(motivating electronic music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the co-host and co-founder of Silicon Angle Media. We're here for a CUBE Conversation in our studios in Palo Alto, California. Here with two great guests inside the industry, to help illuminate the cloud computing conversation, really around what's coming up with Amazon re:Invent. But more importantly, the major advances happening in the digital transformation around IT and around developers and around cloud, and how that's impacting business. Our guests are Chris Comings, who's with the Chasm Group, consult and they help people, and former industry executive at NetApp, and (mumbles) the storage company. Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos.io data, and then he's the CMO there. Now, new progressive solutions. So guys, great solution. And Peter, I know you got news. We're gonna do another segment on your big news coming out, so we're gonna hold that off. >> Cool. >> The game has changed, right? >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> And we talked, with Chris and I had a one on one about this. But the industry conversation, there's people that are in the know, and people who are trying to figure out what's happening and how it impacts their business. CIO, CEOs, CDOs, chief data officers, chief security officers. There's a lot of things on the plate of businesses. >> Right. >> Big time. >> Right. >> So let's unpack this, and let's illuminate what it means. So cloud computing, Peter, what's your take on this, because Datos just takes a unique approach? I love your solution. A lot of people are liking this solution, but it's nuanced, because it's cloud-- >> Yeah. >> That's driving you. >> Yeah. >> What's the big driver? >> So the big driver, you said at the top of the discussion, the big driver is digital transformation. Digital transformation. Organizations are trying to be more data-driven. Okay, this is completely throwing, throwing traditional IT amok, because we're not living in the traditional world anymore of all my data sits within a single data center, I run my traditional monolithic applications. That's changed. The world is no longer running in a traditional four wall data center, and the world's moved away from the traditional view of scale-up architectures to elastic compute, shared nothing, elastic storage environment. So what's happening is, you've got the challenge of trying to essentially support traditional transformation initiatives, and it's just throwing all the underlying infrastructure foundations that an entire generation of IT professionals has known (laughs) into disarray. So everything's a little bit caddywhompus right now. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative), Chris? >> Well, and like you said, those people all have gone from being implementers to, they're moving to being developers. >> Right. >> And it completely changes their, it has to be a big change in their mindset. And it changes the management folks, the CIOs, the CDOs, the people that you interact with on a daily basis, right? >> Absolutely. >> Because these people are all trying to kind of come up to the next generation and get there. >> So you talked about, we got re:Invent coming up in a couple of weeks and, I think reinvent's a perfect term for this entire conversation, because everybody is reinventing themselves. The customer's reinventing themselves, the IT organizations are reinventing themselves, the individual roles within organizations are changing, and the whole evolution of dev ops versus traditional roles, so it is really-- >> And the vendors are all trying to reinvent themselves, too. >> Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. >> Well there's a lot of noise, so the customer's being bombarded with pitches. And if I here one more digital transformation pitch, without substance, I still don't understand. So in the spirit of trying to understand, first of all, I believe in digital transformation, but you can't just say the word, you gotta to prove it. But there's hard to prove a new approach or they've never seen it before. It's kind of like Steve Jobs would say, "If you want a Blackberry, that's a phone, "but the iPhone's not what you've seen before." But everyone loved it, changed the industry. That dynamic's happening in the cloud where for instance, your solution, some might not have seen before, but it's highly relevant to the user behavior expectations of the new environment. Okay, so this is the issue. What is the new environment specifically around digital transformation? Because I have an investment in storage. If I'm a customer, I bought a zillion drives from NetApp and EMC. I got data domain backup and, I got a perimeter, I have all this stuff, and now I've got this cloud thing bursting, and I got some analytics running there, and then I got the hot shot young developers banging out apps, and they want to put it in the cloud and... and security, I mean, what's going on? >> You wanna take that one first? And then I'll jump in. >> Can't I just buy more storage? >> Yeah. (Men laugh) Hey, just, no John, you don't just buy more storage, you upgrade from spinning to flash. I mean, that's really, >> There you go. >> That's really, really cutting edge right there. No I think what a lot of you see what they're doing is basically saying listen, for all this secondary, tertiary, quaternary, I mean, I didn't even know what that word was. But your second, your third, your fourth cuts of that data, move that all to the cloud, get that out of my environment. I'm not gonna be submersed in dealing with all of that anymore. Then maybe I can clear out some of my headaches, so I can actually focus on that primary cut, and what do I do about that primary cut? And that's where these completely new approaches come into play, and I, Peter I don't know if you call that hybrid, or multi-aire or what? But it is basically just trying to get some of that noise out of their system, so they can focus on the thing that's most valuable. >> So the way I would make that tangible John, is sort of, to us it all rolls down to the notion of the modern IT stack, okay? So essentially, the way you respond to digital transformation which, is all about being more agile, and some of the buzzwords you hear, but they're trying to be more, customers are trying to be, vendors are trying to be, or excuse me, customers or organizations are trying to be more customer-centric. They're trying to be more business driven, more data driven, okay great. If that's their initiative-- >> That's a mission. That's a mission. >> That's a mission. >> Yep. >> What that means for IT specifically is a fundamental rearchitecture of the underlying stack, okay, along a couple vectors, which is, organizations are building these new applications. They're fundamentally rearchitecting applications. What used to be a monolithic-oriented, traditional, relational, on-prem database is now running in a microservices, highly distributed configuration. That's vector number one, implication. Implication number two is we're absolutely in the mainstream of hybrid cloud, okay? You may be running all your apps on-prem, but you're still connected in some way to the cloud, for archiving, for BI, for TASDAV, whatever the case may be. And number three is the world just moved completely to an elastic, compute, shared nothing world. So we call that the modern IT stack. So the modern IT stack, modern infrastructure today-- >> Share nothing, you said? >> Shared nothing, the cloud is-- >> Oh, shared nothing. >> Yeah, shared nothing, shared nothing storage, shared nothing compute, that's that's, those are the foundations of a cloud based architecture. >> Is that called serverless? >> You could call it serverless as well. >> Okay. >> But, if you look at the modern IT stack, so to your point, the modern IT stack, modern infrastructure today is EC2. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Modern storage is S3. It could be object prem, object storage sitting on-prem. You know, modern applications are IOT. Modern, or our customer 360, IOT. Modern databases are dynamo DB. It's MongoDB, it's the number two-- >> Right. >> database in the cloud. So to answer your question very specifically, to make it tangible, that's to us the fundamental indication is, that new modern IT stack, throws storage into disarray, it throws data management into disarray-- >> It's an operational disruption. >> It's an operational disruption. >> All right, so let's backup for a second, because I think you nailed the thread I was trying to connect on. So let's take MongoDB, your reference to that being, where'd that come from? We all know why, the LAMP stack, it was one of the drivers. But developers drove that. >> That's right. >> So it wasn't the IT department recommending Mango. >> Right (laughs). >> so the developers were driving that because of ease of use. Now there's some scalability with Mango, we all know about, but what that means is, no one gives a crap if it can scale, because you already hit your product market fit. Then you could rearchitect, so you're seeing this use case of developers driving some of the behavior. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Hence containers, docker containers, and the role of Kubernetes. >> Kubernetes, yep. >> So if that's the case, how does an enterprise customer deal with that vector? Because now the developers are dictating the stacks. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Well, I-- >> Is it a free-for-all right now? I mean, this is... >> I think both of those guys are, think of it as they used to be warring factions, dev and ops, and the fact that we say the word dev ops right now is kind of a, it's kind of an oxymoron, right? Because they don't actually know each other and actually don't naturally talk to one another, and they go, "That's the other guy who's holding me back." >> Yeah, it's the old-- >> They look at, yeah, yeah. >> Goes over the fence. >> And so now, you've got folks that are really trying to, trying to bring it together a little bit more on that front and I think that, we're starting to see some technologies where people can say, "Not only can I use that "to accelerate my developments," so meets the dev criteria, but also the ops people say, "You know what, that stuff's not so bad. "I could actually work with that." >> Right, and then there's IT going, "Uh-oh," because they're basically sitting there on the catcher's side, so to your point it's, the dev ops, it is very much of an application-led environment. The tip of the spear for the new IT stack is absolutely application-led. And IT is challenged with essentially aligning to that, collaborating with that, and keeping up with that pace of change. >> And John, on this point, I think this is where, back to re:Invent, and really the role of AWS. This all started because of that. When a developer can just say, "I don't even know who those IT people are over there, "But I can spin up my S3 instance, "and I can start working against it." They start moving down the path, they show it to somebody, someone says, "Wow, that's great stuff, I want that." >> John: Yeah, right. >> Guess what? We need to make sure that that's enterprise class and scalable and then that's where that whole thing starts, and then it becomes that pull-ya-apart, "Oh God, what did these developer people do? "I'm gonna inherit this? "What the heck am I gonna do with it?" Now it's, we've gotta move that to be more symbiotic up front. >> I remember talking to both Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jassy years ago, I think maybe five years ago, and I asked the question, "What enables developers?" What is enabling point? Does infrastructure dictate developer behavior? Or do developers dictate infrastructure behavior? This was years ago, when the dev ops was an early-on movement. Clearly the vote is there. Developers are driving infrastructure. Hence the dev ops infrastructure, >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> as code model, that's proven. Jassy was interesting because he looked at it that way and said, "Yeah, we saw the same thing," and they've never wavered, Amazon's stayed on the course, and they've just been running like a machine, like a, just pounding it out. I asked Pat Gelsinger, he once positioned the AWS as the developer cloud. Kinda in, I wouldn't say depositioning them, but he was basically pointing out, they have a developer cloud. Now Amazon's the enterprise cloud. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> Because they've developers are now a big driver of that, and the scale with data is actually turning out to be a better security environment. >> Right. >> For cyber. >> Right, it might just-- >> So it's cloud's winning. >> Cloud is winning and just sort of just take that one step further. It's always ultimately, the winner's going to, it's Darwinism, it's like the winner's gonna be the one with the richest ecosystem. And AWS is becoming that enterprise eco. And you could argue, I mean, GCP's fighting to be in there, Oracle's not going to go quietly into that dark night. You've got multiple public cloud vendors. >> That's right. >> Yeah. >> But the reality is that he who has the biggest, he or she who has the biggest ecosystem is gonna win, and that's right now is AWS driving that bus. >> All right, so I need to see those glasses for a second, and then want to go into another line of question here. (men laugh) >> You may use those. >> Oh who's, oh you put them on, all right good, as long as he's wearing them. >> He that wear-- >> You know, on that front too, on that front too, I would think we started back where VM was the big new thing, and here we go with VM's, and then all of a sudden we're coming up and we're saying, "Yeah, now there's containers." And so now we're gonna see this move to, we want to micro-package these services, and be able to aggregate them. Well you know the average IT shop that I would be talking to out there is just still trying to figure out, how do they put together their on-prem and their AWS instance? So this notion of hybrid is where most of these large enterprises are. We see a lot of terminology out there and a lot of vendors talking about multi-cloud. But multi-cloud is really just taking an option on the future and saying, "I'm not locked into you, AWS, "even though I am locked into you 100% right now. "I don't want to be forever in the future." >> It's a value statement that they're gesturing. >> That's right. >> Good segue. >> Chris: But it's not a practical implementation piece. >> I got my nerd glasses on so-- >> Peter: Strap in for something, here we go. I got my nerd glasses, so next question, we'll go a little nerdy, because this is important one. I put out at my crowd chat for Amazon, so to crowdchat.net/awsreinvent it's open, I have a lot of questions on there. Feel free to weigh in, it's an influencer-only chat, so no consumers, so I asked the question, and this is to the value statement, because multi-cloud is basically telegraphing lock-in. We don't want lock-in. >> Right. >> But we want love choice. If you have good choice and good value, we'll go there so it's a value equation. So the question I said is, where do you, this is a question I put on crowd-chat, I'll ask you guys. Where do you see the value that cloud creates for customers in the next 24 months? #cloud So the first response was from Subbu Allamaraju, who's the CIO at Expedia. He writes, "Agility from the service "ecosystem and rapid second-order architecture "architectural changes thereby clearing technical debt." And the second one from Grant Chase, "Born on the cloud apps already here. "Next wave migrating of existing apps." And then Maddoux Tsukahara said, "Legacy SASS applications will be disrupted "by cloud microservices, serverless, "and AI and machine learning." So we start to see the pattern. Your thoughts? Value creation, in the cloud, is gonna be what? >> So I think they're hitting on the right trends. I would go back to the first one which is "How do I get this on-prem stuff "that's driving me crazy, consuming all of my resources "in terms of maintenance and upgrades? "And then optimizing my environment for that." Which ones of those are core? And which ones of those are really kind of ancillary? I've gotta have them, but I really don't want them. If I didn't have to use them, I'd get rid of them. Take all, just do that homework. Separate the two cleanly. Move ancillary to the cloud, and move on. >> Peter: Yeah, yeah. >> So service ecosystem he nailed, I love, by the way, I agree with you, that was my favorite answer. And rapid second-order architecture changes. This speaks to what datos.io is doing. Because you guys, what you're in, the tornado that you're in, kind of just a play on the Chasm group here. You guys have a solution that has got visibility into some of the real dynamics of the environmental environment. >> Check. >> People, tech, stack, et cetera. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So what are some of the things that you're seeing that point to these second or level architectural changes? >> Well you mentioned, a couple different things, which is, you mentioned the notion of technical debt, which is indirectly what you were just talking about, the ability to get rid of my technical debt. It's an easy way, it eliminates my barrier to answering to creating net new applications. So without having to sort of, I avoid the innovator's dilemma if you will, because I can build these net new applications, which are the things I have to to drive my digital transformation, et cetera. I can do that in a very cost-effective and agile way. Meanwhile, sort of ignoring the old world. Then what I'll do is I'll go back, and I'll worry about the old stuff, and I'll start migrating some of that old stuff to the cloud. So in the context of, yeah, so what we see from a Datos IO perspective, in the context of data management, is that one, applications drive the stack, like you said earlier, it's absolutely, the application's at the tip of the spear, driving the stack. Organizations are building net new applications that are cloud native, okay? And they're built on the new modern IT stack, and at the same time, they're also taking their legacy application, so I like that second answer as well which is, modern cloud applications are here. The interesting thing is, you say modern cloud apps, modern cloud apps don't have to run in the cloud. >> That's right. >> We've got customers that are running their next gen app-- >> It's an operating model. >> It's an operating model. We've got customers running 100% on-prem. Their econ number stuff runs on-prem, then you have people that run in the cloud. So it's a mindset, it's an operating model. So you've got folks absolutely deploying these cloud-native apps. >> Well, it's an architectural model too, it's how they are deploying and servicing apps. >> And ultimately, it comes down to the architectural model. That's what shifted, and that world is very infrastructure. The other thing I would add to the cloud thing is if you do it right, the cloud actually can give you architectural independence and cloud independence, but you can't be focused on the infrastructure level. You've gotta focus at the application level, because then you can be agnostic, until they're online. >> So Peter you, you guys are disrupting a very large space, backup and recovery in the cloud which you guys are doing. >> Check. >> And the application database layer is a very progressive solution. So I love your approach, but you're talking about disrupting the data domains of the world. We're talking about big whales. >> Yeah. >> Big incumbents that are built around four walls in the data center. >> Check. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative), yep. >> What are you seeing? What's the makeup? What's the personnel of the customers look like? If dev ops is happening, which we agree it is, and the the evidence is there clearly, they're not 50 year old backup and recovery guys. They're young guns, they're probably not thinking about waking up every day with their coffee, say, "Hmm, what am I gonna do with backup today?" >> Yeah. >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> They're waking up saying, "Hey, I'm gonna drive some more machine learning "and AI in my apps." >> Yep. >> "And I'm gonna provide workflow movement to--" >> And you said breakfast was some, you said that. >> Adopt this microservice. >> I had the craziest dream last night. It was microservices, what? