you live from Miami Beach Florida Biman 2019 brought to you by beam welcome back to Miami everybody this is the cube the leader in live tech coverage I'm Dave Volante with my co-host Peter burst we're wrapping up day two of v-mon 2019 and so we've been talking about cloud hybrid cloud data protection backup evolving to more of an automated data management environment can bring dollars here and he is in charge of really building out the VM ecosystem that he's the vice president of global alliance architecture at VM Kent great to see you again thanks for coming on yeah thanks Dave preciate so the ecosystem is evolving you know you're in a competitive marketplace but one of the things that differentiates Veeam is you know billion dollar company and people want to do business with your customers and so the ecosystem keeps growing and growing and you guys have some you know blue chip names at the top of your sponsor list we do a good job but you're not done yet so not at all and I think Dave you know it's it's really great to see how v-mon has evolved and you know in our partner ecosystem you know we have you know you talked about us hitting a billion dollars you know we rat marinelle's we hit 350,000 customers that customer number is a huge asset for us when we talked to our partners you know that is something that they're all trying to tap into right they love you know and our customers are really passionate and we have partners that come to us and they say hey look you know and that you know the bigger partners than us and they're saying hey will you please work with us will you please you know we want to do deeper integration because our customers you know are saying we're Veeam customers and and you you know you know mister partner you have to go work with teams so that so that our solutions will work better together so it's a it's a great asset to us yeah and it's it's evolved since you know it's just certainly just the first Vemma and I was at the very first one I think was we were talking was at the Aria whatever it was five years ago so so you know ecosystem is I think Jason Buffington was quoting Archimedes today and you know livre and and that ecosystem is is you know a huge opportunity for growth ok so let's get into it well first of all I want to ask you if time was interesting global alliance architecture yes so we're not talking technical architecture necessarily we're talking about what the architecture of the ecosystem or both yeah so some money you know my role my responsibilities and what my team looks after is everything technical related to our partners so veem we're a hundred percent is fee and you know ratmir and aundrea to co-founders and leaders to the company you know that that's something that they take to heart and it's something that's actually really valuable when we talk to our partners is we don't really overlap very much especially with the infrastructure partners that we have and so you know my job is to take the great products we have and make it work really well and go deep with our partners so create value with these partners there's sometimes their product integrations storage snapshot integrations we announced the width beam program two weeks ago we are together at that next with the rest of your team talking about Nutanix mine with theme which is a secondary storage integrated solution so all of those that's all part of my roles so solution architecture and product integrations you know through our partner ecosystem which which is very broad it stretches from storage partners to platform partners to other is feeds like Oracle SAT even healthcare partners yeah Peter we were excited about the width Eames stuff dat who is with Fein yours with Vemma yeah so my team is responsible for the overall architecture with Vemma it's it's really a joint collaboration within within Veeam so we have an R&D investment that's building the intellectual property that powers the you know the system under the covers my team's responsible for the broader architecture how we bring it together how we bring it to market through the channel right and and and how we bring it to our customers and that whole experience so my team is is intimately involved in that so a lot of people talk about inflection points in the industry and clearly were in the middle one way of describing it is that the first 50 years were known process unknown technology we never gonna do accounting we knew are going to do HR where you were going to do blah blah blah blah blah and there was mainframe client-server with a lot of other stuff but the whole notion of backup and restore and data protection grew up out of the complexity in the infrastructure as we move forward it's interesting because it's known technology it's gonna be cloud relatively known yes but what's interesting is we don't know what the processes are gonna be we don't know what we're gonna automate we don't know how we're going to change the business it's all going to be data driven which places an enormous burden on IT and specifically how they use data within the business so I'm gonna ask your question it's a long preamble but I'm asking the question I asked you out in there too and this is not the test but the question is look as we move forward as data is used to differentiate a business it suggests that there's going to be greater specialization in how data use is used which could and should lead to greater specialization in the role that veem and related technologies will play within the business and the question then is is the with veem approach a way to let allow innovation to bloom so that specialization can be accommodated and supported within the VM ecosystem yeah so yeah Peter good question and so I tell you that the short answer is yes the longer answer is I wasn't shorter