(gentle music) >> Welcome to this Cube Conversation, I'm Lisa Martin. Laura Dubois joins me next, VP of product management at Dell Technologies, Laura, welcome back to the program. >> Yeah, thank you so much Lisa, it's just fantastic to be here and talking about data protection now that we're coming out of COVID, it's just wonderful to be here, thank you so much. >> Isn't it so refreshing. So, you're going to provide some updates on Dell's data protection software, some of the innovation, how you're working with customers and prospects. So let's go ahead and dig right in, let's talk about some of the innovation and the enhancements that Dell is making to its data protection suite of software and also how customers are influencing that. >> Yeah, so it's a great question Lisa and you're right. We have driven a lot of innovation and enhancements in our data protection suite. And let me just level a second. So data protection suite, is a solution that is deployed by really tens of thousands of customers. And we continue to innovate and enhance that data protection suite. Data protection suite is comprised primarily of three main data protection software capabilities. So, longstanding capabilities and customer adoption of Avamar, which continues to be a central capability on our portfolio. The second one is Networker. So Networker is also an enterprise grade, highly scalable and performance data protection solution. And then a couple of years ago, we launched a new data protection capability called power protect data manager. So, all three of these capabilities, really the foundation of our data protection suite. And as I said, enterprises around the world rely on these three sets of capabilities to protect their data, regardless of wherever it resides. And it's really central now more than ever in the face of increasing security, risks and compliance and the need to be able to have an always kind of available environment that customers rely on the capabilities and data protection suite to really make sure their enterprises resilient. >> Absolutely, and make sure that that data is recoverable if anything happens, you mentioned cybersecurity. We'll get into that in a second. But so thousands of Avamar and Networker customers, what are some of the key workloads and data that these customers are protecting with these technologies? >> Yeah, I mean, so, actually tens of thousands. >> Tens of thousands. >> Tens of thousands of customers that rely on data protection suite. And it really, I think the strength and advantage of our portfolio is its breadth, breadth in terms of client operating environments, in terms of applications and databases, in terms of workloads and specifically use cases. So I mean, the breadth that we offer is unparalleled, pretty much whether Windows, Linux, OpenVMS, NetWare, kind of going back in time a long tail of kind of operating environments and then databases, right. So everything from SQL and Oracle and Sybase and DB2 to new types of databases, like the NoSQL or content store and key value store types of NoSQL schemas, if you will. And so, and then lastly is the word they use cases, right? So being able to protect data, whether that be data that's in a data center, out in remote or branch locations or data that's out in the cloud, right. And of course, increasingly customers are placing their data in a variety of locations; on Edge, on core data centers and in cloud environments. And we actually have over six exabytes of capacity under management, across public cloud environments. So pretty extensive deployment of our data protection suite in public clouds, you know, the leading hyperscalers, cloud environments and premises as well. >> So let's talk a little bit about the customer influence 'cause obviously there's a very cooperative relationship that Dell has with its customers that help you achieve things. Like, for example, I saw that according to IDC, Dell Technologies is number one in data protection, appliances, and software, leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for data center backup and recovery for over 20 years now. Talk to us a little bit more about that symbiotic customer, Dell relationship. >> Yeah, so it's a great question. We see our customers as strategic partners, and we really want to understand their business, their requirements. We engage on a quarterly basis with customers and partners in advisory councils. And then of course, we are always engaging with customers outside of those cycles on a kind of a one-on-one basis. And so we are really driving the innovation and the backlogs and the roadmap for data protection suite based upon customer feedback. And approximately 79% of the fortune 100 customers, our Dell data, Dell Technologies data protection customers. Now that's not to say that that's our only customer base. We have customers in commercial accounts, in mid-market in federal agencies, but, you know, we take our customer relationships really, really seriously, and we engage with them on a regular basis, both in a group forum to provide feedback as well as in a one-on-one basis. And we're building our roadmaps and our product release is based on feedback from customers, and again, know large customer base that we take very seriously. >> Right to the customer listening obviously it is critical for Dell. So you talked a little bit about what that cycle looks like in terms of quarterly meetings and then those individual meetings. What are some of the enhancements and advancements that customers have actually influenced? >> Yeah, so we, I mean, we, I think continuing to provide simplicity and ease of use is a key element of our portfolio and our strategy, right? So continuing to modernize and update the software in terms of workflows, in terms of, you know, common experiences also increasingly customers want to automate their data protection process. So really taking an API-first strategy for how we deliver capabilities to customers, continuing to expand our client database, hypervisor environments, continue to extend out our cloud support, you know, things like protection of cloud native applications with increasingly customers containerizing and building scale-out applications. We want to be able to protect Kubernetes