>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, welcome back to the cubes coverage of combo go 19. Stu Miniman is here with me, Lisa Martin and we are wrapping up two days of really exciting wall to wall coverage of the new vault and we're very pleased to welcome a couple of special guests onto the program. To help us wrap up our two days, we have Miranda foster, the vice president of worldwide communications for comm vault and Al Bunty is here, the co founder, former COO and board member. Welcome Miranda and Al. Great to have you on the program. Thanks Lisa. So a lot of energy at this event and I don't think it has anything to do with our rarefied air here in the mile high city. Al, let's start with you. >>Well, there's other things in Colorado. >>There are, yeah, they don't talk about it. They talked about that on stage yesterday. So owl, you have been with convo ball as I mentioned, co-founder. What an evolution over the last 20 years. Can you take us back? >>Surely. So, um, yeah and it's been, it's, it's really kind of cool to see it coming together at this point. But if you go back 20 years when we started this, the whole idea was around data. And remember we walked into a company that was focused on optical storage. Um, we decided it would be a good company to invest in. Um, for two reasons. One, we thought they were really great people here, very creative and innovative and two, it was a great space. So if we believed we believe data would grow and that was a pretty decent thesis to go with. Yeah. And then, then it started moving from there. So I tell people I wasn't burdened with facts so I didn't understand why all these copies were being made of the same set of data. So we developed a platform and an architecture focused on indexing it so you just index at once and then could use it for many different purposes. >>And that just kept moving through the years with this very data centric approach to storage, management, backup protection, etc. It was all about the data. I happened to be lucky and said, you know, I think there's something to this thing called NAS and sand and storage networks and all those things. And I also said we have to plan for fur on scale on our solution of a million X. Now it was only off a magnitude of about a thousand on that, but it was the right idea. You know, you had to build something to scale and, and we came in and we wanted to build a company. We didn't want to just flip a company but we thought there is a longterm vision in it and if you take it all the way to the present here it's, it's really, um, it's, it feels really good to see where the company came from. It's a great foundation and now it will propel off this foundation, um, with a similar vision with great modern execution and management. >>Yeah. Al, when we had the chance to talk with you last year at the show in Nashville, it was setting up for that change. So I want to get your view there. There are some things that the company was working on and are being continued, but there's some things that, you know, Bob hammer would not have happened under his regime. So want to get your viewpoint as to the new Convolt, you know, what, what is, what are some of those new things that are moving forward with the company that might not have in the previous days? >>Yeah, that's a good questions. Do I think Mo, a lot of the innovation that you've seen here, um, would have happened maybe not as quickly. Um, we, the company obviously acquired Hedvig. Uh, we were on a very similar path but to do it ourselves. So you had kind of been a modern, we need to get to market quicker with some real pros. I think, um, the, the evolution of redoing sales management essentially was probably the biggest shift that needed to be under a new regime, if you will. Yeah. >>So Miranda, making these transitions can be really tricky from a marketing standpoint. Talk, talk us through a bit, some of the, how do you make sure trusted yet innovative and new that you've accomplished at this show? >>Well, trust it is obviously the most important because the Bob, the brand that Bob and Al built really embodies reliability for what we provide to our customers. I mean that's what gives them the peace of mind to sleep at night. But I'll tell you, Sanjay has been with us for just eight months now, February of 2019 and it's been busy. We've done a lot of things from a points on J transition with Bob and now to his point we've, we've acquired Hedvig, we've introduced this new SAS portfolio and you're exactly right. What we need to do is make sure that the reliability that customers have come to rely on Convolt for translates into what we're doing with the new Convolt and I think we've done a really good job. We've put a lot of muscle behind making sure, particularly with metallic that it was tried, it was trusted, it was beta tested, we got input from customers, partners, industry influencers. We really built it around the customer. So I think the brand that comm brings will translate well into the things that we've done with these, with these new shifts and movements within the company >>on, on that questions too as well. Um, I think Miranda is a good example of somebody that was with the company before a tremendous talent. She's got new opportunities here and she's run with it. So it's kinda that balance of some, uh, understood the fundamentals and the way we're trying to run the business. And she's grasped the new world as well. So, >>and Rob as well, right? Robin in his new, >>yeah, that's another good point. So that was all part of the transitioning here and Sanjay and the team had been very careful on trying to keep that balance. >>Change is really difficult anywhere, right? Dissect to any element of life. And you look at a business that's been very successful, has built a very strong, reliable brand for 20 years. Big leadership changes, not just with Sanjay, but all of the leadership changes. You know, analysts said, all right, you've got to upgrade your Salesforce. We're seeing a lot of movement