>> Narrator: Live from Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering veeAMON 2019. Brought to you by veeAM. >> Welcome back to veeAMON 2019, in Miami. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Justin Warren as my co-host. Simon Robinson here is the Senior Vice President, 451 Research, Simon it's great to see you, thanks for coming to the cube. >> Thanks for having me. >> So is this your, is this right, your first veeAMON. >> It is, it is, first veeAMON, the first time in Miami, first time on theCUBE. So kind of bucket list check. >> Hey, got to give you a sticker here then, so here you go, thank you for coming on. And of course you've got the veeAM party tonight, which you may have been to some other veeAM parties at other shows, but-- >> Simon: I know them by reputation. >> Yeah, they're good. So looking forward to that. Two days, what have you learned here in the last couple of days, what are your impressions? >> Yeah, my impressions are that this is a conference that reflects the type of company that I think veeAM is, and veeAM's a little atypical for a technology company in this space, they didn't go down the traditional route, they had a very kind of different model right from the get-go, but what I see is real grass roots innovation, and veeAM has always been short on rhetoric, short on hype, and long on actually delivering the products and the capabilities that customers want, and it's been great to see examples of how that's playing out at the show, and we heard Ratmir talking about innovation, and 451 Research, we're an analyst firm focused on understanding the impacts of innovation, we provide data and insight around the technology innovation lifecycle, and it's always been, we've covered veeAM from pretty much day one, and it's always been clear to us that veeAM is a pretty special company, not just you have to be in the right place at the right time with the right product, but you also have to do it in a way that, they're kind of table stakes, you've got to do it in a way that actually engages and empathizes with what a customer is looking to achieve, and I think they've got that at the grassroots level, the veeAM admin level, a decade or more ago, and really have doubled down on that, so it's been awesome to see some of the examples of that at the conference this last couple of days, to have a general session with the eight demos. (laughing) >> And they all worked. >> They all worked. >> All of the eight!. >> I was terrified when they wheeled out the tub of water and it was like, they were dropping a laptop in there. Hey, you know, it was awesome and I think Ratmir is talking around, this being Act Two of veeAM's journey and veeAM's story. But firstly, lets kind of pay tribute to what they did in Act One. I think for any company to build a billion dollar revenue business software is a phenomenal achievement. But to do it in the data protection space? It's even more so. >> It's on backup, possibly the most boring thing ever, and they've kind of made it exciting. >> They used to say that backup was, well they used to say two things about backup. Firstly it's an insurance policy. And secondly, it was the one part of the IT environment that even storage people found boring. (laughing) But I mean, just see the kind of energy, enthusiasm, passion, of the folks here. That really isn't the case. >> That's true. It's been one of those boring but important factors. And then, veeAM's ascendancy, I've said this many times, has coincided with the birth of virtualization. We were consolidating physical servers because they were under-utilized, but then the backup had to be completely rethought because you didn't have enough band-width in the servers, and the capacity to run a backup job, and here comes veeAM, and it's just perfect fit, boom. Takes off. Now you've got Act Two, which is cloud. And I feel like it's jump balled, to use a U.S. basketball analogy, for you-- >> Simon: No idea what that means. >> --folks who don't follow basketball. (laughing) But it's "start over," right? And so, everybody's going after cloud, multi-cloud hybrid. And so, do you feel as though veeAM can replicate a success in what Ratmir's calling "Act Two" and draft from "Act One"? And one of the key factors, what's the tail wind for them, and what are some of the head winds. Certainly competition, we're going to' talk about that, but what are some of the other things that you guys see in your research? >> Yeah, so I think, I mean, first off, I think the hybrid cloud is a reality. Our research tells us that 60% of organizations are looking to, or characterize their strategy as being hybrid cloud strategy. But they're really struggling with actually enacting that and doing that in a processed, organized, deliberate way. We got a lot going on in the multi-cloud world, but multi-cloud is often an accident rather than something deliberate. It just turns out that they've got all these assets across all these different-- >> Dave: Multi-vendor, "Oh, I've got all these clouds!" >> That's right, that's right. Again, go back a decade, and how relatively straight forward the data and application environment seemed, right? I mean you had your application, it was probably on-prem, it really on a server that was connected to this bit of tin, and-- >> Little did we know at the time, right? >> Yeah, and fast forward to today, and data is just everywhere. So I think the tailwind for a company like veeAM is that, obviously, there's always going to be a need for backup, but I think that the conversation is evolving from one around data backup into one of data management, because you can only manage the data in your environment if you understand where it is, what its value is, what the potential exposures are, and I think that's why we see a big opportunity in managing data across this much more diverse and broader environment. >> So given that, do you think customers are better able to manage their data environment now than they used to be, or is it actually getting worse because now it's a much more dynamic and disparate environment. People weren't that great at it beforehand, have they gotten better, or not? >> It's hard to generalize. I think, in the main, customers acknowledge that they do a pretty bad job of managing it on a holistic basis. And I think we are seeing many organizations do it on a piece by piece basis. I think things like GDPR have been a wake-up call that, "Hey, your data is your responsibility!" And whether that data is on your facilities or it's