(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube. Covering VM World 2017 brought to you by VM ware and it's ecosystem partner. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back, we are here on the ground at the VM village live in Las Vegas at VMworld 2017. People buzzing around us here on the ground floor in the hang space, I'm John Ferrier, with my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Craig Nunez, Chief VP of Marketing at Datrium, Andre Lebosi? >> Lebosi. >> VP Solutions and Alliances at Datrium. Welcome to The Cube, great to see you. >> I've been looking forward to this since I arrived in Vegas, man. (laughter) >> You guys are the hottest start-up right now on the track in Silicon Valley. A lot of people talking about you guys. Want to get this out there. Give you a minute to just talk about Datrium. You guys are a new model emerging, some real pros. David Doman everyone knows about your success with that. Frank's Loop and that went that way. You guys have a great team of XVM guys. >> Craig: Yes. >> So you're working on a really compelling unique thing but it's getting traction so give a minute to explain what Datrium is. >> In simple terms, we are a very different take on conversions. We were conversing VM ware and Linux virtualization even bare metal container hosts with your primary storage we leveraged host Flash for that with secondary storage and archived to cloud. All in one super simple system. And I mean, what a lot of our customers kind of tell us, wow you are a simpler more scalable kind of nutanix that meets rubrik. You're like this love child of nutanix and rubrik. (laughter) They just love it 'cause it's one thing that does it all, super simple. >> A lot of free love going around this generation. (laughter) You got AWS and VM ware bonding together. Google playing in here, it's like the 60's all over again. (laughter) >> Yeah, yeah, not that I remember. >> Tech B generation.6 >> Dave: Summer love 2017. Summer of love, that I'm going to use that. >> Okay love child between rubrick and nutanix. What specifically does that look like? Just clarify one from a product p6erspective. >> First of all there is absolutely zero Call it, HCI cluster administration and so you know growing is as simple as adding a server. Adding capacity, you add those independently as you need it, so it's super economic. Everything runs fast 'cause it runs right out of Flash in your server adjacent to your VM. Again no back up silo, you take care all of your protection and archiving to the cloud with the same console that you're running your business on. So it's in a nutshell what you get. >> So contrast that Andre with the classical hyper-converged infrastructure in terms of how it's scales and how it's managed. >> Yeah I know that's a good question. So if you think about hyper-convergence. It was great, it really changed the years. In many ways it simplified, you remove the no silos that san was creating complexity around scalability or configuring rate, lunz, zoning. All the things that you'd specialize as skill to manage, right? And as you know, as you move along in your journey in the data center, you end up with multiple different vendors. They have different skill sets to manage. So HCI really changed the game in that way. But it also created different challenges for the data center. And we were lucky enough that HCI's only starting, right? This whole thing about converging is only getting started. So one of the first problems that we are dress is being able to scale performance, independent of capacity. So we've hyper-converged for the most part. You know, if you might want more capacity you need to have a computer, if you need a computer, you need more capacity. So we enable customers to go in different directions as needed. We also enable customers to bring their own existing environment into the solution. With HCI generally speaking, you need to buy that specific appliance or that specific HCL and sort of like pour everything in that specific solution. Which kind of becomes a silo as well. So we enable companies to leverage the existing environments and get the same benefits that you'd get from a performance perspective that HCI is bringing. Data locality and relook or read IO's with ...... But at the same time, with your existing hardware. And allows you to use whatever you want. There are other benefits on the resilience side as well. A primary and secondary bad cops so all the primary data, leaves in the nodes in the servers but we have the copy of the data or the back up in what we call a data cluster. So, what that really makes is the solution is stateless on the server side. I don't know if you remember, it's the same timeframe. All the servers were stateless. If a server went down, you would just, no move. You restart the VM's or the workload in a different server. And it's great. With hyper-convergence, now it's always stateful. All the data is actually living on the server. So when you lose a server, you actually putting data