>> from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the queue covering active eo 2019. Data driven you by activity. >> We're back with the Cuban active FiO Data driven day one day Volante with student a man you're watching The Cube. Steve Duplessis here is the, uh, let's see. Uh, I'm going to say benevolent. Dictator of Enterprise Strategy Group. Chief analyst, Founder Welcome. Welcome back to the Cube. >> Thanks. Nice friend. Nice to be here, you fellows, and we don't Great. Congratulations. Newly newly closed. That's awesome. I want Yeah, thank you very much. >> Great. Looking good. You're here for your honeymoon. >> He said this is it? After a few marriages. This is the honeymoon. >> Yeah. That's good to know that the honeymoon's not over. So let's talk data, Tio. It's happening. >> That is a terrible question, Dave. >> So yeah, Data. Okay, everybody talks. Data you here, bro. My data is the new oil. Fate is a competitive advantage. And >> you like that. >> You do like what Data's in oil. >> So it's funny because we're I think I'm way older than you. You look better. >> God, no. >> But if you go back in time as long as we were doing this, it's been kind of hilarious, really. In retrospect, when you watch way watch these massive industries get created like the AMC just created because all they were about building bigger buckets to put data, zeros and ones. But no context, completely useless, just big buckets. So we valued Wow, you built a big fast bucket. Then IBM and her tachy whoever was gonna leap frog your next built a faster, bigger bucket. And that was with the world considered valuable. And it's now fast forward to the modern day and oh, maybe with the thing that's really valuable with those zeros and he's in contact. Maybe it's not really the bucket. It's, uh so valuable anymore. So >> So, do you think the with the bucket builders still bucket builders air they actually becoming data Insite creators? Or is it just still build a better bucket? That's cheaper. Faster >> till it's a great question. I think >> that we're first of all, you You still have to have the buckets, right? It's a relative who's going to make a smarter bucket builder. I don't know. >> You need someplace to put it, so >> you're gonna have to put it some place and you're gonna have to deliver it in the good news, you know, storage and or infrastructural say is the most brilliant business ever. From a capacity demand perspective, no one ever needs less, right. You always need Mauritz justa matter what you're gonna do with it, how you're going to address that. So it's we've propagated for 50 years and infrastructure business that build a bigger, faster bucket. Build a bigger, faster processor, build a bigger, faster. And every time you you solve one of those particular problems as long as data doesn't abate and it never does, is only is there's more versus Les. It's just every time we fix one problem way, you stick your finger in the dike and another poll springs out. So right now we're at the we've got more processing capabilities that week, ever possible. Use not true, right? We'll figure out a way to use it so that the last five years of and for the >> next five years waiting talk about analytics, wouldn't talk about io ti. We didn't talk about any of those things that are all just precursors to folk crap. We could make a whole bunch more NATO and do stuff with >> so So computers. Kind of a similar dynamic. It's sort of sensational. But is the relatively crappy business compared to storage rights? Storage is 60% plus gross margin. Business servers. I don't know. You're lucky if you get in in a low twenty's. Um, why is that? >> Hello, Number one. It's essentially monogamous. So 20% is wonderful if your intel and you get it. All right. Well, it sells. Got great gross margins, right? Everybody else's does it. You go down the supply chain. That's where you're gonna add value. So that's difficult for anything. Hard to get gross margins out of like spending. She had a box. >> So, Steve Yes, she's now 20 years old. >> I know >> when I think back 20 years ago. You know, short. You know this capacity price per dollar price per gigabyte. You know, all that stuff has changed a lot. The other thing, You know, I think back 20 years talk about automation and intelligent infrastructure. We were using those terms back that sure, one of things that they did. That that's right. Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about is like, right back then when you talked about well, how intelligent wasn't what could it do? And automation was There was a lot of times, you know, I'm just building a little script. I'm doing something like that. At least you know, from what we see, it feels like, you know, today's automation and intelligence is light times away from what we were talking about. 20 years. Sure, and it's true. What do you see in that? Well, >> so remember where we came from When we were talking originally about automation and orchestration, we were talking about how to manage a box, how to expand a box, how to manage infrastructure. Now it's data operations. Right now it's that that's the whole point of activity. Right to be in with is all right, if you are good enough and smart enoughto have the data sort of everything. What kind of matters? There you've gotta have the data and what can you up? What can you automate an orchestra from a data out perspective? Not from a box, not from a Let's scale out or scale up or something like that again, that's just a bigger bucket. It's a better bucket, but to be able to actually take data and say, You know what? I don't even know necessarily what I'm going to want to use this for, but I know that I gotta have. It's gotta be You have to be able to go click, click, click and get it. If if and when I figure out who I want to find out how lowering the price of Sharman and Seattle at a Wal Mart is going to affect my revenue or my supply chain or whatever. >> So one of the things I've talked with you in the past about is the pace of change of the industry. And, you know, I've said, you know, we know things are changing rather fast, but the average company, how much were they? Actually are they good at adopting change? And you've called me on stupid enterprises slow getting any faster, you know? Are they Are they open to change? Mohr. You know, what do you see in 2019? Is is it any different than it was in, You know, two thousand nine? >> That's a great question. So thie answer is yes, they're getting better. We are finally getting better. Problem, though, is a CZ industry insider watcher or a Boyar is ur is you see it and know what should happen 10 years. It takes 10 years in general for the world to actually catch upto the stuff that we're talking about. So it's not really that helpful to the poor schlub that's running on operation that build sneakers in Kansas, right? That's not really that helpful that we're talking about. This is what you could be doing and should be doing. The pace of change is much faster now because and give the em where most of the credit. Because once that went into place, all of the sudden and that you gotta remember there, everyone thinks vm where was an instant home run? It was 10 years of the same cold sitting in the corner in a queue, a environment before. Finally, we ran out of room in the data center, and that's the only reason they were able to come out. But once it was there, and it enabled you to stop associating the physical to the to the logical once, we could just just dis aggregate that stuff that I think opened up a tidal wave of kind of what else can we do? And people have adopted now. Now it's pervasive. So VM where's everywhere? Now? We're moving in the next level of kind of woman. Why can't I just build a containerized app that I can execute anywhere? No matter of fact, I don't even want it in my data center on. No one has to know that necessarily. So as modernization exercises have started to take off, they just they pick up, they actually pick up steam. So what we know empirically is those that are are halfway down. Call it the transformation or the modernization curve are going three times faster than those just starting. And those guys are going three times faster than the ones that are sitting there in idle doing stuff. The same >> city with the inertia going on. What do you make of this Bubblicious Back up market. Let's talk about that a little bit. You got these big install bases? The veritas, Conmebol, Delhi emcee, IBM, Tivoli install base. Everybody wants a piece of that action. Well, I guess cohesive rubric also want a piece of each other. Sure, which is kind of, you know, they get that urinary Olympics going on. I'd like to say And then you got these guys, which is kind of, you know, playing. Uh, I said to Ashleigh kind of East Coast, West Coast, There's no no, it's not East Coast, West Coast, but there's definitely more conservativism on this side of the of the flyover states. What's your take on what's going on in the landscape right now? >> So back up is awesome from the again, still probably the single most