>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, its theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back the the Aria in Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Stu Miniman. Angelo Sciascia is here, big Tom Brady fan, Senior Vice President of NetX Information Systems, from Brooklyn, New York, I don't think so. >> Not a Tom Brady fan. >> Thanks for coming on theCUBE do you think it matters, how much it airs at a football. >> No, not at all, Tom Brady doesn't care about that. >> No, well, listen, thanks for coming on. We have a great conversation, we love talking sports on the Cube. So welcome, how's the show going for you? >> Ah, it's fantastic, you know, lots of great material Veritas has been talking about. 360 Data Management, obviously we all know the benefits of that by now. So we have a lot of customers here so I'm glad they they got to see it from a senior leadership perspective, rather than our sales guys and sales engineers going in there and talking to them, and seeing Veritas executives really getting behind what we're talking about. So it backs up our story and, you know, our customers are pretty excited about it, actually. >> What's the nature of your relationship with Veritas. I know you have a relationship, and maybe still do, with Symantec. How's that all, how did it all evolve? >> Yeah, so we are a Veritas Platinum Partner, we would be, what we consider, a solution-provider type partner. A lot of our business today is either directly or indirectly tied to Veritas, which was kind of funny because we started as a security company, so our roots are systems management, you know. That's where we were in 2005 when I joined NetX, that's where we were for many, many years after Symantec acquired a company called Altiris. We just stayed in that vein, you know, managing endpoints, securing endpoints, encrypting data. And then, somewhere in 2013, we said hey, you know, let's try to diversify the portfolio a little bit. And we used to manufacture an endpoint management appliance for Altiris so we said hey, Symantec's got these things called NetBackup Appliances, let's check it out. It's a formed fact that we know how to sell and, shoot, four years later it's been a great partnership for us, great partnership, I'm sure, for Veritas, and for our customers and that's a lot of our business today. >> So, I mean, it's hot market, you know. Data protection is exploding, and security. I mean, you're in two of the sweet spots in the market right now. So how do you approach the business with customers? Do you, are you a specialist around data protection? You deliver services around them. Maybe you can explain it on the model? >> Yeah, you know, that's actually a good question, because it's evolved quite a bit, right? So, you know, when you had a limited portfolio of just one or two products that you can sell to a customer, you're really doing a product sale, right, which, I would say that was probably the most difficult transition from the split from Symantec to Veritas, because at Symantec we had thousands of products in the portfolio, or hundreds of products in the portfolio that we could actually talk to. And for a little while, really we had a handful, you know, we had NetBackup Appliances, Enterprise Vault and ancillary things to bulk on to that, like Clearwell. I think one of the most exciting things for us, as a reseller, is to now be able to go have a discussion with our customers that we were never able to have before. And rather than sit there and try to sell them a backup product or a storage solution, we could sell them a platform that solves many problems for them, right? Rather than sitting there and trying to sell one-off. So, our conversations are significantly more strategic now then they've ever been, and frankly I speak for myself and my whole team, I know everyone enjoys the conversation more now that we have a portfolio to talk about, than just a handful of products. >> Angelo, you've got an interesting viewpoint on this split off of Aritas from Symantec. What have your customers said about it? What's been your interaction with the organization? What can you tell us about kind of the inside going on? >> Yeah, look, I've lived firsthand on a Symantec acquisition of a company, okay. I was, we were not a Symantec partner when they acquired Veritas. Funny enough, I was actually doing Veritas consulting, you know, on my own on the side prior to Symantec purchasing Veritas. So I really, I'd made my career on two products; Veritas for backup and Altiris for systems management. Symantec bought Veritas and I was like okay, you know, I'm just going to stay with Altiris. Symantec bought Altiris and here we are now, so we can talk about all of them. The thing I noticed was Symantec was always going to be a security company, right, and they weren't going to change that no matter how much they try to integrate it. It's two radically different stories. You know, and for many, many years, things that we look at as new products today were kind of already there in the Symantec portfolio, but buried underneath other products that really never saw the light of day because when you have hundreds or thousands of products, like I said earlier, you know, the ones that are going to move the most are the ones that are going to get the attention. So I think the benefit of the split is that it really allowed Veritas to focus on what they do well, which is managing data, and Symantec to do what they do well, which is securing your infrastructure and securing your data. From my perspective, our customers really appreciated that. Sure, a couple of them were a little annoyed that they had to now split contracts and deal with that kind of stuff, but I think that was a momentary blip and for the most part, it's been well-received from everyone we've spoken to. >> Angelo, you said you're having, your conversations are evolving. Who are you talking to? And maybe take us inside some of those conversations. What are the big challenges they're having? >> Yeah, a year ago, a year and a half ago I was talking to either somebody who was on the messaging side and needed to archive emails or IMs, or on the backup side and they just wanted to be able to meet their backup windows and maybe to get some better d dub rates, right. Fun conversation to have, bit mundane. It's not really solving problems as much as backing up data or archiving data. Today, we're having overarching conversations at a C-level, or a senior VP level, or a director level, and talking about dramatic changes to the way they do business, and how we can do business with them. Six months ago, NetX, we weren't doing anything in the Cloud, you know. We were selling to some customers' Vdub space to the Cloud, and that's about it. We weren't talking Cloud strategy with them. Today we're talking to our customers about moving workloads to the Cloud, doing it in a way that's predictable for them, and doing it with Veritas. >> That's a really interesting point. I have to imagine that changed who you're talking with inside the company. Can you walk us through kind of a typical customer's, you know, and how you kind of move up into a more strategic discussion for Cloud strategy? >> You know, so for full transparency, that whole thing's still evolving, right. 