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, so I can answer that two ways. There's the technology side of it. Fun little tidbit, average age of the traditional backup and recovery software architecture, about 20 years. >> Hmm. >> Architected well before the mainstream advent of the cloud or certainly modern applications. >> Hold on, the person's 20 years old? Or it's 20 years of architecture? >> No, the architecture of the software. >> Okay. >> The solutions, or come up, the point is they've been around for awhile. >> It's old. It's old. >> It's old, fair enough. >> Yeah, and 20 years-- >> So on the technology side, that's a dilemma. On the persona side, you're absolutely right as well. These are, it's the application folks that are driving the conversation, that our applications dictate the IT stack. They're building these new architectures, which have all these implications on the infrastructure. >> All right, so I'm gonna play devil's advocate, just because I want to connect the dots. And again, illuminate what I think the problem is that you have. One is, okay I'm a CIO. Hey, he's my storage guy. Who the hell are you, young gun? Complaining about your backup and recovery. He recommends all flash arrays in the data center provisioned in a VSAN environment, whatever that's going on. Who are you? You're just nothing to me. You don't make that decision. >> I'm the guy that can give you all the visibility to your data to make you smarter and more agile as a company. I can save you money. I can make this company more market-- >> So what do I need to do differently? If I'm the CIO, I don't want to make these, or these architectural calls based upon old dogma or old reporting lines. This is an example. I go to him, he's my storage guy. Who are you? I already built you the dev ops environment. He runs storage and so, you're impacted as a developer. So how do you guys talk to that guy? What does the CXO have to do differently to adapt to the new environment? >> I'll take that and then you can-- >> Please. >> You know, jump in. So I think what you see is, you see the proliferation of new personas. Like you see chief transformation officers, you see chief digital officers. You see system architects and DBAs getting a more prominent role in the conversation. So the successful CIOs and technology officers are the ones that are essentially gonna get the cowboys and the Indians to collaborate more closely, because they have to, because the folks that were over in the corner that used to get laughed at, building these, oh mangos and these new applications and such, they're the ones holding the keys to the future. So the successful technologists are gonna be the ones that marry those personas from the application side of the house with the traditional storage, infrastructure folks as well. You successfully do that, then you can be more, then you can move more quickly forward. >> Yeah, that's right. >> What do you think? >> Well I think some of it's gonna come back down to economics, too. And I agree with that move which is, I talked to over a hundred CIOs and their staff in the last year. I had one conversation where the person said, "You know what? "The chief complaint about me as CIO "is I'm not spending enough money." And I thought to myself, "Sounds like a company that I should put some bucks into, "because they must be doing really, really well." Everybody else is looking at it saying, "You know what? "I'm under pressure to adopt the cloud, "because there's a belief out there "that the cloud is gonna be so much less expensive "than what they've done in the past." And then I think they find that it's not, that it's not just the one size fits all answer to that. >> Right. >> And so as a consequence, you're gonna have people say, Listen, this money printing operation, or this funnel out the door to, whether it's EMC or NetApp 4, or whatever it may be, whatever storage vendor for backup architecture, they've got to stop that funnel. Because they've got to take what they were spending there and move it to the things that are going to make money for them, not just gonna hold on to it, and de-risk their enterprise. >> I'm here with two industry leaders, Chris Comings and Peter Smails, talking about the impact of infrastructure technologies, and app development in the cloud for businesses. It's a great conversation, and our final point, I wanna just get to, I know we're running on some time here but we wanna go a little further. I think this is awesome. That's for taking the time to share it out. >> It's great. >> One of my other questions I put on my crowd chat was, a true or false and comment question. Here's the statement: Serverless computing will become mainstream, will come to mainstream private cloud, true or false, comment. Subbu said, "False, adoption and success "of serverless patterns depend almost entirely "on the strength of the ecosystem "that the data center lacks." Interesting comment. I was kinda leaning, I go, "I was leaning towards true." But I don't have enough insight on this, because I'm waffling between true or false. I love serverless, I love the idea of, notion of resources that are just programmable. But what is the state of serverless? I mean, is he right? Is that that there's not enough ecosystem in the data center areas or... >> You wanna go first? >> Well, I'd just say that I would, I would just call out two things on that front. One is, I think you need a lot more germination of microservices that are out there in order to be able to put that all together. That's one aspect. We're seeing that growth come rapidly. The other thing is, now your security is beholden to the lowest common denominator. The security of that individual microservice. So I think you're gonna have some fits and starts here as we move down that path because, boy oh boy, the last thing I wanna do is get all modern but at the same time, put myself at a greater amount of risk. >> I thought the comment at the end was, I think it's true. I thought it was interesting what he said at the end. He said, "The ecosystem that the data center lacks." I would contend that potentially, the ecosystem that the cloud has would support that. >> Yeah. >> Because the cloud, by definition is, it's a shared-nothing world. >> Right. >> You know? >> So, he also comments, someone said, Lambda, "My Expedia is that Lambda's growth "is almost entirely due to the power "of the ecosystem of services, "which is one of the key points," and he points to his blog post. Stu Miniman, our Wikibon analyst weighed in, because Stu's on this big time. "Service will definitely be used for edge applications. "Currently don't see use case for general data center usage." >> Mm-hmm (affirmative). >> So edge of the network. Again, good point? This edge of the network thing helps you, because most people are using cloud for edge. >> Peter: Right. >> So this IOT, which is, an iterative things, is an edge of the network. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Whether it's devices, sensors, industrial equipment, or people's devices on their bodies. >> Yeah. >> It's a huge data source. >> Absolutely. >> Cloud's rolling that up. Or a cloud-like infrastructure. >> Well but it's not necessarily rolling it up. It's just connecting all the dots as to where you can put storage and you can put compute where the data is. Or you can move the data to where the storage and the compute is. So it's not, I mean, yes there's core and edge, that's absolutely true, but the notion of rollup isn't necessarily true. It's not necessarily the cloud enables me to do all this colossal aggregation. It's I basically distribute my compute, I distribute my storage. >> Well, when I say rollup, I'm assuming there's some sort of architectural thing. >> Okay, fair. >> But this fits into your wheelhouse, I think. But I just connecting the dots. That's why it's a question for you is, it would make sense for a solution like DATOS to be there because, That's a application so you-- >> Absolutely. >> You back up IOT? >> Oh absolutely. We backup IOT, but we basically backup any modern cloud application. And by definition, what does that mean? >> So IOT's and app for you. >> IOT, absolutely IOT's-- >> Not necessarily a-- >> So the technically where we plug in is, we plugin at the database level. And the databases basically, are the underlying infrastructure that support the applications. So in the case of IOT, those are typically very highly distributed across GIOS, absolutely we protect them. >> So we were just talking earlier about the words flexibility, manageability, agility. That's kind of vanilla words that everyone uses these days. But in essence, you're actually really doing it. Right, so. >> Thanks for that setup. Yes, we actually do all those buzz words. >> So Chris recommends, I recommend that you call it, hyper flexibility. >> Yeah. >> Or microflexibility. >> Or ultra. >> Or ultra flexibility. >> Or go mega. Just go mega right now. Or uber and steal a little of that, although that's kind of out of favor right now. >> Not, uber is-- >> Uber we wanna let that one kind of fly by. >> But remember we also talked before, we thought we were spot on with our product being branded RecoverX. We thought we were really in the spot with the whole, you know. >> Your name is awesome. RecoverX is a great brand. >> So we're gonna stick with that for now before we-- >> Good branding, RecoverX, Data IOS. Chris, thanks for coming on. Final comment, any words on the storage industry as it evolved? You mentioned earlier, just call it flash. Certainly, all flash arrays are doing well. Pure Storage went public. Flash is a standard. >> Yeah. >> It has benefits. Where does the flash storage go with all this cloud value coming over the top? >> Well I think, you know, there's gonna be a couple. I have one comment on that which is, we see what flash is doing at the array level, and now we're gonna see what NVME does at the cash layer, for allowing this access to information. You think about, I want to run a singular query, but some of that data is here, there, everywhere, but I've gotta have a level of performance that allows me to actually run it, and get an answer from it. And so that's where that comes into play. I think we're gonna see a whole host of folks flooding into that space, to try and improve performance, but not only improve performance, but enable that whole distribution model. >> Yeah, and I would just pick up on more persona-centric thing which is, the message to the traditional IT shops is it is all about collaboration. The folks over in the corner, the application folks, it is absolutely all about getting more closely aligned, because cloud is here. >> Yeah. >> Multicloud, hybrid cloud, call it whatever you want, is here. The traditional IT stack is absolutely being disrupted, and it's all about embracing this application-centric, data-driven view of the world. That's the future, traditional IT's got to align with that, and collaborate and drive that whole thing forward. >> That's a great, I agree 100% what you guys just said, great comment. I would just say Wikibon calls it unigrid, which is, I'll rename it hypergrid, meaning it's just one system, to your point. Private, public, it's all cloud-like. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, it doesn't matter where it goes. Okay guys, thanks for the thought leadership. Peter Smails and Chris Cummings here, breaking down the industry landscape on storage infrastructure, application developers, in context the cloud. This is theCUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (motivating electronic music)