than the short answer is yes the longer answer is it doesn't have to be with Veeam but really our goal and and what we want to empower our partners and so really the goal of with Veeam is hey we're already working across our partner ecosystem and we you know we work with with the likes of NetApp and HP and pure and Nutanix and you know and all the platform providers as well public clouds you know our goal is is to make VM ubiquitous and drive better value to our customers and through our partners right we need partners no matter what when we're working with a customer there's always there's always a workload we're protecting and we need a place to land our backup so no matter what we're always working with one or two partners in a deal and sometimes it's multiple because then you TR out to cloud storage and in other places you know with with veem what we're trying to do is is really simplify that process for customers and so make that process from the buying experience all the way through the delivery and the deployment and the management and the ongoing management day 1 and day 2 operations we want to make that all seamless and give them higher value now one thing we're looking to enable and by adding api's with veeam is we want to leverage the strengths of the partners we have and so you know I often end up in these discussions because we have a broad partner ecosystem we've already announced - with VM solutions we have a third that you know we did last year with Cisco that's in the market that's sort of similar in nature and we're gonna add more and you know the question our partners even ask us is you know you already got three of them why are you gonna add another one you know how am I going to differentiate and the answer is you know they differentiate with their own technology and and the idea is we have these open API so that they can they can build their own solutions they fit different markets and fit different use cases some are small small customer solutions some are enterprise but our goal is to enable them to be creative and how they build on top of eeeem but but have you know Veen be a core part of that solution rather so so it is a core part of solution yes apply to specific customer absolutely okay so the term seamless always you know triggers me in a way because seamless is like open right it's evolved over time and so what was seamless you know 10 years ago wasn't really seamless in today's terms so when you talk about seamless we're talking about if I understand it deep engineering right getting access to primitives through api's and creating solutions that are differentiable as a function of your partner's core value proposition and obviously integrating with meme with 350,000 customers so you're now in the ball game with with Veen customers so so so talk about the importance of api's and how that actually gets done yeah and seamless to whom to the partners to the customer to ultimately it's to the customer boom but but but there's got to be an ease of integration as well with the partners and I'd like to understand that better yeah absolutely so I'll give you an example of something we've done in the past that's that we're trying to model this with veem program after so but a year and a half as part of our 9.5 update 3 we introduced what we call universal storage API and we've talked about our version 10 there were five core features of version 10 when we announced that two years ago in New Orleans you're the first time you were you were with us at a v-mon and one of those was Universal storage API and what that means is you know we help we help our partners we help our customers ultimately by way of our partners on the primary side of integrating storage snapshots with vmware vsphere and so when we when we go to backup a vm we take a snapshot of that vm and with this with our storage snapshot integration we then take a storage snapshot of the volume that vm is on and we can release that VM where a snapshot very quickly so it's very low touch and low impact on the environment well we we introduced this API so that we could scale we had we had done our own storage snapshot and integration with you know call it 5 or 6 storage vendors over the previous seven years eight years right in the last year and a half we've added seven right and that's the scale we're talking about and allowing our partners to build the storage snapshot plug-in together right so we have a program we invite them into that program we collaborate on it they develop the plug-in we jointly test it and we release it and so we're trying to sort of take and that's been very successful as I said eight years five or six storage snapshot vendors year and a half we've done like another seven or eight so it's been very successful and we have more that are in queue so we'll be talking about more of these as time goes on in the very near future with the width beam program we're looking to do something very similar it's gonna be an invite-only program realistically the secondary storage partner is this the universe is probably 20 the logical universe for us is probably 10 to 12 so it's not going to be huge but it's gonna be impactful for our partners and so we'll invite them into the program we'll have an agreement of us working together we'll jointly develop and test it and we'll bring it to market together at the end of the day you know both our partner and veem we have our name on it and I'm sure you heard from rat mayor and Danny and others right we have our NPS score which we really really value and it's really high it's best in the industry and if we're putting our name on a solution in the market we also want to make sure that we're working on it together in it you know it really goes through the rigor of what it takes to bring a Vemma solution