from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host still minimun hi and welcome to a special cube conversation here in our Boston area studio I'm Stu minimun and we're getting towards the end of 2019 where we've had a bevy of cloud conferences I've - I've attended Microsoft ignite cube con cloud native con and the big the Super Bowl for industry AWS reinvent is right on the horizon and happy to talk about some of the data protection items related to cloud welcoming back to our program RIA a touch Barrett who is the vice president of marketing in the data protection group at Dell EMC Fria great to see you great to see you Stu nice to be back alright so RIA you know obviously cloud has had such a huge impact on our entire industry you know transforming what's happening there bring us inside how some of those trends are really impacting your organization in your customers yeah definitely I think one of the things that no one would be surprised about is that organizations today are managing seven times the data that they were managing just two years ago so last year in 2018 there was a study done by Vanson Bourne and analyst firm it's called the global data protection index study where they surveyed over 2,200 IT decision-makers and they asked specifically about their data protection challenges one interesting data point is more than 76 percent of the surveyed had placed some sort of data disruption in the last 12 month the preceding 12 months before the survey and 30 close to 30 percent are twenty seven to be exact had lost data costing upwards of millions based on that disruption so before you even get into some of the market trends that's complicating protection I think a lot of customers are still very challenged with their data protection just in any regular environment now the challenge are on data protection and even more broadly data management because again there's the 80/20 rule a lot of your data is actually in the tertiary secondary copies of your data it's getting more complex so a couple of big trends that you and I talk about all the time data growth we kind of talked about that data distribution data is more distributed than ever you have it across multiple clouds you have data hungry technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning that's basically generating data volumes that's unprecedented and that will be generating data volumes that are unprecedented and obvious and some of these technologies are actually also fueling data growth at the edge so I think that I saw a number or I think Michael Dell was talking about how the data at the edge is actually going to surpass data in all of the clouds combined in the near future then you have application transformation so that's where cloud really comes in a lot of our customers are speeding their time to market and their exchanges and interactions with their customers by really transforming their application development and using cloud native you know application deployment to really fuel how they're how they're developing apps and that's requiring new ways of data protection then you bring into effect all the regulatory rules there's one coming up very shortly I think in January so you have increasing governmental regulations you have increasing privacy laws and and mandates so again data protection is getting into this area where you would say it's in the eye of the storm yeah so many challenges what we've really loved to document over the last few years is the opportunity around data your business is creating new business value creating new lines of business and really extracting information use the word information even you know we've really defined is what defines a company that has successfully gone through digital transformation is it as data that is driving decisions and companies there so you've talked to a lot of customers you've got some survey data or you bring us inside you know what are some of those leading-edge customers what differentiates kind of the leaders and ones that become winners in this world compared to before data was at the center of what they were doing absolutely three the power of three again I think the the companies that are really doing things well or have seem to have a handle around their ever-changing data protection needs are doing have three things in common I think the first thing is pretty evident and you talk to it just now Stu they value data they see data as capital so the amount of attention they give to data is really significantly different than a lot of the other companies so they really ranked when they talked about how they see data as the most important capital you know one of the most important capitals in their in their environment they looked at productivity apps as a significant area of importance they looked at AI machine learning business intelligence and analytics as some of the most critical applications including the new cloud native applications they are gaining significant importance in the eyes of these companies so first and foremost they really value data and they want to make sure that they are protecting it in a way that really meets what they need to the second thing that's really interesting that they're doing is they're investing in a single vendor for all of their data protection needs again this is based on the global data protection index study of the 2,200 IT decision makers and GDP I found that companies that are using at least two vendors are 35 percent more likely to experience some sort of disruption and when they talk about disruption they talked about downtime ransomware and they talked about data loss as the number most frequently cited disruptions in their environment and multiple vendor solutions really really lead to increased complexity there's just more touch points disparate management tools especially when you're in a recovery type situation it just adds a lot of complexity to it including service and support experience that you're going to get from multiple vendors so again investing in a single solution across a very diverse portfolio of application deployment choices physical virtual multi-cloud including extent to cloud use cases as well as cloud native protection really makes sense from core to edge to cloud and I think it will increase decrease the complexity as well as minimize the downtime associated with any type of disruption so that's the second trend so we talked about they value data the second one was that they really have investing in a single partner in their data protection solutions the other one is that they prioritize the third one they have some fundamental needs that they prioritize for their multi cloud so they prioritize scale efficiency as well as ease of management for their multi cloud data protection needs so while cloud computing gives us a lot of flexibility agility it can also bring with it complexity unknown costs and increased risk if not managed appropriately and if this extends to your data protection environment so you need data protection solutions that basically can manage that are easy to scale easy to deploy and deliver efficiency and resiliency across this multi cloud environment so those are the three things that are really doing differently still all right yes so many so many things that customers need to think about now living in that multi cloud world cloud native infiltrating the application environment so as we look forward to 2020 here what are those new requirements so you know what a customers need to really think about when they're they're shaping the future of building their environments yeah that's that's a great question and all of the new requirements start with the fundamentals if you don't have the fundamentals and your requirements will fall short and if anything the fundamentals are becoming more and more critical so we already talked about what those companies that are doing well really do differently so they value scale efficiency performance and when they look at those environments they look at it across a distributed deployment model so you're talking about global scale performance at a global level you know if efficiency