>> From Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE! Covering Actifio 2019 Data Driven. Brought to you by Actifio. >> Here we are in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm Stu Miniman, this is theCUBE at the special, at Data Driven '19, Actifio's user event. Happy to bring on a CUBE alum who's a partner of Actifio, Phil Buckellew, who's General Manager of IBM Cloud Object Storage. Phil, thanks for coming back. >> Great, great to be here Stu. >> All right, so object storage. Why don't you give us first just kind of an encapsulation of kind of the state of your business today. >> Sure, object storage is really an extremely important business for the industry today because really it's a new way accessing data, it's been around obviously for a decade or so but really, it's increasingly important because it's a way to cost-effectively store a lot of data, to really to be able to get access to that data in new and exciting ways, and with the growth in the volume of data, of particularly unstructured data, like 103 zettabytes by 2023 I think I heard from the IDC guys, that really kind of shows how important being able to handle that volume of data really is. >> So Phil, I go back, think about 12 years ago, all the technologists in this space were like, "The future of storage is object," and I was working at one of the big storage companies and I'm like, "Well we've been doing block and file," and there was this big gap out there, and kind of quietly object's taken over the world because underneath a lot of the cloud services there, object's there, so IBM made a big acquisition in this space. Talk about, you know, customers that I talk to it's not like they come out and say, "Oh jeez, I'm buying object storage, "I'm thinking about object storage." They've got use cases and services that they're using that happen to have object underneath. Is that what you hear from your users? >> Yeah, there's a couple of different buying groups that exist in the object storage market today. The historic market is really super large volumes. I mean, we're unique in that IBM acquired the Cleversafe company back in 2015 and that technology is technology we've expanded upon and it really, it's great because it can go to exabyte scale and beyond and that's really important for certain use cases. So some customers that have high volumes of videos and other unstructured data, that is really a super good fit for those clients. Additionally, clients that really have the need for highly resilient, because the other thing that's important the way that we built our object storage is to be able to have a lot of resiliency, to be able to run across multiple data centers, to be able to use erasure coding to ensure the data's protected, that's really a large part of the value, and because you can do that at scale without having downtime when you upgrade, those are really a lot of core benefits of object storage. >> Right, that resiliency is kind of built into the way we do it and that was something that was just kind of a mind shift as opposed to, okay I've got to have this enterprise mindset with an HA configuration and everything with N plus whatever version of it. Object's going to give you some of that built-in. The other thing I always found really interesting is storing data is okay, there's some value there, but how do I gain leverage out of the data? And there's the metadata underneath that helps. You talk about video, you talk about all these kinds there. If I don't understand what I've got and how I'd leverage it, it's not nearly as valuable for me, and that's something, you know really that one of the key topics of this show is, how do I become data driven, is the show, and that I have to believe is something critically important to your customers. >> Absolutely, and really object storage is the foundation for modern cloud-native data lakes, if you will, because it's cost-effective enough you can drop any kind of storage in there and then you can really get value from those assets wherever you are, and wherever you're accessing the data. We've taken the same technology that was the exabyte scale on-premise technology, and we've put it in the IBM public cloud, and so that really allows us to be able to deliver against all kinds of use cases with the data sets that clients want, and there's a lot of great innovation that's happening especially on the cloud side. We've got the ability to query that data, any kind of rectangular data with standard ANSI SQL statements, and that just really allows clients to unlock the potential of those data sets, so really good innovation going on in that space to unlock the value of the data that you put inside of object storage. >> All right, Phil let's make the connection. Actifio's here, IBM OEM's the solution. So, talk about the partnership and what customers are looking for when they're looking at their IPs. Sure, so, quite a ways prior to the partnership our object storage team partnered up with the Actifio team at a large financial services customer that recognized the growth in the volume of the data that they had, that had some unique use cases like cyber resiliency. They get attacked with ransomware attacks, they needed to have a standard way to have those data sets and those databases running in a resilient way against object storage that can still be mounted and used, effectively immediately, in case of ransomware attacks, and so that plus a lot of other traditional backup use cases is what drew the IBM Cloud Object Storage team and the Actifio team together. Successful deployments at large customers are really where we got our traction. And with that we also really