John Furrier and Dave Vellante recently spoke with Christopher Rence, during EMC World 2015 in Las Vegas, on the subject of digital business infrastructure and the challenges of integrating with the cloud. Rence is the chief information officer of Digital River, Inc., a payment processing company.

“Digital River has been around for about 20 years and is one of the largest e-commerce and payments processors in the world,” Rence said. Its advantage lies in the large toolkit of core technology and integration with third parties that it can offer customers.

Waves of change

“We virtualize everything, including the database,” he said. Rence explained the company can do this because it relies on a standard portfolio of technology that is repeatable and reusable. This allows it to leverage known tech for new projects and to manage its data globally. This technology portfolio includes an HP server base, EMC storage solutions, and XtremIO.

A big part of Digital River’s development revolves around integration. Everyone has their own Cloud and their own services. Tying into third-party Clouds presents a challenge for a modern digital business. “How do you see it end to end? That’s where I think the big future is,” he said.

Transformational challenges

Rence offered his thoughts on the role of the technologist in this new digital landscape. He feels that the most important thing is to talk with clients and vendors and to keep on top of the regulatory framework they use. “You really have to understand where it’s going,” he said.

Companies seeking to transition to the Cloud face the same transformational difficulties, he believes. They have to read, communicate with their customers and, most importantly, retain their employees. It’s the employees who know how all these new technologies come together.

“I think the big thing to understand is that everything you touch today touches somebody else’s computer,” he said.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2015.