360 Data Management is still fairly new. So what we're seeing, the conversations turned, it would start, again we're talking to somebody that we've been talking to historically in the backup side or architecture side, and we talk to them about wanting to do better things than what their backup is, and start to talk about, hey this is what 360 Data Management is. What's relevant to that person he's going to want to talk about but then there's going to be things in there that are not relevant to him. So he'll make that introduction and he'll get other stakeholders in the boat with him. And that's something we've really appreciated because the people you used to talk to are now bringing in stakeholders to offset their own desires and their own budgets, so want to bring in other technology. And typically, when we get to that point when we're starting to talk about strategic pricing, is when you're getting that C-level person to really have that aha moment, and say wow, we're offsetting costs here, we're doing things like truly getting rid of tape, or moving to the Cloud and things like that, and it's a conversation that really evolves and it's still starts at the bottom. But we're figuring out ways to start it at a higher point. >> Well, those strategies are still evolving for most customers; the roles of those people that might have had one role definitely are changing. I'm curious, one of the big transition points, especially for a company like Veritas, is going from licenses to some kind of more of a subscription model. Any commentary you have on your customers; their embrace, or like, dislike of some of those transitions? >> I think the one thing the Cloud has done is it's opened up a different avenue of how people consume IT, right. Cloud is very much consumption-based billing, and while that can complicate our lives from a reseller perspective in terms of how to collect and track monthly billing and things like that, they like it because they feel like, and it's the truth, they're only paying for what they're truly using, rather than paying for products or infrastructure that they're only using part of the day, or software that they're only using for a particular project. A lot of our healthcare systems might have a research project that their going on, and they might like to scale up for some backup licensing and scale back down once that project is done. Consumption licensing allows that, versus having to go to them and saying, hey, well now you got to buy 200 terabytes of perpetual licensing, and justify that capital expense, rather than having an operational expense on just that one particular workload that you have to back up for that one period of time. >> Angelo, Stu and I are always interested in the human capital management aspects of things, and you talked about, you went from sort of talking about having a conversation around email archiving or backup, to one about the Cloud, Cloud strategies. From your internal organization perspective, how did you manage that? Are you rescaling, are you retraining? Is it just you got really supersmart people that can adapt? >> We definitely have supersmart people, because they're all over there, that's right. But I definitely have supersmart people. But, you know, it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of, you know, you take one of our data protection projects; see Christian Muma, you know, he's been in the data center for god knows how many years, he has seen technology evolve. It was a natural fit to look at Cloud infrastructure. Started taking some classes, consumed it, all the information he could, and now we're out there actively selling it. In some other respects, we had to hire from outside and bring in some services ourselves to actually use, maybe some third party partnerships to help us better understand how we price out Cloud for our customers. So it's a little bit of everything, and I think that that's what's exciting about it, because I think for the first time in a long time, everyone's learning something new at the same time, because, I don't care what anyone said about the Cloud years ago; it's different today, it's going to be different in six months, it's going to be different in nine months. And I think that that's exciting, and I've been in this industry since 1996. I've seen a lot of really cool things come and go. I just think that there's still infancy in the Cloud and I think it's exciting because everyone's still learning. And any time you can still learn, I think that's, I think an important part of your job. >> So when you think about your, sort of, near-term and midterm and long-term plan for the company, how do you sort of describe that? Where do you want to take this thing? >> Near-term, I want to have a solid end of the quarter. >> Business is good, right, I mean market's booming right now. >> Business is very good. Veritas will tell me it's not good enough but they're just never happy. No, business is, business is very good. I think, near-term for us, you said hey, how do we get our head around it? Near-term for us is, as we're absorbing all this information, is start to really figure out what our path is going to be. So near-term, I think we still have to identify other ancillary partners that we need to bring to the table. We've got our partnerships with Azure, Microsoft Azure, and our partnerships with AWS. We'll probably have to look at Google and IBM and see what they're doing, and then we have to look at other partnerships that are not related to Veritas but still drive that home. We maybe look at a different colo partnership or partnerships around outsourcing billing, things like that, that we can make where it's