consistently line item budget thing for five decades. It's a guaranteed money in and out, and by and large it still sucks. My general rule is still it's crazy that we haven't been able to solve that particular problem. But regardless, the reason that it's so important is, besides the obvious. Yeah, you need to protect stuff, case. Something goes away and something bad happened good. But really, it's That's the inn. Just point for everything you do, you create data today. I'm backing it up on our later so that backup becomes the injust engine and it also is kicking off point. So at tapioca it started as wow, this is a better backup, most trap for lack of a better term. But really what? It was is didn't matter what with was back up or something else. It's I need tohave the data in order to do other stuff with it, and back up is just a natural, easiest way to be able to do that. So I think what's finally happening is we're moving from Christophe Would would say it's really about intelligence intelligence more so than just capturing those bits and being able to assemble and put it back together. It's understanding the context of those bits so that I can say stew in test. Dev has a different use case than Dave in whatever analytics, etcetera, etcetera. But they both need a copy of the exact scene data, the exact same state at the exact same point in time, etcetera. So if lungs backup's going to be kind of a tip of the spear in terms of going from what I will say, production or live data to the first copy, there's almost always back up. It's gonna matter. >> Christoph, Christoph Bertrand want your analyst? And so we saw, uh, c'mon, Danni Allen put a slideshow $15,000,000,000 tam and back up being a big chunk of that, probably half of it um, how does that jibe with your gut feel in terms of the opportunity beyond backup Dev ops? You know, I don't know. Ransomware insights. So you think that's low? High? Makes sense. >> I think I could justify the number. And what history has taught me is that it's probably low because we we're only talking about a handful of use cases that we've all glommed onto. But there will be remembered, like 11 years ago, there was no iPhone. You know what? How bad that changed. Everything that we do over there. And when did you know at some point during that particular journey, the phone became Who gives a shit about the phone? Excuse. But it's a text machine and it's an instagram thing, and it's a video production facility and all these other things, and the phone's almost dead. I only use it when my mom calls me kind of thing. So, you know, really, it's difficult to imagine. I certainly don't have the mental capabilities to imagine what the next 10 things after Dev Ops and this that and the other. But it's still all predicated on the same you got Somebody's gonna have a copy of that data and you're gonna be able to access it. You've got to be able to put it where you need it for whatever the reason again, a disaster is an important thing to recover from. But so is being ableto farm That data for nuggets of gold. >> Well, I guess I asked the question because, you know, it's a logical question is, is the market big enough to support all these companies that are in, You know, that gardener thing that they do? And I hope so because we love competition. >> I think I >> can answer it >> this way. Everything. Even the oldest guard Veritas, for God's sakes, 1000 years old, t sm 1000 years old con vault code base, 1000 years old. You're all big companies, right? And they're not perishing anytime soon. And I don't run. Love the startup Love the active FiOS or the cohesive sees coming in. But what they're really trying to do is not, you know, they might have started, as in a common ground, backup is a common warzone, but because there's money there like this consistent money there go get. But they soon turn in Teo other value propositions. And that's not is true with the incumbent back up guys because of their own legacy, right? It's hard to turn 1,000,000 year 1,000,000 lines of code into something. It wasn't designed, innit? >> Yeah, and it's not trivial to disrupt that base. But I guess if you get, you know, raising I don't know how much the industry is raised, but it's well over $1,000,000,000 now. I mean, activity has raised 200,000,000 and that's like chump change. Compared to some of the other races that you've seen. Cody City was to 60 and their last rubric was even, you know, crazy, crazy, even >> count the private money that beam God is that, you know, that was half 1,000,000,000 >> right? Well, that's a That's an off camera discussion. All right, we gotta go. So, Steve, thanks so much for for coming. Thank you. Great to >> have you. All right. All right, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You wanted the Cube from active field data driven from Boston, right on the harbor. Right back

live from New York it's the cube covering riverbed disrupt watch you buy riverbed now here are your hosts day volante and Stu minimus welcome back to the Big Apple everybody this is riverbed disrupts we've got a special guest Steve de plusieurs with us the man behind many men and women at enterprise strategy group founder head chief chief analyst senior analyst Steve's great to see you thanks for coming off thanks for having me I appreciate it I'm you doing fellas it was good we were photobombing video bombing us today and here you are that was not intentional I didn't know the exact configuration in the camera almost always live it's all right and that ended up now you're in front of the camera how the right time this is not a bomb so what's doing these days what's what's happening on that's a ridiculous question citing you ah somewhat less ridiculous and still very open to interpretation I give me a path to head down and we can't I let's start with the with Delhi MC you've got a great blog on that you know the history was good really enjoyed that it's EMC success is because you left right so I'm not exactly sure it's a 50-50 between my crackers coming in and making everything that we sold actually work because not much really good I gotta say a lot of people are really positive people who know both dell and emc are actually really positive about the the marriage here but we nuts i don't think so i think from day one I saw I'll give you a quick anecdote hopefully quick tell me to shut up if not here's the parallel in two thousand Joe Tucci comes in and at that particular run emc and at that particular time EMC was really good about bringing in some outsider and spitting them out the DNA and the antibodies were just awful in that culture in that for an outsider to come in and be able to survive in there and they went through a bunch of senior managers senior executive vice-presidents yada yada yada that nobody lasted and 2g came in and I'd never met the man or and he had no business to have any idea who I was for example and for whatever reason I was able to get an audience with him very early on and I sat down with him and the first question I asked him only question I asked him and I wasn't looking nice like you I was disrespectful and he could conceive of me as disrespectful and I said what are you going to do about mo Shay because at the time as many of us that are old enough to know mo Shay was king of the of the hill over there he owns symmetrix and and he was untouchable Harry Dixon and Mo Shay were the two untouchable human beings within that emc culture and Joe looked me right in the eye and didn't skip a beat at all and said he's either going to play nice in the sandbox or he's gone and it wasn't six weeks later that ostensibly he was gone and I couldn't believe and so I knew right that in there I knew without knowing the man that this guy was a little bit different and everybody within the EMC antibody sort of climate said nope he's not gonna last six months he's not going to last and but I you know you look somebody in the eye and you see that and so I saw a lot of the similarities in this deal so you guys have been around forever I've been around forever you know Michael Michaels a straight-shooting guy Michael's doesn't have a go or vanity pretense or he doesn't do things for the wrong reasons he said something very very interesting to me about a year before the MC deal which was or a couple years before when he was talking about I think it was three power at the time when he's in the bidding war with Dave Donatelli at HP / 3 part and I don't remember the exact context of the comment but he talked about Dell spending money and he said you know I treat it like it's my own money because it is because it is it whereas he what he was alluding to as others are spending stockholders money and it's not really it and but so that was just a sort of an interesting look into into into the guy there so when this deal happened these are not to strangers right they've been together they've been married and divorced if you will and have had a relationship for a long time they know each other and so when it sort of happened you like oh boy you know and you on paper you can see the