>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! With digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020. Brought to you by Actifio. >> We're back, This is theCUBE's coverage, our ongoing coverage of Actifio's Data Driven, of course we've gone virtual this year. Ash Ashutosh is here, he's the founder, president, and CEO of Actifio. Ash, great to see you again. >> Likewise, Dave, always, always good to see you. >> We were at a little meetup, you and I, in Boston, I always enjoy our conversations. Little did we know that a few months later, we'd only be talking at this type of distance, and of course, it's sad, I mean, Data Driven is one of our favorite events, it's intimate, it's customer content-driven. The theme this year is, you call it the next normal. Some people call it the new abnormal. The next normal, what's that all about? >> I think it's pretty fascinating to see, when we walked in in March, all of us were shocked by the effect of this pandemic. And for a while, we all scrambled around, trying to figure out, how do you react to this one? And everybody reacted very differently, but most people had this tendency to think that this is going to be a pretty brutal environment with lots of unknown variables, and it is important for us to try to figure out how to get our hands around this. By the time we came around about six weeks into that, almost all of us have figured out, this is not something you fight against, this is not something you wait for it to go away, but this is one that you figure out how to live it, and you figure out how to work around it. And that, we believe, is the next normal. It's not about trying to create a new abnormal, it's not about creating a new normal, but it's truly one that basically says "There is a path forward, there's a way to create this next normal," and you just figure out how to live with the environment we have, and phenomenal outcomes of companies that have done remarkably well, as a result of these actions, Actifio being one of them. >> It's quite amazing, isn't it, I mean, I've talked to a lot of tech companies, CEOs, and their customers, and it's almost like, the first reaction was of course they cared about their employees and their broader families. Number one, number two was, many companies, as you know, saw a tailwind, and initially didn't want to be seen as ambulance chasing, and then of course the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and they said, "Okay, hey, "we can only control what we can control." And tech companies in particular have just done exceedingly well. I mean, I don't think anybody really predicted that early on. >> Yeah. I think at the heart we are all human beings and the first reaction was to take care of, four constituencies, right? One, take care of your family, take care of your community, take care of your employees, take care of your customers. And that was the hardest part. The first four to six weeks was to figure out how do you do each of those four. Once you figured that part out, or you figured out ways to get around to making sure you can take care of those, you really found the next normal. You really started figuring out how to continue to innovate, continue to support each of those four constituencies, and people have done different things. I know it's amazing how CUBE continues to operate. As far as a user is concerned, they're all watching remote. Yes, we don't have the wonderful desk and we all get to chat and look in the eye. But the content, the message is as powerful as what it was a few months ago. So I'm sure this is how we're all going to figure out how to make through. There's a new next normal. >> Yeah, and digital transformation kind of went from push to pull, I mean every conference you'd go to, they'd say, "Well, look at Uber, look at Airbnb," and they put up the examples. "You have to do this too." And then all of a sudden the industry dragged you along. So I'm curious as to how, and I guess the other point there is digital means data. We've said that many, many times, if you didn't have a digital strategy during the height of the lockdown, you couldn't transact business and still many restaurants are still trying to figure this out, but so how did it affect you and your customers? >> Yeah, it's really interesting. And we spend a lot of time with several of our customers who are managing some of the largest IT organizations. And we talk about a very interesting phenomenon that happened somewhere beginning of this year, about 20 years ago, we used to worry about this thing called the digital divide. Those who have access to the network and internet, and those who don't. And now there is this data divide, the divide between organizations that know how to leverage, exploit, and absolutely accelerate the business using data, and those who don't. And I think we're seeing this effect show very clearly among organizations that are able to come back and address some of this stuff. And it's fascinating. Yes, we all have the examples of the likes of people who are doing delivery. People who are doing E-tailing, but there are so many little things, you're seeing organizations, and just the other day, we had a video from Sentry Data Systems, which is helping accelerate COVID-19 research because you're able to get copies of the data faster, they're able to get access to data, to their researchers much, much faster, sometimes from several days to a few minutes. It's that level of effect, it's not just down to some subtle, you know, you almost think of it as nice to have, but it's must have life threatening stuff, essential stuff, or just addressing today, I was reading a wonderful article about this supercomputer and that's doing analysis of COVID-19, and how it's figured out most of these symptoms, then able to figure it out by just crunching a ton of data. And almost every one of those symptoms the supercomputer has predicted, has been accurate. It's about data, right? It is absolutely about data, and which is why I think this is a phenomenal time for companies to absolutely go change, make this transformation about data acceleration, data leverage, data exploitation. And there's a ton of it all around us. >> Yeah, and part of that digital transformation, the mandate is to really put data at the core. I mean, we've certainly seen this with the top market cap companies. They've got data at the core, and now, as I say, it's become a mandate. And you know, there's been several things that we've clearly noticed. I mean, you saw the work from home required laptops and, you know, end point security and things of that, VDI made a comeback, and certainly cloud was there, but I've been struck by the reality of multi-cloud. I was