tomorrow actually you know what nobody's talked this week this week about the NPS core if they maybe they have in the keynote so that it might have missed it but well I was in the keynotes what is it today well yeah so so an NPS score is basically you know from from 0 to 100 it's it's you know we'll a customer reference you or recommend you right right and so ours is 73 ok the industry the the general average in in in our space is about 28 to 30 so we're about 2 and a half times that that's core you know and that's in Frank Zubin said to me one time it's easy to have a high NPS core if you're a one product company but you're not a one product company no no we've we've evolved substantially I mean you know we've we've added agents to cover physical workload we've we've added cloud support we've added other applications we've added veem availability Orchestrator we've added beam backup for office 365 we have VA C which is the availability console for our service providers which has cloud connected it's a very broad portfolio everything comes back to beam backup and replication as the flagship foundation but we have all these other products that that now help our customers solve their problems the reason we were so excited about this with wid theme is this notion of cloud and hybrid cloud and you talk about programmable infrastructure you really have been pushing just bringing the cloud experience to your data talking about that for a while and part of that has to be infrastructure as code and it can't really do that without open api's and this sort of seamless integration well the cloud is testing us with you as well the cloud is a really an architecture for how you're going to distribute work as opposed to how you can centralize Handicap I think for a long time we got it wrong it's all presumed and it's all gonna go to the center we're in fact when you get that level of standardization and common conventions and the technologies are built to make a tea that much easier it allows you to distribute the work a lot more effectively get the data closer to where the works going to be done and that is enormous implications for how we think about things but it also means that we when we talk about bringing the cloud to the data that the data has to be there the data services that make that data part of a broader fabric have to be there and it all has to be assured so that the system knows something about where the data is and what services can be applied to it in advance of actually moving the workloads that suggests ultimately that the technology set that veem is offering is going to evolve relatively rapidly so the whole notion of you know with V today for secondary storage but I could see that becoming something that you guys take two new classes of data service providers pretty quickly I don't want you to pre-announce anything but what do you think yeah Peter I think I think you're really on to something and when we when we sort of look at the worlds right the infrastructure world were in you know and and certainly some of our partners would draw a slightly different picture but we see Veen as as the common thread in the middle right because at the end of the day and I think you mentioned it as you were just talking there you know when we talk about hybrid cloud right we see now our customers especially commercial and enterprise and large enterprise customers it is it is a very heterogeneous environment it's multiple hypervisors different storage platforms it's multiple cloud providers because they're picking best to breed for the workload and so they need a platform that's got really breadth in depth of coverage and so the the one common thread we weave between there is Veeam right so if if we are that data protection layer as I mentioned before you know we're in the middle we're protecting a primary workload and we're writing our data to a secondary workload but in the middle is Veeam and so that workload we're protecting on Prem cloud secondary data centers theme is the thread in between there you can move that data around and wherever that is we can make use for now I'll give you a good example today you know let's say we're protecting a visa or workload on Prem right we back that up to it to assist them locally so we can have fast restore but ultimately we tear that out bean cloud tier capacity tear tear that's AWS so we can we can actually recover workloads in Atos one or two we have directory store which would take a backup from on-prem and directly move it there for DRAM migration purposes or we can simply consume that that backup that's now up in the cloud because Veen backups are self-describing we can lose the system on Prem and recover it so your point about making the data close to your workload with with veeam in the middle we enable that for our customers regardless of where they want to go yeah so we think that that's going to change the mindset from protection to assurance so assure your data is local and then it's the right data it's Integris and all the other things and then ultimately you know move it and back it up to some other site so it's but it's a subtle switch it's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out this is obviously well and as we talked about as you need to begin to protect things like containers like functions that come and go super quickly assurance has more meaning because there's the security threats and if you can help solve those problems through your partners through automation spinning containers up and down making it harder for the bad guys to you know a target a specific container raising essentially the cost so lowers their ROI that is a new game yeah and and I'll call out one thing a rat mayor I thought did a really good job on stage yesterday in his keynote he popped the slide