began to notice the uptick in clients that wanted to use, they wanted to do test data management, they wanted, they needed to be able to have DevOps team that needed to spin up a replica of this database or that database very fast, and, you know, what we found was the combination of the Actifio product, which we've OEM'd as IBM Virtual Data Pipeline, allows us to run those virtual databases extremely cost-effectively backed by object storage, versus needing to make full replicas on really expensive block storage that takes a long time. >> Well yeah, we'd actually done research on this a number of years ago. Copies are great, but how do I leverage that right? From the developer team it's, I want to have something that mirrors what I have in production, not just some test data, so the more I can replicate that, the better. Phil, please, go ahead. >> There's some really important parts of that whole story, of being able to get that data flow right, to be able to go do point-in-time recoveries of those databases so that the data is accurate, but also being able to mask out that PII or sensitive information, credit card data or others that you really shouldn't be exposing to your testers and DevOps people. Being able to have the kind of-- (Phil laughs) >> Yeah, yeah, shouldn't because, you know, there's laws and lawsuits and security and all these things we have. >> Good, good, absolutely. >> So, Phil, we're talking a lot about data, you've actually got some new data to share with us, a recent survey that was done, should we share some of your data with us? >> Yeah, we did some, we did a, the ESG guys actually worked with us to build out a piece of research that looked at what would it cost to take a 50 terabyte Oracle 12c database and effectively spin up five copies the way you traditionally would so that different test teams can hammer away against that data set. And we compared that to running the VDP offering with our Cloud Object Storage solution. You know, distances apart, we had one where the source database is in Dallas and the destination database is in Washington, D.C. over a 10 gigabyte link, and we were able to show that you could set up five replicas of the database in like 90 minutes, compared with the two weeks that it would take to do full replication, because you were going against object storage, which runs about 2.3 cents per gigabyte per month, versus block storage fully loaded, which runs about 58 cents per gigabyte per month. The economics would blow away. And the fact that you could even do queries, because object storage is interesting. Yes, if you're using, if you have microsecond response times for small queries you got to run some of that content on block storage, but for traditional queries, we look at, like, really big queries that would run against 600 rows, and we were half the time that you would need on traditional block storage. So, for those DevOps use cases where you're doing that test in development you can have mass data, five different copies, and you can actually point back in time because really, the Actifio technology is really super in that it can go do point-in-time, it was able to store the right kind of data so the developers can get the most recent current copies of the data. All in, it was like 80% less than what you would have paid doing it the traditional way. >> Okay, so Phil, you started talking a little bit about some of the cloud pieces, you know, Actifio in the last year launched their first SaaS offering Actifio GO. How much of these solutions are for the cloud versus on-premises these days? >> Absolutely, so one of the benefits of using a virtual data approach is being able to leverage cloud economics 'cause a lot of clients they want to do, you know, they want to be able to do the test in dev which has ups and downs and peaks and valleys when you need to use those resources, the cloud is really an ideal way to do those types of workloads. And so, the integration work that we've done with the Actifio team around VDP allows you to replicate or have virtual copies of those databases in the cloud where you want to do your testing, or we can do it in traditional on-prem object storage environments. Really, whatever makes most sense for the client is where we can stand up those environments. >> The other thing I wonder if you could expand on a little bit more, you talked about, like, cloud-native deployment and what's happening there. How does that tie into this discussion? >> Well, obviously modern architectures and ways of Agile, ways of building things, cloud-native with microservices, those are all extremely important, but you've got to be able to access the data, and it's that core data that no matter how much you do with putting Kubernetes around all of your existing applications you've still got to be able to access that core data, often systems record data, which is sitting on these standard databases of record, and so being able to have the VDP technology, be able to replicate those, stand those up like in our public cloud right next to all of our Kubernetes service and all the other technologies, it gives you the kind of full stack that you need to go do that dev in test, or run production workloads if you prefer from a public cloud environment, without having all of the burdens of running the data centers and maintaining things on your own. >> Okay, so Phil, everybody here for this two day event are going to get a nice, you know, jolt of where Actifio fits. You know, lots of orange here at the show. Give us the final word of what does it mean with orange and blue coming together. >> Well absolutely, we think this is going to be great for our