kind of a multi-cloud skeptic early on. I said many times, I thought it was more of a symptom than it was a strategy, but that's completely flipped. Recently in our ETR surveys, we saw multicloud popping up all over the place. I wonder what you're seeing when you talk to your customers and other CIOs. >> Yeah. So fascinating. No, we released our first cloud product sometime around 2018, end of 2018. >> Dave: GO, right? >> Yeah, Actifio GO, OnVault, which is a phenomenal way to completely change the way you think about using object storage in the cloud. For over two years, we saw about 20% of our business, by the beginning of this year, 20% of our business was built on leveraging the cloud. Since March, so that was the end of our, almost the end of the Q1, to now, we're just in the middle of Q3. In six months, we added 12 more percent of the business. Literally we did it in six months, what we did not do before for 18 months before that, significantly more than what we did for a year and a half before that. And there are really three reasons, and you see this over and over again, we have a large customer we closed in January. Ironically we were deploying out of UK, a very large marketing organization, got everything deployed. They were running their backup and DR in a separate data center. And they had a practical problem of not being able to access the second site, literally in the middle of deployment, we steer that customer to GCP, or Google Cloud, because there was simply no way for them to continue protecting the data, being able to develop new applications with that data, they simply had no access. So there was, this was the number one reason, the inability for an organization to physically access or put their employees at risk, and have portal for the cloud be the infrastructure. That's number one. So that first of all drove the reason for the cloud. And then there's a second reason. There are practical reasons on why some cloud platforms are good at one workload. The other ones are not so good at some of the workloads. And so if I'm an organization that has, that spans everything, I've got a power PC, an X86 machine, a VM, I've got container platforms, I got Oracle, I got SAP. There is no single cloud platform that supports all my workload as efficiently, it's available in all the regions I want. So inevitably I have to go adopt different cloud platforms. So that's the second practical reason. And then there's a strategic reason. No vendor, no customer, wants to be locked into any one cloud platform. At least two, you're going to go pay, more likely three. So those are the reasons. And then interestingly enough, we were on a panel with us global CIOs. And in addition to just the usual cloud providers that we all know and love inside the US, across the world, in Europe, in Asia, there's a rise of regional cloud providers. So you take all these factors, right? You've got absolute physical necessity. You got practical constraints of what can the cloud provider support, the strategic reasons of why, either because, I don't want to be locked into a cloud provider, or because there's a rise of, you know, data nationalism that's going on, that people want to keep their data within the country bounds. All of these reasons are the foundations of why multicloud is almost becoming a de facto. It's impossible for a decent size organization to assume they would just depend on one cloud anymore. >> The other big trend we're seeing, I wonder if you could comment, is this notion of the data life cycle, of the data pipeline. It's a very complex situation for a lot of organizations. Their data is siloed. We hear that a lot. They have data scientists, data engineers, developers, data quality engineers, just a lot of different constituencies and lines of business, and it's kind of a mess. And so what they're trying to do is bring that together. So they've done that, data scientists complain, they spend all their time wrangling data, but ultimately the ones that are succeeding to putting data at the core as we've just been discussing, are seeing amazing outcomes, by being able to have a single version of the truth, have confidence in that data, create self-serve for their lines of business and actually reduce the end to end cycle times that's driving your major monetization, whether that's cost cutting or revenue. And I'm curious as to what you're seeing, you guys do a lot of work, heavy work in DevOps and hardcore database. Those are key components of that data life cycle. What are you seeing in that regard regarding that data pipeline? >> Yeah, that's a phenomenal point. If you really want to go back and exploit data within an organization, if you really want to be a data driven organization, the very first thing you have to do is break down the silos. Ironically, every organization has all the data required to make the decisions they want to. They just can't either get to it, or it's so hard to break the silos that it's just not worth trying to make it happen. And 10 years ago, we set out on this mission, rather than keep these individual silos of data, why don't we flip it open and make it into a pipeline which looks like a data cloud, where essentially anybody who's consuming it has access to it based on the governance rules, based on the security rules that the operations people have set. And based on the kind of format they want to see data, not everybody may want to see the data in a database format. Maybe you want the database format converted to a CSB format before you run analytics. And this idea of making data the new infrastructure, this idea of having the operations people provide this new layer container. It's finally come to roost. I mean, it's fascinating. I was looking at the numbers last quarter. We just finished up Q2. Now 45% of our customer base uses Actifio for, or reuses the backup data for things that accelerate the business, things that make the business move faster, more productive, or even survive. That was the mission. That was what we set out to do 10 years ago. You know, we were talking to an analyst this morning and now there's this question of, you know, "Hey, looks like there's a theme of backup data being reused." We said, "Yeah, that's kind of what we've been saying for 10 years." Backup cannot be an insurance, backup cannot be a destination. It has to be something that you can use as an asset. And that I think is finally coming to the point where you can use backup as a single source of truth, only if you designed it right from the beginning for that purpose, you cannot just, there are lots of ways to fake it, make it, try to pretend like you're doing it, but that was the true purpose of making data the new infrastructure, making