at risk and to be cost effective with ACI, you need to do what they call IFTT1 or replication factor two which means I have two copies of the data across the cluster. But it's not very uncommon to have avoid this failure and the read error and then you down to back up and have to restore. You want to rely on the backup as your insurance-- >> Dave: Not as your-- >> Not as then we use it for a day today. >> Yeah. >> So there are a number of different things that we solved that we believe we solved well. That hyper-convergence was not able to solve in its first instance. But you know what? That said, hyper-convergence started this whole journey to convergence is starting. I think I heard Chad Sakeet saying that, there's 440,000 VMX out there. Those are all coming for renewal, no refresh cycles. And now customers that have been able to see what HCI was doing the past three, four years. What worked and what was not working well and look at the use solutions and see how we are addressing those changes. >> Well what about the data protection side. You guys obviously have with Brian and Hugo, a lot of experience as a target. >> Voiceover: Yeah, yeah. >> But you're talking about more. You're talking about a software platform. >> Yeah from a data protection perspective, first of all you've got a platform that's totally unified with your primary storage environment. You then have this wonderful grandularity at VM and V dis level, container level. Great scale, I mean again the chops that the founders bring to that. But one of the things that you know, it think is really powerful. other platforms will talk about, hey we can snap VM's. We can replicate but then they will store them on expensive Flash in those nods and we have a separate device that is cost optimized, globally dedupped compressed on very low cost capacity. That is ideal for all that capacity you need to keep to protect the business. And so bringing that together with the great performance of Flash, this thing really does it all end to end And so it's a different way to think about it. And when we go in, we typically solving problems on the compute primary storage side. >> Voiceover: Uh huh. >> But when we then describe what we do from a backup or archived to cloud perspective, the lights go on and oh my gosh, I simply don't need-- >> John: I got a two for one here. >> Yes exactly. >> Your file system basically you're saying eliminates the need for any separate backup software, is that right, or? >> We do, I would say 80 or 90% of what most people need because the convenience of having your virtualization engineer do it all is so good. Now what I would say is, there are a lot of requirements in the world that we absolutely are going to turn to our pals at Zerto for and Cool Replication. Our friends at Veem, Rubert Cohesidi. All of those guys, we'll team up with because if you want you know back up off platform you know we're daydream to daydream. >> Voiceover: Yeah, right. >> We're not, going to sugar coat that. But there are specific requirements that those guys do that you need. We're going to give them a ring and bring them in. But what we're finding is, most of our customers are looking for ways to just do it all in one spot with a guy running the business, so. >> So I want to back up for a second. We had Brian's founder on Monday and this is an interesting story. I want you to take a minute to describe why you're doing this, because a lot of people, you come in, okay primary storage compute and then that's how I used to operate and then the next guy comes in with his solution. You guys have an interesting perspective with the data domain backup side. Why are guys taking this approach? Explain the uniqueness, why you guys are engaging in this way and what does it mean for the person the customer on the other end. >> Craig: Yeah. >> Is it all in one, is it optional? I mean, the approach is unique 'cause of the founder. >> Craig: Yeah. Just take a minute to explain that. >> Here's the world, the world is hard and getting harder, right? I mean it's just a morning, noon, night and weekend job to keep businesses running with the pace of this economy we're in, right? >> John: The economists are pulling their hair out, basically. >> And the, exactly and so the winner in the market is the one who can bring the simplest approach that gets the job done. And the problem is the bolt on, peace meal solution's that folks are tasked to live with, if you sit down and just draw all of the software stacks and consoles, then you need to put together to go from your virtualization environment. Flash, your backup environment. Replication DR, security, you want to blow your brains out. (laughter) >> John: Hang from the raftors. And again guys, they're trying to get the job done. They're forced to move fast and they're tight on budget. And so if you Ycan bring them the simplest possible solution that solves the problem today and future proofs it going forward, that's what folks are looking for. And there's a lot of nuanced