>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering the VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its Ecosystem Partners. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're live in Las Vegas. theCUBE special coverage of VMworld 2017, our eighth year. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE with my co-host, Dave Vellante is also co-host. Our next two guests is Jaspreet Singh, CEO, Founder of Druva and Matt Morgan and CMO of Druva. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. >> Glad to be here. >> So Pat Gelsinger basically laid it out on the keynote, essentially the waves, and one of them, you're riding hard, you're a startup. Take a minute to talk about why you guys are excited about this wave, because I think data protection, decentralized, fully cloud world. Cloud, IoT, and edge. It's creating a huge data environment. Jaspreet, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing. >> Absolutely, so if you look at the big wave, right? The data, as said, is getting completely decentralized. We have IoT, edge... the new cloud, and the data center is getting disrupted with time. And the more data gets decentralized or defragmented, the more centralized the data management has to be. Whether on the edge, in the cloud, and the whole notion of cloud, if you think about it is actually an interesting phenomenon where Amazon is applying retail economy to traditional IT. If you combine them together, you sort of want to manage the data as a service wherever it goes. Be it the edge, be it the core. You want the simplest ability to sort of protect it, to govern it, and to add intelligence to it over time as it gathers more and more information. So Druva provides a platform, end to end, to sort of make data all managed properly from a single console. >> Pat Gelsinger was up on the stage in his keynote, Andy Jassy came out. Big news, Amazon relationships. Got some fruit bearing already. And they had to do that because vCloud Air was kind of an interesting point. But he brings up the point about the cloud as disruption and that the conventional wisdom of the old is no longer the most relevant thing right now and a lot of customers are paying attention to that so I got to ask you as a founder and CEO on the right wave, in our opinion, and Wikibon's opinion. What should customers look for for success, 'cause we're early on this new vector. What's different? What should they be thinking about as they look at the cloud, look at the distributed and decentralized edge. What are the some of the things that's different? >> I think you would think about customers and, Matt, please, add to it. For customers, this is not just a technology stack, right? It's not a software-defined data center all over again. This is more of a... trying to see how they can consume something at a predictable and certain price wherever they go, right? That's the whole genesis of cloud, it's a complete business model shift. And so when they look at data and how they holistically manage data they understand data is likely to outlive most systems by 3X. And now when they have this notion of cloud, how can they be on the journey to sort of to consume and deliver the value of data as a service in this whole notion of public cloud. And that's sort of the delivered promise. >> So Matt, I wonder if you could talk about the brand continuum, that brand promise. The ascendancy of the sort of modern backup software in the first part of this millennium was coincident with virtualization and consolidating servers and that we sort of played that out. And now customers are saying we have to rethink the way we protect data because of cloud. So I wonder if you could address that and talk about the brand promise of Druva in that context. >> Excellent. Yes. We did a survey, 450 VMware customers and it basically underscores the VMware strategy. There are going to be three tenets to the modern data architecture moving forward. There's going to be physical servers, there's going to be virtualized infrastructure, and there's going to be VMware Cloud on AWS, or its derivatives. When you move further from left to right, moving from physical to virtual, virtual to cloud. What ends up happening is the approach to data protection of the past fails to scale and frankly is no longer compatible. You can't float an appliance in a cloud. You can't possibly put in your own co-located infrastructure within a cloud store to attempt to protect that data. So a lot of people just go without protection at all. What we found in our survey is that three out of four people surveyed really want an as-a-service solution because they're able to basically protect cloud to cloud. They're able to come in and say, "OK, if my data is going to be sitting there, my infrastructure is going to be sitting there, I want to be able to wrap that infrastructure with an as-a-service solution that will protect it. The real value though isn't just protecting in the cloud, it's the as-a-service solution is not limited by the constraints of the past. It can actually be extended backwards so you could take your virtual infrastructure and protect it with an as-aservice solution. You can take your physical infrastructure and protect it as a solution. So as a result, we see this as a sea change to this new way of protecting data. >> So Jaspreet, you were saying that you've got to have this centralized data management philosophy in order to succeed in this world that Matthew just described. Why is that? Is that because you need a single point of control in case something goes wrong and it's a recovery thing? Or is it more of a business model sort of an as-a-service business model requirement? I wonder if you could address that? >> So the traditional IT boundary is sort of shattering in the cloud world, right? If you're going to have... There's a last incident of sorts, right? If one incident happens in a company then many parties are looking at what happened there. Is it a breach, is it a loss, it is a governance issue? So data has multiple faces now. Data also touches multiple parties, be it production, be it the DevOps. You've got to have a holistic view of looking at the data versus traditional approach of I'm going to put a backup architecture, or DR architecture, or e-discovery