which talked about the universal storage API and with theme and it had all our partners sort of around that you know that that I think he Illustrated our strategy which is hey we're focusing on the core parts of backup and replication and helping the core parts the data protection we're gonna partner with everything else that's adjacent to that we're not going to go solve maybe some of the security problems ourselves we're gonna enable some hooks secure restore maybe as an example we've announced you know in the technology keynote yesterday we announced a new API that allows partners to come in and crack open Veen backups and take a look at them one of the things could be deep inspection so you know our strategy and our goal is really to be open to our partners so that they can come in and add value and again our our goal for our customers is give them choice so give them choice of to choose best-of-breed solutions don't go do it and say hey you got to go use partner a you know hey we're gonna we're gonna have an API that others can build to and you go choose your best debris partner or your platform technology choice well and with 350,000 customers you've got a big observation space so guys have always been customer driven can give you the last word on vivant 2019 you're our last guest then we're gonna wrap with a little analysis on our end but give us the bumper sticker yeah I think the bumper sticker is hey you know we've you know from a business perspective you know we hit a billion dollars in bookings we have hit 350,000 customers the Innovation Train is really moving our Veen clouds here that we announced with update four earlier this year has gone way beyond our expectations and and we're looking to continue to build on that momentum so we're just super excited you know we if I'm the closer I'll say thanks to all of our sponsors we have a lot of great sponsors and on the cloud side on the on the Alliance partners side the channel side you know it's just it's it's a testament to where we are as a companies yeah and you're building out a great ecosystem congratulations on that and and good luck going forward and we'll see you around at the shows it's great it's great to have you guys right thank you all right you're welcome all right keep it right there everybody Peter and I went back to wrap right after this short break and watching the cube live from V Mon 2019 from Miami we'll be right back

>> Announcer: Live from Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering VeeamON 2019. Brought to you by Veeam. >> Welcome back to the Fontainebleau, Miami, everybody. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with my co-host for this segment, Justin Warren. Justin it's great to see you. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, day two of our coverage of VeeamON 2019 here in Miami. Jason Buffington, @Jbuff is here, he's the vice president of solution strategy congratulations on the promotion and great to see you again, my friend. >> Thank you very much. >> Dave: And Nathan Hughes who is the IT director at Flex-N-Gate. Great to see you, thanks for coming on. We love to get the customer's perspective, so welcome. >> Great to be here. >> Okay, so, Jason let me start with you. Former analyst, you've been at Veeam now for long enough to A, get promoted, but also, get the Kool-Aid injection, you're wearing the green, and, what are the big trends that you're seeing in the market that are really driving this next era, what do guys call it? Act two of data protection? >> Sure. So, I preached on this even before I joined Veeam that every 10 years or so, when the industry shifts the platform of choice, the data protection vendors almost always reset, right? The people that lead in NetWare don't lead in Windows. The people that lead in Windows didn't lead in Vert. The next wave is we're moving from servers to services. Right, we're going from on prem into cloud and so, and every time the problem is the secret sauce doesn't line up, right? So you got to reinvent yourself each time. And what we saw in the past generations, what we learned from, is, you can't be so busy taking care of your install base that you forget to keep innovating on what that next platform is and so for us, act two is all about cloud. We're going to take everything we know about reliability but we're moving into cloud. The difference is, that in virtualization there was one hero scenario. VMs, right? This time around it's IaaS, it's SaaS, it's PaaS, it's using cloud storage, it's BaaS and DRaaS, there's not a single hero scenario which means we have a lot more innovation to do. That's round two. >> And you made that point today, you used the Archimedes quote, give me a lever and a fulcrum and I'll change the world. You used the analogy of backup as now becoming much more than just backup, it's data protection, it's data management, we're going to get into that. And test some of that with Nathan. So, Nathan, tell us about Flex-N-Gate what does the company do and what does your role as IT director entail? >> Okay, so Flex-N-Gate is a tier one automotive supplier. Which means that we provide parts, most of the things that go into a car besides electronics and glass, to the final automotive makers. So most of the companies that you're familiar with when you go to buy one. >> Okay, so you guys are global, I think you've got what, 24,000 associates worldwide, 64 locations. So what're some of the things that are, fundamental drivers of your business, that are rippling through to your IT strategy? >> Well, our business is varied in the sense that we do a lot of different things in house so, we do, obviously, manufacturing, that's a big part of what we do. And then, even that is broken down into different kinds and then beyond manufacturing we have advanced