across the cloud as well as the cloud resources that you're utilizing so if when you talk about efficiency and performance and scale it takes on a brand-new meaning in the new set of requirements and then there's some real new new requirements so for protection we're seeing protection for cloud native applications so we were at kubernetes and we had our kubernetes cube con and we were showcasing our container data protection kubernetes container data protection so we're doing a tech preview of that that got really well received because a lot of companies are struggling with how they're going to be protecting containers and then you have protection for modern apps SAS based applications MongoDB cloud era type applications that now need protection so it used to be a wide range of different applications now there's new modern apps that need the same level of protection and they have new requirements one of the last ones is again protection of traditional because you're going to still have a big traditional deployment and cloud native applications at what we're calling global scale so what does global scale mean it means you have visibility and reporting to ensure protection across health compliance efficiency across core edge and multi cloud right those are going to be some of the new requirements and then data reuse is another one that we see coming up more and more so there's so much investment in making sure your data is protected and companies want to actually get additional value out of their protection data and they want to drive that value through innovation through being able to leverage that data for app dev and test analytics type work so really they want to be able to do that on their secondary and tertiary copies so that's another set new set of requirements that we're seeing so it starts with the fundamentals and then you need to be able to scale and drive these new requirements yeah absolutely in many ways some of these requirements echo what we had in the past you know go back 20 years ago was spreading a crawl you know mainframe UNIX and Linux and Windows and now it's multi cloud and SAS and hybrid environments so really exciting stuff you know your team you know just give us a look for 2020 you know you know seeing Dell EMC show up not only at of course Dell technology's world but you know cube Colin and reinvent and some of these cloud shows yeah yes more and more Dell to be announced I'll tech cloud last year so it's a big focus for the company what we're doing in partnership with VMware so there's a lot of exciting things that are happening and data protection is really becoming critical to all of these conversations so it's going to be a very exciting year I think it's going to be a defining year for us next year and you're gonna see innovation like you've never seen before from Dell EMC all right exciting stuff definitely so much opportunity innovation happen in the clouds Rhea thank you so much for the updates looking forward to seeing the team with lots of you know over 50,000 of everybody's friends in Las Vegas for AWS thank you thanks for having us - all right be sure to check out the cube net for all of the AWS reinvent content as well as all the other shows we've done this year and look forward to 2020 also I'm Stu minimun thanks for watching the Q

from Las Vegas it's the queue covering VMworld 2018 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners welcome back to the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas everybody you're watching the cube the leader and live tech coverage my name is Dave Volante I'm here with my co-host Peter Burroughs Peter great to be working with you we haven't done much this week but I'm really excited to put a great week despite that it's been a great week this day three of our wall-to-wall coverage last year at vmworld one of the biggest hottest trends was data protection same thing this year a lot of buzz a lot of hype a lot of parties Rio Barrett is here so the vice president of product marketing for the data protection division of Dell EMC welcome great to see you again great to be here brian linden is here he is the IT Directorate Melanson Heath out of Austin as well Brian thanks very much for coming on thanks for having me so Rio I mean we talked and I have talked about this yeah what's going on in data protection I mean VMworld it's not it's become the hottest topic absolutely seeing you guys some of the VC funded startups or trying to duke it out throwing big parties all right you guys got all the customers everybody wants them you're fighting like crazy cloud has now come in what's your take what's going on that's really exciting I mean data protection I started out my career in data protection you know but move forward and back in data protection is hotter than ever it's it's great and I think it has to do with the trends that are happening out in the market the big mega trends that are happening we talked about distribution you know data moving out of the data center where the four walls are no longer defining how you secure something so security recoverability are becoming really critical as you talk about edge and data moving to the edge on to cloud computing and multi cloud computing I think it's going to be one of those frontiers that the enterprise still wants to have a reign over how do I recover my data no matter where it's sitting and how do I get it back and how do I secure it so it's very exciting so Brian talked about Melanson heath set it up the company you know tax accounting Boston based in New England etc your and really want to understand the drivers in IT but start with the company please yes lesson Heath is a top-10 accounting regional accounting firm in New England we have offices in Massachusetts New Hampshire and Maine we service other clients in Vermont etc a large portion of our focus is on auditing we do a lot of misrata it's school districts town cities we also do traditional tax accounting there's been advisory the full gamut of accounting professional services you run IT yes okay what are the big drivers in your business and how are they forcing you to sort of rethink the way in which you generally approach IT but specifically approach data protection over the years we've you know we've gone from the traditional everything on premise to moving things to the cloud whether it's a SAS provider or or whatever so we really need to be able to secure our data no matter where it is whether it's in the cloud game it'll have a backup locally between our various offices etc and uptime is paramount we have deadlines that don't don't shift the IRS does not care if we have a storm or we have something wrong with our building we have our professionals have hard deadlines so I one of my tasks is to make sure that no matter what happens we have a timely backup plan and I need to be able to focus on the business and not be focusing on worrying about the backup and data protection so obviously the other part that equation is the recovery plan so really you know we this is our ninth year of the cube and at the time you know when we first started it was a lot of talk about re-architecting backup to handle the the the V blender if you will and the lack of resources now all the conversation Brian just mentioned is cloud so how are you guys - that from a product standpoint oh my god yeah this has been a big topic of conversation I think one of the areas where we really differentiated you know one of the areas that Brian is in the middle of his mid-market and we see a big propensity for an appetite for cloud from an agility standpoint from time to respond standpoint and one of the biggest trends and we heard about it at yesterday's keynote as well is cloud as a disaster recovery site especially for customers that might not have a secondary site so we recently introduced a product called the DP 4400 Brian's actually the first customer to purchase the product so in July we announced it one of the key differentiation of that product is the ease of which customers can now access cloud you know whether it's for a long term retention or cloud disaster recovery without needing