>> Announcer: Live, from Washington, DC, it's theCUBE. Covering .cof2017. Brought to you by Splunk. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome back to the nation's capital, theCUBE coming to you here from the Walter Washington Convention Center at .conf2017, Splunk's annual get-together, along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls. Good to have you with us here on theCUBE and how's your flying experience these days here in the States? Baggage, security, you happy? Well we're going to make you a little less... (laughs) Dubai Airports has just an exceptional network of operations that are going on right now, from soup to nuts and Michael Ibbitson is the VP of Technology and Infrastructure at Dubai. He joins us now here on theCUBE, and Michael, first off, glad to have you here in the States. >> Thank you. Good to be here. >> Good to see you, sir. You ran through on the key note stage a litany of checks that we all go through here in the States of, yes we'd love... better security, better baggage, even the golden bathroom, which I can't wait to hear about. But tell me about your focus with technology and Dubai, and what you're bringing to the job and how you're trying to revolutionize the travel experience. >> Yeah so, in Dubai we're really, really pushing the envelope in terms of volume, numbers of people going through the airport, but also we want to make it the best passenger experience we possibly can. We're already the biggest international airport in the world, going to be doing nearly 90 million passengers this year, growing to 100 million by the end of the decade, but we want to drive experience as well. And the airport is constrained, so we've got a limited site, so we now have to figure out how to do it to greater efficiency, automation, making the passenger experience better. You can get much better throughput in an airport if you take out all the queues. So that's a better experience. So you get both at the same time. >> Well, tell us about the security lines then, because Dave and I both relate to this here in the States. Sometimes they can be tedious to work through. So how are you addressing that through technology. >> Well, through lots of different ways. I mean, we put sensors all over the airport for lots of different things, and one of the key areas we've done it is in security. So we have some sensors that measure the queue length for us, which is really important. It allows us to understand what's happening now, in real time, deploy additional staff to support that, but also predicts what's happening over the next few hours, so we can be ready for whatever's coming next. On top of that, we then take data out of the lane itself, in real time, so we can see how many people are passing through, how many alarms they're setting off, and then we can use that data over time to understand the behavior of passengers. Certain destinations drive more security alarms, so we can now understand that and then try and pre-inform those passengers about what to do so everybody gets through faster. >> So kind of, like a way, is in reverse for the security line. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Love it, that's great. >> So, you mentioned the golden bathroom, I got to ask you-- (laughter) We saw some data that only 10 percent of the people admit that they don't wash their hands when they leave the bathroom, but your data suggests its 25 percent of the people do not. I wonder if part of that reason is the reason that I often get frustrated is, when you put your hands underneath, nothing comes out. (laughter) >> John: You're waving underneath, right? >> In modern Dubai, airport bathrooms must actually give me water when I ask for it, is that right? >> Yeah, well, we like to think we've got pretty efficiently working bathrooms, that's for sure, but I think the challenge with the bathroom one, we wanted to understand how to make bathrooms cleaner and a nicer environment for everybody, and when you're doing 90 million passengers a year, that's a lot of people going to the bathroom. We put sensors all over the bathrooms, not CCTV, want to make sure that's clear. It's all like presence sensors, door lock sensors, when the faucets are on or off, people stood at basins, and that's just given us so much insight into how people actually use the bathroom. So we know that at peak hours, the number are quite low in terms of people who wash their hands after using the bathroom, but off-peak when it's quiet, the number goes right up to 100 percent. So, we think we've got some work to do on capacity, and understanding how people use the bathroom, and also maybe on the cleanliness. Maybe people are leaving because it's the lesser of two evils. Do I wash my hands, which doesn't look like a nice environment to wash my hands, or do I just walk out? >> So, some of the stats. 90 million passengers a year go through your airport and that'll be 100 million, over 100 million by 2020, is that right? >> Michael: On the current growth, yeah. >> And then 150 million bags, you handle, each year. >> Michael: That's correct. >> So there's a lot of data that you're collecting. So hence we're here at .conf. How do you use Splunk to sort of manage all this data? >> So we have two Splunk instances. We have one that does all of our IT stuff, and then we have one that's focused on all the business services, operations, if you like. And it's the business one that is kind of the most interesting because it drives the most debate and discussions about the future, and how we should plan the airport, and how we should drive performance. We have about four and a half billion data points in our Splunk, in our business Splunk instance, and it grows by somewhere around 12 to 14 million data points a day. Just baggage alone, every bag generates about 200 data points. Now, people don't probably think that from the outside, when you put the bag in, you drop the bag at the check-in desk and then you don't see it again til you to the other end, but there's so many check points that it passes, security screening that it goes through. It gets transferred in terms of jurisdiction between airline, airport, ground handler, and then it gets loaded onto the aircraft. All of these things, we create data points for all of those. So we can track it through your whole journey. I think these are fantastic opportunities for us to start thinking about how we might share that data the consumer in the future. We'd like to get to a point where your bag journey is just as well-informed as your own journey. >> Yeah, so, a little bit more on that then, I mean, just in terms of what your real life experience, what you hope it will be, in terms of your baggage, You were talking about taking down baggage arrival to a matter of seconds? >> Yeah so, you as a passenger, you arrive at the airport. You've got a process to go through before you're going to get reunited with your baggage, and that might be 10 minutes or 30 minutes, depending on the size and the nature of the airport that you arrive at. But as we know now, based on the data we have in Splunk, and we've been analyzing this data over the last four or five months, we know exactly how long it takes to get a bag from any aircraft stand to any point where you pick it up. And we can average that over a serious period of time. So if we can do that historically, we can start to predict that into the future. Based on the current conditions of the airport, we should be able to give you and exact time that your bag's going to arrive on that carousel. Maybe it will be down to a few seconds, maybe it'll be in the next 30 seconds your bag will arrive, type of message, but we want to give you that message to your phone. >> Think how nice that would be, Dave, if you're waiting at the baggage carousel, with another 150 of your best friends, and everybody's crowding around, watching for their bag to come out, but you know your bags about to come out in 20 seconds. >> Well, I always say it's one of my pet peeves everybody crowds around, and