synergies and a lot of people i think i'm certainly not unique everybody saw the synergies is not a lot of overlap really what you worry about in a deal like that is cultural other other chiefs of the generals going to be able to get along or are they going to beat the hell out of each other and backstab and and do what happens in every one of these deals it seems like and they didn't write though they really didn't interesting that you know thou MCS a private company kind of a bummer for those who live in Massachusetts good but I kind of a there's a good days that a bummer why is that a bummer well because CMC the brand emc is gonna be gone right just like the walk go up with your private yeah crime and wagon oh let's hope that doesn't happen well we'll see we'll see it's dell technologies it's there's already Delia me logos up on the building from that standpoint it's okay you're right about it too it's hard not sure after yeah of course ok but this backdrop of companies going private obviously riverbed now click BMC many many many other space this new private equity game plan veritas right exactly right used to be private equity put it in some financial guy suck all the money out sure the carcass for yeah whatever's left and now they're saying why should the VCS have all the fun I mean riverbed got taken out for 13.6 billion think at some point to an IPO they're gonna be 10 billion plus a year from now J right I mean eight ten billion maybe I probably 70th I mean that's a nice return as a nitrile Michael Dell returns so I think that you bring up a very fascinating point that I think is gonna happen more often than less and the at the I'm not that smart but fundamentally having that microscope and that's spotlight on you in 90 day increments dealing with no disrespect 26 year old MBAs that have never had a real job that their only interest is squeezing that any per share regardless of what the human impact or what the long-term impact of a company is is the wrong way to do business it's it's our way it's our system but it's the wrong fundamental way to do business you your dad's probably told you just like I did no no you you you spend less than you make it's right if we're not the government we can't print our own money you spend less than you make and and you you honor your debts and all these other things i think the privatization aspect and all of this stuff is just going to keep going because these companies are good companies and they you take the handcuffs on them they don't care what Wall Street thinks for a certain period of time years certain period of time and when they're ready to come back exactly right they go from three billion dollars to ten billion dollars because they were able to do the right things not because they only cared about squeezing the coffee budget to make another you know point ten cents a share yeah Steve so you know market shares in competition and enterprise tech you know seemed for a long time you know nothing change storage industry was very entrenched you know we've seen market share shifting a lot i'll bring it back to you know where to show called disrupt here you know there's been a leader in the networking world for most of my career here um why are you know enterprises you know open to you no more change they're doing cloud there you know looking at some of the things like riverbeds talking about it's a great question so at first i would say they're not they're not open to it nobody and there are two fundamental reasons one is i hate to say it but human beings are lazy I'm one of them the devil I know is easier than the devil I don't yeah most people don't like change no to do not like change whatsoever so the really reason that anybody changes any of this stuff is because one they have to it just doesn't work anymore nobody buys something that's better because it's better they buy it because they have to buy it yeah why'd you buy that Tesla yeah what well that's a terrible example I'm an idiot and I just bought it because it was way better all right sorry now but where we are at some inflection points right now so it doesn't matter why the change occurred right so I could still I think maybe a different answer is I could buy a horse but it's still a valid mode of transportation it just makes me a complete ass if if I do right but it's technically a valid mode of transportation so we I can still go on do that path I people get into a habit of over a course of years and sometimes decades this is just the way we did it this is the way we do it its way I was trained this is way I will train the next guy I'm gonna walk in in the morning and smash myself on the hand with a hammer in the head every day why I don't know it doesn't feel good why do you keep doing it because that's the way we do it type of stuff so it change tends to be some you need some macro external function to force a change VMware had ESX for 10 years before they became VMware as we know them in 10 years why did that happen because it was a nice to have it was the smarter thing to do it only happened when the data center ran out of power and cooling when I couldn't physically fit any more stuff in there and I still had to do a job that's when people went well those guys in the corner are running this cool stuff that emulates pretty much any environment you want to you doing them people at oh oh that's interesting and now you're an idiot if you don't run vmware just as an example right and so I think that it's the same sort of thing we get hub-and-spoke spine and leaf yatta yatta yatta whatever the networking terminology is that we had to do that had a place and and in time but you would never probably architect something like that today if you started from a clean piece of paper and I'm not picking on just Cisco I'd take the longer you're going to keep giving me a buck I'm gonna take your buck right it's because they do answer to shareholders so they're sort of at a catchment they could they could and they will eventually react to the market that says stop doing it that way because it's the wrong way to do HP HP e oh how about a go in the opposite direction of del super interesting well they will will will Dells ability to sell through EMC change the dynamic in the server market well they surpass HP ok so my personal bet if I had to bet right now I would say yes the answer is yes and here's the reason why you could you had three sort of mega companies in in what really to HP and IBM and then you had dell as the it sounds stupid to say but of the wannabe to those guys intel's grown up and now they're on equal playing field but so h IBM took one path IBM said I'm kind of getting it out of the infrastructure business and I'm gonna get into the third platform all in the higher value or what I presume to be eventually higher value plays there but there's no value in commodity hardware etc etc analytics baby yeah you got it whatever automotive yeah and ok let's very good for them and I made a lot of big bets right eight feet went exactly the other way let's just strictly you know we might have paid 10 billion for autonomy but we're gonna sell our 30 billion dollars and in software assets for less money because it is distractive and they so they split the two companies into printers assess your losses and go and don't get me wrong but those are Burger King makes money right Burger King makes money they follow McDonald's around and I'm this is not a good analogy but the only one I can kind of think of on the top of my head being number two and profitable is not a bad business and so as such they don't have to support each feed is enough to support a full stack of all of this other stuff that's really complicated and hard and really big company things so they're divesting themselves of it so makes essentially being her own PE firm she's stripping it before somebody else strips it and taking what she can get in the coffers and in a sufficient yeah starting it again what about riverbed give you a book give us your bumper sticker and then we get a rep all right so they I am I I'm probably the wrong person to ask and for the following reasons number one am not deep enough but number two is I love these guys since literally their inception and i will tell a quick story in that sense i was meeting their primary venture capitalist at the time a guy named chris chevy from light speed and i went to that that greek place in palo alto that I can never member the name of and I was meeting he he called me on the way over he said hey I'm running a little late with a guy do you mind if somebody joins us I said no and it was Jerry and in so I walk in and I'm this kid and there's Jerry and his jeans and doesn't care about anything type of thing oh great so what do you do he said oh well crank chris said why we just funded seed funded him my gosh all this terrific what's what's the company doing I swear to god he went not exactly sure yet thinking about a networking thing you know some paraphrasing Dudley they gave him money and he didn't know what they were gonna do and I was like oh my god what a great