any additional hardware literally it's at the fingertips you manage it exactly the way you would you can manage it directly from your VMware operational tools and have access to cloud as a secondary site whether it's for dr or long term retention so that's one of the ways for mid market customers we're really bringing that cloud and bringing it at their fingertips from a recoverability standpoint and then we've done some exciting announcements Beth was here with yang-ming talking about some of the innovations that we've been delivering in cloud whether you're a service provider whether you're a big enterprise across our portfolio so I think we have that's by far one of our key differentiations and better together stories with VMware so I'm really fascinated Brian about some of the things are doing let me let me throw a thesis at you and Andrea you've probably heard this we tend to think that there's a difference between business and digital business and that difference is the degree to which a digital business uses data as an asset in many respects if you start thinking in those terms then data protection for the new world is not just the technical data is protecting your digital business now if you think about an accounting we normally associate accounting with manual processes manual activities but there's a lot more data being generated by your clients by your by the people that are providing the services how is this relationship between data the value of your business and the value of your service is driving you to adopt these new classes of solutions for millions and Heath we are almost completely paperless so all of our data all of our work product goes through technology so we need to you know it's it's imperative that we be protected if servers go down if the site goes down our professionals don't do work and time is money so you know it first is the old thinking of having paper storage or just having local backups if there's a significant enough then we can leverage the cloud and be able to disperse our staff to places where they can sit down with a computer and do work additionally like you said we're collecting a lot more data you know our various software processes are using more machine learning to get more out of that data so having that protected as it expands is critical so increasingly the services that you're providing to your clients are themselves becoming more digital as well that's correct yes so as you think about where this ends up would you characterize yourself as especially interested in the DP 4400 and the set of services that around that as facilitating that process are you going to be able to tell a better story to your business about how they can adopt new practices offer new services etc that are more digital in nature because of this I think so I think having the DP 4400 with its cloud connections will help our our partners our principals become more comfortable with the cloud and and not not fear it they've tended to be you know a little more insular and want to see and feel and you know know that the data is there so you know being able to recover to the cloud or just use the cloud natively is going to be a game-changer for for our firm and our business just add one thing that we've talked about with Brian one of the capabilities with the DP 4400 is the instant access and restore capabilities and we're seeing more of a trend especially in secondary storage platforms much like the ones we're using with DP 4400 we're basically all your data is there right so you're doing your data for recovery your data for disaster recovery for replication is in a place and we're seeing a trend towards wanting to have flash nvme cache to be able to actually do instant access and restore not only for recoverability purposes for app tests and dev type applications and data sharing so that trend has already left the station and even in our mid tier products like DP 4400 well you know targeted specifically for commercial buyers and midsize organizations we're bringing that enterprise class capabilities and making it available to them to be able to leverage not only cloud but also on-premise and your cloud is you all cloud you some cloud you hire hybrid we do have a lot of on-premise we are migrating things over the years to the cloud and that's certainly going to be the trend and is that in effect or in part what's driving you to rethink how you approach data protection or how did that affect your data protection decisions I think having the capacity to touch all types of systems and services is is critical we need to be thinking not what we're doing now but we're gonna do any year five years from now and you know just looking back to the past five years it's a completely different IT environment so ok so I want to translate a little marketing into what it means for the customers but we agree oh when you guys announced with DP 4400 it was simply powerful was kind of attack okay so what is what are you looking for from the standpoint of simplicity and a same question on on on on power simplicity that you know the DP 4400 is a 2-u unit goes right in the rack it's not use of various interconnected components that you have to you know figure out how to connect it's one interface it's extremely simple and quick to deploy you know I have a very lean IT shop we don't have a lot of time a lot of people to be devoting hours and days and weeks to getting a deed protection environment set up our previous solutions we're much more complicated different interfaces always changing interfaces and they didn't really work well I need you know I need to be able to just set it and forget it it's it's an insurance policy is what it is you know when something goes wrong I need to know what's going to happen - from the moment that the disaster is to recognize - when our staff will be able to get back up and working okay and I the DP for 4,400 just makes that extremely simple okay so it's simple not just simpler know that right it's simple example and what about the powerful piece what is it what does that mean the power of having everything in one unit it's one interface you know giving me and my staff the power to do what we need to do without having to have a degree in data protection it's very simple to learn very simple to use it just works and a couple of the things Brian and I talked about earlier was really no one wants to impact production to do data protection write it like you said it's an insurance policy so the performance of the platform is really significant I think performance performance without compromising efficiency because at the end of the day cost is a big consideration especially for midsize organizations when they're buying a solution so I think it's really hey it's simple to use simple to deploy but it's powerful because you can get your stuff done in the you know a lot of times for data protection which is almost zero these days with the efficiency I got also saying really quickly that I would also presume that because every single document is so valuable and so essential power also relates to being able to sustain the organization of that day absolutely absolutely more you know going further into power as we was indicating is the is the performance of the backups the deduplication rate sending things over the over the network to our disaster recovery site very quickly very efficiently we can pull back you know do backups during business hours don't have to throttle it to just the overnight hours which those hours are you know off hours are getting fewer further between because in tax season in particular we have people working seven days a week all day so to send that data it's work needs to go in comp in a compact form doesn't prevent our staff from doing work whenever they want to want and need to be able to do it organizations increasingly focusing on the data data has more value means it's got to be protected in new ways bring in cloud requires new architectures games on is a big market you know thirty billion dollar plus ten when you add it all up rating it on a lot of people want it you're the leader congratulations guys all right thanks very much for coming on the cube Thanks all right keep it right there buddy the cube will be back from VMworld 2018 right after this short break [Music]