you can't see. Take three steps back and we'll all be better off. I wanted to ask you Michael, though, as a consumer of airline products and services, there seems to be a difference between the airport and the airline in terms of their data. You have a lot of data, the airlines obviously have a lot of data. Of course, they're competitive with each other. What kind of collaboration do you have with the airline, what kind of data do you share? >> So, I mean it really depends on the nature of your airport. Are you a hub for a big carrier, or do you have lots of small airlines all operating there, to how you might go about doing that. In both the airports that I've worked at recently, we've run projects to integrate the airline data into our systems. Cause we're just so much more well informed about what's happening and what's going to happen in the future when we do that. We spent the last couple of years working with Emirates, who's our biggest airline, to integrate their data, but we also have FlyDubai, who've got a huge flying program with us as well, and integrate their data so that we can start to combine the two data sets. And we do that within Splunk, so we know what's going on. The baggage data that I talked about, the 200 data points, I mean that comes from three different entities in reality. It's the airline at check-in, and the passengers data about their booking and everything else, the baggage system itself, and the security process it goes through, which is our data, and then the ground handler, which again is another set of data, because that bag then onto the aircraft, and inform the airline of where it is. And then that all gets combined back again at the point where you board the aircraft to make sure that that passenger and the bag are all on the same flight. So we've been pulling all that data into our systems and then sharing that back across the teams, to provide people with a lot more insight. So the airline wants to know the bags are going through successfully, the ground handler wants to know how many more they've got to come. So by sharing that data through a platform like Splunk, we're hopefully making a lot of breakthroughs. >> I think that's huge, because the mobile app is a game changer for an airline passenger. But the diversity of mobile apps, and the quality of the mobile apps is the function of the data model that each airline and their back-end processes, and you can tell some of the airlines that have sort of antiquated back-end processes, and those that don't have as much baggage, right? No pun intended. And so, my question is, with tools like Splunk and some innovation on your end, are you able to sort of unify those disparities? >> Yeah, and you've also got to remember something about the passenger, right? No passenger comes to an airport for an airport tour. They're coming because their going to fly somewhere, right? (laughs) And this is important. So they book a ticket to an airline, we might be able to integrate that data from all these different organizations at the airport, but who are you as the passenger really going to get that information from at the last moment? Probably from the airline because you're going to use their app, because you bought your ticket through it, and you're going to check in through it, and you maybe have a car service booked through it. So we would rather... we could be the combiner of that data, but then pass it back to the airline to display to you as the passenger, cause that makes more sense. But what's important for the passenger is that data is consistent at every point in the journey, whether you find it out from the airport, or whether you find it out from the airline, you want it to be the same. You don't want conflicting information. So that's what we can do by deciding to join these things together, but make sure that the consumer interface is the right one for the right time. Now that wouldn't work for us with Emirates because they're so huge and they have so many passengers for us, but for some of the smaller airlines, like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, you know they have two, three flights a day with us, it might make more sense for their passengers to use our app in that situation. So it really depends who you are and what you're flying for, but we see that there's opportunity across that space, but what would be important is that every app tells the same story and has the same data >> John: It's like uniformity, right? >> Yeah, because that gives you so much confidence as a customer if that flight screen changes at the same time that your app pushes a notification to you, and it's exactly the same data, that's a huge amount of confidence that this is all really accurate and timely, and then you get to make decisions off that. >> I was struck by the comment that you guys are out of space and I think the way you phrase it is the city grew up around the airport. You'd think Dubai, I have not been, but you'd think Dubai, planning ahead, has lots of resources, but they're subject to the whims of metropolitan growth. Your challenge then is to use efficiency to squeeze more out of that fixed space. What are you doing in that regard? I mean that's a major CIO challenge. How do you deal with that? >> Yeah, I have to admit, that was the challenge that attracted me to the role, like how do you take this airport... when I joined it was about 78 million, couple of years back, and now pushing 90, pushing 100 by the end of the decade. That was the challenge for me, and that was the focus of the CEO, he said the only way we're going to grow this business is to figure out how to do more people, or more planes, through the same space. And that's really exciting, and the only way to do that is looking cutting out the waste wherever you can. Redefining the processes in areas, and removing all of the queues and all of the bottlenecks in the airport, whether that be in the airspace, on the airfield, in the terminal buildings for the passengers, in the baggage area for the bags. You've got to remove all those bottlenecks and I think, as a passenger, queuing up just wastes time and space. If we can make sure nobody ever queues, then everybody will get through the airport faster, which means we can do more people. We can take more people through the airport. So that's really the focus, and we have an internal project that we call queue-busting and it's literally just about busting the queues, busting the lines, as you call them here, and getting rid of them, because they're the thing that creates the capacity constraint-- >> Yeah, you talk about all these sensors you have around the airport, you talk about all the data that you're gathering, billions and billions of data points, so what don't you know that wish you did, or that you hope you can, relatively soon? >> I mean one of the things, so we know, like, the queuing time, all the major touch points, and that's been fantastic and we've, in our transfer security areas, in the last two years, we've lowered transfer security queuing from over eight minutes to an average of four minutes and 47 seconds, so we're really precise on this stuff now, it's great. But what we don't know is, the people's entire journey. So, we know that you queued in a certain place for four minutes, and you might queued up at check-in for maybe 10 minutes as well, but what we don't know is how long it took you to get between those points, which route you took, what's the most efficient, how to get you to spend more money in the airport because we... that's our business model, right? So that is where we need to learn a lot more, and I think there's a lot of work going on in that space, and we're doing some trials on some cool technology to figure out how to help you find your journey, make the most efficient overall journey through the airport, not just at the key check points. And obviously give you more time to enjoy the experience, we have shops and restaurants, we've got spas and swimming pools and hotels inside our airport, which we'd love