bet that worked out of any of your people really really well so I love riverbed I've loved them ever since I love Jerry is not only a character in a human being but it's a great company that is done you know again taking on Goliath really hard to take on Goliath and Cisco's about its Goliath as they come and these guys have just kicked by well you've taken on Goliath in a pretty entrenched business so I said last question last question what's new with ESG you guys are rocking you got a bunch of people working for you and just keep growing and love to see it new areas hit the security or to virtually you know every part of IT your customers love you what's what's new with you guys I'm my current personal passion and we're we're driving more I think interesting stuff the normal is insecurity because it is the wild wild west so I'm a storage guy I'm boring box kind of guy i understood that stuff 25 years ago securities fascinating to me because it is the storage business kind of 25 years ago only an order of magnitude if not bigger so there are 1500 companies not 150 trying to wannabes and and there's zero clear winners in any of these senses they riverbed brought up Palo Alto today great company but there are hundreds of different vectors that are all sort of attempting in one way or another to do the same thing but it's a it's a horse race where all the horses are running in different directions looks like a Monty Python look kind of scared two ready go hmm everywhere and so I I personally find that intriguing and fascinating also because the bigger they are the harder they fall so we'll go from 1,500 to 150 and we'll go from almost a trillion invested too oh boy a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money but from that certainly some players are going to rise tremendously and the other thing I'd really find interesting is this is we're no longer in the era of the boring box we really aren't and I and that's good for everybody in i.t except people that really love the boring box and so there's always hard a school of hard knocks right people are going to lose jobs and and it's unfortunate that respect and they'll come clinging to that Titanic but at the end of the day what's on the other side is crazy stuff you know it's great that the iphone we forget is it's seven years old or something it's eight years old we act like it's a you know we've had it forever but no no I had a bag phone when i was with the MC and i thought it was really cool at a thousand dollars a minute to be calling my friend who had a bag phone cuz you couldn't call anybody else cuz no one else at a bank what wasn't that long ago so anyway them all right well big buddy could be interesting to see picking winners in the security space but some gradual ations on all your success okay thank you very much for coming to the cubes great time guys thank you so much all right keep right to everybody will be back to wrap riverbed disrupt right after this

(bright music) >> You know, there's a lot of negative press around the technology industry these days. The tech lash is somewhat understandable, people are struggling and yet the tech industry is booming, creating incredible wealth for a relatively select group of people. I get it. But the reality is, that the technology industry has guided us through the pandemic, allowing us to work remotely, securing our employees, keeping goods and services flowing, and using data and analytics to track COVID and accelerate the development of vaccines. And many in the tech industry are passionate about giving back and applying their talents to solve real world problems. I'll give you an example. After accidents, cancer is the number one cause of death among young people. In the middle of the 20th century, the survival rate for kids with cancer was 0.0%. Today, it's above 85%. Cancer in kids is much different than in adults. The types of cancer, the diagnoses, the treatments, they vary. Different types of research are required to attack the problem. And that takes money. And one of the people here in Boston and beyond that's using his talents, his creativity, his network, and yeah, his wealth, to attack this problem, is my friend, Chris Lynch, entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. Chris, awesome to see ya. Welcome back to theCUBE my friend. >> Thanks, Dave. It's great to be here. >> So, listen, this personal story of yours, how'd you get into, where's the passion come from for kids with cancer? >> Dave, it's actually related to one of my startup endeavors. When you're starting, bootstrapping your company, you're typically staying at people's homes to save money. >> Sleeping on couches. Yeah. >> Yeah, yeah. Pretty much. And for the years of these startups, I've developed relationships with families all over the world, 'cause I've literally lived with them for periods of time until the companies got to points where we didn't have to do that. And there was a family in Seattle that I used to stay with, and they had a son that was a similar age to one of mine and he ultimately passed of cancer. And I stayed with the family, and I stayed with them a few times while they were going through this, and I was touched, I was inspired by their courage, how positive they were. I was thinking in my own circumstance, how could I, I would just hate the world. And in these families, I stay there, they call me Uncle Chris. And I was having dinner at the family home and I was looking at the boy, and I excused myself, went to the bathroom and I started sobbing, and he knocks on the door, comes in and says, "Uncle Chris, it's okay. My dad tells me you can do anything. Just do whatever you can so that other kids don't have what I have." You know and... >> Wow. Wow. And I can see the emotion that you're feeling right now, bringing us back to that moment. >> Well. Yeah. >> It's unbelievable. All right, so you got Tech Tackles Cancer. Is this your latest venture? I think the last one was 2018. It's coming back, took a break 'cause of COVID, and this is going to go down on the 21st at The Sinclair in Harvard Square. Bring a bunch of people in. We got a number of people who have signed up to, actually you're one of them, of course, but to sing karaoke, raise a bunch of dough, and then there's like a little contest, right? So... (he chuckles) Alex, bring up that slide. I got to show the audience who we got here. And this is, Chris, this is your competition. So, here you go. We got, Steve Duplessie, right? That's a great picture, Steve. Thanks for doing this, right. Nathan Hall, who's at Pure Storage. Steiny, Ken Steinhardt, from INFINIDAT. And you got George Hope at HPE. And Joe Lemay, who's an inventor, he's the CEO of Rocketbook. Any of these guys worry you? >> I'm going to sleep easy tonight. (Dave laughs) >> So, how did you get into rock and roll? You wrote a blog one time. You quoted Nietzsche saying that life without music would be a mistake. Rock and roll. Rock on. How'd you get into rock and what's your passion there? >> Well, I always loved rock and roll but I had someone that was staying with us who was a student at BU, and he went to his semester abroad, he went to the UK. And he came back with all this punk rock music, the Sex Pistols and all this stuff. And I heard it and it just triggered something in me. And then I didn't want to do anything but play music and try to be a musician, and my grades and everything else suffered as a result. But music's always inspired me, the creativity, the boldness. A lot of things that I think I apply to my startup life. >> How could people help? Let's say they want to get involved. I mean, obviously, they can attend the event, they donate. What should people do? They could sing? >> Yeah. So they can certainly sponsor the event. There are a number of sponsorship opportunities. They can participate. They can volunteer for the event. It is an all-volunteer organization. Every dollar that we raise goes to the charities that we've listed. And we handle everything else through a lot of arm twisting and whatnot. >> Great. So it's June 24th, sorry, June 21st, at The Sinclair, which is right in Harvard Square. So it's live band karaoke, right? >> Correct. >> I've seen some of the, we're going to share a little clip there. And so, it's a call to action to all you rock and roll technology gods out there. You know, we showed you the five folks plus Chris who were doing it, and so we're dying to see you up there again, you must be really excited about it. >> I am, I am. I'm going to be much better than last time. >> Okay. Well, so just on that note we'll close with a little taste of what's in store for June 21st. We'll see you there. ♪ Now my loneliness ♪ ♪ Is killing me now ♪ ♪ You know I still believe ♪ ♪ Midnight, midnight to six ♪ ♪ Midnight, midnight to six ♪ ♪ Midnight, midnight to six ♪ ♪ Believe in things that you don't understand ♪ ♪ then you're su... ♪ (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> On June 21st in Cambridge mass at the Sinclair in Harvard Square, Tech Tackles Cancer is back after a COVID hiatus with live band