in somebody else's, that doesn't matter. It's still your responsibility. So that was kind of a little bit of a wake-up call for organizations, certainly in Europe, and I think we're going to' see that replicated across the region also. >> We had the rise of Ransomware as well, which was actually the best advertisement for backup that you could ever have had. >> No doubt. >> Absolutely. >> Absolutely. >> These, we talk about the shared responsibility model, I mean, to your point, Simon, I mean, it's like security, right? I mean, somebody misconfigures an Amazon EC2-- >> Simon: That's right. >> -okay, it's not Amazon, it's the shared responsibility, and the same thing with the GDPR, malware. >> It really is, but I think, when we think about what the major challenges that just about every business faces, it's how do they scale their operations in a way that's going to' allow them to really take advantage of this thing we're calling "Digital Transformation," I know it's an over-used term, but-- >> Dave: But it's real. >> It is real, it is real. And I'll research, we asked a question in a survey recently, which is, "What is your organization's single biggest barrier?" And it's, "We don't respond quickly enough to the business." It's the biggest objective, but it's also the most difficult barrier to overcome. And I think we're only going to start to address this if we can fundamentally have a different look at how we scale operations, and that's across the application estate, across the infrastructure, it's also across data, right? And it's modernized, and it's transforming the way we think about managing data, and it's, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past and end up with a zillion silos that all have a person that needs managing that silo, that environment. We've done that. We don't want to, as we move to multi-cloud, and we acknowledge that data and applications are going to' be in a greater diversity of locations, we have to have a model that scales to managing across those environments. And it's that kind of consistency of approach that I think the industry is lacking, but there's definitely an awareness that we need to address though. >> Yeah, so given that there's that awareness and there's a need there for the market, there has been a refresh in data protection in that part of the industry. Nothing much was happening for probably a good 10 years. David LaMein was kind of the last big disrupter that we had in that marketplace. And then it feels like overnight, everything changed. And suddenly there were a whole bunch of competitors all trying to go after this data-protection market, and veeAM being one of them. So with that challenge for customers happening, and this dynamic market, how do you see the market dynamics evolving as we go through what veeAM calls its "Act Two," and people start moving to this hybrid cloud. What does that look like from your research? >> I think from a customer's perspective, it is often actually just perplexing. I mean, where do you start? How do you think about this on a strategic basis? And again, some of our research has pointed out, highlighted that, again, it's kind of obvious, but, how do we get better alignment between IT and the business? And when we asked about that in the context of digital transformation, it was the businesses, it was the respondents that said, "Yes, our IT strategy is being developed in lock-step with the business," right? Those are the companies that feel like they can, that they have a good handle on this digital transformation. Data transformation. And we do see a bit of a, almost kind of a schism opening up. There is a kind of digital leaders, and there are definitely digital laggards that are really, really struggling with this. And I think that, to me, means opportunity. I mean, there's opportunity for vendors to come here, to come in here and address it. I think with data protection specifically, if you'd have said 10 years ago that there was almost kind of a Cambrian explosion of start-ups and new companies in backup recovery, and data protection, DR. That sounded like madness a decade ago. You know, we've seen absolute explosion, huge number of companies coming together, coming to market with real innovation, which ultimately, I think, is going to' be good for customers. I think there's probably too many for the market to sustain at this point, 'cause all these new entrants, none of the incumbents are going away. But I think it's going to' be very much a partner-centric kind of success. There's a realization I think from, certainly from the hyperscale cloud providers that they're not going to be able to do this on their own, right? They're going to' have to work with "legacy" incumbents. These guys definitely have a role to play. I mean, I was just in a session earlier today talking about VTL in the cloud. >> Dave: Yeah. >> I mean (laughing) VTL?! In the cloud?! (laughing) >> Legacy processes, they're hard to kill. >> But the more this evolves, the more it seems like the public cloud is starting to resemble kind of the on-prem world in some ways. >> Well that's interesting. You know I was in London a couple of weeks ago for the AWS summit and Matt Garman, who's the AWS exec, I think he's the guy who first launched EC2, he was the product manager at the time. Now he's the senior executive. He said, "We believe the vast majority of customers will eventually migrate all workloads into the cloud." And then it was, "But," and this is the "but" that they wouldn't have acknowledged two years ago, we realize that its a hybrid world-- >> We can't do this ourselves. >> And then they talked about snowball, and outpost, and all these other things that they're doing. And Microsoft has always had a different posture. Of course it has a huge on-premise state. But let's talk a little bit about the horses on the track. So you were mentioning some of the legacy backup guys, all the start-ups coming in. There's been over a billion and a half raised for data protection. So you've got Veritas, Dell EMC, IBM with its Tivoli business, it's done some stuff with Catalogic. And then you've got Cohesity and Rubrik trying to get escape velocity, so they got tons of cash, having big parties, trying to replicate that marketing momentum. And you've got veeAM, has, to your point, Simon, built a billion dollar software business, okay. And is now saying, "Okay, we're going into the next wave." >> And profitable! I was speaking with Ratmir this morning, and they were actually cash-flow positive