edges to a lot of different solutions out there but at the end of the day show me simple and that wins. >> Alright so, now give me the reactions. That's important to buyers to understand what the (mumbles) is, thank you very much for that. Now the reactions. So you walk into that buyer and say, hey don't blow your brains out. Don't hang from the rafters, we got you here. This is beautiful for you, simple works. Cleans those lines up. What are they reacting to? Are they skeptical, they say you're full of you know what? Do they test the hell out of it? What goes on? >> When you walk them through it, and I'm going to let you take this too. You've talked to a ton of people already. When you walk them through it, they totally get it. Where should Flash be? Right next to the VM on the host. Makes perfect since, it's cheaper there, right? How should you scale, well stateless host. You know, servers that aren't storage nods. You know you lose two and you cluster down. That's not a great situation. >> Voiceover: No problem. >> Voiceover: Yeah. (laughter) >> And so stateless hosts. Any number of servers can fail, you're still going. People love that, they get that. Bringing all the backup capability into that one console. If you've got it, people get it and by the way, a quick demo is kind of icing on the cake. But I mean-- >> Share some color. >> Yeah, no, I've been traveling the last few weeks and talking to customers. I joined Datrium four months ago, and customers understand the proposition and they like. They like that we bring performers. They like that we bring resiliency. They like that it re-utilize the existing investments in the data center. And they like that we do primary and secondary backup. The customers that we're talking to they get it and they understand it and they want to do POC's and move on. >> So you're talking about a lot of VMX's out there. 400,00 plus, obviously that's been a target for hyper-connected verge. Clearly a target for your guys.6 But you're also talking about stateless. And when you think about these emerging cloud native apps, these stateless apps, certain IOT apps that are being developed. Do you see the emergence within your customer base yet? Of those type of emerging applications that aren't staple. >> Absolutely, I mean well first of all. If you look at the public cloud world. Architecturally what those guys have had to do to kind of get latency low and scalable, they think EC2 and S3, you know think of how Google cloud is architected with Kolassas. They have separated that persistent capacity from what's going on, effectively on the nods, the compute nods. And they've done that for exactly for that reason. To scale, low latency workloads as you need as you grow on demand. >> And to make that infrastructure invisible to the developer. >> Absolutely, absolutely and so the approach we're taking is fundamentally to give customers in kind of this hybrid world a way to bring that kind of infrastructure with the simplicity, scale, performance you need and kind of on prim. >> Dave: Yeah. >> And then it's a wonderful map when you take that in hybrid way to public cloud, 'cause you can very easily map that capacity layer to capacity layer, compute to compute. Instead of this kind of crazy dance you have to do with traditional infrastructure. >> That was actually part of it. You look at the VM ware and nowadays there's keynotes and embracing double ups and container. It's all over the place now. Now we're counting the days for how many store engineers or infrastructural engineers who actually need the data center moving forward. But the way system that we said was the architecture while in mind just support very medal containers and provide all of the performance benefits. And really finding a way to run containers and native apps, called native apps across data centers, across clouds. And we're moving in that direction more and more to support (mumbles) integrated and a few other architectural solutions. >> So I want to follow up with that. I mean, everybody talks about cloud. The show it's cloud, cloud, cloud and obviously the big wave. But the, you know this well John being all the time you spent with AWS, Reinvent and Jassie and so forth. The (mumbles) cloud is not VM's. >> Voiceover: Right. >> Right, and so is the conversation beginning to change? And your customer base around more of a developer mindset and what does that conversation look like. >> For the customers that I've been talking they still are very VM centric. There are some discussions about containers and developing, developers embracing containers. Off brand on the &cloud and on premise but they know VM is still pervasive in the prize. >> Dave: So that's where the money is? (laughter) >> That's where the money is, at least for the large majority of -- >> I'm sorry now on premise. And so cloud is just a different vernacular true but-- >> But the reality is though folks have that've got a VM environment. A lot of people we talk to are they have mason container development