karaoke and some local tech celebrities raising money for a great cause. The Cube is a media sponsor of the event and Josh Epstein, local marketing exec and one of the events organizers is here to tell us more. Josh, good to see you, welcome. >> Good to be here, Dave. >> So tell us about this event. What's going on? What are the logistics? How's that all work? >> Yeah, we're super excited. So as you said, June 21st at the Sinclair in Harvard Square, Sinclair, if you haven't been there is just the great old school rock club. So we'll be there from 6:00 to 10:00. We will have live band karaoke. So the main event and kind of the primary fundraising approach here is that we have some celebrity technology rock gods these featured performers like Chris Lynch who was the founder of Tech Tackles Cancer, who are are raising money from basically now, up until June 21st. Then at the event, their fundraising will culminate with them singing a live song backed by a live band. And the awards will be given out to the most money raised, the best performance and the best stage presence. So it will be a lot of fun. >> So the fundraising format is I sign up to sing do the karaoke with a live band which is a little bit different. And then I raise as much dough as possible. So obviously that's competitive. >> It's competitive, I think that we ask for a minimum of $10,000 targeted for each of the fundraisers but knowing these guys, knowing guys like Chris Lynch, they don't like to lose. So the bet here is that people are going to go out, they're going to hit their network and they are going to look to kind of raise the most money. So we anticipate this to be a great event with a lot of money raised and a lot of fun. >> So we have a graphic from Alex. If you could bring that up of the people who have signed up for this already. We got Steve Duplessie, founder of of ESG, senior analyst. They sold their company to Tech Target, which is awesome. Congratulations to those guys and thank you for stepping up. George Hope, who heads partner sales for HPE, Joe Lemay of Rocketbook Nathan Hall from Pure Storage, system engineering guy and of course, Steiny, Ken Steinhardt from Infinidat. He was at EMC, he's the field CTO now. He's going to be up there singing. So of course, Chris. >> Absolutely, these are just the early entrance here. So we just started really working our networks. And obviously, I'm a Boston tech guy kind of working the storage networks, the networking networks and kind of the other folks that are around. So as we come out of stealth here in April and start really recruiting, we anticipate having probably 10 to 15 of these featured performers, really fundraising performers that we'll sing. And then we're also obviously soliciting broader donations from anyone who wants to come to the event or just give to the cause and the corporate sponsorships as well. >> All right, so you got corporate sponsorships. You can sing, you can donate you can be there just to support it. That's fantastic and the awards, how's that work? >> Yeah, so we're excited. So first off, most money raised wins an award. So we'll have a leaderboard on the website, we'll be able to kind of track who's raised what, at the event, we're going to have some celebrity judges that will be actually voting for their favorites and then have a crowdsource component as well. So we'll introduce what that mechanism is. But as people, either at the events or a watching in streamed live on LinkedIn live, we'll actually vote for their favorite performance as well as their their pick for best stage presence which we know in rock and roll is half the battle. >> Now this cause has raised a bunch of, I think last time, you guys did this, it was probably a quarter million or close to it and you support multiple causes. What causes are you supporting? >> Sure, yeah, actually I think since they founded the event several years ago they raised over $2 million. This year for this format where we're looking, we can really up our game here but this year we're supporting two really great causes that are both focused on pediatric cancer. The first is St. Batrick's that is really committed to raising funds for research to really help stamp out pediatric cancer really. The approach to researching cures and treatments to pediatric cancer is very different from regular adult cancer. So St. Batrick's does a great job of picking those research projects that really target in on those pediatric cancer causes. And then the second is one mission. And one mission really outlooks to help make pediatric cancer patients that are spending time in the hospital, making their time less stressful, less painful, less sad, less boring. And so they do a lot of fundraising and contributions targeting children's hospitals, really around the country for those pediatric cancer floors. >> Josh, amazing cause. Thanks so much for coming onto the Cube and explaining all that. >> Great, thanks David. >> All right, June 21st, go to ttcfund.org, Tech Tackles Cancer fund, ttcffund.org for more information and you can donate. We'll see you there. (soft music)

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is theCUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, David Vellante here and welcome to the special CUBE conversation with a colleague and friend of mine, Randy Seidl is a accomplished CEO, he's an executive, sales pro, and he's a founder of the Sales Community, this newly formed social network, Randy, good to see you again, welcome. >> Hey, great to see you, it's been a lot of great years, great relationship with you and congratulations with all your success with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. I was remembering back, I think it's been probably since 1985, so 35 years ago when we were both Cub Scouts, I was at EMC, and you were at IDC. >> Yeah, I mean, first of all, I love where you are, your man-cave there, we heard you held a great little networking event that you do periodically with some of our joint colleagues. And yeah, wow, we were both in our twenties, I was a young pop and Dicky Eagan, and Jack and Mike, and they would have me talk to you guys, you know, sort of brief you on the market, what little I knew now looking back. But wow, Randy, I mean. >> We knew! >> Right, I mean, and then just the whole thing just took off, but we had a good instinct, that storage was going to matter, everything back then was mainframe and IBM was the king of the world, and then you guys just crushed it. Wow, what a run, amazing. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So tell me about Sales Community. What are you trying to accomplish with this new social network? >> Well, it was kind of really my COVID moment. I was talking to Peter Bell I know, you know well as well, and it was right in the beginning of COVID we were kind of comparing notes and long story short, he said, hey Randy, you do all this work with these technology companies, and channel partners, and use your customers, CIO, CTO, CSOs, but you're really not doing much for those that you know the best, which are really technology sales professionals, CROs, STRs kind of up and down the food chain. And that really got me thinking, then he introduced me to one of his companies that sells to CROs and I was going through with them and they were kind of calling me on the carpet saying, okay, do I really know these people? I'm like, oh my gosh! They basically just said, I'm a dope, I haven't really done anything here. So, one thing led to another and ended up developing a Sales Community, a big thing and big help for me was talking to probably 150 or so during the course of the summer, CROs, VPs of sales, Reps STRs to really kind of help get some feedback from them in terms of I caught now they call product-market fit, but kind of what they think it's missing, what's needed, what are their teams need, what do they want? So, it's kind of all a perfect storm, which to be honest without COVID probably wouldn't have created Sales Community. >> Well, I joined and it was a great onboarding experience and love participating with colleagues. I mean, sales is hard, I mean, you've got your ups and your downs and you just got to keep pressing on, but who's participating in Sales Community. >> We're targeting STRs on up to CROs and the kind of the tagline is learn more so you can sell more. We have a lot of great different kind of content areas and we're going to kind of bob and weave based on the feedback that we get, but we've got some great virtual events and interviews. We have an executive coach, Tony Jerry, who's doing nine sessions on designing your life. We did a recording, a live session last week on personal goal setting. We did one yesterday, it was a live session that'll be posted shortly on strategic health. Next one's on branding, so that's not necessarily specific to tech sales, but kind of adding value. We also have Dave Knorr, another executive coach doing a weekly interview series that we're calling tech sales insights with some of the leading CROs, CEOs, Jim Sullivan, who I know you know well, he's