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live on day one is Las Vegas, of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. And we have a couple guests joining us now. We've got Ruya Barrett, the VP of Product Marketing for Data Protection at Dell EMC. Welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Lisa: And we've also got Kerry "KJ" Johnson from FieldCore, you are a senior systems engineer. Welcome, KJ. >> Thank you very much. >> So, KJ, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about FieldCore. I know you're a GE company but what is it about FieldCore that you guys do that makes you unique and how are you working with Dell EMC? >> Okay, so FieldCore is a global service provider in the power services sector. Our customers are governments and large countries. We service and build power plants all over the world. We're in the power generation business. So, anything that generates power. That could be wind, it could be water, it could be traditional oil and gas, it could be nuclear, anything that generates power. Basically, what FieldCore does is we service it, and we keep the lights on around the world, especially in, we're in 92 countries. So, other countries don't have the infrastructure that the United States has and experience outages a little more frequently than us. So our job is to get the power back on as quickly and as efficiently as possible. >> So last fall in the U.S. we were slammed with a lot of natural disasters, including Hurricane Irma. You guys at FieldCore had a critical situation last fall when that hurricane struck. Tell us about that, and how working with Dell EMC Technologies you were able to recover. >> Okay, so last year, they changed the forecast on Hurricane Irma from coming up the east coast of the state to coming up the west coast. And they were projecting it to hit the Tampa Bay area, which put all of our production systems directly in its path. So with them projecting the storm to hit us within about three to four days, we weren't prepared for it. I was on a call with all of the directors, and they asked me, what was our level of preparedness for this storm. So I told them that as far as data protection, we had replication, that was fine. We were replicating all of our SAP, Oracle, databases, all of our email via Exchange and file systems, to our data recovery center that was in Atlanta, via Dell EMC RecoverPoint appliances, so that was fine. We had a recovery point objective of less than two minutes. We could go back two minutes and be up and running. The problem was, had the storm hit us, and we had to then throw over and go live at our DR facility in Atlanta because Tampa was down, we wouldn't have any way to have backups during that time that we were live. So that was a gap that I identified. They subsequently asked me, is there something that could be done in three days- >> Dave: Got any magic beans? >> Yeah, exactly, so I'm going, I'll do everything in my power to make something happen. So basically I got on the phone and called my Dell EMC Data Protection rep, Matthew Sattler. And he was actually at a Dell management boot camp in Boston I believe, at the headquarters. And he actually took my call. He snuck out of the meeting and answered the call, which was an all-day meeting, which was, that enabled us to do what we did. He offered a solution that we could actually use virtual appliances, because we had not rolled out our DR equipment yet, it was wasn't even scheduled to be delivered for two weeks. So he shored up the licensing, he called a sales engineer, who got in touch with me, his name was Dominic Greco, he's based out of Pittsburgh, great guy. He lined up all of the resources. I got my resources together, and we put a plan together, and we actually had the project started by the end of that first day. >> Just another day at the factory. >> Hey, you know, our customers call us and we answer. That's how it works. >> So, it's common scenario for you guys? >> I think we had an exceptional team on the account, so exceptional teams always make a huge difference, and I think in this case, we definitely had a great team. And I think one of the things that KJ talked about, is how flexible the software-defined data protection approach can be. I think sometimes people think of us as an infrastructure company, infrastructure meaning hardware predominantly, but our data protection capabilities are just as robust on the software-defined data center front. So I think the flexibility of being able to do DR, and put in place a DR environment, that gave KJ all that flexibility, is really a testament to the software capabilities. >> So could we just kind of review exactly what happened? So, if I understand it correctly, you were concerned about the exposure on your remote site, right? You're going to fail over, RPO of only two minutes, so you're going to lose, maybe exposed to two minutes of data loss, you can live with that in business, right, understood that, you communicate it. But then you have no way to back up that failover site. >> KJ: Yeah. >> And so, the team came in and what, you you accelerated a DR project that was sort of in the pipeline? >> Exactly, we had hardware that was scheduled to be delivered to Atlanta, and be deployed within two weeks, but we didn't have the two weeks. >> Ruya: Three days. >> So our DR facility was still running on a legacy product, and that wouldn't work for us, because all of our production data was backed up to data domain and it's not interoperable. So, we went with the virtual appliances, and we deployed a virtual data domain, a virtual Avamar appliance, running Dell EMC Data Protection Software Suite, and an NDMP Accelerator, I always have trouble with that one, for our file systems, and by the end of the day, they were deployed and we were already starting the replication. >> So in this situation did you do you failover proactively, or you just wait for the disaster to hit? What's the- >> Well, the thing was just to be prepared. So, the storm was projected to hit Saturday. Day two, was Thursday, and we convened the conference call, an indefinite conference call, that means I was going to be on it, all of Dell EMC's people were going to be on it, until either we finished, or the storm blew us away. So we monitored the replication all Thursday and by like 6:45 that evening, all of the data had replicated over to the DR, and the next day, the office had closed early so people could go home and hunker down for the storm, look after their families and their property, and we kept the call going from home, but the data had finished by that evening. And the storm hit, started coming around midnight that evening on Saturday. So, fortunately, the storm only hit us as a weak Category 1, so we never even had to throw over to it, but had it hit us as a Category 3, we would have been very much in trouble, had we, weren't able to accomplish that. >> So I wanted to get, kind of an idea KJ, in terms of what is the business impact that you've been able to achieve? You've obviously had to accelerate this part of your security transformation, which you were able to do, what's the business impact that your bosses, and their bosses in the C-suite, at FieldCore, have seen as a result of being able to have the agility, with Dell EMC to implement this so quickly? >> Well, some of the things that came into play with the setup that we had with Dell EMC, one was the Data Protection Suite encompasses everything, hardware, software, licensing, replication, it's all one suite of things. It's not nickel and dime add-ons or bolt-ons, it's one full protection suite. So the package that we had, Matt said, "You already have this package", you know, there's nothing to buy, there was no charge for any of the resources rolling it out because we were on a, what's called a utility mode of billing, and it's basically, it's like instead of a CapEx expenditure, where we buy hardware, we don't buy anything, they bring it out for free, they