work going on. >> John: Right. >> And the challenge is though that those kinds of customers wind up having to silo out the infrastructure that supports those. You just don't have the bridge. >> Dave: And with you, you're saying-- >> And the point is yeah, you can have your ESX, VM's, your Linux VM's, your containers running in those VM's or you can have those containers running bare metal. >> Yeah. >> It's all one shared pool of resources like it ought to be. >> And to some extent when I talk to customers, what I figured out is they all starting using containers running VM's. But as soon as they figured out their frame of work, their management, their orchestration, they wanted to move to bare metal 'cause they wanted to have is that additional 10, 15% performance that they get running bare metal. And that I see constantly and talking to Docker and other companies, that's what they see on their customer base as well. >> Voiceover: Yeah. >> So you know where all that is going, I don't believe everything is going to be running in the cloud. I don't believe everything is going to be running in the data center. There'll be a mix of everything. You talk to two customers, they have different hyper-visors, they had red hat visualization, they have VM ware, they have hyperV. And large customers are embracing everything to some extent. >> Yeah, and you want to set it up in a way that you know, you set your policies and you don't care where it is, right? You set it up, and economical way that is lined with you service levels and who care if it's you know, a different prim site, the cloud, which cloud it doesn't matter. It's all your cloud, one cloud, right? >> Guys, thanks for coming on. Andre Leibovici. >> Andre: Yeah. (laughter) >> Got it right? >> Andre: You, got it. >> Greg Nunez, good friend congratulations on the start-up. >> Craig: Thanks. >> Quick, I want to give you the last word here. Talk about the company's status, what you guys are hiring for, where you guys are in the start-up journey. I see great validation with multiple rounds of funding. How many employees? How much revenue are you doing? Tell me the product cost? (laughter) Share! >> We are growing rapidly, 130% quarter of a quarter. We are hiring literally across the board. We can't hire fast enough to keep up with the demand. And for us the number one goal is just getting in front of customers looking for a way out from personal infrastructure. >> John: Sales people, field organization, channel? >> Channel we have a wonderful channel network and absolutely hiring guys to partner up with our channel. Both sales and marketing and yeah we just-- >> Alright, I'll put you guys on the spot because we love big fan of start-ups, certainly ones that have great pedigree in product that's unique again like Utonics in the early days, no one understood it, founders had stayed on course. You guys are on a similar track where it doesn't look like everything else but it's game changing so. Each of you take a minute to explain to the buyer, a potential customer out there, why they should work with Datrium and what you can bring to the table. We'll start with you. >> So first of all, if you are on a ray based infrastructure now, you're dealing with your performance constraints, managing lines, you've looked at a modern approach to convergence and it just doesn't scale, it's not right for your infrastructure, and enterpriser service provider has to take a look at this new approach to convergence we've got. It will change your world, literally. Your business and your personal world. And if you don't take a look, you're missing out. It is different from hyper-convergence. But fundamentally brings your that wonderful X86 based infrastructure that the whole planet is moving to. Got to take a look. >> Andre you can't say the same thing he's said but in your own words what would you say to the potential buyers that are out there. Potential customers, why should they look at you guys. >> Sure, I'll let you all in on the HCI in the simplicatiion of the data center. You know HCI was great simplying data center, removing a lot of the complexity. We do the same things. We do it in a different way. We remove all the nobs and buttons that you have in the data center as an example our infrastructure doesn't require any tuning on performance. So enable this duplication, enable compression, disable original recording. All those features that people, that when you're managing hundreds or thousands of yams, there's no way you know what needs to be enabled and disabled for each one of your workloads. So we lack from simplicity and that's where I met my pace CI peg, it's simplicity. And we do the same thing but we now solve different challenges that HCI also brought into the market. >> Datrium start-up, hot start-up in Silicon Valley and all around the world. Congratulations. It's The Cube coverage here at VMWorld 2017. I'm John Ferrier and Dave Vellante. We'll be be back with more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)