going to be the first one, it's going to be next Wednesday, he runs a NWN and he's done a lot of great things and a lot of other great leaders from there. Also still on the interview virtual events side, Michael Cotoia from Tech Target he's going to do a CMO insights series. His Tech Target International editors are also going to do regional ones. So CIO interviews from AMEA, Asia Pac, Latin America, Australia, also on the CSO side, we have somebody focused on doing a CSO interviews, Paul Salamanca of channel interviews, I think this channel, by and large gets missed a lot. CEO's and then Steve Duplessie, I know you know well as well is going to do and focus on CIO, sub-CIO insights, but basically creating virtual events and interview series that are really targeted at people that we sell to. So that covers the kind of virtual event and interview side. And I maybe more quickly go through some of the other key segments. So another one is a content library. There's the guy who's a STR at ServiceNow went through, send me note the other day that said, hey, I found out you have some great feedback on prospecting cold calling, I shared it with my team helped me a lot. So a lot of good things in terms of content library, also opportunity to network. So you could be say selling to Fidelity, you could send a note to the community and members and say anybody else trying to sell the Fidelity, let's network, let's compare notes, also great opportunities for channel partners. So channel partner could raise their hand and say, hey, I know Fidelity, let me help with you. A lot of sharing of best practices. And also just in terms of communication, slack channels, and then opportunities to create round tables. So you might have CROs from startups that want to have maybe six to 10 of them get together. So they can kind of commiserate, ask questions, you could have CROs, companies that are maybe transforming going from on-prem to kind of SAS model. So a lot of different great things, ultimately really to serve the folks in the tech Sales Community. >> Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, first of all tons of content, the other thing I like about it is we all read books on sales, some of them are so like gimmicky, some of them are inspirational. Some of them have really great suggestions. Some of them can be life changing, but what's always been missing in my opinion, is this notion of a network, a social network, if you will, where people can help each other, you just gave a ton of good examples. So you're really trying to differentiate from a lot of the things that have worked over the years, but have really sort of one way communication, some sales guru either training or you're reading his or her book. >> Yes, and we're also fortunate on the content side, we have some of the best kind of consulting sales methodology companies that love what we're doing. So they're likewise providing a lot of content and as you said, it's crazy. You think of any other industry, restaurant, hotel, lawyers, landscape, they have these big, kind of user groups, even technology companies user groups within the larger field of technology sales enterprise B2B sales, there's really nothing that looks like this that exists. So far the feedback's been great. >> Well, so just to what you're describing, I mean, I've known you for a long, long time, and one of the principles of great salespeople is, you help others, right? You make as many friends as you can, and you're the master of that. But essentially you're bringing a lot of the things that have worked, a lot of the principles that have worked in your career to this community. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, I mean, especially I think some of the younger sales folks, it's not kind of off the cuff as we know, but it's really kind of training, being disciplined, being prepared, what are you going to do, how are you going to do it in this COVID moment? You know, I'm seeing lots of friends where the companies that have great relationships, they can do really well and kind of lean in a lot. If you're kind of cold calling and this environment, and it's tough, so kind of, how can you be best prepared, how can you do the best homework? How can you have the kind of right agenda, when you're going to do the sales calls? And then it's not really as much follow up, but really follow through in terms of what you do afterwards. So kind of what is the training? What can you do, how can you do it? And, you know, it's crazy, a lot of companies spend lots of money on training, but if you think about it they're really tied in specifically to tech sales, hopefully this will be great. Plus being able to just kind of throw out questions here and there works out well as well. >> Well that's what I'm looking forward to, say, hey, I got some challenges, how do others deal with this? You know, one of the things that is, I think, paramount to being a great salesperson is the attitude you hear it all the time. How do you stay pumped up? (laughing) Like I said before, we've all been through ups and downs, and what do you tell people there? >> In terms of staying pumped up, interestingly enough, the session we did yesterday on strategic health, probably plays a key role. So yeah, there's the work aspects and how are you going to focus and wake up and get fired up. But ultimately, I think you really got to take several steps back and saying are you taking care of yourself? Are you sleeping, are you eating and drinking correctly? Are you drinking enough water, are you exercising? So, in this moment, I think that's probably something that gets missed a lot in terms of getting fired up. And then ultimately just being excited about kind of what you're doing, how are you doing it, taking care of the customers and serving those around you. And you had mentioned in terms of giving it back, but a lot of us that have been around, love the idea of kind of paying it forward, helping out others and seeing a lot of the great younger folks really rise up and become stars. >> I think that's one of the most exciting things is somebody has been around for awhile. Like (laughing) we all get cold calls and say, hey, how you doing today? You know, (laughing) you really had that dead air, and you actually want to reach out and help these individuals. A lot of times they'll call you, they have no idea what you do, well I've read your website, and I think we'd be a great fit for, you know, something that would not be a great fit. So, there's a level of preparation we always talk about in sales, you got to be prepared, but there's also sometimes... I was talking to a sales pro the other day, you know, sometimes you can over prepare he said, I've been on sales calls, I prepare for hours and hours and hours, and then they get there, and it was just a lot of wasted hours. I probably could have done it in 15 minutes. I mean, so there's a really a balance there. And it comes with experience, I guess. >> Yeah, I mean, I don't know how anybody could prepare hours and hours, so that's a whole different subject to think. >> Well, he said, my technique now is just 15 minutes before the call I'll jump on and just, you know, cram as much as I can. And it actually, it worked for him. So, different approaches, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I'd like to mention is the advisory board I'm fortunate to have a work with, and be friends with several of the best in industry like you. So if anybody goes to the website, you can click on an advisory board and there's a 200 plus and haven't count them exactly. But you know, some of the best in technology, we've got them sorted on the sales side and the channel side, the consulting side, the coaching side, analyst side, but, really just such a tremendous each head of talent that can really help us continue to go and grow and pivot and you're making sure that we are serving our Sales Community and making sure everybody's learning more so they can sell more. And then I guess I should add onto that also, earning more and making more money. >> So I got to ask you where you land on this. I mean, you're a sports fan, I am too and for a while there once the "Moneyball" came out, you saw Billy Bean and it was this sort of formulaic approach. The guy, you know, we would joke the team with the best nerds would win. But it seems like there's an equilibrium. It used to be all gut feel and experience, and then it became the data nerds. And it seems like in our industry, it's following a similar pattern, the marketing ops, Martech, becoming very, very data driven. But it feels to me, Randy, especially in these COVID times that there really is this equilibrium, this balance between experience, and tribal knowledge, gut feel, network, which is something you're building and the data. How do you see that role, that CRO role, that sales role evolving, especially in the context of what I just talked about with the data nerds? (laughing) >> Yeah, absolutely, I think I heard two points there since you brought up Billy Bean, I forgot the guy's name, but in the movie is kind