environment. So that's kind of an area of focus for us. Another area of focus for us is going deeper with our key strategic partners, whether that'd be a cloud partner or a hypervisor partner. And then of course, customers, in fact, one of the top three things that we consistently hear from these councils that we do is the criticality of security, security and our data protection environment but the criticality of being able to be resilient from, and in the event of a cyber attack to be able to resilient recover from that cyber attack. So that is an area where we continue to make innovations and investments in the data protection suite as well. >> And that's so critical. One of the things that we saw in the last year, 15 months plus Laura, is this massive rise in ransomware. It's now a household word, the Colonial Pipeline for example, the meat packing plant, it's now many businesses knowing it's not, if we get attacked, but it's when. So having the ability to be resilient and recover that data is table stakes for, I imagine a business in any organization. I want to understand a little bit more. So you talked about tens of thousands of customers using Avamar and Networker. So now they have the capability of also expanding and using more of the suite. Talk to me a little bit about that. >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think it starts with the customer environment and what workloads and use cases they have. And because of the breadth of capabilities indeed the data protection suite, we really optimize the solution based upon their needs, right. So if they have a large portfolio of applications that they need to maintain but they're also building applications or systems for the future, we have a solution there. If they have a single hypervisor strategy or a multiple hypervisor strategy, we have a strategy there, if they have data that's on-premise and across a range of public clouds, one large customer we have as a, kind of three-plus one strategy around cloud. So they're leveraging three different public cloud, IS environments, and then they're also have their on-premise cloud environment. So, you know, we, it really starts with the customer workload and the data, and where it lives; whether that's be out in an Edge location in a remote or branch office, on an end point somewhere, they need to protect whether it be in a core data center or multiple data centers, or rather be in the cloud. That's how we think about optimizing the solution for the customers. >> Curious if you can give me any examples of customers maybe by industry that were, have been with Dell for a long time with Avamar and Networker for a long time and how they've expanded, being able to pick, as you say, as their, or as their environment grows and we've got, now this blur of right. It's now worked from anywhere, data centers, Edge. Talk to me about some customers examples that you think really articulate the value of what Dell is delivering. >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think one customer in the financial services sector comes to mind. They have a large amount of unstructured data that they need to protect, you know, petabytes, petabytes and petabytes of data they need to protect. And so I think that's one customer that comes to mind is someone we've been with for a long time, been partnering with for a long time. Another customer I mentioned in the, it was a kind of a three-letter software company that is a really strategic partner for us with on-premise, in the cloud. You know, healthcare is a big and important sector for Dell. We have integrations into kind of leading healthcare applications. So that's another big, whether they be a healthcare provider or a healthcare insurance company, and had a fourth example, but it's escaping my mind right now, but, I would say going back to the cyber discussion, I mean, one thing that we, where we see really customers looking for guidance from us around cyber recovery and cyber resilience is in what the, you know, of course president Biden just released this executive board on his mandate for ensuring that the federal agencies but also companies in the millisecond sector, sectors be able to ensure resilience from cyber attacks. So that's companies in financial services, that's companies in healthcare, energy, oil, and gas transportation, right. Obviously in companies and industries that are critical to our economy and our infrastructure. And so that has been an area where we've seen, recently in the last, I would say 12 months increased in engagement, you mentioned Colonial Pipeline, for example. So those are some high salient highlights I think of in terms of, you know, kind of key customers. But pretty much every sector. I mean, the U.S. government, all of the the agencies, whether they be civilian, or DOD or key kind of engagement partners of ours. >> Yeah, and as you said in the last year, what a year it's been. But really a business in every industry has got to be able to be resilient and recover when something happens. Can you talk a little bit about some of the specific enhancements that you guys have made to the suite? >> Yeah, sure. So, you know, we continue to enhance our hypervisor capabilities. So we continue to enhance not only the core VMware or hyperbaric capabilities but we continue to enhance some of the extensions or plugins that we have for those. So whether that be things like our VRealized plugin or a vCloud director plugin for say, VMware. So that's kind of a big focus for us. Continuing to enhance capabilities around leveraging the cloud for long-term retention. So that's another kind of enhancement area for us. But cloud in general is an ara where we continue to drive more and more enhancement. Improving performance in cloud environments for a variety of use cases, whether that be DR to the cloud, backup or replications of the cloud or backing up workloads that are already in the cloud. There's a key use cases for us, as well as the archive to cloud use cases. So there's just some examples or areas where we've driven enhancements and you can expect to see more, you know we have a six month release cadence for Avamar and Networker, and we continue with that momentum. And at the end of this month, we