install it for free, as soon as we start backing up, okay, how much deduplicated data do you have on a data domain? We'll bill you for it. And they send us a bill every month. So that helped us out. >> And you know the data domain efficiency quotient is just through the roof, it's one of the best platforms for dedupe, so it really helps our customers, especially when you're talking about a utility-base model as well, that efficiency, that architecture, that really brings that to bear. >> Dave: What do you call this utility model? >> This utility, it's the utility model, it's just one of our consumption models. It's the flexible consumption models that we offer across data protection software, as well as our platforms. >> So it's a pay by the drink? >> Ruya: Yeah absolutely. >> Now, I'm interested in the ripple effects, and I don't know your business well enough, but it sounds like, not only were you covered, but had a Category 3 hit, your customers, there would've been a ripple effect here to your customers, around the world, 92 countries I think you said. Is that right or is it, is this not a real-time business? >> Well, our users, the vast majority of them, are field technicians, they're field service guys. >> Dave: Oh. They work on turbines, they work on boilers, they work on nuclear plants, they're out in the field. They work on windmills. So they're not very technical people, but all of the laptops that they carry and hook up to this equipment, feeds equipment into our systems, and our systems can't go down. So, the impact would've been pretty great had our systems been offline for any amount of time, because when your global you know, there's really no good time to be down. When I'm sleeping, there's people busting their butts in other countries and you know, middle production hours. >> So last question here Ruya, to you, on this theme of Dell Technologies World, of make it real, KJ you've done a great job articulating how you've been leveraging your partnership as well as the technology, to make your security transformation a reality. Ruya, last question to you is, there was a recent ESG study on IT maturity, can you share with us some of the impacts there that you've seen, and how it kind of relates to FieldCore? >> Yeah, absolutely, be happy to. So we just recently unveiled a study we did with ESG, where we surveyed 4,000 customers, IT professionals, over 16 countries. And it really had to do with the IT transformation maturity curve, and their adoption. And one of the things that was really interesting is customer feedback, was that transformed companies, that have gone through this massive IT transformation, are perceived to be 16 times more innovative, be 2 1/2 times more competitive, perceived as being 2 1/2 times more competitive, and six times more apt to have IT as part of the business decision-making process. And data protection was one of the top areas of this transformation as well, because it's so critical. As data's moving out of the data center and becoming more distributed, we talked about the distributed core today, going to the edge with IOT, and all of those types of applications, there is this massive amount of data moving out, outside of the data center. So data's growing, it's moving out, and it's also becoming more and more critical for customers. So data protection, that recoverability, operational recoverability, disaster recoverability, cyber recovery, are becoming more and more critical. And there was three things in the maturity curve on data protection. Transformed companies are basically protecting data in five types of different applications. So they're not really looking at just physical protection, which a lot of legacy companies are still kind of stuck at physical, and maybe virtual, and starting to really do a lot more on virtual. These guys are looking at data protection across distributed environments, they're looking at public cloud, they're looking at hybrid cloud, they're looking at physical, virtual, so very comprehensive. So that was number one. Two, is really self-service models. Transformed companies, that have gone through IT transformation for their data protection have enabled application owners to be able to do self-service. So that has become a part of how they offer data protection. And the last one was really about automation and automated policies. So when you add a virtual machine, when you bring in a new system, how do you automatically apply policies, so protection isn't something that needs to happen as a backend consideration? And I think KJ talked about some of those things as well. And they're doing a self-service model as part of what they're rolling out, as well as the automated protection policies. So I think they're well on their way to transformation, and this is what makes it great, in terms of the partnership we have with our customers. >> Well thank you both so much for stopping by, sharing, KJ the great successes that you've had with that one very, very potent example, Ruya thanks for stopping by and sharing with us that data protection continues to be hot, hot, hot. >> And thanks for having us again. Thank you, nice seeing you guys. >> Our pleasure. We want to thank you, you're watching theCUBE live, day one, Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, stick around. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We'll be back after a short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2017 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE live from VMworld day one, really exciting day that we're having so far. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Dave Vellante and we're joined by a CUBE alumni and a new CUBE guest. Welcome back to theCUBE Ruya Barrett, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dell EMC. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Good to have you here and we also want to welcome Mark Wiseley, the CIO of Palmer Chiropractic College, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> It's great to have you guys. So one of the things we were talking about before we went live is backup. Is backup back? Is backup sexy again? It's hot, why is backup so hot, Ruya? >> Oh my god, yeah, it is. I started years ago and I was in data protection and got forward 20 years, it's back in data protection. It's hotter than ever. In the last six years, I think there's been over 5 billion dollars invested in this space whether from venture capital or big companies and it's hot because of what's happening in the customer's environment. We see a huge restructuring of data centers. So before data used to be in a couple of locations that we called data center and now it's really much more about centers of data, data is moving out of the four walls, moving closer to where decision making is which is with the business, out in the geos so it's moving to the edge and also just cloud. Cloud is really - and cloud deployments are really reshaping where customer's data is so now that data's no longer in a building. How do you secure it? How do you protect it? Where is it? Who owns it? Those are becoming more and more prevalent questions. So that's why backup is sexier than ever. >> So is that what's - What are the drivers for you in terms of your backup? I mean, what keeps you up at night? You wake up in the morning, what are you thinking about in the backup context? >> Well, for us, you know, it's really about not having to think about it, you know, making sure you've got a solid solution that's there to backup that data and make sure it's available when you need it and where you need it and the Dell EMC product we put in place gave us that opportunity where we can backup our servers, our desktops, our laptops, it doesn't matter whether they're offsite or onsite. They can be anywhere, it gets backed up quickly and it doesn't interfere with what they're doing. Users don't want to be interrupted with a backup and have to sit there and wait for it so it's been a great solution for us. >> So Mark, you've been - You've got over 20 years experience in the industry. You've been a CIO at Palmer for nearly two years now. One of the things