it a cloud, making it something that is truly an asset. And it's fascinating to see our businesses. You take any of our large accounts, and the way they've gone about transforming, not just basic backup and DR. Yes, we are the world's fastest backup and most scalable DR solution. That's a starting point. But to be able to use that to develop applications eight, 10 times faster, to run analytics 100 X faster? The more data you have, the more people who use data you have, the better this return becomes. >> You know, that is interesting to hear you talk about that, because that has been the Holy Grail of backup was to go beyond insurance to actually create business value. And you're actually seeing some underlying trends, we talked about that data pipeline, and one of the areas that is the most interesting is in database, which was so boring for so many years, and you're seeing new workloads emerge. They take the data warehouse beyond, you know, reporting, never really lived up to its promise of 360 degree view. You mentioned analytics, that's really starting to happen. And it's all about data. You know, John Furrier used to say that data is the new development kit. You call it the new infrastructure and it's sort of the same type of theme. So maybe some of the trends you're seeing in database, I'd love to talk about that for a little bit, and then pick your brains on some other tech like object storage is another one that we've really seen take off. >> Yeah, so I think our journey with object storage began in 2016, 2017, as we started to adopt cloud platform in response to the user requirements, we did more like most companies have done and unfortunately continue to do, we take the on-prem product and then just move it onto the cloud. And one of the things we saw was there was a fundamental difference of how the design points of a cloud engineering is all about, what the design it for. Object storage is one of those primitives, the fundamental storage primitives that the cloud providers actually produced, that nobody really exploited. It was used as a graveyard for data. It's a replacement for the place where data goes to die. And then we look at it really closely and say, "Well, this is actually a massively scalable, very low cost storage, but it has some problems." It has an interface that you cannot use with traditional servers. It has some issues around, you know, not being able to read, modify, write the data, so it feels like you're consuming a lot of storage. So we went on to solve those problems. It took us a good two years to come back with something called OnVault, that fundamentally treats object storage like this massively scalable high performing disk. Except for just ridiculous low cost and optimize the capacity. So this thing called OnVault, as we patent it, has really become the foundation of how everything in cloud works without using CPU. Today there is simply nothing at a lower TCO, that actually, if you want to do basic backup, the more importantly use that to do this massive analytics. Now you're talking about data warehouse, data lakes, right? Because now there's something called data lakehouse. All of these are still silos. All of these are people trying to take some data from somewhere, put it into another new construct and have it be controlled by somebody else. This is autosync, it's just, you just move the silos from someplace to another place, and sort of creating a pipeline. If you want to really create a pipeline, object storage has been an integral part of that pipeline, not a separate bucket by itself. And that's what we did. And same thing with databases. You know, most business, most of the critical business runs on databases, and the ability to find a way to leverage those and move them around, leverage in terms of whichever format the database is accessed, whichever location it's accessed, doesn't matter how big it is. Lots of work has gone into trying to figure that one out. And we had some very, very good partners in some of our largest customers who helped take the journey with us. Pretty much all of the global 2000 accounts you see across the board, were an integral part of our process. >> You know, you mentioned the word journey and it triggered a thought, your discussion with Ravi, the CIO of Seagate, who's a customer of yours. And what he said, I liked what he said, he, of course he used the term journey, we all do. But he said, "You know what? I kind of don't like that term because I want to inject a sense of urgency," essentially what he was saying, "I want speed." You know, journey's like, "Okay, kids get in the car, we're going to drive across country. We're going to make some stops." And so while there's a journey, he also was really trying to push the organization hard. And he talked about culture as some of the most difficult things. Like many CIOs said, "No, the technology is almost the easy part. It's true when it works." >> That's true. >> I thought that was a great discussion that you had. What were your, some of your takeaways? >> I think Ravi's a very astute IT executive who's been around the block for so long. And one of the fascinating things, when I asked him this question about, "Hey, what's the biggest challenge, we've just gone through this a couple of times, what is the biggest challenge?" Taking an organization as venerable, as well known as Seagate is, I mean, this is a data company. This is at the heart of half the world's data is on Seagate stuff. How do you take this old company that's been around for long, in the middle of Silicon Valley, and make it into a fast growing transformation company that's responding to the newer challenges? And I thought he was going to come back with, "Well, you know, I got to go through these pieces, I pick this technology that technology," and surely that's exactly what I expected he would end up with. He goes "It has nothing to do with technology." In this day and age, when you can have an Elon Musk can send a car to Mars, there's not many technologies that we can't really solve. Maybe COVID-19 is the next frontier we got to go solve. But frankly, he hit upon the one thing that matters to every company. It is the fundamental culture to create a bias to action. It's a fundamental culture where you have to come back and have a deliverable that moves the ball forward every day, every month, every quarter, as opposed to have this series of, like you said, a journey that says, and we all know this, right? People talk about, "Oh, we're going to do this in phase one, we're going to do this in phase two and do this in phase three," nothing ever happens in phase three. Nobody gets around to phase three. So I think he did a great job of saying, "I