architecture all in silos. And cloud sort of also gives an opportunity for people to not hug their hardware and say this is mine, go get yours. They can sort of break boundaries and say let's work together on this data set where I can manage the prediction part of it and someone else can pay their dues to manage the governance part of it. So decentralization, the more... I'm sorry. (coughs) The more decentralization of data is promoting a holistic view of management of data purely built from the cloud. >> Jaspreet, I wanted to ask you. You had a pretty busy week. We covered this on SiliconANGLE, and so I kind of want to ask it again since we're here at VMworld. $80 million in funding. Congratulations, big news. And the Druva Cloud Platform on AWS. Congratulations. Can you share more color to that? That's a lot of cash, 80 million. >> It's a good amount of money. It's no replacement for creativity, but it's a good fuel to have in the company. Yes, it's fortunate to have a great lead, lower capital with all of our existing investors: Sequoia and Nexus, Tenaya including EMC Ventures was a (mumbles) to be in this round. Secondary storage overall is getting disrupted. The legacy isn't material anymore given the big cloud wave, as I said. So the new wave of providers have to be in the cloud and hence, Druva. We've been building historically a very strong foundation of cloud native solution without a hardware approach. With no hardware approach, all in the cloud. In the past, we've taken a legacy architecture of a backup, DR, e-discovery into multiple products in Druva Phoenix, to take care of edge data or data center data and now we're taking a big step forward and say we're going to combine our products into a single platform. Think of it as Amazon services for data prediction. The customer logs in and can search for their workload, they want a backup VM survey, they want to search today, and then deliver what they want to the IT right from a single point of console. That's the power of Druva Cloud Platform. >> Eight years ago, we interviewed Dheeraj Pandey for the first time. It was our first time doing theCUBE 2010, and at that time, no one's ever heard of Nutanix. New-tan-nix, New-tAh-nix. A little accent from New Jersey, Massachusetts. I always get it wrong. >> I say New-tan-nix. >> Dheeraj was kind of crazy. He was viewed in Silicon Valley as kind of a wild card. No one got his model at that time. Dave, and David Florey of Wikibon, were like "This is amazing," they saw it right away. And I'm like, "This is really awesome." You guys are kind of out of that same track and invest along the same lines for secondary storage. So I've got to ask you, when you're doing your fundraising, you must've had some pretty interesting experiences. Can you share some of the, without naming names, the good, and kind of weird conversations you had around, cause you got to understand the trends to get your business. >> Absolutely. I think storage is the new F word, right? There's a lot of people who don't dislike storage for what happened in the public market recently. So you go to explain to them there's a thesis around making money on public cloud using public cloud as storage tiers, so we've had various interesting conversations there. We were lucky to have Riverwod, who got the idea, who are of the same conviction as the founder to put money behind where the market is going, but still a lot of venture capitalists don't like the venture part of it. They want a predictable story, they want easy money, and they want big valuations. But the venture in the venture, VC capital.. >> John: Wait a minute. The idea of venturing... >> Jaspreet: That's right. >> To go take a chance or a bet. >> Jaspreet: That's right. >> That's called venture capital. >> Jaspreet: Absolutely. >> Not hedge fund or, you know, money market. >> Jaspreet: Absolutely. >> You basically got some pretty weird, kind of like, "Huh" questions. What was the craziest question you got? That was so off-base. >> Crazy questions like, "Where's the box? (Interviewers laugh) "Wait a minute. Where's the storage box?" >> John: "Where do I put it?" >> We had one question where someone asked, "So what's your..." You know, not option, it was... What the word? What's your, the... >> "Engagement?" >> "Engagement on your software?" And we were like, this is your... backup software, or DR software. It's going to perform virtually dutiable. But you don't engage with the software as you would with a salesforce.com. You got to look for... one party or two parties of a strong conviction and sort of go with them. >> John: Great story. Thanks for sharing. >> You mentioned three things: protect, govern, and add intelligence. And that "add intelligence" pieces You don't usually associate that with, certainly not backup, but data protection. So in this world of digital business, we think of digital business is all about how you leverage data assets. And when you think of adding intelligence, that's not something we typically think of in a data protection company. How is Druva different in that regard and how can you help organizations leverage their data assets? >> Yeah. We see this as a customer journey, OK? Data protection is the gateway drug to leveraging an as-a-service model, right? Because it's really obvious. I can protect my data, I can restore it, I can do disaster recovery. Once you get that data into a centralized store, there's incredible things you can do. From the fact that it's centralized. Unlike previous approaches that were dozens or hundreds of silos that you never could report across, Druva gives you that centralization effect. So the first logical step to move up the customer journey is to embrace governance where you can start having a perspective. Making sure that you're legally complying with regulations. Making sure that you're governing for legal requirements within the company. But when you move pass that, you start to actually start to manage for patterns. And that's where intelligence comes in. When you start thinking of data, the associated metadata that surrounds that data, is data within itself. And if you wrap intelligence around that, you could start to get predictive around areas that could affect risk for your organization or even open up opportunity. So a good risk