in the area. You got to enhance your marketing. We're seeing metallic has the new routes to market, new partner focus, so PSI focuses. We're also seeing this expansion in the market, so what folks were saying, you know a year ago come on is answering in a big way and to your point in a fast way that's not easy to do. You've been here nine years since the beginning. Can you give us a little bit of a perspective, Miranda, about some of the things that were announced at the show? >>How excited everybody is, customers, partners, combo folks. How do you now extend the message and the communications from go globally after the show ends? That's an awesome question. I'm really passionate about this. So you know, Monday we announced metallic, we announced a new head of channels and alliances and Mercer Rowe, we had crazy technology innovation announcements with activate, with the acceleration of the integration with Hedvig with the momentum release that we put out today. We're also doing cool stuff with our corporate social responsibility in terms of sponsoring the new business Avengers coalition. That's something that Chris Powell is really championing here at, at the show and also within combo. So we're very excited about that. And then when you add people like yourselves, you know the tech field day folks, because not everybody can be here, right? Not everybody can be at go. So being able to extend the opportunity for, for folks to participate in combo, go through things like the cube through things like tech field day and using our social media tools and just getting all of the good vibes that are here. Because as Al says, this really is an intimate show, but we try to extend that to anybody who wants to follow us, to anybody who wants to be a part of it. And that's something that we've really focused on the last couple of years to make sure that folks who aren't here can, can get an embrace the environment here at Commonweal go. >>It's such an important piece that you're here helping with the transition I talked about. It's important that some of the existing >>get new roles and do responsibility going forward. What's your role going to be and what should we expect to see from you personally? Somebody has got to mow the lawn. >>Yeah. >>But yes, do I, I'll stay on the board. Um, we're talking through that. I think I'll be a very active board, not just the legal side of the equation. Um, try and stay involved with customers and, and strategies and, and even, uh, potential acquisitions, those kinds of things. Um, I'm also wandering off into the university environment. Uh, my Alma mater is a university of Iowa. I'm on the board there and uh, I'm involved in setting up innovation centers and entrepreneurial programs and that kind of thing. Um, I'll keep doing my farming thing and uh, actually have some ideas on that. There's a lot of technology as you guys know, attacking Nat space. So, and like I said, I'll try to keep a lot of things linked back into a combo. >>What Al can have confidence in is that I will keep him busy. So there's that. And then I will also put on the table, we agree to disagree with our college athletic loyalties. So I'm a big kid just because we don't compete really. Right. So I mean, but if I won Kansas wherever to play, then we would just politely disagree. Yeah. Well that's good that you have this agreement in place. I would love to get some anecdotal feedback from you of some of the things that you've heard over the last three days with all this news, all these changes. What are you hearing from customers and partners who you've had relationships with for a very long time? >>I think they're, I think they're all really excited, but, and maybe I'm biased, but they liked the idea that we're trying to not throw out all the old focus on customers, focus on technologies, continue the innovation. I'm pleased that we, Miranda and the team started taking this theme of what we do to a personal level, you know, recovery and those kinds of things. It isn't just the money in the business outages. It's a really a effect on a personal lives. And that resonates. I hear that a lot. Um, I asked our bigger customers and they've loved us for our support, how we take care of them. The, the intimacy of the partnership, you know, and I think they feel pleased that that's staying yet there's lot of modern Emity if that's a good word. I think fokai was what you, I think it's the blend of things and I think that really excites people. >>We've heard that a lot. You guys did a great job with having customers on stage and as a marketer who does customer marketing programs, I think there's nothing more validating than the voice of a customer. But suddenly today that I thought was a pivot on that convo, did well as Sonic healthcare was on main stage. And then he came onto the program and I really liked how he talked about some of the failures that they've been through. You know, we had the NASA talking yesterday, NASA, 60 years young, very infamous, probably for failure is not an option, but it is a very real possibility whether you're talking about space flight or you're talking about data protection and cyber attacks and the rise of that. And it was really, I'd say, refreshing to hear the voice of a customer say, these are the areas in which we failed. This is how come they've helped us recover and how much better and stronger are they? Not just as a company as Sonic healthcare, but even as an individual person responsible for that. That was a really great message that you guys were able to extend to the audience today and we wanted to get that out. >>I loved that as well. I think that was good. I have also back on driving innovation, I always felt one of my biggest jobs was to not punish people that failed. Yeah. I, you know, with the whole engineering team, the bright people in marketing, I, I would be very down on them if they didn't try, but I never wanted them to feel bad about trying and never punish them. >>And one of the things Matthew said on main stage, first