>> From Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Tavern on the Green. We're in the heart of Central Park in New York City, the Big Apple. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here at the Veritas Solution Day #VtasVision. Veritas used to have a big main tent day where they brought in all the customers. Now they're going out, belly-to-belly, 20 cities. Dave Raffo is here, he's the editorial director for TechTarget Storage. Somebody who follows this space very closely. David good to see you, welcome to theCUBE. >> Yeah, it's great to be on theCUBE. I always hear and watch you guys but never been on before. >> Well you're now an alum, I got to get him a sticker. So, we were talking about VMworld just now, and that show, last two years, one of the hottest topics anyway, was cloud, multi-cloud, Kubernetes of course was a hot topic. But, data protection was right up there. Why, in your view, is data protection such a hot topic right now? >> Well there's a lot of changes going on. First of all, couple years ago it was backup, nobody calls it backup anymore right. The whole market is changing. Data protection, you have newer guys like Cohesity and Ruberik, would come out with a, you know, architecture. They're basically, from scratch, they built scale-out and that's changing the way people look at data protection. You have all of the data protection guys, the Dell EMC, CommVault, Veeam, they're all kind of changing a little. And Veritas, the old guys, have been doing it forever. And now they're changing the way that they're reacting to the competition. The cloud is becoming a major force in where data lives, and you have to protect that. So there's a lot of changes going on in the market. >> Yeah I was talking to a Gartner analyst recently, he said they're data suggested about 2/3 of the customers that they talk to, within the next, I think, 18 months, are going to change they're backup approach or reconsider how they do backup or data protection as it were, as you just said. What do you think is driving that? I mean, people cite digital transformation they cite cloud, they cite big data, all the buzz words. You know, where there's smoke, there's fire, I guess. But what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, it's a little bit of all of those things, because the IT infrastructure is changing, virtualization containers, everything, every architectural change changes the way you protect and manage your data, right. So, we're seeing a lot of those changes, and now people are reacting to it and everybody's figuring out still how to use the cloud and where the data is going to live. So then, you know, how do you protect that data? >> And of course, when you listen to vendors talk, data protection, backup, recovery, it's very sexy when you talk to the customers they're just, oftentimes, drinking from the fire hose, right. Just trying to solve the next problem that they have. But what are you hearing from the customers? TechTarget obviously has a big community. You guys do a lot of events. You talk personally to a lot of customers, particularly when there are new announcements. And what does the landscape look like to you? >> So they're all, you know like I said, everybody's looking at the cloud. They're looking at all these, how they're going to use these things. They're not sure yet, but they want data protection, data management that will kind of fit in no matter which direction they go. It's kind of, you know, we know we're looking at where we're going to be in five years and now we want to know how we're going to protect, how we're going to manage our data, how we're going to use it, move it from cloud to cloud. So, you know, it's kind of like, it's a lot of positioning going on now. A lot of planing for the future. And they're trying to figure out what's the best way they're going to be able to do all this stuff. >> Yeah, so, you know the hot thing, it used to be, like you said, backup. And then of course, people said backup is one thing, recovery is everything. You know, so it was the old bromide, my friend Fred Moore, I think coined that term, back in the old storage tech days. But when you think about cloud, and you think about the different cloud suppliers, they've all got different approaches, they're different walled gardens, essentially. And they've got different processes for at least replicating, backing up data. Where do you see customers, in terms of having that sort of single abstraction layer, the single data protection philosophy or strategy and set of products for multi-cloud? >> Well, where they are is they're not there, and they're, you know, far from it, but that's where they want to be. So, that's where a lot of the vendor positioning is going. A lot of the customers are looking to do that. But another thing that's changing it is, you know, people aren't using Oracle, SQL databases all the time anymore either. They're using the NoSQL MongoDB. So that change, you know, you need different products for that too. So, the whole, almost every type of product, hyper-converged is changing backup. So, you know, all these technologies are changing the way people actually are going to protect their data. >> So you look at the guys with the big install base, obviously Veritas is one, guys like IBM, certainly CommVault and there are others that have large install bases. And the new guys, the upstarts, they're licking their chops to go after them. What do you see as, let's take Veritas as an example, the vulnerabilities and the strengths of a company like that? >> So the vulnerabilities of an old company that's been around forever is that, the newer guys are coming with a clean sheet of paper and coming up and developing their products around technologies that didn't exist when NetBackup was created, right. So the strength is that, for Veritas, they have huge install base. They have all the products, technology they need. They have a lot of engineers so they can get to the board, drawing board, and figure it out and add stuff. And what they're trying to do is build around NetBackup saying all these companies are using NetBackup, so let's expand that, let's build archiving in, let's build, you know, copy data