product development and engineering so we do a lot of that in house. >> Dave: You support it all? >> Yes. >> So you've got diverse lines of business, you've got different roles and personas, you know, engineers versus business people versus finance people. And you got to make 'em all happy. >> We've got to make 'em all happy. >> So, one of the things I love about manufacturing examples, is if you think about it it's the two extremes of high tech and low tech, right? On the low tech side of things you've got this manufacturing floor and it's just producing real stuff, not the zeros and ones that we live with, but real things come off this line. And then you have the engineering and R and D side. Where they're absolutely focused on stuff that comes out of some engineer's head into a computer, which is truly unique data, so, one of the things I love about the story is, talk about the downtime challenges you have around the manufacturing floor. Because I learned some things when we first met, that I think is phenomenal when it comes to manufacturing things that I didn't realize. >> Sure. So, we have a lot of different kinds of manufacturing environments. Some of them are more passive and some of them are more active. The most active environments are, a form of manufacturing known as sequencing. And it's sort of where you bring final assembly of parts together right before they go to the customer. The way that customers order up parts these days, it's not like they used to back in the 70s and 80s. Where they would warehouse huge volumes of everything on their site and then just draw it down if they needed it. And you just kept the queue full. Now they want everything just in time delivery. So they basically want parts to come to the line right when they're needed and actually in the order they're needed. So, a final car maker, they're not necessarily making, 300 of the same thing in a row, they're going to make one of this in blue and one of that in red and they're all going to be sequenced behind each other, one right after the other on the assembly line. And they want the parts from the suppliers to come in the exact right order for that environment. So, the challenge with that from our perspective is that we have trucking windows that are between 30, maybe 60 minutes on the high end, and if anything goes badly, you can put the customer down. And now you're talking about stopping production at Ford, Chrysler, GM, whatever. And that's a lot of money and a lot of other suppliers impacted. >> Dave: So this is a data problem isn't it? >> Yeah, it definitely is. And it's an interesting point, 'cause, you talk about sequencing. Veeam has their own sequence about how customers use the product and they start with backup, everything starts with backup, and then they move further to the right so that you get, ideally, to fully automated data protection. So, what are you actually using Veeam for today? And where do you see yourself going with Veeam? >> So, right now, we're using Veeam primarily as backup and recovery. It's how we started with it. We came from another product that was, great conceptually, but in the real world it had terrible reliability and its performance was very poor as time went on and so, when Veeam came on the scene it was a breath of fresh air because we got to the place where we knew that what we had was dependable, it was reliable. We got to understand how the product worked and to improve the way that we'd implemented it. And so, one of the key features in Veeam that really actually excited us, especially in those sequencing environments are these instant recovery options, right? So, we were used to the idea of having to write down a VM out of snapshot storage. And then being put in a position where it might take an hour, two hours, three hours before you could get that thing back online now, or again, to be able to launch that right out of snapshot storage was a blessing in the industry we're in. >> Yeah, did you see the tech demo yesterday where they were showing off how you could do an instant recovery directly from cloud storage? >> Yes, yeah. >> Did that get you excited? >> Yes. That is exciting. >> Are you using cloud at the moment or is this something that you're looking to move towards? >> Cloud is something we're sort of investigating but it's not something that we're actively utilizing right now. >> So this instance recovery, you guys obviously make a big deal out of that, I was talking to Danny Allan yesterday offline about it. He claims it's unique in the industry. And I asked him a question, I said specifically, if you lose the catalog, can I actually get the data back? And he said yes. And I'm like, that sounds like magic. So, so I guess my question to maybe both of you is, instant, how instant? And how does it actually work? (he laughs) >> It just works, isn't that? >> It just works! >> It's just magic, new tagline? >> I guess we don't have to get into the weeds but when you say, when I hear instant recovery, we're talking like, (fingers clicking) instantaneous recovery with, very short RTOs? >> To us what that means is that in practice, we can expect to have a VM from snapshot data back into production in about a five minute window. >> Dave: Five minutes? Okay. >> And that is sufficient for our needs in any environment. >> Okay, so now we're talking RTO, right? And then, what about, so we said 64 sites across the world, 24,000 associates, is Veeam your enterprise wide data protection strategy or are you rolling it out now? Where are you at? >> Yes, no. Veeam, we started with it in a handful of key sites. And we were using it to specifically back up SharePoint and a few other platforms. But once we understood what the product was capable of, and we were sort of reaching the end of our rope with this former