clients. We've got, you know, tons of interested clients in this space because they see the value of being able to take what Actifio's done, to be able to virtualize that data, combine it with some of the technologies we've got for object storage or even block storage, to be able to serve up those environments in a super cost-effective way, all underlined by one of our core values at IBM, which is really trust and being responsible. And so, we often say that there's no AI, which all of this data leads up to, without information architecture and that's really where we specialize, is providing that governance, all the masking, all of the things that you need to feel confident that the data you've got is in the right hands, being used the right way, to be able to give you maximum advantage for your business, so we're super excited about the partnership. >> Phil, definitely a theme we heard at IBM Think, there is no AI without the IA, so, Phil Buckellew, thanks so much for joining us, sharing all the updates on what IBM is doing here with Actifio. >> Great, great to be here. >> All right, and we'll be back with more coverage here in Boston, Massachusetts at Actifio Data Driven 2019. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCUBE. (futuristic music)

>> From Boston, (upbeat music) Massachusetts, it's the Cube, covering Actifio 2019, Data Driven. Brought to you by Actifio. >> Welcome back to Boston everybody. You're watching the Cube, the leader in on the ground tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. Stu Miniman is here. John Furrier is also in the house. This is Actifio's Data Driven conference, the second year that they've done this conference, #DataDriven19. Ash Ashutosh is here. He's the founder and CEO of Actifio, a good friend to the Cube, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Likewise Dave. Always good to see you. >> Yeah, so second year. You chose Boston, that's great. Last year was Miami at the very swanky Fontainebleau Hotel. >> Yup. >> It's a great location. >> Yup. >> Right in the harbor here. So you've got a nice crowd, and you guys focus on the substance, you know. Not a lot of Actifio marketing stuff coming out, as you market through substantive content. Explain that theory. >> Yeah. Well, I think from inception, there's a very fundamental culture the company has had is about driving customer success, and that is the number one and probably the only one that we drive by. And if you truly are focused on customer success, when you bring a whole bunch of customers together, having more customers talk about their success, so that they help and share with other customers who are looking for some of these initiatives, almost becomes natural. People become tired of seeing and sometimes even participating in our own user conferences, where you would bring a whole bunch of very enthusiastic users, lock the doors, and start talking about your vision, and start talking about your roadmap, your new line, your new partnership. One, we believe we should be doing that throughout the year with our customers. Two, we felt it was a lot better if the customer actually talked about how it mattered to them versus how it mattered to us as Actifio. So that was the theme for why Data Driven, in general, and even before that, you used to have some colleague cloud summit as you were transitioning into use of hybrid cloud in 2016. Across the board, I think this is one theme you'll hear from Actifio and the users who are here is we pay a very, very close attention to what users want, and we give them a forum to explain that to share with other users across the world. >> Well, it sounds like a great way to build a company, you know, focus on the customer and the customer success. Sounds simple, it's not. It's very challenging, and you've been a successful entrepreneur. When I've asked you in the past and David, you know, kind of why you started the company, you focused on a problem, and you guys created the category of copy data management, which is a problem. We had copies everywhere, copy creep, and you felt as though, okay, we can help people not only organize that but maybe even get more out of their data. >> Yeah. >> And so, and that has evolved, and obviously on that journey, people wanted to use you for backup. I mean, that's the big problem. >> Yeah. >> And so you created the category. You kind of monetized the backup space and tried to change the way people thought about that, and then all of a sudden, all this VC money sort of flowing into the whole space. >> Yup. >> From your standpoint, what's going on in the marketplace? Why is it so hot today? >> Yeah. Well I think, as you'll see at this conference, there is absolutely no doubt about how data is a strategic asset, and you'll see the more reason acquisitions of Tableau, of Looker, or even Qualtrics, where the use of data, which is what actually users see, has become one of the killer apps for anybody who is running a cloud. Your own business here, right. It's a use of data, and that's the first app that's out there, that's happening across the board. But right behind that, there's an entire ecosystem about supplying that data to these applications that becomes really important. And we figured this out almost nine years ago. We figured out that for an enterprise, having data available as a strategic asset, wherever, whenever they need, and whoever, as long as it complies with the operations requirements. Instantly is absolutely what we should provide. Now in order to do that, the first place to make it available for users was to capture it. And the best place to start was backup, and we always treated copied data, journey begins