for people to use more of, and I think we can do that if we can help them plan their journey better, so, I think there's still a lot of data out there. >> Well and, when you look at your strategic planning road map, how much runway do you have? I mean, you're using efficiency to utilize your space better, drive more revenue, customer satisfaction, avoiding the huge cutbacks of building another airport, which is not going to be as convenient. How much, again no pun intended, how much runway do you have in terms of that strategic plan? >> Well based on our current expectations, predictions that we have, we're looking at this site being able to do about 120 million, maybe we can squeeze a bit more out of it, >> Decade, plus? >> Yeah, I mean there's lots of exciting things we might have to do with the airfield to try and land more planes. We do about 65 flights an hour, off our two runways. We don't have the luxury of really wide-space runways, so we may have to come with some new ideas on that front. But about 120 million we think, which would be easily the biggest airport in the world. It's helped by the enormous fleet of A380s that Emirates uses. Of course we get a lot more passengers for every flight. But that's probably about as far as we can go. But the airport was designed for 90 to 95 million, so we're already going to bust that by about 30 million. So yeah, hopefully we can extract that, and then you never know what we might be able to do. >> Great, great story. >> Hopefully go further. >> Well it's fascinating, it really was. Great job on the key note stage today and certainly wish you continued success down the road here, I think we've run out of puns. (laughter) So, I'll leave it at that, but safe travels, if you will, home, and thanks for being with us here on theCUBE. >> Michael: Thanks very much. >> Michael Ibbitson from Dubai airports. Back with more from theCUBE here in just a bit. Washington, DC coming to you live. Back with more in a bit. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners! (electronic music) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and my co-host John Troyer, you're watching SiliconANGLES' production of theCUBE here at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas. Happy to welcome to the program two first-time guests, but from a company we've talked to many times. Rex Backman and Rob Young, both with Red Hat. Rex is the senior principal marketing manager and Rob is the senior manager of Red Hat product management, gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us, we're happy to be here! >> So sorry, tripping over, sometimes, titles and things like that, just like acronyms go out there, sometimes. So you know, I go back, I started working with Red Hat before Red Hat Advanced Server came out, which became Red Hat Enterprise Server, then, when we talk about virtualization, it used to be RHEV, R-H-E-V, and now it's RHV! >> Yup, making it simpler! >> Sometimes the people stay in the same place and, you know, the badges change, other times things change a lot. So why don't we start with Rob, tell us a bit about how long you've been at Red Hat, your role there? >> So I've been with Red Hat now for two years, almost to the date. I come from an open source pedigree, so I worked with companies like MySQL, MongoDB, to develop not only the open source model but a community around those products, and a commercialized version that people trust in running their data centers. >> Alright, and Rex, yourself? >> I'm fairly new to Red Hat, joined about three months ago. Virtualization background, really, from the world of Microsoft. So happy to be at Red Hat, we've got a strong offering with RHEV, and we just want to help get people more educated on it and the opportunities we have to help solve their problems. >> Alright, it's always an interesting dynamic. You talk, you know, virtualization, we spent a decade, you know, VMware's ascendancy and the threat of Microsoft, you know, KVM and RHEV and everything were going to be there. There's a nice Red Hat booth on the show floor. Always, customers have had Linux sitting as guests in there and lots of those, I'm sure you probably have stats for me as to how much of that's been Red Hat over the years, but tell us about the relationship, you know, VMware, Red Hat, virtualization? >> So we see the relationship with VMware and other, you know, companies and partners within our ecosystem as very positive. If you look at the workloads that are running on VMware primarily, a lot of those are Red Hat Enterprise Linux, applications that are running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so we see it as a very positive relationship. And moving ahead, we see a challenge in maintaining a virtualization footprint within VMware, within the market, because of the evolution of the market. And we see that virtualization is becoming more of a commodity-based feature and the challenges that it poses to partners like VMware, going forward, to evolve along with that model in the market. >> Well, if virtualization is a commodity, and it's becoming a commodity, what's the Red Hat approach with KVM et al in terms of, it is, parts of it are commodity, but certainly, the stack and the system it plugs into is not. >> Yeah. >> I would say, it's also very foundational. Virtualization is everywhere, and I think the value that Red Hat brings to it is, you know, the capabilities we have in our team, the capabilities we derive from the open source model. And then virtualization with RHEV, bundled in with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it's foundational. And then if you bring in other aspects of the Red Hat stack, around manageability, cloud, things of that nature, I think we have a strong offering, a good offering that people can choose from. And I think that's really important for us, is our customers have choice. And us, we differentiate ourselves on the open source model, primarily. >> Rob, it keeps becoming a more and more complex world. We've been watching, for years, it was the pull of cloud against the data center, now we're even seeing Edge pulling at the cloud. But let's go back to the data center. What's Red Hat's viewpoints, what are you hearing from customers, what do they need in the data center, and how are they viewing that these days? >> So what we see in the modern data center, one, the workloads that we see around Mode One applications or Legacy applications, that footprint is not going away. It's going to continue to have a bare metal footprint as well as a virtualized and private cloud. So what we're doing, and what our customers are asking us for, is a transition from pure virtualization or bare metal to virtualization to hybrid cloud. And what we're doing now, with our engineering efforts, not only upstream but also from a proprietary and configuration standpoint, all open source by the way, is we are giving customers the option to standardize on that virtualization platform built on KVM that shares components with hybrid cloud technologies from Mode Two. So what we see, from our customers, is that they're maintaining a Mode One, but buying and planning for Mode Two. And that's how we see the on-premise data center market heading at this point. >> Okay, I'd like you to unpack that for our audience. Because, big discussion this week is, public cloud, yeah sure, it has virtualization, but it's not VMware. So now we've got this one option, VMware and AWS starting to roll out, are you saying that my data center can really be compatible with the public clouds and, you know, the Red Hat pieces on both sides, or is it native to what AWS and Google are doing? How does that dynamic work? >> So the way we're approaching it is, we look at it, not only as a software solution, but also as a paradigm shift in more openness, APIs, things are more generic. So if you want to plug into a common framework for management, as an example, or deployment, you can easily do that via the open APIs that are available in the open source community. So as an