fundamentally had to go change the culture." That was my biggest takeaway. And this, I've heard this so many times, the most effective IT execs who've made the transformation, it actually shows in the people that they have. It's not the technology, it's the people. And his history is replete with organizations that have done remarkably well, not by leveraging the heck out of the technology, but truly by leveraging the change in the people's mindset. And of course that mindset leverages technology where appropriate, but Ravi is a insightful person, always such a delight to talk to him, it's a delight for him to have chosen us as a foundational technology for him to go pull his data warehouses and completely transform how he's doing manufacturing across the globe. >> Yeah, I want to add some color to what you just said, because some key takeaways from what you just said, Ash, is, you know, you're right. When you look back at the history of the computer industry, there used to be very well known processes, but the technology was the big mystery and the big risk. And you think about with COVID, were it not for technology, we didn't know what was coming. We were inventing new processes literally every day, every week, every month. And so technology was pretty well understood, and enabled that. And when you think, when we talked earlier about putting data at the core, it was interesting to hear Ravi. He basically said, "Yeah, we had a big data team in the US, a big data team in Europe." We actually organized around silos. And so you guys played a role, you were very respectful about, you know, touting Actifio with him. You did ask him, you know, what role you play, but it was interesting to hear him talk about how he had to address that both culturally and of course, there's technology underneath to enable that unification of data, that silo busting, if you will. And you guys played a role in that. >> Yeah, well, I always enjoy conversation with the folks who have taken a problem, identified what needs to be done, and then just get it done. And that's more fascinating than, yeah, of course Actifio plays a small part in a lot of things, and we're proud to have played a small part in his big initiative. And that's true of the thousands of customers we talk about, but it's such a fascinating story to have leaders who come back and make this transformation happen and to understand how they went about making those decisions, how they identified where the problem was. These are so hard when we all see them in our own lives. We see there's a problem, but sometimes it takes a while to try to understand how do you identify them and what do you have to do? And more importantly, actually do it. And so whenever I get an opportunity with people like Ravi, I think understanding that, and if there's a way to help, we always make sure that we play our own small part and we're privileged to be a part of those kinds of journeys. >> I think what's interesting about Actifio and the company that you created is essentially that we're talking about the democratization of data, that whole data pipeline, that discussion that we had, the self service of that data to the lines of business, and, you know, you guys clearly play a role there. The multicloud discussion fits into that. I mean these are all trends that are tailwinds for companies that can help sort of flatten the data globe, if you will. Your final thoughts, Ash? >> Yeah, you said something that is so much at the heart of every IT exec that we are talking to. If data truly is the fundamental asset that I finally end up with as an organization, then democratization of data, where I do not lock this into another silo, another platform, another cloud, another application, has to be part of my foundation design. And therefore my ability to use each of these cloud platform for the services they provide while I am able to move the data to where I need it to be, that is so critical. So you almost start to think about the one position an organization now has. And we talked about this with a group of CIOs. There might be some pretty soon, not too far off, but if data is truly an asset, I might actually have a data market, just like you have a stock market, where I can start to sell my data, imagine a COVID-19, there's so many organizations that have so much data, and many of them have contributed to this research because this is an existential issue, but you can see this turning into a next level. So yes, we have got activists help move the data to one level higher where it's become a foundational construct for an organization. The next part is, can I actually turn this into an asset where I actually monetize some of this stuff? And it will be not too long when you and I could talk about how there's this new exchange and what's the rate of data for this company versus that company, and there'll be future trading options, who knows, it's going to be very interesting. >> Well, I think you're right on, this notion of a data marketplace is coming and it's not that far away. Well, Ash, it's always great to talk to you. I hope next year at Data Driven, we can be face to face, but I mean, look, this has been, we've dealt with it. It's actually created opportunities for us to kind of reinvent ourselves. So congratulations on the success that you've had and thank you for coming on theCUBE. >> No, thank you for hosting us and always a big fan of theCUBE. You guys, we've engaged with you since the early days, and it is fascinating to see how this company has grown. And it's probably many people don't even know how much you've grown behind the scenes and all the technologies and culture that you've created yourself. So it's hopefully one day we'll switch the table and then I'd be on the other side and ask you about transformation, digital transformation of CUBE itself. >> I'd love to do that, and thanks again, and thank you everybody for watching our continuous coverage of Actifio Data Driven. Keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. >> Ash: Thank you, Dave. (calm music)

>>from around the globe. It's the cue with digital coverage of active Eo data >>driven 2020 >>brought to you by activity. Okay, Ash, tell us what's in it for me as an attendee of active FiOS data driven day. What's what's in it for you at Data Driven is very, very simple. You have probably one of the most unique events that is completely customer driven. The presentations, the discussions, the shading of talks, the platforms, the topics. They're all decided by the costumers act. If he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to host this, provide a platform and there's a reason why recorded data doing we didn't call it active. Yo next or active, feel something else. It is truly about being able to share, learn, and you'll not hear a single presentation that talks about our road map. Our new lunch. We could have all the time talk about that at some point in future. But the ability to have this concentrated time you have some of the most notable industry executives talk about should listen. So what they have done to change their business things have done in terms of people technologies. Fascinating. I would not miss it. Oh, sure,