with capturing data, and backup happens with the best use case, one that you already spend money on. And that's how we always treated backup as a starting point for the journey. We have over 3,600 enterprise users who range from some of the largest financial services, energy, retail, airline industries, service providers, and the focus has been on companies that are at least $500 millions of (mumbles) more normally for a billion or more who really view data as a strategic asset in their digital transformation. And almost 78 percent of our business now comes from people, they are (mumbles) applications faster. So a small person did almost 20 percent now is coming from people using Actifio data for running machine only analytics faster. And almost 100 percent of them obviously collect the data from backup. That's how we view the market. We view it as application, analytics, machine learning, DevOps, down, and infrastructure happens to be a place where you start. It's not lost on anybody in the market that data is important. It's not lost on investors who see this as an opportunity to pursue in a different way. And so you have different approaches being taken, one that starts with more infrastructure, (mumbles) has provided infrastructure to keep all this (mumbles). And we've always focused on the one thing that really matters to the customer, which is applications, and one that matters to every other application that's using this application, which is the data for this application the point in time. So you see a lot of backup-centric appliances. You see a lot of consolidation appliances. So it's a bottom-up approach. It's a great approach for people who want to buy another single-purpose storage. We fundamentally believe you're not going to be a lot on the storage system. We think this, there's a lot of companies who do a phenomenal job, and we're better off being suppliers of a multi-cloud data management, multi-cloud copy data management, and to leverage all this infrastructure. >> No box. >> Completely no box. In fact, that is the reason why we think 2016, when we saw the emergence of cloud in our user community, it took us two years, but we have the world's best multi-cloud, just copy data and data management. The largest software company, enterprise software company in the world uses Actifio today to manage their SaaS offerings in four different public-wide platforms. We couldn't do that if you had a box. You could not. I mean-- >> Because it wouldn't scale. >> Well, firstly, you can't take your box and go into a cloud. They already have infrastructure. >> Right. >> You can't bring the scale out stuff, because they already have scale out. You can't take your scale out and put in another scale out. And if you start from bottom up, you're fundamentally providing infrastructure on top of an infrastructure that's already provided as a service. What you really needed to do was to allow the applications to come back and use any infrastructure that is most relevant for their workload, for their use case, and most importantly, for that particular time. It's really important, especially if data is persistent. It stays there for 20, 30, forever. And the opportunity for me to come back and leverage infrastructure there just happens to be the right one. That's what we try to describe. >> We always say at the Cube that the difference between a business and a digital business is how the business uses data, how it leverages data. >> Yeah, yeah absolutely. >> So that's been a real tailwind for you. You guys have been on the, you know, data virtualization, it was part of that. You know, it seems to me that one of the challenges that incumbents have is their data is locked inside. Frank James talked about it today, and sort of his maturity model. Actually no, it was Brian Regan, >> Yup. >> talking about the extension maturity model. >> Yup. >> Through the early stages, it's siloed. And it's not easy to go, you know, from that siloed data that's built maybe around a modeling plant or a bank, you know, to sort of this virtualized vision. So that's something that you guys caught early on. Clearly, digital transformation has been a tailwind for you guys, but how are your customers capitalizing on your solutions to transform themselves into a data driven company? >> Yeah, well the first thing you're seeing is, as I mentioned 2016. In 2016, 100 percent of our use cases were people who wanted a backup NDR solution that was a 100x faster and 50 percent or 90 percent cheaper and manage large sets of data. From 2016 into now, we have a massive shift of almost, between 56 percent on DevOps, another 20 percent on machine (mumbles). Think about it, you have a bunch of customers, large enterprises, whose number one focus is now around how to use data, and these are people who are consumers of data, not custodians of data, who are our previous customers. The best part is as you saw their own evolution of DevOps, the merge of the consumers and custodians managing as an agile system, that's exactly what's happening in our customer base. These are people who maybe have a role of a chief data officer, whose job is to supply data but also make sure it complies with governance rules. So there's a big shift of how data is now the new infrastructure. Data is now the one that I have to provide and enable access to wherever I need. And that does require a very, very different approach then build a box, you know, build something that centralizes all this silos into one place. When you build a box, fundamentally, you create another silo, 'cause you just broke in the whole idea about I need something that just drops down that is more global as