easier for our customers to consume the technology. So I think six to nine months from now if we were to have the same conversation, everything that we're doing today is probably going to be somewhat different. But I just think that there's still a lot of planning to do. >> Angelo, any feedback from your customers on what there's still on the to-do list from the vendors? We talked, you know, the strategy, Cloud's changing a lot, you know. What are some of the pinpoints that they said hey, if we could get this into the offering from Veritas or some of the others it would make our lives a lot easier. >> I mean, that's a tough question, because we're going to them now and changing the conversation already. You know, obviously they're always asking for different features, but I don't like to get into a feature conversation with the customers. I try to solve the problem. >> Dave: You're leading that conversation, is what you're saying. >> Yeah, I don't want to get into the weeds of talking about well, this widget does it at 50% and you do it at 48%. You know, I try to sit a little bit more macro. I think that one of the things our customers have asked us to do a better job at is figure out better ways to make it easier to consume the technology from budget perspective. So we're trying to figure that out now; 360 Data Management is a subscription, Veritas would like them sold in three years, we're trying to figure out ways to get creative with our customers on that. What's the right bundle, what's not the right bundle. One thing that I've noticed, and Veritas have been great at it, is we have to have some flexibility in terms of adding things in and make it seem like it's all part of that bundle. There's been some flexibility and I think that, because of that, we haven't hit that roadblock yet where, well, we really want this product in the bundle. Reality is that we'll work through that and try to add it in there, some way, shape or form, even if behind the scenes. >> The customers see you as the experts, and what we often see is that technology is the technology; it's pretty much understood. What's not understood by the customers is how to apply it to their business, and their business is changing so fast that it seems like they're looking to organizations like yours saying okay, here's our business challenge. How can you help me? You tell me, and then the best answer is somebody he'll be able to work with. Is that a valid, sort of, premise? >> Yeah, it is, it certainly is and I think we're really uniquely positioned in the fact that, here we've got, we've got our partnership with Veritas and we're 100% focused to everything in the Veritas portfolio so we don't compete from within. That's the same thing that we could say, basically, on Symantec and some of our traditional storage partners as well. That'll change most likely, on our storage partners, especially because of what Veritas have been releasing with Access and some of the other software providing storage technology. When we're brought in, we're brought in as the experts in that finite area, so we're not brought in as a generalist-type of reseller. We're brought in as, hey, I've got a data management problem, I've got a data security problem, or I'm trying to do some high-performance workloads on storage. So yeah, we are the experts, but at the same time we're being brought in for those handfuls of things, so we're not having these, hey, can you maximize my span on anti-virus software because I want to sell you commoditized software. It's just not us, it's not our thing. We're not adding any value to the customers, or the poor owners for that matter. >> Angelo, curious that there's a lot of startups in the data protection space. What do you here, your customers asking you about them? You know, what's your thoughts there? >> I guess I got to be nice, right? Because I'm being streamed everywhere. >> Stu: They're not listening, go ahead, be a New Yorker. >> Listen, I challenge Rubrik at any point of time, you know, those guys, Rubrik, Cohesity, those guys, they're new, they're the shiny new toy. The problem, the problem is they have their messaging out there, and the problem we have is that they're the shiny new toy. But when the rubber hits the road and when it's time to actually go and prove out what the technology can do, we'll win all the time. We will win ten out of ten times if we get the seat at the table, right. The problem is is because we were a limited portfolio, a limited product, limited integration type of company before, we weren't getting that seat at the table. I think they see it now, I think they're starting to get a little concerned about, hey, you know what, if this 360 Data Management is what it's going to be, and we all know it is, I think they're going to be concerned. They're new, and they're going to get attention. My honest opinion: I'm glad they came out, I'm glad that Rubrik and Cohesity and all these guys came out and did all this different ways to go to market, because I think it really forced all of us to say hey, we got some real tough decisions to make here, the competition has caught up, in certain ways. Let's change the game, and 360 Data Management does that. I think they should take as much business as they can right now, because it's going to be short-lived. >> You said it makes you rethink your strengths, and like you said, change the game. >> Yeah, it changes the game. >> Yeah. Uh, okay, predictions on the MLB? Yankees won their getaway game today to put the pressure on the Red Sox, two and a half to two and a half games back. You know, the Indians are looking good, my man, Terry Francona. What's your prediction for it? >> The Sox fan's outnumbered two to one here, so go ahead. >> You know, so I shouldn't say that the Yankees are going to win the World Series? >> No, he's a Yankees fan. >> I'm a Yankee fan, too. >> Honestly, as a Yankee fan, I think we all know that they weren't supposed to be this team, so I think this is, that's the team to look out for. >> Dave: Maybe this is their year. >> I think this is the year that they're going to challenge people, I mean, are they going to win? It's Cleveland, do you really think Cleveland's going to win anything? They won one thing in the last, what, 30 years. >> That's what they used to say about us in Boston. Angelo, thanks so much coming on, really appreciate it. Keep right there, buddy, we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. We're live from-- (electronic music)