of nerd. I've got Jesse and Tucker who have been tremendously helpful for us putting together a Sales Community. But to answer the question on the CMOs side, the CMOs out there frankly not going to like this answer, but I think more and more, you see CMOs and CROs kind of separated and it's kind of different agendas, my belief is that eventually the CMO function or marketing is really going to come under sales and sales are really going to take a much more active role in driving and leveraging that marketing function in terms of what's the best bang for the buck, what are they doing, how are they doing it? And I've got a lot of friends, I won't name names, but they're not on the sales side and they're doing what they can, but they just see what I'd call it kind of wasted money or inefficiencies on the marketing side. So, if I maybe I spin that a different way, I think given kind of analytics and those companies that do have best practices, and I write things on the marketing side, you know, they're going to continue to go and grow, you know, on cert with the right sales team. So I think that you bring up a great point and that area is going to continue to evolve a lot. >> Does that principle apply to product marketing? In other words do you feel like product marketing should be more aligned with engineering or sales and maybe sales and finance, where do you land on that? >> Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of old school, so I go back to Dick and Jack and Roger and Mike Rutgers, and you all in terms of, hey, you have those silos, but you get everybody at the table, kind of what we're working well together. It is interesting though in today's world, the PLG, Product-Led Growth models, where a lot of companies now are trying to get in maybe almost like a VMware, maybe BMC did in the early days where you're kind of getting into the low level developers and then kind of things bubble up so that you think Product-Led Growth model, having a lower cost insight sales model, works when I'll say the kind of the product sells itself. But I would argue, that I think some of those PLG led companies really miss out on leveraging the high end enterprise relationships, to kind of turbocharge and supersize and expedite larger sales deals, larger (indistinct). >> Well, and you mentioned earlier a channel you said a lot of times that's overlooked and I couldn't agree more, channel increasingly important. That's where a lot of the relationships live, it gives you scale, it just gives you a lot of leverage, maybe you talk about the importance of channel and how it relates to Sales Community. >> Yeah, I mean, it's interesting they're really unto themselves, there's some things that are channel channel, but if you think about, you know, go to market tech sales, pick the company on average is probably half of the business goes through the channel. And it used to be way back when just kind of fulfillment, but now the best companies really are those that have the right relationships, that are adding value, that can help on the pre sales, that can help on the post sales, that can help kind of cross sale. You know, if I'm a customer, I don't want to deal with whatever five or 10 different vendors if I can have a one stop shop with one bar solution provider, partner, SI, or whatever you want to call them, you know, that certainly makes life a lot easier. And I think a lot of companies almost been kind of a second class citizen, but I think those companies that really bring them into the fold as really partners at the table, whether it be an account planning sessions, whether you're doing sales calls, but kind of leveraging that I call it a variable cost kind of off balance sheet, sales force really is where the future is going to continue to go. >> So you've been a successful individual sales contributor. You've been a CEO, you've run large sales organizations. I mean, you basically ran sales at HP for Donna Telly, and so you've seen it all, and you've been helping startups. When you look at hiring sales people, what are the attributes that you look for? Is it intelligence, is it hard work, is it coach ability? What are some of the things that are most important to you, and do you apply different attributes in different situations? What are your thoughts on that? >> Great question in a little plug, maybe for a recruiting business, top talent recruiting, (laughing) but one of the key things that we do, which I think is different from others in the recruiting side is the relationships. So a lot of people don't dig in, when we're talking to candidates, they say, well, nobody really asked me this before. And I would argue a key differentiator, and this is way before COVID, but especially now with COVID is okay, who do you have relationships with? So I could be talking to a candidate that maybe somebody is hiring, wants to cover financial services in New York. And then I'll say, okay, well, who do you know what City JPB Bay and I'll know more people than they know. And I'll probably say, just so you know, that's weird me up in Boston. I know more than the council you probably know the best. So really trying to unearth, really kind of who has the right relationships and then separate from that in terms of a reference check, being able to reference checks sooner in the process with somebody that know well firsthand, as opposed to second hand. And a lot of times I've seen even some of the larger, more expensive recruiting firms, you're kind of wait until somebody is the final say, when do an offer, then they do a reference check and they do the reference check with somebody that they don't know. And to me, I mean, that's totally useless which quite with LinkedIn today, I could be say if we're looking at you for candidate, maybe a bad example, but I don't know, we probably have a 1000 in common, and from those, we probably have 200 that we both know, well, that I could check. And when you do reference checking, it's not a maybe it's either, hey, the person is a yes, or the person's a no. So trying to do that early in the process, I think is a big differentiator. And then last and probably third piece I'd highlight is, if it's a startup company, you can't get somebody that's just from a big company. If it's a big company role, you can't get somebody that just from a small company, you got to really make sure you kind of peel back the onions and see where they're from. And you could have somebody from a big company, but they were kind of wearing a smaller division. So again, you have to kind of, you can't judge a book by the cover. You got to kind of peel back the onion. >> So Randy, how do people learn more about Sales Community? Where do they go to engage, sign up, et cetera? >> Absolutely, it's salescommunity.com. So it should be pretty straight forward. A lot of great information there. You can go subscribe, and if you like it spread the word and a lot of great content and you can ping me there. And if not I'm randy@salescommunity.com. So love to get any feedback, help out in any way we can. >> Well, I think it's critical that you're putting this network together and you are probably the best networker that I know I've seen you in action at gatherings and you really have been a great inspiration and a friend. So, Randy, thanks so much for doing the Sales Community and coming on theCUBE and sharing your experience with us. >> Great, thanks Dave, appreciate it. >> All right you're very welcome and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020, brought to you by Actifio. >> Hi everybody this is Dave Vellante, full of preview of Actifio Data Driven, and with me is Brian Reagan who is a long time cube alumni, good friend. Brian, awesome to see you thanks for coming on and help us set up Data Driven >> Dave it's always a pleasure to be here, thanks for having me. >> So this is one of our favorite events of the season, not only because it's historically been in Boston, but it's a really good intimate event, lot of customer content. Unfortunately this year, of course everything has gone virtual but tell us about that, what do you guys got planned for Data Driven this year? >> Well again we're delighted to be able to put the show on, in spite of all of the challenges of travel and face to face. As you know from years past, Data Driven has always been sort of by the customers for the customers, very much an event that is driven around understanding how customers are using data strategically, and how Actifio is helping them do that to power their businesses. This year is no different, I think what we've done is we've taken the best of the physical events, which is really facilitating fireside chats and panels of people using our technology to move the business forward with data, but also added a lot of things that frankly are impossible to do when you're strained by a physical event, which is be able to run a series of on demand technical sessions. Our technical tracks are always standing room only, so now we can offer more content, more discreet package content that can be consumed the day of the event