example, we provide a management solution called Cloud Forms. And with that platform, it's part of the Red Hat stack and solution, we allow customers to manage not only the virtualized environment but also, their hybrid or private clouds, but also AWS as well. So if they've got instances running on AWS, they can manage it through one pane of glass. And this is our strategy going forward, but it's not tomorrow, this is happening today with our Red Hat Stack platform. >> Rex, you've got a background in networking, networking front and center, and networking and security even more than ever, that I've seen at VMworld. How does that fit into Red Hat's whole story? >> You know, if you look at the world of virtualization, obviously, we've gone from the story of server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and those are the antes into the game now, and I think, Red Hat, with what we provide, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, obviously the foundation started with, you know, the knowledge that our R&D team brings from their open source background around RHEV and server virtualization. But also, now, network virtualization capabilities, and also, what Red Hat has around storage. So I think we cover those three antes into the game of virtualization, and then, you know, it adds to the equation Rob was talking about, which is the whole Red Hat Stack, which I think is a good story, and a choice for our customers. >> I think, actually, 2017 is actually a really interesting year for virtualization. We're at an interesting era, right? 10 years ago you had some market dominance, you're looking at Microsoft and VMware like we talked about, we had Zen and KVM came up, and they were a little scary for people, right? They were developing, they weren't as mature of a stack. I do think, now, that the average admin in an average, you know, IT estate, is actually dealing with the fact that, oh, I could actually manage multiple hypervisors, look at a mixed estate, it's not as scary anymore, the technology is more mature, more manageable. Can you talk a little bit about that scenario of a mixed estate? Like, if you have, part of your data center is running VMware, what kinds of use cases and what kinds of management scenarios would you, as you start to add Red Hat virtualization to the mix? >> So the dynamic that we see and play right now is, there's a huge install-base on VMware. And a lot of customers, a lot of clients, a lot of partners are looking at that relationship now and deciding if they should invest elsewhere in other solutions. So what we provide is the ability to manage those environments, the clients for hyper-V, for VMware, for Red Hat, all within one pane of glass. But it allows customers who want the choice to manage that heterogeneous environment built on multiple hypervisors, but it allows them to evaluate if, maybe, the Red Hat solution is better for them. And if we can help them with V to V migrations as well, workload migration, mobility, I think that's the perfect scenario for Red Hat, an open source company, and choice. >> And I think some of the customers, you know, public case studies that we've promoted, some of the attributes that they've been looking at that shifted them over towards the Red Had side was performance, you know, was very important. Scalability was very important. So I think, it depends, customer to customer. >> I was actually wondering about, so do we see re-platforming as people are re-architecting? Are these green field opportunities? I imagine, again, it's all across the board. But have you seen any particularly common patterns of people standing up, maybe a new business-critical app on a new platform, maybe they're re-architecting it to be a little bit more cloud-native, any particular directions like that? >> I think, some of the things I've seen recently is an enterprise IT organization has decided to go down an open source path for their world. And then that kind of is a strong point for us. Mountain Health is a company that there's some news on, from last week, is an example of that. British Airways is another customer like that. And, you know, as Rob said. It's large companies, big brands, down to commercial companies as well, or governments, or education. So I think it could be performance, it could be open source, open source is definitely one of the drivers though. >> Yeah, and what we're seeing there with open source is, the more trust is built in open source, the more enterprise adoption, and the cost-effectiveness of working with a development team that's worldwide, a QE team that's worldwide, really helps to build the stability of the products that companies like Red Hat build subscription models around. So there's no vendor lock-in, as well, for proprietary licensing models. And we find that many customers are very open to that discussion, as opposed to, you know, the alternatives. >> One of the other discussions we've been having at VMworld for the last couple years is this whole containers discussion. VM versus containers, is it containers inside VMs, Red Hat Summit, there was huge discussion, there was the super popular t-shirt, on one side it said, Linux is containers, and on the other side it said, Containers are Linux. So where do you see that discussion? What do you think about how VMware's been looking at things? There was a big announcement about VMware and, through the pivotal activity, kind of embracing Kubernetes, Red Hat's, I'm sure, saying, welcome to the party, right? (laughing) >> So there's an interesting dynamic with containers, because containers, Kubernetes, you know, you name the project, is purely an open source play. And if you look at the projects, the contributors, most of this is going to be built on an open source model. So proprietary software companies, like VMware, are going to be challenged to adapt and evolve how they develop, how they contribute, their presence within those communities. Now, Red Hat is uniquely positioned in that our model has been, for the last 25 years, that we're purely open source. Everything we do is out in the community. And it lends itself very naturally, not only the way we've done commercialization of Linux, but we're doing that now with containers as well. And if you look at the dynamic in the market, a lot of people believe that there's VM or containers, and this is really a symbiotic or complimentary relationship. 85% of the workloads for containers runs within a virtualized environment, and containers and virtualization fill gaps for each other that's just a natural complement, and just because Red Hat is already comfortable operating in the open source environment in this way, we think we're just in a very good position to lead in both areas. >> You mentioned open source commercialization. And Jim Whitehurst, the CO of Red Hat, has been on theCUBE, Stu and I talked with him at the last Open Stack Summit. I was super impressed by his insight and grasp into the economics of open source and how Red Hat has been able to build a model like that. Can you talk at all about data centers, or IT spend in general, and capex, opex, where it's going in a more open source driven world? Where do you put your money then? >> So do you want to answer? (laughs) >> I'll take a stab at it. >> Can you now invest your money, that's a little better. >> Yeah, I think it's really interesting. And I'm going to answer this question from the perspective of a three-month Red Hat employee, but with, you know, a lot of experience in the industry with proprietary companies, if you will. I think the value, the commercialization of what Red Hat has done, there's the upstream aspects of open source and the programs available there. And then there's the downstream commercialization of what Red Hat has done, which is wrapping the value of a Red Hat subscription around that open source project. And I think what we see in our customers in terms of budget spend, you know, more on the opex side than the capex side, in our case, is looking at that price point. Because