of all, I love him. He's great. He's been a longtime CommonWell supporter. I love his sense of humor. He said, you know, combo came to me and said, can you identify, you know, your biggest disaster recovery moment? And he was like, no, because there's so many. Yes. Right? Like there's so many when you're responsible for this. It's just the unpredictability of it is crazy. And so he couldn't identify one, but he had a series of anecdotes that I think really helped the audience identify with and understand this is, these are big time challenges that we're up against today. And hearing his use case and how con ball is helping him solve his heart problems, I think was really cool. You're right. I loved that too. He said, I couldn't name one. There are so many. That's reality, right? As data proliferates, which every industry is experiencing, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. There's also great risk as technology advances for good. The bad actors also have access to that sort of technology. So his honesty, I thought was, was refreshing, but spot on. And what a great example for other customers to listen to the RA. To your point, I, if I punish people for failure, we're not going to learn from it. >>Yeah, you'll never move forward. >>Miranda. So much that we learn this week at the shows. Some, a lot of branding, a lot of customers, I know some people might be taking a couple of days off, but what should we expect to be seeing from con vault post go this year, >>continue to innovation. We're not letting our foot off the gas at all. Just continuing innovation as as as we integrate with Hedvig continued acceleration with metallic. I mean those guys are aggressive. They were built as a startup within an enterprise company built on Comvalt enterprise foundation. Those guys are often running, they are motivated, they're highly talented, highly skilled and they're going to market with a solution that is targeted at a specific market and those guys are really, really ready to go. So continued innovation with Hedvig integrate, sorry, integration with Hedvig with metallic. I think you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt in the future on the heels of what we consider humbled, proud leadership with the Gartner magic quadrant. You know the one two punch with the Forrester wave. I think that you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt and in terms of how we're really getting out there and aggressive. And that's not to mention Al, you know what we do with our core solutions. I mean today we just announced a bunch of enhancements to the core technology, which is, which is the bread and butter of, of what we do. So we're not letting the foot off the gas to be sure >>the team stay in really, really aggressive too. And the other thing I'd add as a major investor that I'm expecting is sales. Now I'd love to just your, your final thoughts that the culture of Convolt because while there's some acceleration and there's some change, I think some of the fundamentals stay the same. Yeah, it's, it's right to, and again, that's why I feel we're at a good point on this transition process. You alluded to it earlier, but I feel really good about the leadership that's in, they've treated me terrifically. I'm almost almost part of the team. I love that they're, they're trying to leverage off all the assets that were created in his company. Technology, obviously platform architecture, support base, our support capabilities. I, I told Sandy today I wish she really would have nailed the part about, and by the way, support and our capabilities with customers as a huge differentiator and it was part of our original, Stu knows he's heard me forever. Our original DNA, we wanted to focus on two things. Great technology, keep the great technology lead and customer support and satisfaction. So those elements, now you blend that stew with really terrific Salesforce. As Ricardo says, have you guys talk with Ricardo soon? But anyway, the head of sales is hiring great athletes, particularly for the enterprise space. Then you take it with a real terrific marketing organization that's focused, Oh, had modern techniques and analytics on all those things. You know, it's, it's in my opinion, as an investor especially, I'm expecting really good things >>bar's been set well. I can't think of a better way for Sue and me to our coverage owl veranda. Thank you. This has been fantastic. You've got to go. You get a lawn to mow, you've got a vacation to get onto and you need some wordsmithing would focus your rights. You have a flight ticket. They do five hours. Hi guys. Thank you. This has been awesome. Hashtag new comm vault for our guests and I, Lisa Martin, you've been watching the cubes coverage of Convault go and 19 we will see you next time.

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Welcome to the cube. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are in Denver, Colorado, specifically Aurora, actually for the fourth annual comm vault. Go. Stu, I'm super excited to be back hosting with you again. Lisa, it's great to be with you our second year doing Convolt go last year. Keith Townsend with here with me and so glad you're here with me because you've got a little bit of background with this company I was with come out 10 years ago. It's scary to think that it's been 10 years that we're at the Gaylord Gaylord Rockies, which is one of their customers, massive conventions that aren't, as you said, the first conference that the Gaylord that probably heard that this, this convention center just opened up a couple of months ago. I think it holds like 1500 people, the 1500 rooms at the hotel and supposedly this is the first large event that they've done and this was planned last year. >>Last year we were in Nashville at the Gaylord the year before. I think they were in DC at the Gaylord and next year I know there'll be at another Gaylord, so definitely putting their customers first. Just like in the keynote this morning they had the state of Colorado