have the next major release of our data protection suite. And then six months later, we'll have the next update and so on and so forth. And we've been doing that actually for the last three to four years. This is a six month release cadence for data protection suite. We continue with that momentum. And like I said, simplicity and modernity, APIs and automation, extending our workloads and hypervisors and use cases. And then cloud is a big focusing area as well, as well as security and cyber resilience. >> Right, and so a lot of flexibility in choice for Avamar and Networker customers. As things change the world continues to pivot and we know it's absolutely essential to be able to recover that data. You mentioned 70, I think 79% of the Fortune 100 are using Dell technologies for data protection software. That's probably something that's only going to continue to grow. Lots of stuff coming up. As you mention, what are some of the things that you're personally excited about as the world starts to open up and you get to actually go out and engage with customers? >> I'm in just looking forward to like in-person meetings. I mean, I just loved going and trying to understand what problems the customers are trying to solve and how we can help address those. I think, you know, what I see customers sort of struggling with is how do they kind of manage their current environment while they're building for the future? So there's a lot of interest in questions around, how do they protect some of these new types of workloads, whether they're deployed on premise or in the public cloud. So that continues to be an area where we continue to engage with customers. I'm also really personally excited about the extensions that we're doing in our cyber recovery capabilities so as you can expect to hear more about some of those in the next 12 months, because we're really seeing that as a key driver to kind of increased policies around and implementations around data protection is because of these, you know, the needs to be able to be resilient from cyber attacks. I would say we're also doing some very interesting integrations with VMware. We're going to have some first and only announcements around VMware and managing protection for VMware, you know, VM environments. So you can look forward to hearing more about that. And we have customers that have deployed our data protection solutions at scale. One customer has 150,000 clients who they're protecting with our data protection offerings, 150,000. And so we're continuing to improve the, and enhance the products to meet those kinds of scale requirements. And I'm excited by the fact that we've had this long standing relationship with this one particular customer and continue to help in flowing up where their needs go. >> And that's something that even a great job of talking about is just not just a longstanding relationships but really that dedication that Dell has to innovating with its customers. Laura, thank you for sharing some of the updates of what's new, what you're continuing to do with customers, and what you're looking forward to in the future. It sounds like we might hear some news around the VMworld timeframe. >> Yes, I think so. >> All right, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate your time. >> Yeah, it's been great to be here. Thanks so much. >> Excellent from Laura Dubois and Lisa Martin, you're watching this Cube Conversation. (soft music)

>> From the SiliconANGLE media office in Boston Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> Hi everbody, this is Dave Vellante, and welcome to this special Cube conversation on a very important topic, cyber security and cyber resiliency. With me today is Stefan Voss who's the Senior Director of Product Management for Data Protection Software and Cyber Security and Compliance at Dell EMC. Stefan, thanks for coming on and helping us understand this very important topic ahead of RSA World. >> My pleasure, thanks Dave for having me. >> You're welcome, so let's talk about the environment today. We have, for years, seen back-up evolve into data protection, obviously disaster recovery is there, certainly long term retention. But increasingly, cyber resilience is part of the conversation. What are you seeing from customers? >> Yeah, definitely, we're seeing that evolution as well. It's definitely a changing market and what a perfect fit. We have to worry about right of breach, What happens when I get attacked? How can I recover? And the technologies we have, that we have for business resiliency back-up, they all apply, they all apply more than ever. But sometimes they have to be architected in a different way. So folks are very sensitive to that and they realize that they have great technologies. >> I'm glad you mentioned the focus on recovery because we have a lot of conversations on theCUBE about the CIO and how he, or she, should be communicating to the board, or the CSO, how they should be communicating to the board. That conversation has changed quite dramatically over the last 10 years. Cyber is a board-level issue. When you talk to, certainly large companies, every quarter they're talking about cyber. And not just in terms of what they're doing to keep the bad guys out but really what the processes are to respond, what the right regime is - you know, cyber security is obviously a team sport, it's not just the responsibility of the CSO or the SECOPS team, or the IT team, everybody has to be involved and be aware of it. Are you seeing that awareness at board levels within your customer base, and maybe even at smaller companies? >> 100%, I think the company size almost doesn't matter. Everybody can lose their business fairly quickly and there's one thing that NotPetya, that very bad, sort of, attack told us is that it can be very devastating. And so if we don't have a process and if we don't treat it as a team sport, we'll be uncoordinated. So, first of all, we learned that recovery is real and we need to have a recovery strategy. Doesn't mean we don't do detection, so the NIS continuum applies, but the CSOs are much more interested in the actual data recovery than they ever were before which is very interesting. And then, you know, you learn that the process is as important