>>from around the globe. It's the cue with digital coverage of active EO data driven 2020. Brought to you by activity. We're back. This is the cubes coverage. Our ongoing coverage of active FiOS data driven. Of course, we've gone virtual this year. Ash. Ashutosh is here. He's the founder, president and CEO of Active Eo. Great to see you again. >>Likewise, They always always good to see you. >>We have We're in a little meet up, You and I in Boston. I always enjoy our conversations. Little did we know that, You know, a few months later, we would only be talking at this type of distance and, uh and of course, it's sad. I mean, a data driven is one of our favorite events is intimate, its customer content driven. The theme this year is you call it the next normal. Some people call it the new abnormal, the next normal. What's that all about? >>I think it's pretty pretty fascinating to see when we walked in in March, all of us were shocked by the effect of this pandemic. And for a while we all scrambled around trying to figure out How do you react to this one, and everybody reacted very differently. But most people have this tendency to think that this is going to be a pretty broom environment with lots of unknown variables, and it is important for us to try to figure out how to get a get our hands on this. By the time we came on. For six weeks into that, almost all of us have figured out this is Ah, this is not something you fight again. This is not something you wait, what, it to go away? But this is one. Did you figure out how to live in and you figured out how to work around it? And that, we believe, is the next long. It's not about trying to create a new abnormal. It's not about creating a new normal, but it's truly one that basically says that is it. That is a way, perhaps packed forward. There's a is a way to create this next normal, and you just figured out how to live with the environment, behalf and the normal outcomes of companies that have done remarkably well as a result of these actions. Fact. If you're being one of them, >>it's quite amazing isn't it? I mean, I've talked to a lot of tech companies, CEOs and their customers, and it's almost like they feel the first reaction was course they cared about their there, their employees and their broader families. Number one number two was many companies, as you know, saw a tailwind, and it initially didn't want to be seen as ambulance chasing. And then, of course, the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and they said, Okay, we can only control what we can control and tech companies in particular just exceedingly Well, I don't think anybody really predicted that early >>on. Yeah, I, um I think of the heart, We're all human beings, and the first reaction was to take it off. Four constituencies, right? One. Take care of your family. Take it off your community, take care of your employees, take care of your customers. And that was the hardest part. The first 4 to 6 weeks was to figure out How do you do each of those four. Once you figured that part out or you figured out ways to get around to making sure you can take it off those you really found the next mom, you really start forgetting our out of continue to innovate Could, you know to support each of those four constituencies and people have done different things. I know it's amazing how, um, Cuba continues to operate As far as a user is concerned, they're all watching anymore. Yes, we don't have the wonderful desk, and we all get to chat and look in the eye. But the content of the messages asked powerful as what it waas a few months ago. So I'm sure this is how we're all going to figure out how to make through this new next normal >>and digital transformation kind of went from from push to pull. I mean, every conference you go to, they say, Well, look at uber, you know, look at Airbnb and it put up the examples you have to do this to, and then all of sudden the industry dragged you along. Some Curis esta is toe. How and and I guess the other point there is digital means data. We've said that many, many times. If you didn't have a digital strategy during the height of the lock down, you couldn't transact business and still many restaurants is still trying to figure this out, But so how did it affect you and your customers? >>Yeah, it's very interesting. And I we spend a lot of time with several of our customers were managing some of the largest I T organizations. We talk about very interesting phenomena that happened some better beginning of this year. About 20 years ago, we used to worry about this thing called the Digital Divide, those who have access the network and Internet and those who don't. And now there is this beta divide, the divide between organizations that know how to leverage, exploit and absolutely excellent the business using data and those adorable. I think we're seeing this effect so very clearly among organizations that unable to come back and address some of this stuff. And it's fascinating. Yes, we all have the examples off the lights off. People are doing delivery. People are doing retailing, but there are so many little things you're seeing organizations. And just the other day, he had a video from Century Days Is Central Data System, which is helping accelerate Cohen 19 research because it will get copies of the data faster than they would get access to data so that these are just much, much faster. Sometimes you know, several days to a few minutes. It's that that level of effect, it's not just down to some seven. You know, you almost think of it as nice to have, but it's must have life threatening stuff. Essential stuff or just addressing. Korea was running a very pretty in a wonderful article about this supercomputer in That's Doing an Aristo covert 19 and how it's figured out most of these symptoms they're able to figure out by just crunching a ton of data. And almost every one of those symptoms that the computer has predicted Supercomputer is predicted has being accurate. It's about data. It is absolutely about data, which is why I think this is a phenomenal time for companies. Toe Absolutely go change. Make this information about data exploration, data leverage, exploitation. And there's a ton of it