that I read about you is that you're attracted to neglected IT systems. I imagine you saw a tremendous amount of opportunity but we talked about kind of bringing sexy back with state of protection but you were instrumental in kind of changing the IT direction at Palmer back to Dell EMC, tell us a little about that and why that was so important to you as the leader of IT there. >> Well, when I came into Palmer, we had a number of different issues. Everything from performance to backup windows that we couldn't hit. We were still using tape backup. There was a number of different issues and so we really needed a platform that would be able to come in and solve all those issues and also do it as quickly as possible so we put in a Dell EMC VxBlock which allowed us to, I kind of look at it as a data center in a box type of thing, I mean it solved our networking issues and our backup issues and then because we have multiple sites, we were able to actually back up our data and replicate it to some of our other data centers across the US so it was just a perfect solution for us and then one of the real nice things is when we actually put that product in Dell EMC came in and helped us to implement it and within three days of them arriving we were actually running production workloads on that system so it worked out great for us. >> You know, that reminds me, so Ruya, I've asked this of some of your colleagues, backup forever has been a bolt on and the VxBlock triggered something in my mind, I remember the original Vblock. I remember it said, oh no, Serves up 5,000 vms and my first thought was how do you back that up? And there wasn't and integrated answer. This is a long, long time ago. There is today. >> Ruya: Yeah, absolutely. >> Maybe talk about the philosophy of backup as a core component of a deployment and what you guys specifically have done there. >> Absolutely, we actually today had a really exciting announcement that would really be under what I would call more of a transformational approach to data protection and really the move that we see is it used to be that backup used to be kind of an afterthought, something that you roll out your applications and you're like oh yeah, we have to protect them and figure out what you're going to do and implement what you need from an infrastructure standpoint. We're really seeing a much more of a move to a source-based data protection so we're building data protection capabilities in directly to the applications so today we announced data protection suite for applications and a whole new version of it which really enables the native UIs that the database administrators are using to protect their own workloads and this source-based data protection is going to be more and more critical especially as data is moving closer and closer to where it's getting created so you need to protect it at the source not in the background, not as an afterthought. We also are seeing convergence which is your question around the VxRail. We have integrated data protection now built into VxRail deployments and we've had it for a couple of years now and this year at Dell EMC World, we introduced IDPA, Integrated Data Protection Appliance. Again, bringing all the components that a customer would need, integrated data protection storage, integrated data protection software, into an appliance model so it's all about simplicity, just making it easier for customers to be able to deploy. >> So Mark, you're obviously a VMware customer and as a VMware customer, your backup has sort of been subservient to the VMware momentum. You remember the ascendancy of VMware totally changed your backup requirement. You get less physical servers, backup was very consumptive of resources so you had to think about that. Fast forward, now this whole cloud world, what are you doing in cloud? How is it effecting your backup strategy, specifically? >> So we're looking at, you know, the cloud is one of the areas where obviously we're exploring opportunities. One of the reasons that we put in the VxBlock and the data domain and the data protection suite was really to set us up to be able to make that transition into the cloud simpler. You know, now we have the tools in place so we can decide when we need to move it to the cloud, what data do you need to move in the cloud, where do we need that data to be and it just gives us lots of opportunities and lots of options so >> So let me take that one step further, let's define cloud a little differently, not just as a place you put data but as I want to bring a model to the data wherever the data lives so it's self-service and it's automation and all those things you associated with cloud maybe bringing that on prem or putting it in the cloud. Is that something that as an IT practitioner, you see as viable or is the cloud no, no, it's in Amazon or Google or some other external location? Are you trying to bring that cloud model to the business? >> Yeah, I think as we look at the cloud, I think a lot of it is just options. Figuring out which option or which model or which provider you're going to utilize both from a cost perspective as well as regulatory compliance pieces come into play so you know as we look at cloud, we look at kind of what we've put on site as kind of a private cloud or a cloud in a box type thing and it just opens up lots of different opportunities for utilizing Amazon or Azure or whatever that is. >> So one of the things that I wanted to ask you Mark is really about, you know, Palmer School of Chiropractor was chartered in 1907. >> Mark: 1897. >> Right and then I think I saw that it was chartered, maybe a different name in the early 1900's. >> Mark: Yep. >> It's been around for a very long time so you know, as we see people moving from virtualization to cloud, we're seeing certifications change, you've seen a lot of evolution in data protection Ruya. What's the evolution from an education perspective or maybe even a cultural perspective at Palmer, an organization that's been around for well over 100 years. What's the shift that you have maybe driven within your IT experts to improve their education to remain at Palmer and to help you attract new talent as technologies evolve? >> Well, I think, you know, one of the reasons that Palmer decided to really look at IT, we're kind of the trusted leader in Chiropractic, the founder of Chiropractic and they really wanted to up their game. We're a higher ed institution so most of our students come from large universities and they're used to a lot of technology and instant on and all these different things and so we really wanted to make sure that we could provide an experience for them that gave them that instant on as well as there's a lot of online experiences after you graduate, you know, there's a lot of CEUs and things that they need to come back for and so we're starting to build some of our online programs to give them the opportunities without them having to come on site for everything so it just opens up a whole world of opportunity. >> I had one last question for you Mark, it's the why Dell EMC question, I mean, you've got a lot of options out there, we've talked about all this investment going in, why Dell EMC? What's attractive to them? And a two part question. What's on their to-do list in your view? >> Well I think the thing with the Dell EMC is it really was the one company that gave us everything that we needed. You know, it gave us that full solution, covered all of our issues, everything from performance with the servers and network and data backups and recovery. It just gave us everything that we needed and it was one solution from one vendor so if we do have support issues, we have one vendor to reach out to. We don't have three different vendors or having vendors fighting with each other. It's one solution, one vendor for support, and it just gave us everything that we needed. >> Excellent. Well, Ruya, I heard you say that at Dell EMC World on theCUBE moving from data centers to centers of data. Pat Gelsinger may have gotten that from you, he said that on stage this morning. >> Ruya: I don't know, you heard it first. >> As things are evolving, we thank you for sharing your insights. It sounds like there's a lot of opportunity. Same thing at Palmer, congratulations on the evolution that you have helped >> Thank you. >> To charter there and we want to thank you both taking the time to chat with Dave and myself this afternoon. >> Ruya: Thank you so much. Nice seeing you guys. >> And for our guests and my co-host Dave Vellante, you're watching theCUBE live from VMworld 2017 day one. Stick around, we'll be right back.