as the technology. So, in other words, Bob Bender - a fabulous quote from Founders Federal - you know, the notion of sweating before the game, being prepared, having a notion of a cyber recovery run book. Because the nature of the disasters are changing so, therefore, we have to think about using the same technologies in a different way. >> And I said at the open that things are shifting from just a pure back-up and recovery spectrum to much broader. The ROI is changing, people are trying to get more out of their data protection infrastructure than just insurance and, certainly, risk management and cyber resiliency and response is part of that. How is the ROI equation changing? >> Yeah, I mean, it's a very valid question. You know, we do have, people are asking for the ROI. We have to take a risk-based approach, we are mitigating risk. It's never fun to have any data protection or business resilience topology, 'cause it's incremental cost, but we do that for a reason. We need to be able to have an operational recovery strategy, a recovery strategy from a geographic disaster and, of course, now more so than ever a recovery strategy from a cyber attack. And so, therefore, we have to think about, you know, not so much the ROI but what is my risk reduction, right? By having, sort of, that process in place but also the confidence that I can get to the data that I need to recover. >> Now we're gonna get into that a little bit later when we talk about the business impact analysis. But I wanna talk about data isolation. Obviously ransomware is a hot topic today and this notion of creating an air gap. What is data isolation from your perspective? What are customers doing there? >> Yeah, I mean, I think almost every customer has a variant of data isolation. It's clear that it works, we've seen this from the NotPetya attack again that where we were, large logistics company, right, found data the domain controller on a system that underwent maintenance in Nigeria. So a system that was offline, but we don't wanna operate that way. So we wanna get the principles of isolation because we know it kind of reduces the attack surface, right, from the internal actor, from ransomware variants, you name it. All of these are, when you have stuff on the network it's theoretically fair game for the attacker. >> So that Nigeria example was basically by luck there was a system offline under maintenance that happened to be isolated? And so they were able to recover from that system? >> Absolutely. And another example was, of course, critical data that domain controller, 'cause that's what this attack happened to go after, was on tape. And so, you know, this just shows and proves that isolation works. The challenge we were running into with every customer we work with was the recovery time. Especially when you have to do selective recovery more often, you know, we wanna be able to get the benefits of online media. But also get, sort of, the benefits of isolation. >> Yeah, I mean, you don't wanna recover from tape. Tape is there as a last resort and hopefully you never have to go to it. How are customers, sort of, adopting this data isolation strategy and policy? Who's involved, what are some of the pre-requisites that they need to think about? >> Yeah, so the good thing - first thing's first, right. We have technology we know and love, so our data protection appliances where we started architecting this workflow, that we can use. So, in other words, you don't have to learn a new technology, buy something else. There's an incremental investment, yes. And then we have to think about who's involved. So that earlier point, the security folks are almost always involved, and they should be involved. Sometimes they fund the project, sometimes it comes out of IT. Right, so, this is the collaborative effort and then to the extent it's necessary, of course, you wanna have GRC - so the risk people - involved to make sure that we really focus on the most important critical assets. >> Now ahead of RSA, let's talk a little bit about what's going on in that world. There are security frameworks, Nist in particular is one, that's relatively new, I mean it's 2014 it came out, it's been revised really focusing on prevent, detect and, very importantly, respond. Something we've talked about a lot. Are people using that framework? Are they doing the self-assessments that Nist prescribes? What's your take? >> Yeah, I think they are. So, first of all, they are realizing that leaning too much left of breach, in other words hoping that we can always catch everything, sort of the eggshell perimeter, everybody understands that that's not enough. So we have to go in-depth and we also have to have a recovery strategy. And so the way I always like to break it down pragmatically is - one, what do I prioritize on? So we can always spend money on everything, but doing a business impact analysis and then maybe governing that in a tool like RSA Archer can help me be a little bit more strategic. And then, on the other end, if I can do a better job co-ordinating the data recovery along with the incident response, that will go a long way. You know and, of course, that doesn't forego any investment in the detection but it is widely adopted. >> One of the key parts about the NIS framework is understanding exposure in the supply chain where you may not have total control over one of your suppliers' policies, but yet they're embedded into your workflow. How are people handling that? Is there a high degree of awareness there? What are you seeing? >> It is absolutely, that's why product security is such an important element, and it's the number one priority for Dell Security, even above and beyond the internal security of our data center, as crazy as it sounds. Because, you know, we can do a lot of damage right in the market. So, certainly, supply chain, making sure we have robust products all along the way is something that every customer asks about all the time and it's very important. >> Let's go back to business impact analysis, we've mentioned it a couple of times now. What is a business impact analysis and how do you guys go about helping your customers conduct one? >> Yeah, I mean, let's maybe keep it to that example, let's say I go through this analysis and I find that I'm a little bit fuzzy on the recovery and that's an area I wanna invest. You know, and then I buy off on the concept that I have an isolated or cyber recovery vault on an isolated enclave onto which I can then copy data and make sure that I can get to it when I have to recover. The question then becomes, well what does business critical mean? And that's where the business impact analysis will help to say what is your business critical process - number one, number two - what are the associated applications, assets? 