all over all around us. >>Yeah, and and part of that digital transformation, the mandate is to really put data at the core. I mean, we've we've certainly seen this with the top market cap companies. They've got dated at the core, and and now, as they say it's it's become a A mandate. And, you know, there's been several things that we've clearly noticed. I mean, you saw the work from home required laptops and, you know, endpoint security and things of that. VD. I made a comeback, and certainly Cloud was there. But I've been struck by the reality of multi Cloud. I was kind of a multi cloud skeptic early on. >>Yeah, >>I said many times I thought it was more of a symptom than it was a strategy, but it's that's completely flipped. Ah, recently in r e t r surveys, we saw multi cloud popping up all over the place. I wonder what you're seeing when you talk to your customers and other CEOs. >>Yeah, So fascinating, though really is the first flower part of sometime in 2018. End of 2018 >>Go right, Yeah, >>the act if you'll go on world, which is a phenomenal way to completely change the way you think about the using object storage in the flower for two years that we saw about 20% of our business. By the end of two years, the beginning of this year, 20% of our business was built on never it in the cloud since March. So that was end of our almost ended the Q one. So now we just limit left you three in six months. We added 12 more percent of the business literally weeded in six months. What we did not do before for 18 months before that, right? Significantly more than what we did for a year and a half before that. And there are really three reasons and we see this old nor again, we have a large customer. We closed in January. Ironically, were deploying out of UK, a very large marketing organization. Got everything deployed, running the they're back up and beyond and a separate data center. And they had a practical problem of not being able to access the second sight literally in the middle of deployment. Mystere that customer, Did you see me Google Cloud? Because they were simply no way for them to continue protecting their data, being able to develop new applications with that data that simply had no access. So there was. This was the number one reason the inability for already physically access, but put their their employees at rest and have before the plow would be the infrastructure. That's number one, so that first of all, drove the reason for the cloud. And then there's a second reason there are practical reasons. And why some clerk platforms that good one working the other ones are not. So where, uh, some other more fuels. And so if I'm an organization that has that spans everything, I've got no power PC and X 86 machine A vm I got container platforms. I got Oracle. They got a C P. There is no single cloud platform that supports all my work loaders efficiently. It's available in all the agents I want. So inevitably I have to go at our different about barefoot. So that's a second practical visa. And then there's a strategic reason. No, when no customer what's really locked into anyone card back at least two. You're gonna go pear more likely? Three. So those are the reasons. And then, interestingly enough, have you were on a panel with as global Cee Io's and in addition to just the usual cloud providers of you all know and love inside the U. S. Across the world, in Europe, in Asia, there's a rise off the regional flower fire. See you take all this factor. So have you got absolute physical necessity? You got practical constraints of what can the club provided support the strategic reasons on why either Because I don't want to be locked into a part for better or because there is a rise off data nationalism that's going on, that people want to keep their data within the country bombs all of these reasons. But the foundations or why multiplier is almost becoming a de facto. It's impossible. What a decent size organization to assume. They were just different on one car ready. >>The big trend we're seeing, I wonder if you could comment. Is this this notion of the data life cycle of the data pipeline? It's a very complex situation for a lot of organizations, their data siloed. We hear that a lot. They have data scientists, data engineers, developers, data quality engineers, just a lot of different constituencies and lines of business. And it's kind of a mess. And so what they're trying to do is bring that together. So they've done that data. Scientists complain they spend all their time wrangling data, but but ultimately the ones that are succeeding to putting data at the core is, we've just been discussing are seeing amazing outcomes by being able to have a single version of the truth, have confidence in that data, create self serve for their for their lines of business and actually reduce the end and cycle times. It's driving your major monetization, whether that's cost cutting or revenue. And I'm curious as to what you're seeing. You guys do a lot of work. Heavy work in Dev ops and hard core database those air key components of that data Lifecycle. Yeah, you're seeing in that regard regarding that data pipeline. >>Yeah, it's a It's a phenomenal point if you really want to go back and exploit data within an organization. If you really want to be a data driven organization, the very first thing you have to do is break down the silos. Ironically, every organization has all the data required to make the decisions they want to. They just can't either get to it or it's so hard to make the silos. That is just not what trying to make it happen. And 10 years ago we set out on this mission rather than keep this individual silos of data. Why don't we flip it open and making it a pipeline, which looks like a data cloud where essentially anybody who's consuming it has access to it based on the governance rules based on the security rules that the operations people have said and based on the kind of format they want to see data. Not everyone even want to see the data in a database. Former, maybe you want the database for my convert CSP for my before you don't analytics And this idea of making data, the new infrastructure, this idea of having the operations people provide this new layer for data, it's finally come to roost. I mean, it's it's fascinating. I was the numbers last quarter. We just finished up. You do now. 45% of our customer base is uses activity or for reuse is the back of data for things that excellent. The business things that make the business move faster, more productive or you will survive. That was the mission. That was what we set out to do 10 years ago. We were talking to an analyst this morning, and now this is question off. You know, it looks