(techy music playing) >> Hello, everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, the cofounder of SiliconANGLE Media Inc., also cohost of theCUBE. We're here for a CUBE Conversation on Thought Leader Thursday and I'm here with Chris Cummings, who's a senior manager, advisor, big-time industry legend, but he's also the Chasm Group, right now, doer, Crossing the Chasm, famous books and it's all about the future. Formerly an exec at Netapp, been in the storage and infrastructure cloud tech business, also friends of Stanford. Season tickets together to go to the tailgates, but big Cal game coming up of course, but more importantly a big-time influence in the industry and we're going to do some drill down on what's going on with cloud computing, all the buzzword bingo going on in the industry. Also, AWS, Amazon Web Services re:Invent is coming up, do a little preview there, but really kind of share our views on what's happening in the industry, because there's a lot of noise out there. We're going to try to get the signal from the noise, thanks for watching. Chris, thanks for coming in. >> Thank you so much for having me, glad to be here. >> Great to see you, so you know, you have seen a lot of waves of innovation and right now you're working with a lot of companies trying to figure out the future. >> That's right. >> And you're seeing a lot of significant industry shifts. We talk about it on theCUBE all the time. Blockchain from decentralization all the way up to massive consolidation with hyper-convergence in the enterprise. >> Mm-hmm. >> So a lot of action, and because of the day the people out in the marketplace, whether it's a developer or a CXO, CIO, CDO, whatever enterprise leader's doing the transformations. >> Chris Collins: We got all of them. >> They're trying to essentially not go out of business. A lot of great things are happening, but at the same time a lot of pressure on the business is happening. So, let's discuss that, I mean, you are doing this for work at the Chasm Group. Talk about your role, you were formerly at Netapp, so I know you know the storage business. >> Right. >> So we're going to have a great conversation about storage and impact infrastructure, but at the Chasm Group how are you guys framing the conversation? >> Yeah, Chasm Group is really all about helping these companies process their thinking, think about if they're going to get to be a platform out in the industry. You can't just go and become a platform in the industry, you got to go knock down problem, problem, problem, solution, solution, solution. So we help them prioritize that and think about best practices for achieving that. >> You know, Dave Alante, my co-CEO, copartner, co-founder at SiliconANGLE Media and I always talk about this all the time, and the expression we use is if you don't know what check mate looks like you shouldn't be playing chess, and a lot of the IT folks and CIOs are in that mode now where the game has changed so much that sometimes they don't even know what they're playing. You know, they've been leaning on this Magic Quadrant from Gartner and all these other analyst firms and it's been kind of a slow game, a batch kind of game, now it's real time. Whatever metaphor you want to use, the game has changed so the chessboard has changed. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> So I got to get your take on this because you've been involved in strategy, been on product, you worked at growth companies, big companies, start-ups, and now looking at the bigger picture, what is the game? I mean, right now if you could lay out the chessboard, what are people looking at, what is the game? >> So, we deal a lot with customer conversations and that's where it all kind of begins, and I think what we found is this era of pushing product and just throwing stuff out there. It worked for a while but those days are over. These folks are so overwhelmed. The titles you mentioned, CIO, CDO, all the dev ops people, they're so overwhelmed with what's going on out there. What they want is people to come in and tell them about what's happening out there, what are their peers doing and what problems are they trying to solve in order and drive it that way. >> And there's a lot of disruption on the product side. >> Yes. >> So tech's changing, obviously the business models are changing, that's a different issue. Let's consider the tech things, you have-- >> Mm-hmm. >> A tech perspective, let's get into the tech conversation. You got cloud, you got private cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, micro-machine learning, hyper-machine learning, hyper-cloud, all these buzzwords are out there. It's buzzwords bingo. >> Chris: Right. >> But also the reality is you got Amazon Web Services absolutely crushing it, no doubt about it. I mean, I've been looking at Oracle, I've been looking at Google, I've been looking at SAP, looking at IBM, looking at Alibaba, looking at Microsoft, the game is really kind of a cloak and dagger situation going on here. >> That's right. >> A lot of things shifting on the provider side, but no doubt scale is the big issue. >> Chris: That's right. >> So how does a customer squint through all this? >> The conversations that I've had, especially with the larger enterprises, is they know that they've got to be able to adopt and utilize the public cloud capabilities, but they also want to retain that degree of control, so they want to maintain, whether it's their apps, their dev ops, some pieces of their infrastructure on prem, and as you talked about that transition it used to be okay, well we thought about cloud was equal to private cloud, then it became public cloud. Hybrid cloud, people are hanging on to hybrid cloud, sometimes for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong reasons. Right reasons are because it's critical for their business. You look at somebody, for instance, in media and entertainment. They can't just push everything out there. They've got to retain control and really have their hands around that content because they've got to be able to distribute it, right? But then you look at some others that are hanging on for the wrong reasons, and the wrong reasons are they want to have their control and they want to have their salary and they want to have their staff, so boy, hybrid sounds like a mix that works. >> So I'm going to be having a one-on-one with Andy Jassy next week, exclusive. I do that every year as part of theCUBE. He's a great guy, good friend, become a good friend, because we've been a fan of him when no one loved Amazon. We saw the early, obviously at SiliconANGLE, now he's the king of the industry, but he's a great manager, great executive, and has done a great job on his ethos of Bezos and Amazon. Ship stuff faster, lower prices, the flywheel that Amazon uses. Everything's kind of on that-- And they own Twitch, which we stream, too, and we love. But if you could ask Andy any questions what questions would you ask him if you get to have that one-on-one? >> Yeah, well, it stems from conversations I've had with customers, which was probably once a week I would be talking to a CIO or somebody on that person's staff, and they'd slide the piece of paper across and say this is my bill. I had no idea that this was what AWS was going to drive me from a billing perspective, and I think we've seen... You know, we've had all kinds of commentary out there about ingress fees, egress fees, all of that sort of stuff. I think the question for Andy, when you look at the amount of revenue and operating margin that they are generating in that business, how are they going to start diversifying that pricing strategy so that they can keep those customers on without having them rethink their strategy in the future. >> So are you saying that when they slide that piece of paper over that the fees are higher than expected or not... Or low and happy, they're happy with the prices. >> Oh, they're-- I think they're-- I think it's the first time they've ever thought that it could be as expensive as on-premise infrastructure because they just didn't understand when they went into this how much it was going to cost to access that data over time, and when you're talking about data that is high volume and high frequency data, they are accessing it quite a bit, as opposed to just stale, cold, dead stuff that they want to put off somewhere else and not have to maintain. >> Yeah, and one of the things we're seeing that we pointed at the Wikibon team is a lot of these pricings are... The clients don't know that they're being billed for something that they may not be using, so AI or machine learning could come in potentially. So this is kind of what you're getting at. >> Exactly. >> The operational things that Amazon's doing to keep prices low for the customer, not get bill shock. >> Chris: That's right. >> Okay, so that's cool. What else would you ask him about culture or is there anything you would ask him about his plans... What else would you ask him? >> I think another big thing would be just more plans on what's going to be done around data analytics and big data. We can call it whatever we want, but they've been so good at the semi-structured or unstructured content, you know, when we think about AWS and where AWS was going with S3, but now there's a whole new phenomenon going on around this and companies are as every bit as scared about that transition as they were about the prior cloud transition, so what really are their plans there when they think about that, and for instance, things like how does GPU processing come into play versus CPU processing. There's going to be a really interesting discussion I think you're going to have with him on that front. >> Awesome, let's talk about IT. IT and information technology departments formerly known as DP, data processing, information-- All that stuff's changed, but there were still guys that were buying hardware, buying Netapp tries that you used to work for, buying EMC, doing data domain, doing a lot of stuff. These guys are essentially looking at potentially a role where-- I mean, for instance, we use Amazon. We're a big customer, happy customer. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> We don't have those guys. >> Chris: Right. >> So if I'm an IT guy I might be thinking shit, I could be out of a job, Amazon's doing my job, so I'm not saying that's the case but that's certainly a fear. >> Chris: Absolutely. >> But the business models have to shift from old IT to new IT. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> What does that game look like? What is this new IT game? Is it more, not a department view, is it more of a holistic view, and what's the sentiment around the buyers and your customers that you talk to around how do they message to the IT guys, like, look, there's higher valued jobs you could go to. >> Right. >> You mention analytics... >> That's right. >> What's the conversation? Certainly some guys won't make the transition and might not make it, but what's the narrative? >> Well, I think that's where it just starts with what segment are you talking about, so if you look at it and say just break it down between the large enterprise, the uber enterprise that we've seen for so long, mid-size and smaller, the mid-size and smaller are gone, okay. Outside of just specific industries where they really need that control, media and entertainment might be an example. That mid-size business is gone for those vendors, right? So those vendors are now having to grab on and say I'm part of that cloud phenomenon, my hyper-cloud of the future. I'm part of that phenomenon, and that becomes really the game that they have to play, but when you look at those IT shops I think they really need to figure out where are they adding value and where are they just enabling value that's being driven by cloud providers, and really that's all they are is a facilitator, and they've got to shift their energy towards where am I adding value, and that becomes more that-- >> That's differentiation, that's where differentiation is, so non-differentiated labor is the term that Wikibon analysts use. >> Oh, okay. >> That's going down, the differentiated labor is either revenue generating or something operationally more efficient, right? >> That's right, and it's all going to be revenue generating now. I mean, I used to be out there talking about things like archiving, and archiving's a great idea. It's something where I'm going to save money, okay, but I got this many projects on my list if I'm a CIO of where I can save money. I'm being under pressure about how am I going to go generate money, and that's where I think people are really shifting their eyeballs and their attention, is more towards that. >> And you got IOT coming down the pike. I mean, we're hearing is from what I hear from CIOs when we have a few in-depth conversations is look, I got to get my development team ramped up and being more cloud native, more microservice and I got to get more app development going that drives revenue for my business, more efficiency. >> Chris: Right. >> I have a digital transformation across the company in terms of hiring culture and talent. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> And then I got pressure to do IOT. >> Chris: Right. >> And I got security, so of those five things, IOT tends to fall out, security takes preference because of the security challenges, and then that's already putting their plate full right there. >> That's right, that's real time and those people are-- >> Those are core issues. >> Putting too much pressure on that right now and then you're thinking about IT and in the meantime, by the way, most of these places don't have the dev ops shop that's operating on a flywheel, right? So you're not... What's it, Goldman Sachs has 5,000 developers, right? That's bigger than most tech companies, so as a consequence you start thinking about well, not everybody looks like that. What the heck are they going to do in the future. They're going to have to be thinking about new ways of accessing that type of capability. >> This is where the cloud really shines in my mind. I think in the cloud, too, it's starting to fragment the conversations. People will try to pigeonhole Amazon. I see Microsoft-- I've been very critical of Microsoft in their cloud because-- First of all, I love the move that they're making. I think it's a smart move business-wise, but they bundle in 365 Office, that's not really cloud, it's just SAS, so then you start getting into the splitting of the hairs of well, SAS is not included in cloud. But come on, SAS is cloud. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Well, maybe Amazon should include their ecosystem that would be a trillion dollar revenue number, so all companies don't look the same. >> That's right. >> And so from an enterprise that's a challenge. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Do I got to hire developers for Asger, do I got to hire developers for Amazon, do I got to hire developers for Google. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> There's no stack consistency across private enterprises to cloud. >> Chris: So I have-- >> Because I'm a storage guy, I've got Netapp drives and now I've got an Amazon thing. I like Amazon, but now I got to go Asger, what the hell do I do? >> I got EMCs here and I got Nimbles there and HP and I've still got tape from IBM from five decades ago, so, John, I got a great term for you that's going to be a key one, I think, in the ability. It's called histocompatibility, and this is really about... >> Oh, here we go. Let's get nerdy with the tape glasses on. >> It's really about the ability to be able to inter-operate with all this system and some of these systems are live systems, they're current systems. Some of it's garbage that should've been thrown out a long time ago and actually recycled. So I think histocompatibility is going to be a really, really big deal. >> Well, keep the glasses on. Let's get down in the weeds here. >> Okay. >> I like the-- With the pocket protector, if you had the pocket protector we'd be in good shape. >> Yep. >> So, vendors got to compete with these buzzwords, become buzzword bingo, but there are trends that you're seeing. You've done some analysis of how the positionings and you're also a positioning guru as well. There's ways to do it and that's a challenge is for suppliers, vendors who want to serve customers. They got to rise above the noise. >> Chris: That's right. >> That's a huge problem. What are you seeing in terms of buzzword bingo-- >> Oh, my goodness. >> Because like I said, I used to work for HP in the old days and they used to have an expression, you know, don't call it what it is because that's boring and make it exciting, so the analogy they used was sushi is basically cold, dead fish. (laughing) So, sushi is a name for cold, dead fish. >> Chris: Yeah. >> So you don't call your product cold, dead fish, you call it sushi. >> Chris: Right. >> That was the analogy, so in our world-- >> Chris: That was HP-UX. >> That was HP-UX, you know, HP was very engineering. >> Yes. >> That's not-- Sushi doesn't mean anything. It's cold, dead fish, that's what it is. >> Right. >> That's what it does. >> That's right. >> So a lot of vendors can error in that they're accurate and their engineers, they call it what it is, but there's more sex appeal with some better naming. >> Totally. >> What are you seeing in terms of the fashion, if you will, in terms of the naming conventions. Which ones are standing out, what's the analysis. >> Well, I think the analysis is this, you start with your adjectives with STEM words, John, and what I mean by that is things like histocompatibility. It could start with things like agility, flexibility, manageability, simplicity, all those sorts of things, and they've got to line those terms up and go out there, but I think the thing that right now-- >> But those are boring, I saw a press release saying we're more agile, we're the most effective software platform with agility and dev ops, like what the hell does that mean? >> Yeah, I think you also have to combine it with a heavy degree of hyperbole, right? So hyperbole, an off-the-cuff statement that is so extreme that you'd never really want to be tested on it, so an easy way to do that is to add hyper in front of all that. So it's hyper-manageability, right, and so I think we're going to see a whole new class of words. There are 361 great adjectives with STEMs, but-- >> Go through the list. >> Honestly. >> Go through the list that you have. >> I mean, there's so many, John, it's... >> So hyper is an easy one, right? >> Hyper is easy, I think that's a very simple one. I think now we also see that micro is so big, right, because we're talking about microservices and that's really the big buzzword in the industry right now. So everything's going to be about micro-segmenting your apps and then allowing those apps to be manifest and consumed by an uber app, and ultimately that uber app is an ultra app, so I think ultra is going to be another term that we see heading into the spectrum as well. >> And so histocompatibility is a word you mentioned, just here in my notes. >> Yep. >> You mentioned, so histo means historical. >> Exactly. >> So it means legacy. >> Chris: That's right. >> So basically backwards compatible would be the boring kind of word. >> Chris: That's right. >> And histocompatibility means we got you covered from legacy to cloud, right. >> Uh-huh. >> Or whatever. >> You bet. >> Micro-segmentility really talks to the granularity of data-driven things, right? >> That's right, another one would be macro API ability, it's kind of a mouthful, but everyone needs an API. I think we've seen that and because they're consuming so many different pieces and trying to assemble those they've got to have something that sits above. So macro API ability, I think, is another big one, and then lastly is this notion of mobility, right. We talk about-- As you said earlier, we talked about clouds and going from-- It's not just good enough to talk about hybrid cloud now, it's about multi-cloud. Well, multi-cloud means we're thinking about how we can place these apps and the data in all kinds of different spaces, but I've got to be able to have those be mobile, so hyper-mobility becomes a key for these applications as well. >> So hyper-scale we've seen, we've seen hyper-convergence. Hyper is