'Cause when you have that dependency map it makes it a lot easier to start prioritizing what applications do I put in the vault, in other words. In this specific example. And then how can I put it into financial terms to justify the investment? >> Well we were talking about ROI before, I mean really we've done actually quite a few studies looking at Global 2000 and the cost of downtime. I mean, these are real tangible metrics that, if you can reduce the amount of downtime or you can reduce the security threat, you're talking about putting money back in your pocket. Because Global 2000 organizations are losing millions and millions of dollars every year, so it is actually hard ROI. Even though some people might look at it as softer. I wanna talk about isolated data vault, you know, this notion of air gaps. What are you guys specifically doing there? Do you have solutions in that area? >> Yeah, we do. So we are using, luckily, so the concepts that we know from resiliency disaster recovery. Right, so our data protection storage which is very robust, it's very secure, it has very secure replication. So we have the mechanisms to get data into the vault, we have the mechanisms to create a read-only copy, so an immutable copy, that I can then go back into. So all of this is there, right, but the problem is how do I automate that workflow? So that's a software that we wrote that goes along with the data protection appliance sale. And what it does, it's all about ingesting that business critical data that I talked about into the secure enclave, and then rendering it into an immutable copy that I can get to when I have nowhere else to go. >> Okay, so you've got that gap, that air gap. Now, the bad guys will say 'Hey, I can get through an air gap, I can dress somebody up as a worker and put a stick in'. And so, how much awareness is there of that exposure? And I know it's maybe, you know, we're hitting the tip of the pyramid here, but still important. Can you guys help address that through, whether it's processes or product or experience? >> 100% so we have, of course, our consulting services that will then work with you on elements of physical security, or how do I lock down that remaining replication link? It's just about raising the bar for the attacker to make it more likely we'll catch them before they can get to, really, the prized assets. We're just raising the bar but, yes, those are things we do. So consulting, physical security, how do I do secure reporting out? How do I secure management going in? How do I secure that replication or synchronization link into the vault? All of these are topics that we then discuss, if they kind of deviate from the best practices and we have very good answers through our many customer arrangements. >> Stefan, let's talk about some of the specific offerings. RSA is a portfolio company in the Dell Technologies Group, it's a sister company of Dell EMC. What are you guys doing with RSA? Are you integrating with any of their specific products? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit? >> Yeah, I think, so when you think about recovery and incident response being so important, there's an obvious, right? So what RSA has found - I thought this was very interesting is that there's a lack of coordination between, typically, the security teams and the data professionals, data restoration professionals. So the more we can bridge that gap through technology, reporting, the better it is, right? So, there's a logical affinity between an incident response retainer, activity, and the data recovery solutions that we provide. That's one example, right? So every day counts, that example that I talked about NotPetya, the specific customer was losing 25 Euros every day. If I can shave off one day, it's money in the bank. Or money not out of the bank. The other area is, how do I make sure that I'm strategic about what data I protect in this way? That's the BIA Archer. And then there's some integrations we are looking at from an analytics perspective. >> Archer being the sort of governance risk and compliance, workflow, that's sort of one of the flagship products of RSA. So you integrate to that framework. And what about analytics, things like IOC, RSA NetWitness, are those products that you're integrating to or with, or leveraging in any way? >> Yeah, first off, analytics in general it's an interesting concept now we have data inside our secure enclave, right? So what if we could actually go in and give more confidence to the actual copies that we're storing there. So we have an ecosystem from an analytics perspective. We work with one specific company, we have Arrest API-based integration where we then, essentially, use them to do a vote of confidence on the copy, of the raw back up. Is it good? Are there signs that it was corrupted by malware? and so forth. So what that helps us do is be more proactive around our recovery because, I think you're about to say something - but if I knew there's something, you know, suspicious then I can start my analytics activity that much sooner. >> Well the lightbulb went off in my head. Because if I have an air gap, and I was saying before, it's necessary but insufficient. If I can run analytics on the corpus of the back up data and I can identify anomalies, I might be able to end run somebody trying to get through that air gap that I just mentioned before. Maybe it's a physical, you know, security breach. And the analytics might inform me. Is that a reasonable scenario? >> It is a reasonable scenario, though we do something slightly different. So, first of all, detection mechanisms, left of breach stuff, is what it is, we love it, we sell it, you know, we use it. But, you know, when