opening up the event. We always love to hear a local customer welcoming us and talking about their partnership with the supplier. Absolutely agree with that. The state of Colorado, the statue share the highest number of micro breweries per capita and I don't know about you, I'm not a beer person. I would be super blown away if that, if I was there is the too much choice in beer. It used to be, you know, you'd go in and say, okay, here's the five or 10 beers I like. Now you go in and it's like, all right, there's a hundred new ones. I haven't tried that because they weren't here last time. >>So many beers here, a greater Denver. I've been to Boulder a couple of times. They say if you want to start a microbrewery, there's one that's ready to hand you over a place because they're going out of business. They just churn and go over and everything like that. So yeah, my first time actually hosting an event of the cube here in Colorado. Super excited for that. It's a great locale. And yeah, we're talking about, you know, so Convolt a 20 year old company, a lot of customers, but a lot of new faces. You look, we're going to be talking to the next two days. They run a whole new executive team. We knew this was coming last year. Our final guest in our two days is going to be Al Bunty, who is the CEO, was one of the original 20 years with the company. So we'll, we'll talk about the Baton and some of the changes in some of the things that are, are the same. >>So yeah. Interesting. You mentioned they started things off this morning with the customer at the state of Colorado. I too, like you always love to hear the voice of the customer. And I also really like it when customers talk about the challenges that they had. They talked about the Samsung attack and all of the exposures and vulnerabilities. I love that because that's what happens. We're seeing data protection as a service, the market positive trends in the market. There are a rise in cyber attacks. I love it when customers articulate, yep, nothing is perfect, but here's how working with Combalt we were able to recover quickly from something like that. A lot of big news, you mentioned a lot of new executive leadership. This is Sanjay merchant Donnie's first go. As CEO came in about nine months ago. He's a cube alumni, said we'll get to talk to him later this morning, but he came in after successfully leading puppet through many rounds of millions and venture funding. >>He took puppet worldwide, but he came into a company with declining revenues and one where folks said combat, you've got pressures to find alternative sources of growth. They said three things specifically. One, you need to upgrade your sales force. Two, you need to enhance your marketing, and three, we need to shift gears and expand your market share and there's been a whole bunch of news, not just yesterday, today, but in the last month or so, last few weeks actually where combo is making headway in all three of them. >> At least so right, because you look on paper and you look in the key, the keynote and say we have 20 years of experience. Here's all of the analyst reports that show us as the clear leader in this space. But then you look at it and say, Oh, 2018 to 2019 declining revenues. There are a lot of competitors both as some of the big stalwarts in technology as well as many startups. >>Heck, I'm even seeing the startups now. They're trying to call the last generation of startups that are going after con vault as the legacy. So if you're not fully cloud native microservice sass base architecture, you're the old way. And that's one of the news from Combolt already is they, they've done a couple of what they call Convult ventures. So the first one you were alluding to is they bought Hedvig, which was a software defined storage company. They just bought them back in September. What was their a two 40 $250 million, which was almost half of the cash that Combolt had sitting there. Hedvig company that had been around for a number of years. We're going to have Avinash who's the founder and CEO on the program here. He was on the keynote stage going through the demo. They kind of sat at this interesting line between software defined storage and actually hyperconverged infrastructure because you could in the early days do either storage only or fully converged environments, but massive scale. >>The customer that he talked about was a very large scale deployment. Those large scale deployments are really tough and can be challenging and they're not something that you just deploy everywhere. Unlike the other announcement that Convolt announced is metallic. If you go to metallic.io, they have this new sass based architecture. They built it in months from the ground up from the internal team. Part of me is sitting there saying, okay, wait, if they could do this and you know, six months or nine months or whatever it was, why hadn't they done it before? What has changed what Convolt technology is under there? It's great. It's working, you know, Azure and AWS as well as you can have a local copy in your environment. They call it SAS plus. Um, and we need to understand a little bit more of the technology. So a lot of exciting things. >>Definitely getting awareness, but both metallic and Hedvig they call Convolt ventures. So new areas, areas that they're looking to add some incremental growth. And one of the things Sandra said in his keynote is we want to, you know, rethink primary and secondary storage. So where is Convolt will they start dipping their toe into the primary storage? Does that line blur? We've got HP on the program, you know, NetApp is up on stage with them. They have partnerships. So changing landscape Convolt has long had a strong position in the market, but as things change they want to make sure that they make themselves relevant for the next era. >>Absolutely. And the Hedvig acquisition gives them a pretty significant, a much larger presence in the software defined space. But it also is going to give them a big Tam expansion. We look at