the most popular-- >> Chris: Absolutely. >> Adjective with STEM, right? >> Chris: It's big. >> STEM words, okay, micro makes sense because, you know, micro-targeting, micro-segmentation, microservices, it speaks to the level of detail. >> Chris: Right. >> I love that one. >> Chris: Right. >> Which ones aren't working in your mind? We see anything that's so dead on arrival... >> Sure, I think there's a few that aren't working anymore. You got your agility, you got your flexibility, you got your manageability, and you got your simplicity. Okay, I could take all four of those and toss those over there in the trash because every vendor will say that they have those capabilities for you, so how does that help you distinguish yourself from anyone else. >> So that's old hat. >> It's just gone. >> Yeah, never fight fashion, as Jeremy Burton at EMC, now at Dell Technologies, said on theCUBE. I love that, so these are popular words. This is a way to stand out and be relevant. >> That's right. >> This is the challenge for vendors. Be cool and relevant but not be offensive. >> Yeah. >> All right, so what's your take on the current landscape for things like how do companies market themselves. Let's say they get the hyper in all the naming and the STEM words down. They have something compelling. >> Chris: Right. >> Something that's differentiated, something unique, how do companies stand out above the crowd, because the current way is advertising's not working. We're seeing fake news, you're seeing the analyst firms kind of becoming more old, slower, not relevant. I mean, does the Magic Quadrant really solve that problem or are they just putting that out there? If I'm a marketer, I'm a B2B marketer. >> Yeah. >> Obviously besides working with theCUBE and our team, so obviously great benefits. Plug there, but seriously, what do you advise? >> Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, you know, you think about marketing as not only reaching your target market, but also enabling your sales force and your channel partners, and frankly, the best thing that I've found in doing that, John, is starting every single piece that we would come up with with a number. How much value are we generating, whether it's zero clicks to get this thing installed. It's 90% efficiency, and then prove it. Don't just throw it out there and say isn't that good enough, but numbers matter because they're meaningful and they stimulate the conversation, and that's ultimately what all of this is. It's a conversation about is this going to be relevant for you, so that's the thing that I start with. >> So you're say being in the conversation matters. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. >> What's the thought leadership view, what's your vision on how a company should be looking at thought leadership. Obviously you're seeing more of a real-time-- I call it the old world was batch marketing. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> E-mail marketing, do the normal things, get the white papers, do those things. You know, go to events, have a booth, and then the new way is real-time. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> Things are happening very fast-- >> That's right. >> In the market, people are connected now. It's a global, basically, message group. >> That's right. >> Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and all this stuff. >> It's really an unfulfilled need that you guys are really looking to fill, which is to provide that sort of real-time piece of it, but I think vendors trip over themselves and they think about I need a 50 page vision. They don't need a 50 page vision. What they need is here are a couple of dimensions on which this industry is going to change, and then commit to them. I think the biggest problem that many vendors have is they won't commit, they hedge, as opposed to they go all in behind those and one thing we talk about at Chasm Institute is if you're going to fail, fail fast, and that really means that you commit full time behind what you're pushing. >> Yeah, and of course what the Chasm, what it's based upon, you got to get to mainstream, get to early pioneers, cross the chasm. The other paradigm that I always loved from Jeffrey Moore was inside the tornado. Get inside the tornado because if you don't get in you're going to be spun out, so you've got to kind of get in the game, if you will. >> Chris: That's right. >> Don't overthink it, and this is where the iteration mindset comes in, "agile" start-up or "agile" venture. Okay, cool, so let's take a step back and reset to end the segment here. >> Mm-hmm. >> Re:Invent's coming up, obviously that's the big show of the year. VMworld, someone was commenting on Facebook VMworld 2008 was the big moment where they're comparing Amazon now to VMworld in 2008. >> Chris: Right. >> But you know, Pat Gelsinger essentially cut a great deal with Andy Jassy on Vmware. >> Chris: Right. >> And everything's clean, everything's growing, they're kicking ass. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> They got a private cloud and they got the hybrid cloud with Amazon. >> Yeah, it's that VMcloud on Amazon, that really seems to be the thing that's really driving their move into the future, and I think we're going to see from both of those folks, you are going to see so much on containers. Containerization, ultra-containers, hyper-containers, whatever it may be. If you're not speaking container language, then you are yesterday's news, right? >> And Kubernetes' certainly the orchestration piece right underneath it to kind of manage it. Okay, final point, what's in store for the legacy, because you're seeing a few major trends that we're pointing out and we're watching very closely, which really I put into two buckets. I know Wikibon's a more disciplined approach, I'm more simple about that. The decentralization trend we're seeing with Blockchain, which is kind of crazy and bubbly but very infrastructure relevant, this decentralized, disrupting, non-decentralized incumbence, so that's one trend and the other one is what cloud's doing to legacy IT vendors, Oracle, you know, these traditional manufacturers like that HP and Dell and all these guys, and Netapp which is transforming. So you've got disruption on both sides, cloud and like a decentralized model, apps, what's the position, view, from your standpoint, for these legacy guys? >> It's going to be quite an interesting one. I think they have to ride the wave, and I'll steal this from Peter Levine, from Andreessen, right? He talks about the end of cloud computing, and really what that is is just basically saying everything is going to be moving to the edge and there's going to be so much more compute at the edge with IOT and you can think about autonomous vehicles as the ultimate example of that, where you're talking about more powerful computers, certainly, than this that are sitting in cars all over the place, so that's going to be a big change, and those vendors that have been selling into the core data center for so long are going to have to figure out their way of being relevant in that universe and move towards that. And like we were talking about before, commit to that. >> Yeah. >> Right, don't just hedge, but commit to it and move. >> What's interesting is that I was talking with some executives at Alibaba when I was in China for part of the Alibaba Cloud Conference and Amazon had multiple conversations with Andy Jassy and his team over the years. It's interesting, a lot of people don't understand the nuances of kind of what's going on in cloud, and what I'm seeing is it's essentially, to your point, it's a compute game. >> Chris: Yeah. >> Right, so if you look at Intel for instance, Alibaba told me on my interview, they don't view Intel as a chip company anymore, they're a compute company, right, and CJ Bruno, one of the executives there, reaffirmed that. So Intel's looking at the big picture saying the cloud's a computer. Intel Inside is a series of compute, and you mentioned that the edge, Jassy is building a set of services with his team around core compute, which has storage, so this is essentially hyper-converged cloud. >> That's right. >> This is a pretty big thing. What's the one thing that people might not understand about this. If you could kind of illuminate this trend. I mean, the old Intel now turned into the new Intel, which is a monster franchise continuing to grow. >> Mm-hmm. >> Amazon, people see the numbers, they go oh, my god, they're a leader, but they have so much more headroom. >> Chris: Right, right. >> And they've got everyone else playing catch up. >> Yeah. >> What's the real phenomenon going on here? >> I think you're going to see more of this aggregation phenomenon where one vendor can't solve this entire problem. I mean, look at most recently, in the last two weeks, Intel and AMD getting together. Who would've thought that would happen? But they're just basically admitting we got a real big piece of the equation, Intel, and then AMD can fulfill this niche because they're getting killed by NVIDIA, but you're going to see just more of these industry conglomerations getting together to try and solve the problem. >> Just to end the segment, this is a great point. NVIDIA had a niche segment, graphics, now competing head to head with Intel. >> Chris: That's right. >> So essentially what's happening is the landscape is completely changing. Once competitors no longer-- New entrants, new competitors coming in. >> Chris: Mm-hmm. >> So this is a massive shift. >> Chris: It is. >> Okay, Chris Cummings here inside theCUBE. I'm John Furrier of CUBE Conversation. There's a massive shift happening, the game has changed and it's incumbent upon start-ups, venture capital, you know, Blockchain, ICOs or whatever's going on. Look at the new chessboard, look at the game and figure it out. Of course, we'll be broadcasting live at AWS re:Invent in a couple weeks. Stay tuned, more coverage, thanks for watching. (techy music playing)