it comes to back up they're not off-the-shelf tools we can just use and say 'Hey, why don't you scan this back up?' It doesn't typically work. So what we do is, in the vault, we have time, we have a workbench so it's almost like sending a specimen to the lab. And then we take a look at it. Are there any signs that there was data corruption that was indicative of a ransomware attack? And when there is such a scenario we say, 'You might wanna take a look at it, and do some further investigation'. That's when we then look at NetWitness or working with the security teams. But we can now be of service and say 'You might wanna look at this copy over here'. It's suspicious, there's an indicative compromise. And then take the next steps other than hoping for the best. >> You mentioned the ecosystem, you mentioned the ecosystem before. I wanna double-click on that. So, talk about the ecosystem. We've said here it's a team sport, you can't just do it alone. From a platform perspective is it open, is it API based? Maybe you can give some examples of how you're working with the ecosystem and how they're leveraging the platform. >> Yeah 100%. So, like I said, so we have, you know, our data protection appliances and that's sort of our plumbing, right, to get the data to where I want. We have the orchestration software. This is the part we're talking about. The orchestration software has Arrest API, everything's documented in Swagger. And the reason we did that is that we can do these orchestrations with third party analytics vendors, that's one use case right? So, I'm here, I have a copy here, please scan, tell me what you find and then give me an alert if you find something. The other example would be, maybe, doing a level of resiliency orchestration. Where you'd automate the recovery workflow beyond what we would have to offer. There are many examples but that is how we are enabling the ecosystem, essentially. >> You mentioned Founders Federal earlier. Is that a customer, is that a reference customer? What can you tell me about them? >> Yeah it's a reference customer and they very much saw the need for this type of protection. And, you know, we've been working with them. There's a Dell World, last year, session that we did with them. And very much the same sort of, like the quote said, focus on the process not only the product and the set of technologies, right? And, so that's how we've been partnering with them. >> The quote being 'Sweat before the game'? Founders Federal, that's a great quote. Alright, we've talked a lot about just, sort of, general terms about cyber recovery. What can you tell us, tell the audience, what makes Dell EMC cyber recovery different in the marketplace and, you know, relative to your competition? Pitch me. >> Yeah, I mean, I think it's a very unique capability. Because, one, you need a large install base and, sort of, a proven platform to even built it on, right? So when you look at the data domain technology we have a lot to work with. We have a lot of customers using it. So that's very hard to mimic. We have the orchestration software where we, I believe, are ahead of the game, right? So the orchestration software that I talked about that gets the data into the vault securely. And then our ecosystem, right? So those are really the three things. And then, of course, we have the consulting services which is also hard to mimic. To really, you know, design the process around this whole thing. But I think the ecosystem, sort of, approach is also very powerful. >> You have a big portfolio, you've got your sister company that's, sort of, well known obviously in this business. Do you also have solutions? I mean, for instance, is there an appliance as part of the portfolio that fits in here? And what is that? >> Yeah, so, you can think of this as, if I wanted to really blow it down, the two things I would buy is a data domain - it could be the smallest one - and a VxRail appliance that runs the software. And then I stick that in the vault. And then there's, sort of, that product. So you can think of it as an appliance that happens to go with the software that I talked about that does the orchestration. >> Okay, so, RSA the premier conference on cyber coming up in a couple of weeks. What have you guys got going there? Give us a little tease. >> Yeah, absolutely. So it's gonna be an awesome show and we will have a booth, and so we look forward to a lot of customer conversations. And we do have a panel. It's gonna be with Mastercard and RSA and myself. And we're really gonna take it from left of breach all the way to right of breach. >> Awesome, do you know when that panel is yet? >> It is, I think, on the 5th, I may have to check. >> Which is which day? >> I wanna say it's Wednesday. >> So it starts on the Monday, right? So that'll be day three. So check the conference schedule, I mean things change at the last minute. But that's great. Mastercard is an awesome reference customer. We've worked with them in the past and so, that's great. Stefan, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE and sharing some of your perspectives and what's coming up at RSA. It's good to have you. >> Thanks so much, Dave, I appreciate it. >> Okay, thanks for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante from our East Cost headquarters. You're watching theCUBE.