product, yeah, we began an active roll out and we've now had Veeam in our facilities for five, six years. >> So you swept the floor of that previous product. And how complicated was it for you to move from the legacy product to Veeam? >> It was a challenge just rethinking the way that we do things, the previous product, one thing that it really had going for it, if this could be considered a positive, I guess, is that it was very very simple to set up. So, you could take an entry level IT administrator and they just next, next, next, next, next. And it would do all the things that they needed it to do. But the problem was that in the real world, that was sort of the Achilles' Heel, because, it meant that it wasn't very well customized and it meant also that, the way that they've developed that product, it became performance, it had poor performance. >> So the reason I ask that question is because, so many times customers are stuck. And it's like they don't want to move, because it's a pain. But the longer they go, the more costly it is, down the road. So I'm always looking to IT practitioners like, advice that you would give in terms of others, things that you might do differently if you had a mulligan, I don't know, maybe you would've started sooner, or maybe there were some things that you'd do differently. What would you advise? >> Yeah, I mean, if we'd understood, the whole context of what was happening with that other product, we would've moved sooner. And the one thing that I will say about Veeam is, it's not click and point. It does involve a little more setup. But the Veeam team is excellent when it comes to support. So there's nothing to fear in that category because they stand behind their product and it's very easy to get qualified technicians to help you out. >> Is that by design? >> I don't know if it's. Well, the being great to work with, yes, that's by design. >> Yeah, but I mean. >> I was talking to Danny yesterday and asked about the interface thing. Because there is always that tension between making it really really simple to use but then it doesn't have any knobs to change when you need to. >> That's what I'm asking. >> But it can't be too complex either. >> Our gap actually comes a little bit later in the process, right? So, you asked earlier about, in what ways do you use Veeam? And we think about Veeam as a progression, right? So, everybody if they're using Veeam at all, they're using it for Veeam backup and replication and because foundationally, until you can protect your stuff, right? Until you can reliably do that, all the other stuff that you'd like to do around data management is aspirational and unattainable at best, right? So, we think the journey comes in at yeah, it is pretty easy, to go next, next, next, finish. Just a few tweaks, right? To get backup going. But then when you go beyond that, now there's a whole range of other things you can do, right? So Danny, I'm sure, talked about DataLabs yesterday. The orchestration engine, those are not, next, next, next, finish. But anything that's worthwhile takes a little bit of effort, right? So as we pivot from, now that you've solved backup, then you can do those other things and that's where we really start going back into something which is really more expertise driven. >> Well, and it's early days too and as you get more data and more experience you can begin to automate things. >> Yeah, absolutely. So Justin was asking, Nathan, where the direction is. Today it's really backup. You've seen the stages where, talking about full automation. Is that something that, is on the horizon, it is sort of near term, midterm, longterm? >> I mean, coming to the conference, our experience with backup, or Veeam, is primarily backup and recovery operations but, I've seen a lot of things in the last few days that have piqued my interest. Particularly when it comes to the cloud integration. That's being actively baked into the product now. And, some of the automated, API stuff, that's being built into the product. Any place where I can get to where we simplify our procedures for recovery, that's a plus. So I'm really excited about the idea of the virtual labs, being able to actively test backup on a regular basis without human intervention and have reporting out of that. Those are things that I don't see in any other product that's out there. >> You know, there's another piece of the innovation that we should think through, and, so we've talked about the sequencing side which is where we focus on RTO, how fast can you get back and running again? And when you and I talked earlier, the example that we worked on was think of a zipper, right? You've got the bumpers coming in to a line of cars and if either side slows down, everything breaks, and at the end, by the way, is the truck, right? And everything has to come at the same time at the same rate, if there's downtime on either side of the source, you're done. But that's an RTO problem. The engineering side, for high tech, is an RPO problem, right? You have unique stuff coming out of somebody's brain into a PC and it'll never come out that way again. And so, when we look at backup and replication, that should be the next pieces to go on. And then as you mentioned, DataLabs becomes really interesting and orchestration, so. >> Well speaking of human brains, and you kind of touched on it, Nathan, that you came here to learn some things and you've learned things from different sessions. So, what is it about coming to VeeamON that is worth the time for IT practitioners like yourself? >> I think it's all those, I mean we were talking about Veeam, doing backup and recovery operations, fairly straightforwardly, in terms of getting in, but once you see some of this stuff here at a conference like this, you get a better sense of