>>Good afternoon everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by my co-host Paul for the afternoon. Very excited. Oh, Savannah. Hello. I'm, I'm pumped for this. This is our first bit together. Exactly. >>It's gonna be fun. Yes. We have a great guest to kick off with. >>We absolutely do. We're at Supercomputing 2022 today, and very excited to talk to our next guest. We're gonna be talking about data at scale and data that really matters to us joining us. Kelly Gayer, thank you so much for being here and you are with tech. Tell everyone what TAC is. >>Tech is the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. And thank you so much for having me here. >>It is wonderful to have you. Your smile's contagious. And one of the themes that's come up a lot with all of our guests, and we just talked about it, is how good it is to be back in person, how good it is to be around our hardware, community tech. You did some very interesting research during the pandemic. Can you tell us about that? >>I can. I did. So when we realized sort of mid-March, we realized that, that this was really not normal times and the pandemic was statement. Yes. That pandemic was really gonna touch everyone. I think a lot of us at the center and me personally, we dropped everything to plug in and that's what we do. So UT's tagline is what starts here changes the world and tax tagline is powering discoveries that change the world. So we're all about impact, but I plugged in with the research group there at UT Austin, Dr. Lauren Myers, who's an epidemiologist, and just we figured out how to plug in and compute so that we could predict the spread of, of Covid 19. >>And you did that through the use of mobility data, cell phone signals. Tell us more about what exactly you were choreographing. >>Yeah, so that was really interesting. Safe graph during the pandemic made their mobility data. Typically it was used for marketing purposes to know who was going into Walmart. The offenses >>For advertising. >>Absolutely, yeah. They made all of their mobility data available for free to people who were doing research and plugging in trying to understand Covid. 19, I picked that data up and we used it as a proxy for human behavior. So we knew we had some idea, we got weekly mobility updates, but it was really mobility all day long, you know, anonymized. I didn't know who they were by cell phones across the US by census block group or zip code if we wanted to look at it that way. And we could see how people were moving around. We knew what their neighbor, their home neighborhoods were. We knew how they were traveling or not traveling. We knew where people were congregating, and we could get some idea of, of how people were behaving. Were they really, were they really locking down or were they moving in their neighborhoods or were they going outside of their neighborhoods? >>What a, what a fascinating window into our pandemic lives. So now that you were able to do this for this pandemic, as we look forward, what have you learned? How quickly could we forecast? What's the prognosis? >>Yeah, so we, we learned a tremendous amount. I think during the pandemic we were reacting, we were really trying. It was a, it was an interesting time as a scientist, we were reacting to things almost as if the earth was moving underneath us every single day. So it was something new every day. And I've told people since I've, I haven't, I haven't worked that hard since I was a graduate student. So it was really daylight to dark 24 7 for a long period of time because it was so important. And we knew, we, we knew we were, we were being a part of history and affecting something that was gonna make a difference for a really long time. And, and I think what we've learned is that indeed there is a lot of data being collected that we can use for good. We can really understand if we get organized and we get set up, we can use this data as a means of perhaps predicting our next pandemic or our next outbreak of whatever. It is almost like using it as a canary in the coal mine. There's a lot in human behavior we can use, given >>All the politicization of, of this last pandemic, knowing what we know now, making us better prepared in theory for the next one. How confident are you that at least in the US we will respond proactively and, and effectively when the next one comes around? >>Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's a great question and, and I certainly understand why you ask. I think in my experience as a scientist, certainly at tech, the more transparent you are with what you do and the more you explain things. Again, during the pandemic, things were shifting so rapidly we were reacting and doing the best that we could. And I think one thing we did right was we admitted where we felt uncertain. And that's important. You have to really be transparent to the general public. I, I don't know how well people are gonna react. I think if we have time to prepare, to communicate and always be really transparent about it. I think those are three factors that go into really increasing people's trust. >>I think you nailed it. And, and especially during times of chaos and disaster, you don't know who to trust or what to believe. And it sounds like, you know, providing a transparent source of truth is, is so critical. How do you protect the sensitive data that you're working with? I know it's a top priority for you and the team. >>It is, it is. And we, we've adopted the medical mantra, do no harm. So we have, we feel a great responsibility there. There's, you know, two things that you have to really keep in mind when you've got sensitive data. One is the physical protection of it. And so that's, that's governed by rule, federal rules, hipaa, ferpa, whatever, whatever kind of data that you have. So we certainly focus on the physical protection of it, but there's also sort of the ethical protection of it. What, what is the quote? There's lies, damn lies and statistics. >>Yes. Twain. >>Yeah. So you, you really have to be responsible with what you're doing with the data, how you're portraying the results. And again, I think it comes back to transparency is is basically if people are gonna reproduce what I did, I have to be really transparent with what I did. >>I, yeah, I think that's super important. And one of the themes with, with HPC that we've been talking about a lot too is, you know, do people trust ai? Do they trust all the data that's going into these systems? And I love that you just talked about the storytelling aspect of that, because there is a duty, it's not, you can cut data kind of however you want. I mean, I come from marketing background and we can massage it to, to do whatever we want. So in addition to being the deputy director at Tech, you are also the DEI officer. And diversity I know is important to you probably both as an individual, but also in the work that you're doing. Talk to us about that. >>Yeah, I mean, I, I very passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion in a sense of belongingness. I think that's one of the key aspects of it. Core >>Of community too. >>I got a computer science degree back in the eighties. I was akin to a unicorn in a, in an engineering computer science department. And, but I was really lucky in a couple of respects. I had a, I had a father that was into science that told me I could do anything I, I wanted to set my mind to do. So that was my whole life, was really having that support system. >>He was cheers to dad. >>Yeah. Oh yeah. And my mom as well, actually, you know, they were educators. I grew up, you know, in that respect, very, very privileged, but it was still really hard