some of our customers, well, many of our customers, if not all of our customers, there is a price sensitivity. I think a lot of our customers right now, maybe this might be a crazy thing to say, may not be as price-sensitive as they used to be. Now it's more about innovation, agility, speed to market. But still, the economics is important. And I think the value Red Hat provides and the uniqueness in the model that Jim and his crew cracked early on to start Red Hat, is the ability to provide that Red Hat subscription at value for open source, and, what we see is that, most of the time, in cases, it's an attractive price point and that's how we win customers. So I think, long-winded answer to your question is, I think there's a strong future. You see more and more companies adopting open source in their programs. I think Red Hat is the leader of that and in good shape! >> Rob, why don't you just give us the final word. Conversations you're having at the show, how are people here in the VMware community embracing, is it an open source discussion, is it the innovation, and kind of, the new features, what's bringing them by to talk to Red Hat? >> I think it's a mixture. So what we're seeing is a lot of interest in Red Hat Solutions, the Red Hat Stack. And I think customers are now looking at Red Hat as a good enough alternative to more pricey alternatives, or more pricey options. And if you look at what we've done from a strategic standpoint is, much like we've done with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are now using Enterprise Linux as a foundational support pillar, so to speak, for the Red Hat Stack. If you look at the APIs that we generated, a lot of the interest I'm getting, the question I'm getting not only from customers, but from folks out on the show floor, other vendors, is, what's your API look like? Can I learn more about it? And to me, that's the leading edge of a wave of, maybe that partner's looking a little more red (laughs) in the days to come. So, just, my opinion. >> Absolutely, I know John Troyer and I have been talking for a few years now, that API economy, something that's been coming into this world, and that intersection between what all the Linux admins have known for a long time as to their operational model matches a lot of what we're seeing in the cloud. So Rob Young, Rex Backman, really appreciate you joining us. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, we'll be back with lots more coverage here from VMworld 2017. You're watching theCUBE. (futuristic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partner. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Live from VMworld 2017 day one. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host, Dave Vellante. Very excited to be joined by our next guest. CUBE alumni, Peter McKay, President and co-CEO of Veeam. Welcome to theCUBE, welcome back. >> Great to be here, thanks Lisa. >> Good to see you again. >> Good to see you. Fellow Bostonian. >> Dave: Yeah, alright. Go Sox! >> Good to be here. >> Dave: It's not looking so good right now. >> Aah, and it only matters how it ends. >> That's true. Yep. Until October, it's not over 'til it's over. >> Peter: Not over until it's over. >> So, some good news. You guys were just named a leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant >> Peter: Yes, we were. >> for Backup and Recovery. What is next generation availability for, the enterprise has to always be on, 24/7? >> Yeah, you know it's a category. We call it availability. And now, kind of the market has adopted this availability label term. And it's really around any application, any file, any service. Access to your data at any time. So, it's always on. Always available. Seven by 24, 365. And more and more companies need to be always on. And so it's not, it used to be it's just about back up, back up, and you can back up a hundred times, but it's about the recovery. The time to actually get back up. And so, that's becoming a bigger driver for a lot of companies. They need to be always on. So, this category of availability is what we focus on. Everybody at Veeam, wakes up every morning thinking about how we can help our customers stay up and running and always on. Always available. >> From a buyer's perspective, are you seeing this elevated to the level of the C-Suite or are you still talking more with some of the guys and gals in IT or at lines of business? >> So, I would say, if you asked me two years ago, it was definitely IT-centric. More and more, as you start to see, British Airways, I mean, almost everyday you're seeing another outage. Major outage of a service or access to data or Australian Internal Revenue Service equivalent being down for days. It's starting to be a bigger issue and CIOs, CEOs. It's a major focus here, and not just for the cost of revenue, but also just the brand, associated with it being down. And with new buyers, these new millenniums and people always on access to devices. You know, if you have a shoddy service, they're going to go elsewhere. And so, more and more companies are focused on that being a differentiator for their business and that's why it's elevating up the C-Suite. >> I've personally been, sort of, getting more knowledge about Veeam in the past six or seven months. We had you guys on at HP Discover in London. And then of, course, we did Veeam On. You were at Pure Show. You were at the Nutanix show. >> Nutanix show Yeah. >> The HP in Vegas. And I just recently ... >> Peter: So, it's been more than four. >> Yeah. And I just recently presented to your alliance team back in Boston. So kind of getting the feel for what's going on here. >> You're going to be an expert at Veeam. >> I am starting to. So, one of the things I'm noticing is you guys are moving up market, getting into the enterprise. Talking a little more CIO, CXO language. So, I want to challenge you on something, Peter. And you've really brought in a lot of that new branding and messaging. A lot of people talk about digital transformation. And to us digital transformation is all about how well you leverage data. So, in your mind, is that a viable sort of definition, if you will? And how is Veeam helping its customers particularly upmarket leveraged data? >> Well, more and more companies are leveraging data on almost every aspect of their business. To drive new markets. To drive new products to market. And so the importance of data in this digital transformation, they call it the currency of digital transformation. The more that data is growing in its importance, the more the need for accessing that data and to have that data always available for you to make faster, quicker decisions is only growing. Not only is it the size of data, but it's the ability to access it at all times, in any location. On premise, off premise. Is becoming more and more because of the importance of data, right?. So the applications need to have access to it. Decisions. I mean, I look at our business. More and more of what I do everyday is off of data we're accumulating and how we drive our business. How people are buying. How we can market our products better. So if we're just an example of what we're seeing, not just in the enterprise, but in that medium sized business as well, where data is becoming a crucial differentiator. And one of the leading movements. The kind of drivers of digital transformation. >> I was going to ask, is that the underpinning of your enterprise portion? What you're saying is, not just the enterprise, it's the small businesses as well. >> Peter: Yeah. >> It really was just simplicity, which was the attractiveness to Veeam historically. >> Peter: Yeah. >> You're saying that's changing and it's becoming a data centricity. >> It is. I think as the importance of data. But it's not just the accumulation of data and the access of data, but it's also regulatory and security is also driving that, right? You need to, you know, with regulation, DDPR in Europe is becoming a bigger issue, right? And so, how are we managing that data? What are we