>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of day one of convo go and 19 from Colorado. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu minimum and we have a cube alumni back with us. Arch, not van Venkatraman. You are the research manager for storage and data center for IDC. Welcome back. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Likewise, so here we are. Day one of con BOGO, lots of stuff. Nutrition's I stopped coming out in the last day and a half or so, but also lots of momentum that really kind of the dust kicked up when Sanjay Mirchandani took over the home from Bob hammer just about nine months ago. You've been covering combo for about three years. Just love to get your perspective on the last three years and what you've seen particularly in the last nine months. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I've been tracking them for three years and they've been slowly making that pivot to the cloud world to changing how they're pricing to, you know, to really break free from that perception that they're very traditional, they're very cumbersome, they're expensive, they're trying to break through that and hiring Sanjay was kind of validation that Hey we are committed to the future and Sanjay comes from this very agile DevOps seed, open sores, containerized property worlds. >>So he, he is new culture and Sandra came in and he started, I think he started making a lot more changes. We saw that their journey to the cloud was a lot more accelerated and they're starting to talk this new language that is attracting developers. So they talk about cloud native technologies. They're talking about database and data as the bottleneck in development life cycle, which is all new music to develop us ears. And then that means you're going to bring in data management, which is a huge issue right to the developer strategy, right to the boardroom strategy. That's where it needs to be because data is actually at the heart of what companies are doing. And we keep talking about speed of fins, speed of development and speed of applications. I think it's time we start talking about speed of intelligence and speed of insights because that's what's going to give companies a competitive difference. >>And that's what Sanjay brought in in the last nine months. And I was tracking the Hedwig acquisition as well and a lot of companies, a lot of people who I spoke to here were extremely excited about what Hedwig brings into the table and there was a lot of interest in what they bring in. So I think Sanjay brought in a new culture to come ball and he cemented that new culture with Hedwig because with Hedwig they acquired that new startup culture as well. So it's really coming together of a lot of new culture and that's going to overpower the old culture and going to bring a lot transformation within. >>So as arch and I, but I'd love to get your insights into how that that changed and you said, right. Do you know Sandra came from puppet? We talked to them earlier today about moving faster and CIC D and all this wonderful things. But how that aligned with customers. We talked to customers that are seven or 10 years working with convolve inside the organization. You know the person that owned the backup and recovery process, you know, how familiar are they with their developer team and how that's coming together in an organization. So is Convolt meeting the customers where they are? Are they skating to the puck? How does that alignment? >>Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's imperative that come moved and a lot of traditional data protection vendors move because customers are moving as well and they are forced to move because they are seeing lot of onslaught of data. Data's corporate data is growing 50 to 60% every year. That's just business data. So they're grappling with data growth and they're expected to do more with less and data is fragmented everywhere. So they are forced to make that change as well. So they are employing data protection officers, but at the same time they're also employing data scientists and newer data model architects to do new things with data because they are under pressure to deliver that better customer experiences. So companies are going through that change and we, in August we did a research and asked organizations, are you happy with your existing data protection tools and are you going to change it? >>And interestingly, 60% of those who are operating in multicloud environments want to change their data protection environment. And that shows because until now there was this huge power of incumbency, right? I will, I'm okay with this, I'll probably buy the next version of this and try and do iterative improvements. But now companies realize that this data growth and fragmentation and multicloud environment represents a new frontier and they need to move from this thinking that they've had and they're willing to change and work with the newer kind of companies that provide them what they want around unification and simplification. >>Yeah, I think you brought up some great points there. We've found when we talked to customers, they seem to be more open than ever to try something new. I kind of wonder if that's why metallic almost has a separate brand, a separate web website. It is a Convult venture because you know Combalt has incumbency and it has a pedigree. But if I'm trying something new, Convolt might not be the first one that I think of. >>Yeah. So today was the first time I heard about metallic and there is some, I love the branding and there's so much of gloss and shines, I need to get behind the gloss and shine. But I've seen that was one of the busiest places that we have seen today in the exhibition. And that shows commitment to the, it's, it's, it's, it's, they're entering the SAS world and they're talking that cloud likes scalability and it's also more than applications. They're talking about the pricing is a like consumption base, that cloud language