and on for a year plus after the event. So we're excited to really sort of mix the best of both worlds virtual and the forums that have worked so well for us in the physical events. >> Well it's like I said I mean, lots of these events are sort of vendor fests, but what you do with Data Driven is you bring in the customer's voice. And I remember last year in theCUBE, we had Holly st. Clair who was with the state of Massachusetts, she was awesome. We had a guest from DraftKings, which was really, really tremendous. Of course, you see what's happening with those guys now just exploding. >> Exactly. >> But we also had a lot of fun, when of course Ash comes on, and all the Actifio folk, but we had Frank Gens on, the first and only time we've ever had him on theCUBE, he's now retired from IDC, I guess semiretired. We had Duplessie on, which was a lot of fun. So it's just a good vibe. >> Yeah, we made a conscious decision to your point not to avoid the traditional vendor fest, and bludgeoning people with PowerPoint throughout the day, and really wanted to make it spin it around, and have the customers tell their stories in their own words, and really talk about the themes that are both common, in terms of challenges, ways that they've addressed those challenges, but also dig into the real implications of when they do solve these challenges, what are the unintended consequences? It's sort of like the... In a lot of ways I think about the journey that customers went through with VMware and with the ability to spin up VMs effortlessly, was a fantastic first step, and then all of a sudden they realized they had all of these spun up Vms that were consuming resources that they didn't necessarily had thought about at the very beginning. I think that our customers as they progress through their journey with Actifio, once they realize the power of being able to access data and deliver data, no matter how big it is, in any form factor in any cloud, there's incredible power there, but there also comes with that a real need to make sure that the governance and controls and management systems are in place to properly deliver that. Particularly today when everything is distributed, everything is essentially at arms length, so that's part of the fun of these events is really being able to hear all of the ways these unique customers are, adding value, delivering value, gaining value, from the platform. >> What's it's interesting you mentioned VMs, it was like life changing when you saw your first VM get spun up and you're like, wow, this is unbelievable, and then it was so easy to spin up. and then you just save VM creep and copy creep. >> Right. >> And you're seeing some similar things now with cloud I mean example is the cloud data warehouses is so easy to spin those things up now. The CFOs are looking at the bill going Whoa, what are we doing here? >> (laughs) >> You're going to see the same thing >> Exactly. >> with containers as you begin to persist containers, you're going to have the same problem. So you guys created the category, it's always a marketing executives dreams to be able to create a category. You guys created the Copy Data Management category, and of course, you've extended that. But that was really good, it was something that you guys set forth and then all the analysts picked up on it, people now use that as a term and it kind of resonates with everybody. >> Right, right. It was bittersweet but also very satisfying to start to see other vendors come out with their own Copy Data Management offerings, and so yes the validating that in fact this is a real problem in the enterprise continues to be a real problem in the enterprise, and by using technologies that Actifio really pioneered and patented quite a bit of foundational technologies around, we're able to help customers address those copy data challenges, those spiraling costs of managing all of these duplicate, physical instances of data. And to your point, to some degree when you're on-prem in a data center and you've already bought your storage array. Okay, I'm consuming 20% more of the Ray or 100% more of the array than I really need to be, but I've already paid for the array. When it comes to cloud, those bills are adding up hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and those are real costs, and so in many ways cloud is actually highlighting the power and frankly the problem of copy data, far more than the on-prem phenomenon ever did. >> Yeah I was on the phone with a former CIO, COO now of a healthcare organization, and he was saying to me there's a dark side of CapEx to OPEX, which is now that he's a COO he's like really concerned about the income statement and the variability of those costs, and so to your point I mean it's a big issue, the convenience seems to be outweighing some of that concern but nonetheless lack of predictability is a real concern there. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And I think we see that... You mentioned data lakes, and whether you call it a data lake or you just call it a massive data instance, one of the speakers of Data Driven this year is a customer of our Century Data Systems down in Florida. And they have 120 terabyte database that actually they're using, and this is an incredible story that we're excited to have them share with the world during Data Driven. They're using it to help the federal government get better data faster on COVID treatments and the efficacy of those treatments, and so to even consider being able to rapidly access and manage 120 terabyte instance. It breaks the laws of physics frankly. But again with Copy Data Management, we have the ability to help them really extend and really enhance their business and ultimately enhance the data flows that are hopefully going to accelerate the access to a vaccine for us in North American and worldwide, quite frankly. >> That's awesome, that's awesome. Now let's talk a little bit more about Data Driven what we can expect. Of course, the last couple of years you've been the host of Data Driven. They pulled a Ricky gervais' on you >> (Laughs loudly) like get the golden gloves, he's no longer being invited to host, but I think probably for different reasons, but what are some the major themes that we can expect this year? >> Yeah, we were disappointed that we couldn't get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. >> (laughs quietly) I think we decided that in a virtual construct, the host duties were pretty amenable. So among the many things I talked about Sentry Data Systems and we have many customers who are going to be joining us and telling their stories. And again from accelerating data analytics to accelerating DevOps initiatives, to accelerating a move to the cloud, we're going to hear all of those different use cases described. One of the things that is different this year and we're really excited. Gene Kim sort of the author and noted DevOps guru, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, he's going to be joining us. We had previously intended to do a road show with Gene this year and obviously those plans got changed a bit. So really excited to have him join us, talk about his point of view around DevOps. Certainly it's a hugely important use case for us, really important for many of our customers, and actually registrant's between now and the event, which is September 15th and 16th, we'll get an eCopy an e-book copy of his Unicorn Project book. So we're eager to have people register and if they haven't already read him then I think they're going to be really pleasantly surprised to see how accessible his materials are, and yet how meaningful and how powerful they can be in terms of articulating the journeys that many of these businesses are going through. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm stucked I have not read that material, but I've heard a lot about it, and when I signed up I saw that, said great I'm going to get the free book. So I'm going to check that out, >> Yeah It's obviously a very, very hot topic. Well Brian, I really appreciate you coming on, and setting up the event. What are the details? So where do I go to sign up? When is the event? What's the format? Give us the lowdown. >> It is September 15th and 16th, actifio.com will guide you through the registration process. You'll be able to create the event based on the content that you're eager to participate in. And again not only on the 15th and 16th, but then into the future, you'll be able to go back and re access or access content that you didn't have the time to do during the event window. So we're really excited to be able to offer that as an important part of the event. >> Fantastic and of course theCUBE will be there doing its normal wall to wall coverage. Of course, this time virtual, and you'll see us on social media with all the clips and all the work on Silicon Angle. So Brian great to see you and we will see you online in September. >> Thanks, Dave. >> All right, and thank you. Go to actifio.com, sign up register for Data Driven, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)