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live on day one is Las Vegas, of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. And we have a couple guests joining us now. We've got Ruya Barrett, the VP of Product Marketing for Data Protection at Dell EMC. Welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Lisa: And we've also got Kerry "KJ" Johnson from FieldCore, you are a senior systems engineer. Welcome, KJ. >> Thank you very much. >> So, KJ, we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about FieldCore. I know you're a GE company but what is it about FieldCore that you guys do that makes you unique and how are you working with Dell EMC? >> Okay, so FieldCore is a global service provider in the power services sector. Our customers are governments and large countries. We service and build power plants all over the world. We're in the power generation business. So, anything that generates power. That could be wind, it could be water, it could be traditional oil and gas, it could be nuclear, anything that generates power. Basically, what FieldCore does is we service it, and we keep the lights on around the world, especially in, we're in 92 countries. So, other countries don't have the infrastructure that the United States has and experience outages a little more frequently than us. So our job is to get the power back on as quickly and as efficiently as possible. >> So last fall in the U.S. we were slammed with a lot of natural disasters, including Hurricane Irma. You guys at FieldCore had a critical situation last fall when that hurricane struck. Tell us about that, and how working with Dell EMC Technologies you were able to recover. >> Okay, so last year, they changed the forecast on Hurricane Irma from coming up the east coast of the state to coming up the west coast. And they were projecting it to hit the Tampa Bay area, which put all of our production systems directly in its path. So with them projecting the storm to hit us within about three to four days, we weren't prepared for it. I was on a call with all of the directors, and they asked me, what was our level of preparedness for this storm. So I told them that as far as data protection, we had replication, that was fine. We were replicating all of our SAP, Oracle, databases, all of our email via Exchange and file systems, to our data recovery center that was in Atlanta, via Dell EMC RecoverPoint appliances, so that was fine. We had a recovery point objective of less than two minutes. We could go back two minutes and be up and running. The problem was, had the storm hit us, and we had to then throw over and go live at our DR facility in Atlanta because Tampa was down, we wouldn't have any way to have backups during that time that we were live. So that was a gap that I identified. They subsequently asked me, is there something that could be done in three days- >> Dave: Got any magic beans? >> Yeah, exactly, so I'm going, I'll do everything in my power to make something happen. So basically I got on the phone and called my Dell EMC Data Protection rep, Matthew Sattler. And he was actually at a Dell management boot camp in Boston I believe, at the headquarters. And he actually took my call. He snuck out of the meeting and answered the call, which was an all-day meeting, which was, that enabled us to do what we did. He offered a solution that we could actually use virtual appliances, because we had not rolled out our DR equipment yet, it was wasn't even scheduled to be delivered for two weeks. So he shored up the licensing, he called a sales engineer, who got in touch with me, his name was Dominic Greco, he's based out of Pittsburgh, great guy. He lined up all of the resources. I got my resources together, and we put a plan together, and we actually had the project started by the end of that first day. >> Just another day at the factory. >> Hey, you know, our customers call us and we answer. That's how it works. >> So, it's common scenario for you guys? >> I think we had an exceptional team on the account, so exceptional teams always make a huge difference, and I think in this case, we definitely had a great team. And I think one of the things that KJ talked about, is how flexible the software-defined data protection approach can be. I think sometimes people think of us as an infrastructure company, infrastructure meaning hardware predominantly, but our data protection capabilities are just as robust on the software-defined data center front. So I think the flexibility of being able to do DR, and put in place a DR environment, that gave KJ all that flexibility, is really a testament to the software capabilities. >> So could we just kind of review exactly what happened? So, if I understand it correctly, you were concerned about the exposure on your remote site, right? You're going to fail over, RPO of only two minutes, so you're going to lose, maybe exposed to two minutes of data loss, you can live with that in business, right, understood that, you communicate it. But then you have no way to back up that failover site. >> KJ: Yeah. >> And so, the team came in and what, you you accelerated a DR project that was sort of in the pipeline? >> Exactly, we had hardware that was scheduled to be delivered to Atlanta, and be deployed within two weeks, but we didn't have the two weeks. >> Ruya: Three days. >> So our DR facility was still running on a legacy product, and that wouldn't work for us, because all of our production data was backed up to data domain and it's not interoperable. So, we went with the virtual appliances, and we deployed a virtual data domain, a virtual Avamar appliance, running Dell EMC Data Protection Software Suite, and an NDMP Accelerator, I always have trouble with that one, for our file systems, and by the end of the day, they were deployed and we were already starting the replication. >> So in this situation did you do you failover proactively, or you just wait for the disaster to hit? What's the- >> Well, the thing was just to be prepared. So, the storm was projected to hit Saturday. Day two, was Thursday, and we convened the conference call, an indefinite conference call, that means I was going to be on it, all of Dell EMC's people were going to be on it, until either we finished, or the storm blew us away. So we monitored the replication all Thursday and by like 6:45 that evening, all of the data had replicated over to the DR, and the next day, the office had closed early so people could go home and hunker down for the storm, look after their families and their property, and we kept the call going from home, but the data had finished by that evening. And the storm hit, started coming around midnight that evening on Saturday. So, fortunately, the storm only hit us as a weak Category 1, so we never even had to throw over to it, but had it hit us as a Category 3, we would have been very much in trouble, had we, weren't able to accomplish that. >> So I wanted to get, kind of an idea KJ, in terms of what is the business impact that you've been able to achieve? You've obviously had to accelerate this part of your security transformation, which you were able to do, what's the business