(light orchestral music) >> Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Cube Conversation here at the Palo Alto studios for theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We're here for some news analysis with Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos.IO D-a-t-o-s dot I-O. Hot new start up with some news. Peter was just here for a thought leader segment with Chris Cummings talking about the industry breakdown. But the news is hot, prior to re:Invent which you will be at? >> Absolutely. >> RecoverX is the product. 2.5, it's a release. So, you've got a point release on your core product. >> Correct. >> Welcome to this conversation. >> Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're excited to share the news. Big day for us. >> All right, so let's get into the hard news. You guys are announcing a point release of the latest product which is your core flagship, RecoverX. >> Correct. >> Love the name. Love the branding of the X in there. It reminds me of the iPhone, so makes me wanna buy one. But you know ... >> We can make that happen, John. >> You guys are the X Factor. So, we've been pretty bullish on what you guys are doing. Obviously, like the positioning. It's cloud. You're taking advantage of the growth in the cloud. What is this new product release? Why? What's the big deal? What's in it for the customer? >> So, I'll start with the news, and then we'll take a small step back and sort of talk about why exactly we're doing what we're doing. So, RecoverX 2.5 is the latest in our flagship RecoverX line. It's a cloud data management platform. And the market that we're going after and the market we're disrupting is the traditional data management space. The proliferation of modern applications-- >> John: Which includes which companies? >> So, the Veritas' of the world, the Commvault's of the world, the Dell EMC's of the world. Anybody that was in the traditional-- >> 20-year-old architected data backup and recovery software. >> You stole my fun fact. (laughs) But very fair point which is that the average age approximately of the leading backup and recovery software products is approximately 20 years. So, a lot's changed in the last 20 years, not the least of which has been this proliferation of modern applications, okay? Which are geo-distributed microservices oriented and the rapid proliferation of multicloud. That disrupts that traditional notion of data management specifically backup and recovery. That's what we're going after with RecoverX. RecoverX 2.5 is the most recent version. News on three fronts. One is on our advanced recovery, and we can double-click into those. But it's essentially all about giving you more data awareness, more granularity to what data you wanna recover and where you wanna put it, which becomes very important in the multicloud world. Number two is what we call data center aware backup and recovery. That's all about supporting geo-distributed application environments, which again, is the new normal in the cloud. And then number three is around enterprise hardening, specifically around security. So, it's all about us increased flexibility and new capabilities for the multicloud environment and continue to enterprise-harden the product. >> Okay, so you guys say significant upgrade. >> Peter: Yep. >> I wanna just look at that. I'm also pretty critical, and you know how I feel on this so don't take it personal, multicloud is not a real deal yet. It's in statement of value that customers are saying-- It's coming! But cloud is here today, regular cloud. So, multicloud ... Well, what is multicloud actually mean? I mean, I can have multiple clouds but I'm not actually moving workloads across clouds, yet. >> I disagree. >> Okay. >> I actually disagree. We have multiple customers. >> All right, debunk that. >> I will debunk that. Number one use case for RecoverX is backup and recovery. But with a twist of the fact that it's for these modern applications running these geo-distributed environments. Which means it's not about backing up my data center, it's about, I need to make a copy of my data but I wanna back it up in the cloud. I'm running my application natively in the cloud, so I want a backup in the cloud. I'm running my application in the cloud but I actually wanna backup from the cloud back to my private cloud. So, that in lies a backup and recovery, and operation recovery use case that involves multicloud. That's number one. Number two use case for RecoverX is what we talk about on data mobility. >> So, you have a different definition of multicloud. >> Sorry, what was your-- Our definition of multicloud is fundamentally a customer using multiple clouds, whether it be a private on-prem GCP, AWS, Oracle, any mix and match. >> I buy that. I buy that. Where I was getting critical of was a workload. >> Okay. >> I have a workload and I'm running it on Amazon. It's been architected for Amazon. Then I also wanna run that same workload on Azure and Google. >> Okay. >> Or Oracle or somewhere else. >> Yep. >> I have to re-engineer it (laughs) to move, and I can't share the data. So, to me what multicloud means, I can run it anywhere. My app anywhere. Backup is a little bit different. You're saying the cloud environments can be multiple environments for your solution. >> That is correct. >> So, you're looking at it from the other perspective. >> Correct. The way we define ourselves is application-centric data management. And what that essentially means is we don't care what the underlying infrastructure is. So, if you look at traditional backup and recovery products they're LUN-based. So, I'm going to backup my storage LUN. Or they're VM-based. And a lot of big companies made a lot of money doing that. The problem is they are no LUN's and VM's in hybrid cloud or multicloud environment. The only thing that's consistent across application, across cloud-environments is the data and the applications that are running. Where we focus is we're 100% application-centric. So, we integrate at the database level. The database is the foundation of any application you create. We integrate there, which makes us agnostic to the underlying infrastructure. We run, just as examples, we have customers running next generation applications on-prem. We have customers running next generation applications on AWS in GCP. Any permutation of the above, and to your point about back to the multicloud we've got organizations doing backup with us but then we also have organizations using us to take copies of their backup data and put them on whatever clouds they want for things like test and refresh. Or performance testing or business analytics. Whatever you might wanna do. >> So, you're pretty flexible. I like that. So, we talked before on other segments, and certainly even this morning about modern stacks. >> Yeah. >> Modern applications. This is the big to-do item for all CXOs and CIOs. I need a modern infrastructure. I need modern applications. I need modern developers. I need modern everything. Hyper, micro, ultra. >> Whatever buzz word you use. >> But you guys in this announcement have a couple key things I wanna just get more explanation on. One, advanced recovery, backup anywhere, recover anywhere, and you said enterprise-grade security is the third thing. >> Yep. >> So, let's just break them down one at a time. Advanced recovery for Datos 2.5, RecoverX 2.5. >> Yep. >> What is advanced recovery? >> It's very specifically about providing high levels of granularity for recovering your data, on two fronts. So, the use case is, again, backup. I need to recover data. But I don't wanna necessarily recover everything. I wanna get smarter about the data I wanna recover. Or it could be for non-operational use cases, which is I wanna spin up a copy of data to run test dev or to do performance testing on. What advanced recovery specifically means is number one, we've introduced the notion of queryble recovery. And what that means is that I can say things like star dot John star. And the results returning from that, because we're application-centric, and we integrated the database, we give you visibility to that. I wanna see everything star dot John star. Or I wanna recover data from a very specific row, in a very specific column. Or I want to mask data that I do not wanna be recovered and I don't want people to see. The implications of that are think about that from a performance standpoint. Now, I only recover the data I need. So, I'm very, very high levels of granularity based upon a query. So, I'm fast from an RTO standpoint. The second part of it is for non-operational requirements I only move the data that is select to that data set. And number three is it helps you with things like GDPR compliance and PII compliance because you can mask data. So, that's query-based recovery. That's number one. The second piece of advanced recovery is what we call incremental recovery. That is granular recovery based upon a time stamp. So, you can get within individual points in time. So, you can get to a very high level of granularity based upon time. So, it's all about visibility. It's your data and getting very granular in a smart way to what you wanna recover. So, if I kind of hear what you're saying, what you're saying is essentially you built in the operational effectiveness of being effective operationally. You know, time to backup recovery, all that good RTO stuff. Restoring stuff operationally >> Peter: Very quickly. >> very fast. >> Peter: In a smart way. >> So, there's a speed game there which is table stakes. But you're real value here is all these compliance nightmares that are coming down the pike, GDPR and others. There's gonna be more. >> Peter: Absolutely. I mean, it could be HIPPA, it could be GDPR, anything that involves-- >> Policy. >> Policies. Anything that requires, we're completely policy-driven. And you can create a policy to mask certain data based upon the criteria you wanna put in. So, it's all about-- >> So you're the best of performance, and you got some tunability. >> And it's all about being data aware. It's all about being data aware. So, that's what advanced recovery is. >> Okay, backup anywhere, recover anywhere. What does that mean? >> So, what that means is the old world of backup and recovery was I had a database running in my data center. And I would say database please take a snapshot of yourself so I can make a copy. The new world of cloud is that these microservices-based modern applications typically run, they're by definition distributed, And in many cases they run distributed across they're geo-distributed. So, what data center aware backup and recovery is, use a perfect example. We have a customer. They're running their eCommerce. So, leading online restaurant reservations company. They're running their eCommerce application on-prem, interestingly enough, but it's based on Cassandra distributed database. Excuse me, MongoDB. Sorry. They're running geo-distributed, sharded MongoDB clusters. Anybody in the traditional backup and recovery their head would explode when you say that. In the