example is ransomware. Through intelligence, you can actually see when data that is distributed starts being encrypted early so you're able to identify and do what we call the anomaly detection. So that's kind of the journey, if you will. You go protection to governance, governance to intelligence. >> So it is kind of the holy grail, right? I mean. >> Jaspreet: Absolutely. >> Companies historically, in your business, haven't been able to achieve-- I mean, EMC tried, they bought Documentum to try to achieve that vision. And, I mean, I guess it failed, but they sold it for a boatload of money. So they're all good. Nobody's crying for EMC, but what's your perspective on this, Jaspreet? >> I think these are mostly elastic workload, highly elastic workload. You want a certain data, you want it right now, and you want it to be a short-lived search. You want AI, DPI, which requires a lot of data, but the DPI machine learning has to have a holistic amount of data for a very short amount of time, can burst compute, get the problem solved and move on. So historically, for lack of architecture, lack of abundant amount of hardware, and also the IT boundaries of not supporting each of the decision was the big limiting factor. Now, with cloud we've delivered a full tech search but to a price point that companies can afford for an investigative search. Searches weren't affordable in the past. They can do searching of parable data in an instant, and go out, right? And likewise, in machine learning. Machine learning is a lot easier proposition in cloud and the to use it pretty easier. So you apply deep learning, you understand parlance to what Matt said, you understand ransomware before most customers can see it, and then alert them, and then sort of move on, right? So, the seeking of IT boundaries and the power of current intelligence is truly helping us build this together. >> One last marketing question, if I may. Or a marketing challenge. You got a choice. You can go after the legacy stovepipe guys, which is relatively straightforward but there is an emerging set of modern data protection folks. How do you pick those two? Do you do both, and how do you differentiate from the latter in particular? >> Well, I'm really grateful that some large companies have gone forward to advocate public cloud. OK, Amazon and Microsoft with Azure, and with even Google with Google Cloud Platform. They have done a phenomenal job selling a disruption and a more effective way to do business when leveraging the public cloud. When you move to that, the data protection conversation must change. There is no option to do things they way you used to do it. It will be called the chain of pain. So from a marketing point of view, I can attach to all of the dynamics of what data protection means in this hybrid reality where some of your stuff will be in the public cloud, some of your stuff will be below the horizon on premises. I also have the opportunity to talk about the centralization of data. So unlike any appliance vendor that's on the market today or in any traditional approach, the idea of stovepiping your data limits you. It limits you both in the immediate term and it limits you over the long term. By centralizing that information together and delivering it as a service to wrap more of your infrastructure with our protection technology. You're going to be able to gain a lot of value. So I need to focus specifically on that centralization, the move to public cloud, and then there's a cost efficiencies conversation that I can add on top of all of that, which is about taking half your costs out. >> Guys, you had the launch of the Druva Cloud Platform. It's your big news here on AWS with the VMware. Since it's VMworld, which is VMware's Ecosystem show, what should they know about your cloud platform? The VMware customers. The people who are running ops and data centers, and obviously the data protection. We talked about what you just said, which is, there's no walls in the cloud. So it's a completely different dynamic. Completely disrupting data protection with cloud. Completely different ballgame, we get that. But VMware customers, what do they do? How do they engage with you guys? Why should they use you and what should they know? >> Absolutely, as Matt said, there are about 90% of customers we surveyed said that looking at AWS for hosting their VMs in that new model and this new shift towards public cloud Druva only adds a service solution they can consume from Amazon Marketplace, from VMware Cross Cloud Services platform, is what they're calling it. Our Druva, our partner channel, right? It's a no-hardware, simple as-a-service solution delivered natively on AWS to consume on-prem and cloud directly onto a >> So you're an ecosystem partner of VMware's. >> Absolutely. >> On that chart that Gelsinger is going to put up. Under data protection, you will have your logo there. In the future. >> In the near future, yes. There were a certain... Yes, absolutely, yes. In the near future, we definitely hope to see our logo... >> John: Well VMware is still owned by Dell Technologies, AKA Dell EMC, hence the top billing. >> Jaspreet: That's true. >> VM was in there. And they've had a little bit of a... >> Jaspreet: It's true. (laughs) >> Early on requirements of... >> John: You got screwed. Look, I'll say it. You should be in there. But you're certified, it's not like it's in development. It's shipping. >> The early on requirements by VM is pretty simple that you have to use native cloud technology, not the classic storage, and you have to have a clean path to talk across AWS. And we qualified very well. So we're in development right now and to be announced pretty soon. >> John: Alright, so bottom line. Can I buy it and use it today? >> Yes, you can buy it and use it today. >> I'm a VMware customer. >> Absolutely yes. >> Guys, thanks so much. Druva, a hot startup. $80 million of funding on top of a bunch of cash you had. How much did you raise total? >> 200. About $200 million. >> John: $200 million. Plenty of cash in the work chest. Check it out, data protection in the cloud, one of the areas being disrupted by this new wave that Pat Gelsinger is going to lay out here at VMworld 2017. We've got more live CUBE coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)