impact that your bosses, and their bosses in the C-suite, at FieldCore, have seen as a result of being able to have the agility, with Dell EMC to implement this so quickly? >> Well, some of the things that came into play with the setup that we had with Dell EMC, one was the Data Protection Suite encompasses everything, hardware, software, licensing, replication, it's all one suite of things. It's not nickel and dime add-ons or bolt-ons, it's one full protection suite. So the package that we had, Matt said, "You already have this package", you know, there's nothing to buy, there was no charge for any of the resources rolling it out because we were on a, what's called a utility mode of billing, and it's basically, it's like instead of a CapEx expenditure, where we buy hardware, we don't buy anything, they bring it out for free, they install it for free, as soon as we start backing up, okay, how much deduplicated data do you have on a data domain? We'll bill you for it. And they send us a bill every month. So that helped us out. >> And you know the data domain efficiency quotient is just through the roof, it's one of the best platforms for dedupe, so it really helps our customers, especially when you're talking about a utility-base model as well, that efficiency, that architecture, that really brings that to bear. >> Dave: What do you call this utility model? >> This utility, it's the utility model, it's just one of our consumption models. It's the flexible consumption models that we offer across data protection software, as well as our platforms. >> So it's a pay by the drink? >> Ruya: Yeah absolutely. >> Now, I'm interested in the ripple effects, and I don't know your business well enough, but it sounds like, not only were you covered, but had a Category 3 hit, your customers, there would've been a ripple effect here to your customers, around the world, 92 countries I think you said. Is that right or is it, is this not a real-time business? >> Well, our users, the vast majority of them, are field technicians, they're field service guys. >> Dave: Oh. They work on turbines, they work on boilers, they work on nuclear plants, they're out in the field. They work on windmills. So they're not very technical people, but all of the laptops that they carry and hook up to this equipment, feeds equipment into our systems, and our systems can't go down. So, the impact would've been pretty great had our systems been offline for any amount of time, because when your global you know, there's really no good time to be down. When I'm sleeping, there's people busting their butts in other countries and you know, middle production hours. >> So last question here Ruya, to you, on this theme of Dell Technologies World, of make it real, KJ you've done a great job articulating how you've been leveraging your partnership as well as the technology, to make your security transformation a reality. Ruya, last question to you is, there was a recent ESG study on IT maturity, can you share with us some of the impacts there that you've seen, and how it kind of relates to FieldCore? >> Yeah, absolutely, be happy to. So we just recently unveiled a study we did with ESG, where we surveyed 4,000 customers, IT professionals, over 16 countries. And it really had to do with the IT transformation maturity curve, and their adoption. And one of the things that was really interesting is customer feedback, was that transformed companies, that have gone through this massive IT transformation, are perceived to be 16 times more innovative, be 2 1/2 times more competitive, perceived as being 2 1/2 times more competitive, and six times more apt to have IT as part of the business decision-making process. And data protection was one of the top areas of this transformation as well, because it's so critical. As data's moving out of the data center and becoming more distributed, we talked about the distributed core today, going to the edge with IOT, and all of those types of applications, there is this massive amount of data moving out, outside of the data center. So data's growing, it's moving out, and it's also becoming more and more critical for customers. So data protection, that recoverability, operational recoverability, disaster recoverability, cyber recovery, are becoming more and more critical. And there was three things in the maturity curve on data protection. Transformed companies are basically protecting data in five types of different applications. So they're not really looking at just physical protection, which a lot of legacy companies are still kind of stuck at physical, and maybe virtual, and starting to really do a lot more on virtual. These guys are looking at data protection across distributed environments, they're looking at public cloud, they're looking at hybrid cloud, they're looking at physical, virtual, so very comprehensive. So that was number one. Two, is really self-service models. Transformed companies, that have gone through IT transformation for their data protection have enabled application owners to be able to do self-service. So that has become a part of how they offer data protection. And the last one was really about automation and automated policies. So when you add a virtual machine, when you bring in a new system, how do you automatically apply policies, so protection isn't something that needs to happen as a backend consideration? And I think KJ talked about some of those things as well. And they're doing a self-service model as part of what they're rolling out, as well as the automated protection policies. So I think they're well on their way to transformation, and this is what makes it great, in terms of the partnership we have with our customers. >> Well thank you both so much for stopping by, sharing, KJ the great successes that you've had with that one very, very potent example, Ruya thanks for stopping by and sharing with us that data protection continues to be hot, hot, hot. >> And thanks for having us again. Thank you, nice seeing you guys. >> Our pleasure. We want to thank you, you're watching theCUBE live, day one, Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, stick around. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. We'll be back after a short break. (techno music)