doing? Are we in compliance or not with that data? Making sure that data is secure and you can back up, if there's ransomware. So, you look at a lot. As you accumulate this personal, identifiable information on people and your customers. The protecting of that data. The making sure that that's always available and you're in compliance. It's just growing in importance. Which has been a major driver for the growth of our business over the past couple years. >> Could you talk about that growth? What kind of metrics? You know you're a private company, but what kind of metrics can you share with us about recent growth, recent quarters? >> Yeah. So we're growing at about 35% year over year. So that's been kind of consistent over the past two, three years. We have 256,000 customers. We're adding about 4,000 customers a month. Small, medium and now, larger companies. The growth continues to drive. All of that is through our channel organization. Our alliance partners that we've continued to add. Steady, up and to the right has been our business. >> Well you've said, your stake in the ground is a billion, right? >> A billion. We're on track. Our goal is 800 this year. A billion next year. And 1.2, 1.5 in 2020. We're well on our way. >> So, speaking of partners, you were a VMware guy for a while? >> Peter: Yes, I was. >> We were talking about that. And you've been with Veeam for about a year or so? >> Peter: Year and a half. >> Tell us about, what was, the theme that we've had for the last couple of hours is that data protection, backup and recovery is a hot topic. It's something that you've probably seen evolve over time. Tell us about some of your thoughts on some of the announcements today that VMware has made regarding helping customers migrate to the cloud around data protection. What are some of the things that excite you about working with VMware? >> Well, I think most companies have a hybrid strategy in that medium. Definitely small is moving to either buying applications in the cloud or moving more off premise. That's in the S and B market. Anything above that, it's a hybrid story. There'll always be an on premise. There'll always be kind of a cloud component. And we're seeing a multi-cloud component. And so the announcement on VMware cloud on AWS is important. We're the only solution that is ready to go from a backup recovery. From availability perspective. VMware is an incredibly important partner for us. Announcements around anything data protection is critical because we built our business on the back of VMware's virtualization and vSphere. So whenever you talk virtualization and data, that's Veeam. But also security in moving, allowing that flexibility of moving from off premise to cloud solutions. That's music to our ears. That's a big part of what excites me about the VMworld in 2017. >> I'd love to get your thoughts on the market. I mean, it's on fire. VMware is booming. The data center is smoking hot. If you look back. Take your VMware experiences, look back two years ago. VMware as a company was under fire. Its license revenue was down 1% to flat. Now it's growing. 13% I guess is the latest quarter. Cash flow is cruising. The stock's doubling. Is this, in your view, sort of a product cycle thing? Updates of ELAs or is this a sustained recognition by the customer base that not everything is going to go into the public cloud, that we're going to bring the cloud operating model to the business. What's your sense? >> It's a great question. I think a big part of this is ... I do think it's a, it will be a sustainable growth going forward. I think a big part when I was at VMware. They had the whole vCloud Air cloud environment, which was confusing to the public cloud. And for customers because I think people didn't buy in on the vCloud Air strategy. I think what changed it. One aspect that changed it for VMware was this VMware Cloud on AWS announcement. Which, a lot of companies want to move to AWS and want to move to the cloud. But they want to do it with the same infrastructure that they have on premise, so if you can give them vSphere, the same kind of stack, but in the cloud, >> There's a pathway. >> it opens up opportunities. And that's when we started to see a VMware where companies would do a one-year, two-year agreement because we weren't sure of their long term cloud strategy. Now, they are. That's a great model. That's a great plan. Now, I'll go three, four years with VMware because I like that strategy. And it's great for AWS because they weren't getting a lot of mission critical apps going to AWS in the enterprise. But, now you've got VMware infrastructure that makes it so much easier for companies to take some of this on premise mission critical and move it to the cloud. So, I think it was great for Amazon. Great for VMware. But I also think a lot of some of the smaller drivers, I think Microsoft kind of not focusing as much on Hyper-V has kind of led vSphere to kind of rebirth of vSphere in the market. We see that growth and we're pegged a lot to the vSphere and Hyper-V, the whole virtualization side. I think it's part of VMware getting a better strategy for the cloud, but I think it's also customers kind of getting comfortable that it's not going to be this massive shift to the cloud. It's going to be a hybrid story. >> Well, it's interesting. The vCloud Air piece was always, even go back to Maritz, it was the recognition that the advantage that the hyperscalers had was homogeneity. vCloud Air was always homogenous, like to like. Or what Oracle called same same. And so, in effect, what VMware is doing, I wonder if you agree with this, with AWS, certainly with IBM, and potentially others, is similar to the vCloud Air strategy. They just don't own the cloud. >> Peter: Yeah. >> So, it's a two-edged sword. VMware did a debt, they raised about another four billion. Their CapX is relatively low. >> Peter: Yeah. >> Couple hundred million. >> Peter: Yeah. >> So, they don't have all that Hyperscale CapX. That's an advantage, but at the same time they don't have the vertical integration. >> Peter: Yeah. >> What's your thought on that as a sort of observer? >> That's a big ... I was acquired into VMware. >> Right. >> Three year, four year, whatever years ago from Desktone. And the CEO of Desktone came in. And it was desktop as a service, so desktops in a cloud. And so I got the whole vCloud Air and the cloud market and I kind of said when I came in, I think building your own cloud is, don't do it. Because it's going to suck a lot of cash and it's all up front when you're behind in the race to the public market, right? You had IBM already there. You had Amazon there. You had Azure, Google. VMware was going to be late to the game on vCloud Air. And so, I thought it was the smart move of kind of moving that out. Plus, VMware with vCloud Air alienated the other managed service providers that are building a business. So, you're almost competing with the same people you're trying to load up with your technology. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So, it was like, no. Stay neutral. Stay out of that. You've stayed out of the hardware. Stay out of the cloud. >> So, I want to bring that back to Veeam. Because for you guys, I think the clarity is a great thing. It reduces all that friction and all that noise and now the mission is clear. I wonder if you can comment on that? >> Peter: Yeah. I think that was the, that's what the market wanted. More clarity on what's your cloud strategy. That was I think the biggest mover in the market. VMware's growth has really came when they flicked that switch. When they announced that whole Amazon strategy. And I think it helped us because we're an obviously strong partner with VMware and strong partner with Amazon, so putting them together is perfect. That's why we were able to do it faster than anybody. When you go by our booth, you can see it. We demo it. It's all up and running. But, I think it helped VMware get clarity on their strategy. It helped Amazon and it drove our market. >> You guys draft right behind that. >> We just draft in right behind you, right? So I think that was a good move for everybody. >> Last question for you as the CEO, co-CEO of Veeam. Been around in this space for a long time. What are some of the core things that Veeam does to attract and retain talent as we look at technology like backup and recovery that's hot again? >> Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's a, you've got to, I think a lot of it comes down to culture. We've got, I mean, we've always had great technology. So the product has always been the driver. It gets in, it does a really good job. And then it becomes, then it's the people. We've got a great culture of people. We call it hungry, humble, and smart people. You know, and we have fun. We drive, we're aggressive. We're scrappy. We're hungry. But no egos. In our partner community, is similar. And so, I think it makes because of that you get a reputation and it's kind of a spot that people want to come to. We've done a good job of as we're growing, we've invested in our team to make our team better. But we've also brought in a lot of skill set. Especially in the enterprise where we need to get more skills outside of kind of S and B and commercial. So we've done I think a good job of merging, the investment in our existing team with a lot of really good skills and expertise that we didn't have but also fit the culture. So keep that founders, that Ratmir's founder mentality as the business grows and scales. And make it still being that fun scrappy software company that made Veeam what it is today. >> Yeah, it kind of gets to my last question which was you guys are maturing even though there's a lot of immature things going on. >> Oh yeah. >> Dave: Which is a lot of fun. >> It's fun. We can talk about that ... (laughter) >> All good. But, we talked about this. Veeam's ascendancy was during the virtualization craze. And you guys really got a strong foothold. And beat the competition. And now you're seeing a lot of emergent cloud data protection guys. Very well funded. Hundreds of millions of dollars in a business that's not capital intensive. How are you going to maintain your relevance there? It's a big part of your job. >> Peter: Yeah, it is. >> It's a big part of why they brought you in. >> It is. I mean, a lot of it is kind of continue to do what we've done in terms of being as you grow, and as you scale, don't lose the aggressiveness. It's, think big, right? We've always been taking bigger and bigger steps as an organization. Taking risks. Being aggressive. Being bold. Doing things that you do it as a small company but continue to do it. And that's still with our founders. That's the mentality of our business. A big part of my job is to make sure we don't lose that, right? As you get to 800 and a billion, still be that hungry and aggressive and scrappy company that we were six years ago, seven years ago when we were much smaller. But it's even more important today to be that as we move forward in this hyper competitive different market that exists. We've just got to be so much better every day. Every day that we come to work, we got to be better than we were the day before. >> And scrappy and hungry. I love it. >> Peter: Scrappy and hungry. (laughing) >> Peter McKay, thank you so much for your we'll say nth time on theCube. >> Yes. >> Lisa: Does that work? >> That's fair. >> Alright. For Peter McKay, the President and Co-CEO of Veeam and my co-host, Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCube live from day one of VMworld 2017. Stick around. We will be right back. (techno music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering HPE Discover 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas for theCUBE. (mumbles) check the signal for the noise. I'm John Furrier with David Vellante. We just had Meg Whitman up here, Dave. Our next guest, another CEO, Peter McKay, CEO of Veeam. Welcome to theCUBE. Congratulations on your success, and great party last night. >> Thank you. It's a good party. Veeam always has a good party. So it's been a great event. This has been really action packed from the time we got here yesterday. >> It really speaks to the change of HPE. You guys are a big time sponsor, great booth space here. You presence is here, and you're in that ecosystem and doing very well. Explain for a minute why that's happening, why is Veeam such a prominent role at HPE this year. >> First, I think culturally, the companies really work well together. A lot of our customers, whether it's enterprise or commercial, kind of that mid-tier market, have been asking for more solutions. And we're a part of it. We're the software. HP is the hardware component, and we bring together. And it's really made it easier for our customers to buy a solution versus trying to buy all the pieces and having to pull that together. So it's really worked out well for both organizations as we expand. >> Well, Peter, a couple more zeros to your revenue number and you'll be running a company the size of Meg's soon. Now of course, Veeam brought you in really to the next level. New management, new messaging, we heard a lot of that at VeeamON, one of the things you talked about. What I liked about your messaging at VeeamON is everybody talks about digital transformation. What you did is you pinpointed it around always on availability. I wonder if you could share with our audience and sort of summarize what you were talking about there. >> Yeah, in the software world, we've lived through a lot of transitions, from mainframe, to client-server, to cloud, all the way through. Everybody's going through, as you said, this transformation and the ability for applications or data to be accessible at anytime anyplace. It used to be that everybody backs up. Now it's about recovery. It's about all your apps, and all your data, all your services to be available seven by 24, 365. And so it's no become just like security was earlier when it was kind of an afterthought. Now it's a forethought. Look it, we're pushing more applications. They're more agile. It's going to go down. British Airways, it's been a huge issue. One guy pulls a plug, next thing you know, it's $100 million. So for us, it's now become mission critical, what we do. And that's where this digital transformation, as kids getting older and they're entering this workforce that only know the digital life, want an always on environment. They're not going to be satisfied with a world that is a bad service, where it's down and I have to go to some other spot. So it's this convergence of companies making this transformation and this new group of users that are coming online that only know a digital life. And that's kind of where we see it all coming together for Veeam. >> So that's a great vision. And we've talked in the past about the ascendancy of Veeam is around VMware backup. You're transitioning that messaging into, as you say, recovery and always on availability. It seems like there's a huge market for this intercloud, multicloud management. Your vision there is any combination of use cases, on prem, off prem, bringing it down from SaaS. So I wonder if you could talk about that strategy, that white space, which is really jump ball in the industry right now. >> It is. So for companies today, they have options. They want to have options, right? They want to have the ability. I want to be able to backup and recover from our on premise data, from my internal data center, manage cloud, manage service, or in a public cloud. So I want to be able to back up but also recover from any of those environments and move it. There may be some applications, Office 365, that's in the cloud, but I want to be able to back up and recover on premise. And so it's opened up a lot of flexibility for customers that don't want to have it all on prem that for some of their data, they can put it in the cloud. For some of it, they want to have a very specific service provider that has a security or a vertical expertise, they want to go with them. But either way, they want to be