protect, copy data management into that. Let's build encryption, all of that, into NetBackup. You know, appliances, they're going farther, farther and farther into appliances. Seems like nobody wants to just buy backup software, and backup hardware as separate, which they were forever. So you know, we're seeing the integration there. >> Well that brings up another good point, is you know, for years, backup's been kind of one size fits all. So that meant you were either over protected, or under protected. It was maybe an after thought, a bolt-on, you put in applications, put it in a server, an application on top of it. You know, install Linux, maybe some Oracle databases. All of the a sudden, oh, we got to back this thing up. And increasingly, people are saying, hey, I don't want to just pay for insurance, I'd like to get more value. And so, you're hearing a lot of talk about governance, certainly security, ransomware is now a big topic, analytics. What are you seeing, in terms of, some of those additional value, those value adds beyond that, is it still just insurance, or are we seeing incremental value to customers? >> Yeah, well I think everybody wants incremental value. They have the data, now it's not just, like you said, insurance. It's like how is this going to, how am I going to use this data? How's it going to help my business? So, the analytics is a big thing that everybody's trying to get in. You know, primary and secondary storage everybody's adding analytics. AI, how we use AI, machine learning. You know, how we're going to back up data from the edge into and out of thing. What are we going to do with all this data? How are we going to collect it, centralize it, and then use it for our business purposes? So there's, you know, it's a wide open field. Remember it used to be, people would say backup, nobody ever changes their backup, nobody wants to change backup. Now surveys are saying within the next two years or so, more than 50% of people are looking to either add a backup product, or just change out their whole backup infrastructure. >> Well that was the interesting about when, you know, the ascendancy of Data Domain, as you recall, you were following the company back then. The beauty of that architecture was, you don't have to change your backup processes. And now, that's maybe a challenge for a company like that. Where people are, because of digital, because of cloud, they're actually looking to change their backup processes. Not unlike, although there are differences, but a similar wave, remember the early days of virtualization, you had, you're loosing physical resources, so you had to rethink backup. Are you seeing similar trends today, with cloud, and digital? >> Yeah, the cloud, containers, microservices, things like that, you know, how do you protect that data? You know people, some people are still struggling with virtualization, you know, like, there's so many more VMs being created so quickly, and that you know, a lot of the backup products still haven't caught up to that. So, I mean Veeam has made an awful great business around dealing with VM backup, right? >> Right. >> Where was everybody else before that? Nobody else could do it. >> We storage guys, we're like the cockroaches of the industry. We're just this, storage just doesn't seem to die. You know the joke is, there's a hundred people in storage and 99 seats. But you've been following it for a long time. Yeah, you see all the hot topics like cloud and multi-cloud and digital transformation. Are you surprised at the amount of venture capital over the last, you know, four or five years, that has flooded in to storage, that continues to flood in to storage? And you see some notable successes, sure some failures, but even those failures, you're seeing the CEOs come out and sell to new companies and you're seeing the rise of a lot of these startups and a lot of these unicorns. Does it surprise you, or is that kind of your expectation? >> Well, I mean, like you said, that's the way it's always been in storage. When you look at storage compared to networking and compute, how many startups are there in those other areas. Very few, but storage keeps getting funded. A couple of years ago, I used to joke, if you said I do Flash, people would just throw hundreds of millions of dollars at you, then it was cloud. There always seem to be like a hot topic, a hot spot, that you can get money from VCs. And there's always four or five, at least, storage vendors who are in that space. >> Yeah, the cloud, the storage cloud AI blockchain company is really the next unicorn right? >> Right, yeah, if you know the right buzz words you can get money. And there's never just one right, there's always a couple in that same area and then one or two make it. >> Yeah, or, and or, if you've done before, right, you're seeing that a lot. I mean, you see what the guys like, for instance at Datrium are doing. Brian Biles he did it a Data Domain, and now he's, they just did a giant raise. >> Qumulo. >> Yeah, you know, Qumulo, for sure. Obviously the Cohesity are sort of well known, in terms of how they've done giant raises. So there's massive amount of capital now pouring in, much of which will go into innovation. It's kind of, it's engineering and it's you know, go to market and marketing. So, you know, no doubt, that that innovation curve will continue. I guess you can't bet against data growth. >> Right, you know, yeah, right, everybody knows data is going to grow. They're saying it's the new oil, right. Data is the big thing. The interesting thing with the funding stuff now is the, not the new companies, but the companies that have been around a little bit, and it's now time for them to start showing revenue. And where in the past it was easier for them to get money, now it seems a little tougher for those guys. So, you know, we could see more companies go away without getting bought up or go public but-- >> Okay, great. Dave, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. >> Alright. >> It was great to have you. >> Thanks for having me on. >> Alright keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE from Veritas Vision in Central Park. We'll be right back. (theCUBE theme music)