modern application world, that's a completely normal use case. They have a data center in the U.S. They have a data center in the U.K. What they want is they wanna be able to do local backup and recovery while maintaining complete global consistency of their data. So again, it's about recovery time ultimately but it's also being data aware and focusing only on the data that you need to backup and recovery. So, it's about performance but then it's also about compliance. It's about governance. That's what data center aware backup is. >> And that's a global phenomenon people are having with the GO. >> Absolutely. Yeah, you could be within country. It could be any number of different things that drive that. We can do it because we're data aware-- >> And that creates complexity for the customer. You guys can take that complexity away >> Correct. >> From the whole global, regional where the data can sit. >> Correct. I'd say two things actually. To give the customers credit, the customers building these apps or actually getting a lot smarter about what they're data is and where they're data is. >> So they expect this feature? >> Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I wouldn't call it table stakes cause we're the only kids on the block that can do it. But this is in direct response to our customers that are building these new apps. I wanna get into some of the environmental and customer drivers in a second. I wanna nail the last segment down. Cause I wanna unpack the whole why is this trend happening? What's the gestation period? What's the main enabler for you? But okay, final point on the significant announcements. My favorite topic enterprise-grade security. What the hell does that mean? First of all, from your standpoint the industry's trying to solve the same thing. Enterprise-grade security, what are you guys providing in this? >> Number one, it's basically security protocol. So, TLS and SSL. This is weed stuff. TLS, SSL, so secure protocol support. It's integration with LDAP. So, if organizations are running, primarily if they're running on-prem and they're running in an LDAP environment, we're support there. And then we've got Kerberos support for Kerberos authentication. So, it's all about just checking the boxes around the different security >> So, this is like in between >> and transport protocol. >> the toes, the details around compliance, identity management. >> Peter: Bingo. >> I mean we just had Centrify's CyberConnect conference, and you're seeing a lot of focus on identity. >> Absolutely. And the reason that that's sort of from a market standpoint the reason that these are very important now is because the applications that we're supporting these are not science experiments. These are eCommerce applications. These are core business applications that mainstream enterprises are running, and they need to be protected and they're bringing the true, classic enterprise security, authentication, authorization requirements to the table. >> Are you guys aligning with those features? Or is there anything significant in that section? >> From an enterprise security standpoint? It's primarily about we provide the support, so we integrate with all of those environments and we can check the boxes. Oh, absolutely TLS. Absolutely, we've got that box checked because-- >> So, you're not competing with other cybersecurity? >> No, this is purely we need to do this. This is part of our enterprise-- >> This is where you partner. >> Peter: Well, no. For these things it's literally just us providing the protocol support. So, LDAP's a good example. We support LDAP. So, we show up and if somebody's using my data management-- >> But you look at the other security solutions as a way to integrate with? >> Yeah. >> Not so much-- >> Absolutely, no. This has nothing to do with the competition. It's just supporting ... I mean Google has their own protocol, you know, security protocols, so we support those. So, does Amazon. >> I really don't want to go into the customer benefits. We'll let the folks go to the Datos website, d-a-t-o-s dot i-o is the website, if you wanna check out all their customer references. I don't wanna kind of drill on that. I kind of wanna really end this segment on the real core issue for me is reading the tea leaves. You guys are different. You're now kind of seeing some traction and some growth. You're a new kind of animal in the zoo, if you will. (Peter laughs) You've got a relevant product. Why is it happening now? And I'm trying to get to understanding Cloud Oss is enabling a lot of stuff. You guys are an effect of that, a data point of what the cloud is enabled as a venture. Everything that you're doing, the value you create is the function of the cloud. >> Yes. >> And how data is moving. Where's this coming from? Is it just recently? Is it a gestation period of a few years? Where did this come from? You mentioned some comparisons like Oracle. >> So, I'll answer that in sort of, we like to use history as our guide. So, I'll answer that both in macro terms, and then I'll answer it in micro terms. From a macro term standpoint, this is being driven by the proliferation of new data sources. It's the easiest way to look at it. So, if you let history be your guide. There was about a seven to eight year proliferation or gap between proliferation of Oracle as the primary traditional relational database data source and the advent of Veritas who really defined themselves as the defacto standard for traditional on-prem data center relational data management. You look at that same model, you'll look at the proliferation of VMware. In the late 90s, about a seven to eight year gestation with the rapid adoption of Veeam. You know the early days a lot of folks laughed at Veeam, like, "Who's gonna backup VMs? People aren't gonna use VMs in the enterprise. Now, you looked at Veeam, great company. They've done some really tremendous things carving out much more than a niche providing backup and recovery and availability in a VM-based environment. The exact same thing is happening now. If you go back six to seven years from now, you had the early adoption of the MongoDBs, the Cassandras, the Couches. More recently you've got a much faster acceleration around the DynamoDBs and the cloud databases. We're riding that same wave to support that. >> This is a side effect of the enabling of the growth of cloud. >> Yes. >> So, similar to what you did in VMware with VMs and database for Oracle you guys are taking it to the next level. >> These new data sources are completely driven by the fact that the cloud is enabling this completely distributed, far more agile, far more dynamic, far less expensive application deployment model, and a new way of providing data management is required. That's what we do. >> Yeah, I mean it's a function of maturity, one. As Jeff Rickard, General Manager of theCube, always says, when the industry moves to it's next point of failure, in this case failure is problem and you solve. So, the headaches that come from the awesomeness of the growth. >> Absolutely. And to answer that micro-wise briefly. So, that was the macro. The micro is the proliferation of, the movement from monolithic apps to microservices-based app, it's happening. And the cloud is what's enabling them. The move from traditional on-prem to hybrid cloud is absolutely happening. That's by definition the cloud. The third piece which is cloud-centric is the world's moving from a scale up world to an elastic-compute, elastic storage model. We call that the modern IT stack. Traditional backup and recovery, traditional data management doesn't work in the new modern IT stack. That's the market we're planning. That's the market we're disrupting is all that traditional stuff moving to the modern IT stack. >> Okay, Datos IO announcing a 2.5 release of RecoverX, their flagship product, their start up growing out of Los Gatos. Peter Smails here, the CMO. Where ya gonna be next? What's going on-- I know we're gonna see you re:Invent in a week in a half. >> Absolutely. So, we've got two stops. Well, actually the next stop on the tour is re:Invent. So, absolutely looking forward to being back on theCUBE at re:Invent. >> And the company feels good about those things are good. You've got good money in the bank. You're growing. >> We feel fantastic. It's fascinating to watch as things develop. The conversations we have now versus even six months ago. It's sort of the tipping point of people get it. You sort of explain, "Oh, yeah it's data management from modern applications. Are you deploying modern applications?" Absolutely. >> Share one example to end this segment on what you hear over and over again from customers that illuminates what you guys are about as a company, the DNA, the value preposition, and their impact on results and value for customers. >> So, I'll use a case study as an example. You know, we're the world's largest home improvement retailers. Old way, was they ran their multi-billion dollar eCommerce infrastructure. Running on IBM Db2 database. Running in their on-prem data center. They've moved their world. They're now running, they've re-architected their application. It's now completely microservices-based running on Cassandra, deployed 100% in Google cloud platform. And they did that because they wanted to be more agile. They wanted to be more flexible. It's a far more cost effective deployment model. They are all in on the cloud. And they needed a next generation backup and recovery data protection, data management solution which is exactly what we do. So, that's the value. Backup's not a new problem. People need to protect data and they need to be able to take better advantage of the data. >> All right, so here's the final, final question. I'm a customer watching this video. Bottom line maybe, I'm kind of hearing all this stuff. When do I call you? What are the signals? What are the little smoke signals I see in my organization burning? When do I need to call you guys, Datos? >> You should call Datos IO anytime, if you're doing anything with development of modern applications, number one. If you're doing anything with hybrid cloud you should call us. Because you're gonna need to reevaluate your overall data management strategy it's that simple. >> All right, Peter Smails, the CMO of Datos, one of the hot companies here in Silicon Valley, out of Los Gatos, California. Of course, we're in Palo Alto at theCube Studios. I'm John Furrier. This is theCUBE conversation. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)