to make it. And I couldn't have told you back in that time why I made it and, and others didn't, why they dropped out. But I made it a mission probably back, gosh, maybe 10, 15 years ago, that I was really gonna do all that I could to change the needle. And it turns out that there are a number of things that you can do grassroots. There are certainly best practices. There are rules and there are things that you really, you know, best practices to follow to make people feel more included in an organization, to feel like they belong it, shared mission. But there are also clever things that you can do with programming to really engage students, to meet people and students where they are interested and where they are engaged. And I think that's what, that's what we've done over, you know, the course of our programming over the course of about maybe since 2016. We have built a lot of programming ATAC that really focuses on that as well, because I'm determined the needle is gonna change before it's all said and done. It just really has to. >>So what, what progress have you made and what goals have you set in this area? >>Yeah, that, that's a great question. So, you know, at first I was a little bit reluctant to set concrete goals because I really didn't know what we could accomplish. I really wasn't sure what grassroots efforts was gonna be able to, you're >>So honest, you can tell how transparent you are with the data as well. That's >>Great. Yeah, I mean, if I really, most of the successful work that I've done is both a scientist and in the education and outreach space is really trust relationships. If I break that trust, I'm done. I'm no longer effective. So yeah, I am really transparent about it. But, but what we did was, you know, the first thing we did was we counted, you know, to the extent that we could, what does the current picture look like? Let's be honest about it. Start where we are. Yep. It was not a pretty picture. I mean, we knew that anecdotally it was not gonna be a great picture, but we put it out there and we leaned into it. We said, this is what it is. We, you know, I hesitated to say we're gonna look 10% better next year because I'm, I'm gonna be honest, I don't always know we're gonna do our best. >>The things that I think we did really well was that we stopped to take time to talk and find out what people were interested in. It's almost like being present and listening. My grandmother had a saying, you have two errors in one mouth for a reason, just respect the ratio. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And I think it's just been building relationships, building trust, really focusing on making a difference, making it a priority. And I think now what we're doing is we've been successful in pockets of people in the center and we are, we are getting everybody on board. There's, there's something everyone can do, >>But the problem you're addressing doesn't begin in college. It begins much, much, that's right. And there's been a lot of talk about STEM education, particularly for girls, how they're pushed out of the system early on. Also for, for people of color. Do you see meaningful progress being made there now after years of, of lip service? >>I do. I do. But it is, again, grassroots. We do have a, a, a researcher who was a former teacher at the center, Carol Fletcher, who is doing research and for CS for all we know that the workforce, so if you work from the current workforce, her projected workforce backwards, we know that digital skills of some kind are gonna be needed. We also know we have a, a, a shortage. There's debate on how large that shortage is, but about roughly about 1 million unmet jobs was projected in 2020. It hasn't gotten a lot better. We can work that problem backwards. So what we do there is a little, like a scatter shot approach. We know that people come in all forms, all shapes, all sizes. They get interested for all different kinds of reasons. We expanded our set of pathways so that we can get them where they can get on to the path all the way back K through 12, that's Carol's work. Rosie Gomez at the center is doing sort of the undergraduate space. We've got Don Hunter that does it, middle school, high school space. So we are working all parts of the problem. I am pretty passionate about what we consider opportunity youth people who never had the opportunity to go to college. Is there a way that we can skill them and get, get them engaged in some aspect and perhaps get them into this workforce. >>I love that you're starting off so young. So give us an example of one of those programs. What are you talking to kindergartners about when it comes to CS education? >>You know, I mean, gaming. Yes. Right. It's what everybody can wrap their head around. So most kids have had some sort of gaming device. You talk in the context, in the context of something they understand. I'm not gonna talk to them about high performance computing. It, it would go right over their heads. And I think, yeah, you know, I, I'll go back to something that you said Paul, about, you know, girls were pushed out. I don't know that girls are being pushed out. I think girls aren't interested and things that are being presented and I think they, I >>Think you're generous. >>Yeah. I mean, I was a young girl and I don't know why I stayed. Well, I do know why I stayed with it because I had a father that saw something in me and I had people at critical points in my life that saw something in me that I didn't see. But I think if we ch, if we change the way we teach it, maybe in your words they don't get pushed out or they, or they won't lose interest. There's, there's some sort of computing in everything we do. Well, >>Absolutely. There's also the bro culture, which begins at a very early >>Age. Yeah, that's a different problem. Yeah. That's just having boys in the classroom. Absolutely. You got >>It. That's a whole nother case. >>That's a whole other thing. >>Last question for you, when we are sitting here, well actually I've got, it's two parter, let's put it that way. Is there a tool or something you wish you could flick a magic wand that would make your job easier? Where you, you know, is there, can you identify the, the linchpin in the DEI challenge? Or is it all still prototyping and iterating to figure out the best fit? >>Yeah, that is a, that's a wonderful question. I can tell you what I get frustrated with is that, that >>Counts >>Is that I, I feel like a lot of people don't fully understand the level of effort and engagement it takes to do something meaningful. The >>Commitment to a program, >>The commitment to a program. Totally agree. It's, there is no one and done. No. And in fact, if I do that, I will lose them forever. They'll be, they will, they will be lost in the space forever. Rather. The engagement is really sort of time intensive. It's relationship intensive, but there's a lot of follow up too. And the, the amount of funding that goes into this space really is not, it, it, it's not equal to the amount of time and effort that it really takes. And I think, you know, I think what you work in this space, you realize that what you gain is, is really more of, it's, it really feels good to make a difference in somebody's life, but it's really hard to do on a shoer budget. So if I could kind of wave a magic wand, yes, I would increase understanding. I would get people to understand that it's all of our responsibility. Yes, everybody is needed to make the difference and I would increase the funding that goes to the programs. >>I think that's awesome, Kelly, thank you for that. You all heard that. More funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Please Paul, thank you for a fantastic interview, Kelly. Hopefully everyone is now inspired to check out tac perhaps become a, a Longhorn, hook 'em and, and come deal with some of the most important data that we have going through our systems and predicting the future of our pandemics. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us online. We are here in Dallas, Texas at Supercomputing. My name is Savannah Peterson and I look forward to seeing you for our next segment.