all the more, elaborate aspects of the product. And, you wouldn't get that >> See the possibilities. >> I think, if you were just sitting in front of it using it conventionally, this is a good place to really learn the depth and the level that you can go with it. >> And you're like most of your peers here, is that right, highly virtualized, is that right? Lot of Microsoft apps. And, they say, mid-sized global organization, actually kind of bumping up into big. >> Nathan: Sure. >> Yeah, cool. I asked about the data problem before, it sounds like the zipper's coming together, that's some funky math that you got to figure out to make sure everything's there. So, talk about the data angle. How important data is to your organization, we know much data's growing, data's the new oil, all those promides but, what about your organization specifically as it relates to a digital strategy? It's a buzzword that we hear a lot but, does it have meaning for you, and what does it mean? >> Data is vital in any organization. I mean, we were referencing earlier, how you've got low tech in manufacturing, or at least people think of it as lower tech. And then high tech in R and D, and how those things merge together in a single company. But the reality is all of that is data driven, right? Even when you go to the shop floor, all your scheduling, all your automation equipment, all this stuff is talking and it's all laying down data. You're putting rivets in the parts, you're probably taking pictures of that now with imagers when you're in manufacturing. And you do that so that if you get 300 bad ones you can see exactly when that started and what happened at the machine level, right? So, >> That's a good one. >> We're just constantly collecting massive volumes of new data, and being able to store that reliably is everything. >> Well, and the reason I'm asking is you guys have been around for a while and your a highly distributed organization so, in the old days, even still today, you'd build, you'd get a server for an application, you'd harden that application, you'd secure that box and the application running on it, you'd lock the data inside and, my question is, can, the backup approach, the data protection approach, the data management, or whatever we want to call it, can it help solve that data silo problem? Is that part of the strategy or is it just too early for that? >> I'm, sorry, I'm going to get you to repeat that question in a slightly different way. >> Yeah so, am I correct that you've got data in silos from all the years and years and years of building up applications and-- >> I mean, we have-- >> And can you use something like Veeam to help unify that data model? >> Draw that all together? Yeah. I think a lot of that has, it's more on the hosting side, right? So it depends on how those systems were rolled out originally and all that kind of thing. But yeah, as we've moved towards Veeam, we've necessarily rebuilt some of those systems in such a way that they are more aggregated and that Veeam can pick them up in an integrated kind of way. >> You see that as a common theme? Veeam as one of the levers of the fulcrum to new data architecture? >> We're getting there, so here's the trick. So, first you got to solve for basic protection, right? But the next thing along the way to really get towards data management is you got to know what you got, right? You got to know what's actually in those zeros and ones. And so, some of the things that you've already seen from us are around what we do around GDPR compliance, some of the things we do around sanitization of data for DevOps scenarios and reuse scenarios. All of that opens up a box of, okay, now that the data is curated. Now that it's ingested into our system, what else can you do with it? You know, when I talk to C-level execs, what I tell them is, data protection, no matter who it comes from, including Veeam, is really expensive if the only thing you do is put that data in a box and wait for bad things to happen, right? Now the good news is, bad things are going to happen, so you're going to get ROI. But better is don't just leave your data in a box, right? Do other stuff with that data, unlock the value of it and some of that value comes in, now that I'm more aware of it, let's reduce some of the copies, let's reduce some of the compliance mandates. Let's only put data that has sovereignty requirements where it goes, but to do all of that, you got to know what you got. >> Go ahead, please. >> There was some impressive demo yesterday about exactly that, so, we have the data. You can use the API to script it and you can do all kinds of, basically, you're limited by your imagination. So it's going to be fascinating to see what customers do with it once they've put it in place, they've got their data protected. And then they start playing with things, come to a conference like this and learn, ooh, I might just give that a try on my data when I get back home. >> That's right. >> We'll give the customer the last word, Nathan. Impressions of VeeamON 2019? >> It's been great. And like I say, if you're a company that's been using Veeam even for a while, and you have your entry level setup for backup and recovery and I think there's a lot of, probably, companies out there that use Veeam in that kind of way, this is a great place to have a better understanding of all that's available to you in that product. And there's a lot more than just meets the eye. >> And it's fun, good food, fun people. Thanks you guys for coming on, really appreciate it. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Alright, keep it right there, buddy, we'll be back with our next guest, you're watching theCUBE, Dave Vellante, Justin Warren, and Peter Burris is also here. VeeamON 2019, we'll be right back. (electronic music)