able to access that data anywhere it is on any infrastructure. >> What's the business relationship? What's the connection this year? And just take a minute to describe that for the folks. >> Yeah, no, it's really evolved from a purely technical relationship where all of our technology integrates with all the different HP stack, but it's evolved. As more customers wanted more solutions, they want more of the packaging coming together as a bundle or even appliances, we've been working closer on the go to market side where our partners were kind of pulling these together. And so in November, we announced a global reseller agreement, an OEM agreement with HP that allows HP now and HP partners to resell Veeam as a solution with HP hardware, together or separate, into an HP customer. And so that's been a win for HP because they focus on a data protection solution and always on. >> It's good for the portfolio. I mean they got another club in their bag, so to speak. You guys get a nice pop. >> The brand and their channel, right? And so I think the data protection story and the solutions that HPE can bring together is really compelling. And for us, they've got a broad go to market organization that we can leverage. >> Well, you kind of need each other. I mean you're coming upmarket. I mean the story of Veeam is actually quite amazing. You booked over half a billion dollars, I think 600 million last year. >> Peter: 607, yup. >> Never taken a dime of outside capital, which is outstanding. I guess extensively, want to remain private is sort of the narrative, but you really don't stress about that. >> We're owned by two people. It's pretty simple, and they brought me in to grow a long-term sustainable software company, right? That's my job. That's what I do everyday. What they want to do at some point in time in the future, that's really up to those two. But for me-- >> How does a company go from standing start to over half a billion with no outside capital? >> Great technology. I mean I think from day one, if you've known Veeam, you know that the technology has always been, we use the saying it just works, and our customers will say it. And we have a very loyal customer base. 73 was our score in MPS, which went from 63 to 73. So customer loyalty, strong. Good culture, good company. We've added 1,000 people over the last 12 months. We're going to add another 800 over the next. So good company, good people, 45,000 partners that we've added across the globe. >> And you showed a slide at VeeamON which I want to share with the audience. Again, it was outstanding. It was Workday, Salesforce, and ServiceNow. And essentially, you showed that you're actually going to achieve, on track to achieve a billion faster than those companies. >> Yeah, that's our goal, 2018, to get there, 800 to a billion. I mean that's our internal goal, right? I came in, set a high bar, and we're all working towards that. We're on track. >> And you share that, you're transparent about it, which is kind a unique. >> We did it with our partners and more detail with our partner ecosystem, so they know what we're trying to do and what we're expecting of them, right? Because this is how it has to work. >> You have a shared interest there. Everyone wants that same direction. >> We're 100% channel, right? So it's not like we're taking these deals direct, and we're going to take theirs. >> Oh, you know, the channel, you have to fake the channel once, you're done. You really got to be straight up with them and make them money too. (laughs) >> Just like our customers, our partners are extremely loyal to Veeam. >> All right, I got to ask you, we see a lot at VMworld, and we got that coming up. theCUBE will be there live. Actually, their deal with Amazon points to the hybrid cloud. That's the story here. Hybrid and cloud certainly changed the game on backup recovery, all aspects of storage in the software. What's your vision there? And share with the folks what that means for them as they think about their architectures, the hybrid. >> What it means to VMware? >> No, what it means to the customer who sits there going, "Okay, I've seen all the signals. "I've got VMware. "Now I'm seeing it with Amazon, the relationship, "that's a hybrid cloud path." >> I think up till a little while, up till that announcement, I think it was a lot of the kind of niche use cases, a lot more of the kind of simple workloads were going into Amazon and Azure. But not a lot of the mission critical were kind of moving in that direction yet. With VMware moving to Amazon, it's opened up the door because now, all of them are using vSphere as part of their mission critical apps. So now it's kind of like the door has been opened to moving more of these mission critical into Amazon, which I think was a great move for VMware, great move for Amazon because they want the mission critical. VMware wants to stay, keep everybody on vSphere. And for us, we're extremely close and tied to VMware, and we are moving closer to Amazon. So it's a win for us, and we'll be the first to be in that environment. >> I saw the magician out there on the floor, all these Benjamins, throwing the money around. You guys are doing well. You're making some money for your partners as well on the channels. It's a great strategy. Your observation here at HPE Discover, what's your observation of what's happening here at the event and some of the takeaways? >> So I started my career, a big company, then I did three kind of earlier stage, and then back to big companies, VMware and in here. The line we always use in kind of building a business is focus, focus, focus. And I think what I see is HPE more focused, more focused than ever. It's a tighter message. The vision that they have is so much more clearer. And that's just not my observation. That's the feedback I get from the ecosystem and the customers that we're talking to, that they like it. It allows them to get a much clearer understanding of the HPE direction and where they're going and when they're placing their bets. >> And top three priorities for you guys at Veeam over the course of the next six to 12 months, your goals for the company. >> So we look at it in terms of the pillars. Obviously, the enterprise is a major investment area around the globe, as you said, to go upstream. And so we used to do purely virtual, as you mentioned, and now we do physical. Now we do cloud extension. So we have all that. We think we have the platform for the enterprise. Not to say we don't want to continue to do that, but enterprise is number one. Cloud and obviously, it's having that ability for customers to move workloads anywhere, kind of that orchestration of those workloads. That's a critical initiative for us. And then for me, it's look it, the business is going well. Don't screw it up. Got to keep the S&P going, keep the commercial-- >> Hands on the wheel, hold it straight. >> Do all this other good stuff but don't drop the ball on the other side. What do they say about a doctor? First, do no harm, do no harm to the business and then grow it over here. >> And that's your role and your co-CEO's role, is to really keep that innovation engine going, right? >> Yes. >> I mean near CDP and like you say, bare (mumbles). I mean that's the development track that-- >> And I think you will see us kind of expanding that a little bit and maybe some inorganic. We've acquired, we've accumulated a nice balance sheet that allows us to do some creative things that maybe we'll talk about at the end of the road. We announced one in TWS, which is a company that was in the Amazon marketplace that has opened up some more opportunities for us. We're going to continue to invest and acquire as we go to compliment some of the things that we've been doing very successfully on organic growing. >> David: Amazing. >> Peter McKay, co-CEO of Veeam. Thank you for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insight, and thanks for the commentary. More live coverage from HPE Discover 2017 after this short break. Stay with us. (upbeat electronic music)