like there's a team of backup data being reused, said Yeah, that's kind of what we've been saying for 10 years. Backup cannot be an insurance back up in order to your destination. It has to be something that you could use as an asset and that I think it's finally coming to the point with you can use back up a single source of truth only if you designed it right from the beginning. For that purpose, you cannot just lots of lots of ways to fake it. Make it try to pretend like you're doing it. But that was a trooper was off making date of the new infrastructure, making it a cloud, making it something that is truly an ask. And it's fascinating to see our businesses. You take any of our larger counts and the way they've gone about transforming not just basic backup. India. Yes, we are the world's glasses back up in most Kayla will be our solution. That's that's a starting point. But do we will be used after Devil applications 8, 10 times faster? Ron Analytics, 100 ex pastor. The more data you have, the more people who use data you have, the better this return makeups. >>You know, that is interesting to hear you talk about that because that has been the holy Grail of backup. Was toe go beyond insurance to actually create business value. And you're actually seeing some underlying trends We talked about that data pipeline in one of the areas that is the most interesting is in database, which was so boring for so many years. Ah, and you're seeing new workloads emerge. Take the data warehouse beyond your reporting. Never really lived up to its Ah, it's promise of 360 degree view. You mentioned analytics. That's really starting toe happen. Ah, and it's all about data John, for Used to say that your data is that is the new development kit. You call it the new infrastructure, and it's sort of the same same type of theme. So maybe some of the trends you're seeing in ah in database enoughto talk about that for a little bit and then pick your brains and some other tech like object storage is another one that we've really seen takeoff? >>Yeah. So I think our journey with object story began in 16 4017 as we started or Doctor Cloud platform in response to the user requirements, Uh, we did more like most companies have done and unfortunately continue to do to take the in print product. And then it's smooth under the cloud. And one of the things we saw was there was a fundamental difference off how the design points of flower engineering is all about what they're designed it for object story, that one of those one of those primitives fundamental stories, primitives that the cloud providers actually produced that we know really exploited. There was. It was used as a graveyard for data. It's a replacement for me, please, where data goes to die. And then we look at it really closely and say, Well, this is actually a massively scalable, very low cost storage, but it has some problems. It has an interface that you cannot use with traditional servers. Uh, it has some issues around not being able to read, modify right the data. So it feels like a consuming a lot of stories. So we're going to solve those problems because a good two years to come back with something on world that fundamentally creeds objects the lady like this massive use capable high performer disk? Yes, except it is ridiculously low cost and optimize the capacity. So this finger on world that patented has really become the foundation of how everything in our works without using CPU Ray, that is simply nothing at a lower PCO that if you wanted to basic backup, the, uh, more importantly, use that to do this a massive analytics and you don't know more data warehouse data leaks. It is not a good deal of Lake House aladi. All of these are still silent. All of these are people trying to take some data from somewhere put into one of the new construct and have it being controlled by somebody else. This is artist thing. It's just you just move the silos from some place to another place instead of creating a pipeline. If you want to really create a pipeline object story has been integral part of the pipeline, not a separate bucket by itself. And that's what we did. And same thing with databases, you know, most business, most of the critical business and I was on a daily basis, and the ability to find a way to leverage those. Move them on our leverage in terms of whichever format databases access. Which location or Saxes doesn't know how big it is. Lots of work has gone into trying to figure figure that one out. And we we had some very, very good partners in some of the largest customers who help take the journey with us. I'm pretty much all of the global 2000 accounts you see across the board, but an integral part of a process. >>You mentioned the word journey and triggered a thought. Is your discussion with Robbie, the CEO of of Seeing >>A. It was a customer years. >>Ah, and what he said. I liked what he said. He course he used the term journey. We all do. But he said, You know what? I kind of don't like that term because I want to inject the sense of urgency essentially what he was saying. I want speed, you know, journeys like Okay, kids get in the car, were in a drive across country. We're gonna make some stops. And so, while there's a journey, he also was was really trying to push the organization hard and he talked about culture. Ah, as some of the most difficult things and it goes like many. See, I said, Now the technology is almost the easy part. It's true when it works. Oh, I thought that was a great discussion that you had. What were some of your takeaways >>with thinking? Robbie's is very astute. Ah, I t executive was being around the block for so long and one of the fascinating things, but a asking this question about what's the biggest challenge was just gone through this a couple of times. What is the biggest challenge? Taking an organization as vulnerable as well known A C gate is. I mean, this is a data company. This is This is the heart of the Oliver Half the world's data is on seeing stuff. How are you today was, or company has been around for long in the middle of Silicon Valley and make it into ah into a fast growing transformation company that's responding to the newer challenges. And I thought he was going to come back with Well, you know, I gotta go to the abuses. I picked this technology that techno in. Surely that is exactly what I expected he would end up with. There's nothing through technology in this day and age when you can have an Elon Musk and send a card of Mars. It's not many technologies that we can really solve many covered 19 ism. Next one Do we gotta go solve? Well, frankly, he kid upon the one thing that matters to every company. It is the fundamental culture to create a biased