metallic as you mentioned, the venture. I want to, I want to break that down. We've got Rob Kelly's, John Colussy, and on a little bit later, what is this Combolt venture, but also giving them, it sounds to me like giving customers in mid market more choice, but one of the things I mentioned that that analysts were saying is, Hey you guys, you gotta, you gotta expand your market share, you really gotta expand marketing. So we're seeing not just the technology announcements with Hedvig for the large scale enterprises of which I think most of their revenue, at least three quarters of combat revenue does come from that large space, metallic for mid market, but also some of the seals, leadership changes that they've made to are really positioning them. New initiatives, new partner initiatives, really focused on the largest global enterprises. We're gonna break some of that down today. So in terms of routes to market, you're seeing a lot of focus on mid-market and enterprise. >>Well, at least 80% of the convulse revenue comes from the partners. So that is hugely important. How does metallic fit in? Will that be as a SAS offering? Will that be direct? Will that go through the channel? Believe it's going to, you know, the channel's going to be able to be enabled. How do all of these pieces go together? One, one note on Hedvig you talk about Tam expansion. Hedwig was not a leader in the market when it comes to where they are. There's a lot of competition there. You know, they were not a, you know, a unicorn that had a road to $1 billion worth of actual revenue there. So they got bought at a very high multiple of what their actual revenue was. And the question was did they just not have the go to market to be able to bring that and maybe Convolt can bring them there where they miss positioned in the market. >>Should they not be really primary storage? Should they go more to secondary storage where partner closely with secondary storage, because I know some of Combolt's competitors did work with Hedvig. I've talked to a number of partners out there that liked Hedvig and was like, Oh it's a nice complimentary offering to what we have, whether they be a hardware or place. So we'll being in Convolt hyper charge that growth. Obviously they've got some smart team, smart team members, have an Ash, came from Amazon and Facebook and his team. But what will this do to accelerate what they're doing? How will there be hit the word but synergies between the two sides of the company. So Sanjay and team really laying out their vision for where they want to take the company and it's challenging to be, we're the trusted, reliable enterprise and we're going to go down to the lower end of the market and we're going to go on all these cool new spaces and everything. So Combalt only has limited resources just like any other company. And how will they maintain and grow their position going forward. >>We are going to hear from a number of their customers do today who been combo customers for 10 plus years. Some of them who have a number of Convolt competitors within, you know, disparate organizations. I love to hear from them, why are you running, you know, comm vault, the backup exec within these different departments. For example. AstraZeneca is one of them. And what makes Combalt in certain departments really ideal. So going to get a good picture of that, but also love to understand from these customers who've been using Combolt for years. Do you see a new combo in 20 in their fiscal year 2020 talked about the leadership changes. As you mentioned, this is a company that's not only 20 years old but at low run. Some stats by you that Sandra Mirchandani shared this morning, they've got 2.8 million. The virtual machines protected, they've got over 700 millions of petabytes. They're protecting in the cloud, 1.6 million servers on and on and on. How is con vault of fiscal year 2020 different and and really poised at this intersection of unified >>in? One of the answers for that that we'll dig into is it's about data. So while con vault does 45 million weekly backup jobs, we used to know backup is something that you just kind of had, but you didn't necessarily use it. Now it's not just having my data and making sure that it's relied on, but how can I leverage that data? It's, you know, data at the core and you know, Sandra said data is the heart of everything they're doing. So coming from puppet, Sanjay knows about dev ops and agile and he's going to bring some of that in. He's brought in a team that's going to infuse some change in the culture and we'll see. I expect Convolt to be moving a little, little faster. They definitely have made a number of changes in the short time that he has already been there and we'll get a little bit of a roadmap as to where we see them going. >>Yeah, there's certainly seems Stu to be moving quickly. You mentioned, you know, Sonjay being nine months metallic. You mentioned also being developed in house in a matter of months, announcing the Hedvig acquisition in September. It closed October 1st there Q2 earnings come out in just a couple of weeks right before Halloween. So it seems like a lot of momentum carrying into the Denver aura area. Is it going to be a trick or a treat? Ooh, I like that as a marketer, I'm jealous that you thought of that and I didn't, but I liked that. We'll go with that all these years on the cube. You gotta you gotta have the snappy comebacks, right? So, Steve, it's gonna be a great day today we are jam packed session interview after interview with combat executives, really dissecting what they're doing, what's new, what's positioning them to really kick the door wide open and really reverse those revenues, taking them positive and really not only meeting the endless expectations, but exceeding them. So I'm looking forward to an action packed two days in Aurora with use to, can't wait. All right, first two minute, man. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube from comm vault. Go 19 we'll be right back with our first guest.