and you talk about modernization, transformation, right? I mean, we're here in south far, so the cruise business is, is front and center.

I don't know, people out there carnival's probably, is it the biggest at this point or second? Biggest in the world? So yeah, They own a whole bunch of different brands, not just Carnival, but technology is a game changer here, right?

If you've taken a cruise recently, everything, I mean, you get your app and everything's on there. Talk about this one. Yeah.

You know, we're, we're, we're s super excited to, to partner with them and in, in, in a ton of ways. One is, you know, the, the first I'll I'll say is, you know, to, if you think about how I described DXC kind of off the cuff before, it's gotta run. It's gotta be there, it's gotta work.

I mean, the cruise line, yes, their job is delivering fun. That's how they'll describe themselves. But you, you got a lot of people who, who are in their care, right?

Uh, Like around the world death sort of things. Yeah, yeah, Very much so. And, and, and an experience.

And the, it's really the passion the carnival folks have for delivering that amazing experience. They take it very seriously that that experience is seamless. So, so everything's gotta work, which is kind of the, the table stakes, which is so exciting.

So it's one of the reasons we're so excited to work with them 'cause it aligns with them. But, but to your secondary point about the apps and things like that, you know, their CIO Sean, if you talk to him, you leave that conversation passionate about what technology can do to help deliver a more amazing personalized experience for, for their passenger. Um, and the vision, they, what you're seeing on the ship is really only like the fir They're only on the first step of what they believe is a real journey.

So it's super exciting to be part of that with them. Right? And, and just think about it, everything from the experience of you booking that cruise, whether you do it direct with Carnival or whether you do it through a, a travel partner all the way through a parking boarding, your whole onboard experience, your family's onboard experience, how you kind of think about that and all the way up the technology touch points to you as a passenger.

Uh, you know, if you compare it to, to your point earlier, if you compare it to 10, 15 years ago, it's, it's, it's gotta be tens of thousands of percent. It's exponentially. So the ability to be part of that with them is just really exciting for us.

And, and, and it's, we're we're quite humbled by the honor that they selected us because, you know, they're really putting their, the faith of their, their passengers in we're, I don't wanna say in our hands, but they're allowing us to help them hold them. And, uh, we just think it's, we're really excited about it. And, and to your point, they are, they're kind of an institution down here in South Florida, which is where, you know, where I'm talking to you from, where our geo, where our, this part of our business is headquartered.

So it's a real hometown family story for us too. Yeah, no, it is. It, it's, I mean, look, carnival's, carnival's big no in any market everywhere, but down here it really is.

You know, the, one of the big ones, um, Chris, if you don't mind, talk a little bit about, you know, their technology right now is in many ways best in class, but there are things coming down the pike, right? That the DXE is gonna empower. Um, can you, and I don't know if you can, can, and if you can't, please don't do anything that's gonna get us in trouble.

But could you give us maybe some examples of the kinds of things we might be able to see in the near short term future as a result of this? Yeah. And, and I really don't wanna speak for them, so, so I'll, so I'll, I'll speak a little bit more in generalities.

Sure. But again, I, if, if you were to talk to Sean and the team there, they're really thinking about how do they kind of maximize that fun experience? How do they maximize that personalized experience, right?

So how do they treat every member of that family as an individual? How do they make sure that you're really engaging with everything that's appropriate for you on the ship versus so treating you really as, uh, as Alan or Chris, not just a, You know, passenger B, not just passenger B, and realizing that different families have different needs and some people might be more comfortable with technology and some people more. So it's very big on kind of, I'll say, personalizing that experience and helping that passenger really embrace what's right for them.

So it's really no different than, I hate to make this analogy 'cause everyone has a negative connotation there, but if you think about the ads you see today versus what you saw 10 years ago, you know, if, if you and I both opened our TikTok or Instagram, they, they probably looked very different, totally different from what our interest were, right? Sure. Is.

Um, so I think really just think about, I know that's a negative connotation, it's an ad, but think about that in a positive light, being able to take that same level of personalization and really deliver, you know, again, if you look at carnival's business cards, it has the word fun in bigger letters than anything else. Yeah. Right?

And does they really take it serious as a, as a company and they're really thinking about how do they make the technology non-invasive, but do more of that. Uh, and you know, again, we're really happy to be a supporting player in that role, right? That's carnival's taking the lead on how they're gonna do that, and we're giving 'em the tools and technology to do it better, faster and, and more reliably.

So I, you know, just sitting here thinking about it, another challenge is, look, they're based here. I'm sure they've got data centers all over the place. So a lot, you know, the app works.

I'm here in my office, I can log into my Carnival app and yeah, do whatever. But a good, a good percentage of what goes on here actually takes place on board on ships. Yeah.

And those, you know, you don't have landlines, right? Uh, so that, that's gotta be some interesting challenges. I imagine.

It is. It was a big part of the conversation as we were kind of designing their modernization and how we're gonna work with them. 'cause you know, to your point, they do have data centers everywhere, like we all do.

And then they have a whole second set of data centers that are floating around the world at any given time because they really treat every one of those ships like a, a floating data center. It's a floating city. Really.

That's a good way of looking at it. Yeah. And I, and, and I mean, to the point of there, there's, there's, you know, without going into too much detail with their proprietary stuff, they, there's parts of that chip that look and feel like a data center.

Um, and I think the, you know, while starlink and other amazing things are, are really increasing the connectivity and it may look different 10 years from now, you still do have to treat every one of those ships. Like they're a, a literal and metaphorical island. Uh, from a technology point of view, they have to be able to operate and do all the amazing things we're talking about without just being able to call home to the cloud at any moment or without just being able to reach out to public authentication at any moment.

So that is a big part of the challenges, and, and they've done a really amazing job overcoming it. And, and again, we're proud to help 'em with it, but you do have to think about them. And this is common in a lot of travel businesses as a, a really distributed, they take IOT to a, a, a and, you know, distributed internet to a whole new level because there's thousands of people counting on it.

Agreed. Agreed. Chris, this is a great win for you guys, but a great partnership.

It sounds like. Let me, do you get a discount on cruises? Um, don't Have to.

You don't have to tell us. You don't have to us. I didn't think it was appropriate To ask that in the sales process, but, uh, now that we're a partner, I certainly hope so.

'cause we're looking forward to going on Anyway. Hey man. Great win for you.

Sounds like DX C'S firing on all cylinders. Right? Good stuff happening and an interesting time to be doing this.

It absolutely is. We, we've got a great team here. We've got a great set of customers.

Uh, we're having a lot of fun and, and we're really, we think really helping our customers and, and their customers live better lives. So we're really excited about it. Excellent.

Well keep doing what you're doing. Continued success. Thanks for coming on here on Tech Trunk tv.

We appreciate it. Thanks so much, Alan. Alright.

Chris Rumble, uh, president Global Infrastructure Services at DXE Technology here on Tech Drunk tv. We're gonna take a break. We'll be back.