of action. It's a fundamental culture where you have to come back and have a deliverable that moves the ball forward every day, every month, every quarter, as opposed to have this CDs off. Like you said, a journey that say's and we all know this right? People talk about, we're going to do this in face one. We're gonna do this and face to and good food release and face three nothing and what happens Invasive. Nobody gets a number feast. I think he did a great job of saying I fundamentally had to go change the culture that was my biggest take away, and this I've heard this so many times the most effective I D execs wait a transformation. It actually shows in the people that they have. It's not the technology, it's the people. And some. This history is replete with organizations that have done remarkably well, not by leveraging the heck out of the technology, but truly by leveraging the change in the people's mindset. And, of course, that at that point that leverages technology where a proper here. But Robbie's a insightful person, always such a They lied to talk them, said they like for him to have chosen us as a its information technology for him to go pull his data warehouses and completely transformed how I was doing manufacturing across the globe. >>You know, I want to have some color of what you just said because some key keep takeaways that from what you just said, ashes is You know, you're right when you look back at the history of the computer industry used to be very well known processes, but the technology was the big mystery and the and the big risk and you think about with Cove it were it not for Technology Way didn't know what was coming. We were inventing new processes literally every day, every week, every month. It's so technology was pretty well understood. It and enabled that. And when you when you think when we talked earlier about putting data at the core, it was interesting to hear Robbie. He basically said, Yeah, we had a big data team in the U. S. A big tainted TV in Europe. We actually organized around silos and and so you guys played a role you were very respectful about, you know, touting active video with him. You did ask him, You know what role you play, But it is interesting to hear and talk about how he had to address that both culturally. And of course, there's technology underneath to enable that unification of data that silo busting, if you will. And you guys played a role in that. >>Yeah, I always enjoy, um, conversation with folks who have taken a problem, identified what needs to be done and then just get it done. And its That's more fascinating than you. Of course, I video plays a small part in a lot of things, and we're proud to have played a small part in his big initiative, and that's true of know the thousands of customers we talk about. But it's such a fascinating story to have leaders who come back and make this transformation happen, and to understand how they went about making those decisions, how they identified where the problem with these are so hard. We all see them in our own life, right? We see there is a there's a problem, but sometimes it takes a wider don't understand. How do you identify them and what do you have to do and more importantly, actually do it? And so whenever use, whenever I get an opportunity with people like Robbie, I think understanding that there's a way to help, uh, we always make sure that we play our own small part, and we're privileged to be a part of those kinds of journeys. >>Well, I think what's interesting about activity on the company that you created is essentially that. We're talking about the democratisation of data, that whole data pipeline, that discussion, that we had the self service of that data to the lines of business and, you know, you guys clearly play a role there. The multi cloud discussion fits into that. I mean that these air all trends that are tail winds for companies that can that can help sort of you know, flattened the data globe. If you if you will, your final thoughts. >>Yeah, I know you said something that is so much at the heart of every idea Exactly that you're talking to, if they truly is. The fundamental asset that I finally end up with is an organization. The democratization of data. Where I do not lock this into another silo, another platform, another ploughed. Another application has to be part of my foundation design and therefore my ability to use each of this cloud platform for the services they provide. While I and they were to move the data to where I needed to be. That is so critical. So you almost start to think about the one possession and organization now has. And we talked about this with a group of CEOs. They might be some pretty soon. Not too far off, but data stolen asset. I might actually have our data mark data market, just like you. I was stopped working, but I can start to sell my data. You know, imagine a coup in 19. There's so many organization that have so much data, and many of them have contributed to this research because this is an existence of issue. But you can see this turning into a next level. So, yes, we've got activities, will move the data toe one level higher where it's become a foundation construct for the organization. The next part is gonna actually done. This is the one asset would actually monetize someone stuff. And it will be not too long when you need to talk about how there's this new exchange and what's the rate of data for this company? Was, is that company in the future trading options? Who knows is gonna be really interesting. >>Well, I think you're right on this notion of a data. Marketplaces is coming, and it's not not that far away, Blash. It's always great to talk to you. I hope next year a data driven weaken we could be face to face. But I mean, look, this has been we we've dealt with it. It's it's actually created opportunities for us toe to reinvent ourselves. So congratulations on the success that you've had and ah, and thank you for coming on the Cube. >>No, thank you for hosting us and always a big fan off Cube. You guys, you engage with you since early days, and it is fascinating to see how this company has grown. And it's probably many people don't even know how much you've grown behind the seats, technologies and culture that you created yourself. So it's hopefully one day we'll strict the table that I would be another side and asking of our transformation. Digital transformation of Cuban cell >>I would love to. I'd love to do that index again. And thank you, everybody for watching our continuous coverage of active fio data driven keeper Right there. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. >>Thank you.

>> 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)