and on gap-basis as well, they're making money! >> There's nothing more atypical than-- >> I know! >> --a start-up type company that's making money. >> And you've got specialists. You've got Drover in there and Zerto-- >> Simon: Yeah, you've got Zerto, you got, >> --you know, a lot of guys, Amantis just got taken out by Cohesity, so. How do you guys see that competitive market shaking out, Dave Russel did the bubble chart, Ratmir showed it yesterday, 15 billion. Is the tam big enough to support all these guys? What do they have to do to get return for their investors? We're talking IPO's in the future before the window closes. It's getting hairy. >> It is, and you know, certainly some of those incumbents are not without having their challenges. I think it's incumbent on them to listen to what customers are asking for. Customers are moving to the cloud, right? They're going to' do that with or without the legacy guys. So they have to get on-board with that and help manage that process for customers. I think what I like about some of the newer guys, the Rubrik's, the Cohesity's, is they are talking about this bigger picture, this issue that, we said at the start, that many organizations acknowledges is a real challenge, and that's having an overall view into their data estate, their data assets. But for many different reasons, it's always been very, very difficult to crack that on a holistic basis. These guys are putting together some compelling stories, some compelling products to do that, and customers are definitely buying it. Now it's not on the scale that they're buying Veeam on a very tactical basis, so I think the challenge for Veeam is to evolve their own proposition from being pretty tactical, important, absolutely, but to kind of move up the value chain from there. And I think we are starting to see many examples of how that is coming into play with some of the announcements we've had at the show today. >> Yeah, I mean, to your point. A billion dollars profitable, 350,000 customers, and a modern sort of approach. >> Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We've heard simplicity so many times over the last couple of days, but to me when we talk about if the challenge is operational scale, you can't do that without simplicity. And I think the fact that they acknowledge that from a very early date, we speak to a lot of, you know, customers overall, but lots of veeAM customers. Every single one says, "I love the simplicity." It works, it just works. You know, it's these kinds of things that they really do matter, because, not just because it just sounds great, but actually it lets, it either lets the administrator do other things, it's freeing up their time, or it allows a different part, maybe a less experienced or different type of professional to come in and manage the environment and not have to have a PhD in storage and backup and all those things that made this such a human capital-intensive process in the past. >> Easy and simple, they're easy, things to claim, and many companies actually try to claim that they're either easy or simple. It's really difficult to actually deliver on. >> That's right. >> But when you have customers coming back to you and telling you, "You are simple and easy to use," That's when you know that you've got it right. >> What I like about veeAM's messaging is, I've heard it a lot this week, is it's, start with backup. It actually is all about the backup, and you don't hear that from a lot of the upstarts, they're like, "No, no, no, backup. It's all about the data management." It's this sort of vision, these guys used the term "aspirational," almost as a pejorative. >> Right. >> So it's kind of interesting to see that competitive battle and then you've got the legacy guys trying to hang onto their install base, maybe making some announcements, I mean, Dell EMC just made a bunch of announcements, and kind of came out and admitted, "Hey, we took our eye off the ball." Obviously Veritas has a huge install base that everybody's trying to attack. IBM with Tivoli. >> There's a new CEO at Commvault. >> Yeah, and Commvault. We, I don't want to leave them out of the equation, right? They're doing their enterprise piece. And they've always had a little different angle on this space, so, there's a lot of action going on here. 15 billion, half of that is probably backup. >> The challenge is that this isn't a homogenous market, right? >> Dave: Right, very fragmented. >> There are just so many different things that we need to protect. There are so many different ways we can protect them, that soon just started getting into the details, that's when it starts, the market starts to stratify. >> And with cloud and new programming-- >> And people keep creating new ones, you know, object storage comes up, and then we've got no sequel databases that are now happening. >> Microservices, kubernetes, protection-- >> The whole container thing which we haven't really heard an awful lot about this week, I think. I mean, I'm looking forward to seein' how veeAM's story evolves there, but if we do accept that containers, kubernetes is going to be the new middleware that connects a new breed of infrastructure to a new application paradigm, if you like, then that's going to' need protecting. So I think we talk about it, backup, as being tactical, but actually it is a start of a journey, and also, I think one thing that's come out from this last couple of days is the importance of DR, and that's absolutely reflected in our research when we ask about, "What are big challenges in the storage and data arena, DR is a top two challenge every single time. It's too expensive. It's too difficult to run, to build, to test. I've been hearing that for 15, 20 years, right? And we're still not there. >> You can't automate the testing, it's too dangerous to fail over and fail back, so we don't do it, and we don't test it, so we clearly haven't cracked this one as an industry, and there is massive latent demand, I think, and I think, as we think, I mean who can tolerate any sort of down time for any sort of application, right? It just becomes a prerequisite to have applications always on-line. You know, that prerequisite for effective DR is going to' continue. >> Okay, guys, we got to' go. Thanks very much, Simon, for coming on theCUBE. >> Simon: Hey, great! Great to be here! >> Great to have you. All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest, you're watching theCUBE, live, from veeAMON, 2019, Miami. We'll be right back. (theme music)