a single lane space versus you know a box that is providing a single lane space and somehow, I'm going to assume that nobody else exists in the world. >> Yeah. I want to come back to sort of building a company and your philosophy there. A couple of questions I have for you. So you mentioned cloud and how you embraced cloud early on. You know, Amazon announces a backup service. You know, we talk to the backup vendors, and they say, yeah, but it's recovery, it's wonky, it's, you know, it's really not that robust. But it's Amazon, and you know, if you don't move fast, you know Amazon's going to gobble you up. You saw with the (mumbles), you know. It was down to cloud era, and (mumbles) reeling, it's like, that was going to take over the world. How do you think about that, maybe not in terms of competition, but in terms of staying ahead, of getting, you know, Uber'd by Amazon? >> Yeah. >> Thoughts on that. >> I think, number one, as Amazon and every other cloud provider has proven, and one that started nine years ago, enterprise cloud is hybrid. It's hybrid not just on frame and cloud, but it's also on frame and multi-cloud. Number one. Two, it's about applications. It is not about infrastructure. It is not about providing a single function that ties to a single platform. I as a customer, and we have several of those, I want to be able to manage my enterprise applications exactly the same way whatever cloud platform I choose to have, and that opens up a very different engineering, marketing, sales challenges, and most importantly, keeping the focus on the user. Now if I'm Amazon, I have a focus on my platform, not exactly the 50 other platforms you want to support. >> Right. >> And that's what we focus on. We focus on the 50 other platforms you want to support at the moment. Second, you know, there's this whole notion of a stacked fallacy. You might have heard of this paradigm where it's a lot easier for people on top of the stack to come down. It's a lot harder to go from bottom up. So if you're Amazon, and you're trying to drive infrastructure as a service, it takes a little while to go up the stack. It's a lot easier for somebody like us to come down from the stack, which is why we also announced Actifio GO, our SaaS offering. >> Right. >> That today, our version runs in Amazon, providing a much more robust, much more multi-cloud, much more heterogenous, and much more enterprise class and enterprise grade solution. And we also announced one for Actifio GO for TCV for IBM cloud. >> Yeah. >> And that's how our customers want it. >> And it's a much more facile experience for the customers. It seems to me that it makes sense what you're saying is you're happy to build on top of Amazon's infrastructure. For them, you know, frankly, people always say, oh, is Amazon going to get into apps? To me, yeah, maybe some day. They don't have to. Give developers tools to build apps seems to me. Last question I have is just the philosophy of building a company. You know, you've raised I think $200 million since inception. That's a lot of money. Software's a capital efficient business, but it fails in comparison to some of what the west coast companies have done. You know, you guys, you know, I'm from Massachusetts, where maybe more conservative. You are very deliberately building a company. How do you think about, you know, the craziness in the west coast. I call it craziness, but it obviously works. You (mumbles) storage, you know, they hit escape velocity, TSX had a very successful IPO. >> Yeah. >> You're kind of slow and steady. Your philosophy there, explain that. >> Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, it was about creating a sustaining company that was growing responsibly. And two, it's also the speed of how much our customers in the market can absorb a paradigm like what we are trying to drive. And most importantly, the class of customer you're focused on. These are, like I said, $1 billion plus in revenue and above. >> Yeah. >> Sales process for them is longer, which is actually where the money goes. The money isn't on software development. It's about supporting these customers on their initiatives. Any of these customers are somewhere about eight years with us and continue to expand. Some of the largest financial institutions have started with about $500,000 and almost $20 million with us. So that journey of making the customer successful costs money, but it builds long-standing customer whose foundation is built on Actifio. We are the data provider for these customers. We are not a widgit who throws something in there and calls you in three years when your maintenance is up. That is not the business we're building. So I don't think it's about east coast, west coast as much as it's about what we deliver requires being at the customer's side, working with them for years, as they go through the transformation, and I don't think we can do that by supporting 10,000 users at the same time. Maybe we can support 1,000, 2,000. And that's just the product and the market is going now. >> True to your mission, close to the customers, you know, clear differentiation at the app levels, I'm going to just say top down. You guys didn't talk about it, but you know, database affinity, some of the unique things you have going on there. Ash, it's great to see you. Congratulations on all your success, and you'll keep it going. Really appreciate it. Have a good day. >> All right, you're welcome. >> Thank you again. Welcome again for Data Driven 19. >> All right. It's great to be here. Actifio Data Driven 19, day one, the Cube, from Boston. We'll be right back right after this short break. >> Thank you. (upbeat music)