and it's going to propel them along the way. And your perspective as customers that you talk to in any industry have so much choice. You're saying, Hey, the customers are recognizing in this multicloud world in which they find themselves operating. We've gotta be able to change our data protection strategy. I imagine things like the rise in cyber attacks or GDPR or the new law in California. >>That's coming are some compelling events. But when customers look at the landscape, and as was saying, they're so much more open to maybe trying new vendors, for example, how does Combalt part, you know, significant part and combat maybe new part with Hedvig and with metallic as a sort of this startup within combo. How did they elevate and differentiate themselves in your opinion, in a competitive landscape? Interesting. Yep. So when you look at startups, they have a lot of agility, but they're not able to bring that enterprise grade skill. Excuse me. And if you look at a lot of traditional vendors, they have that scale and enterprise grade guarantees, but they don't have that agility. But with this initiative, they've done some clever things and brought agility and skill together. That's their differentiator to see no, grab some water, we'll talk for a second. You probably even taught all day. >>That's the hazard, right, of going to these events is your voice, especially with the altitude. But, but as, as we've seen other large incumbents do the same thing. Absolutely. Everyone's pivoting to the same. It is. But also integration of technologies is not easy. Right. And that's sort of the table stakes is how are they, for example, going to integrate Hedvig such that one had bigs installed. ACE has a smooth, seamless transition and this opens up more opportunity for them and vice versa that that Combolt's install base now has more opportunity. Talk to us about what you've seen. They talked a little bit yesterday about some of the integration connections that they've made so far, but that's really key because a lot of companies don't do integrations. Well yeah, there've been some big acquisitions and they do integrations for years and years, right? It's been just 13 days since the acquisition closed. >>So it's still early days, but they need to keep that momentum up and I see a lot of synergy. So bringing storage and data management together is a good idea. But at the same time, I heard Sanjay alluded to it on the stage as well, where they're talking about application and data and moving away from that infrastructure. Right. And that that view is very important because companies need to move from protecting data centers to protecting centers of data. That's what they need to think about. So they need to abstract from infrastructure, but which is why when you look at it all though it's software defined storage. The language that they use is very clever. They're talking about APIs, they're talking about newer workflows, they're talking about changing business processes, they're talking about enabling data, they're talking about controlling data and using it data, using data for insights. >>So they're putting in a lot of newer perspective to this infrastructure view and taking a software defined container defined API defined view, and that's kind of very, very modern. I think that's going to bring a huge amount of difference. So thinking about some of the customers that you've spoken to will say in the last year that are either using Combolt or evaluating combo, some of the positioning that you just talked about to kind of very interesting, but I presume quite strategic with how they're talking about protect, use, manage control data. Are you hear from Comvalt are you hearing and seeing this is what I've been hearing from customers, is there an alignment? Are you hearing from custom what you heard from customers? I'll start over like in the last year, what combat is now delivering and the messaging that they're articulating. Are you now, are you seeing alignment like they're going in the direction that I'm hearing with what customers are wanting. >>He has, the customers are grappling with multicloud data services, so it's not just data protection but they need to get visibility of data across their, all the data sets across the board that they're challenged not just with structured data but growth in unstructured and semi-structured data as well. So they need to look at newer kinds of storage like object storage and all that. So they are grappling with newer kinds of challenges and that's why this new language is going to be hugely useful. And that's why this coming together of storage and data management can actually make a big difference because together they can paint a picture for the organization and tell them these are the challenges you're grappling. You don't need to buying different solutions from different places and buy it and bring it all together. We have deeper level of integration and we can solve it and convert. >>We'll be able to get to the customer at the storage level before they hit the customer, hits the data management problem and then starts hunting for a newer solution. So they're getting in early before the problem actually becomes an operational issue and that the Hey red, they are ready with the solution when the customer gets there. You might, you mentioned data visibility a minute ago and that's critical, right? For organizations that are, whether it's a smaller organization or one that's heavily matrix, if you don't have, and a lot of them don't have visibility into all of the data. Something that you talked about in the very beginning of the interview, that speed of intelligence and speed of insights, it can't take advantage of that. Yeah, yeah. Yes. So companies are investing into a lot of data scientists. But then so, so I was talking to actually three, I was doing a CIO executive dinner on this whole topic about data driven. >>And then so some of organizations, some of the CIS put their hands up and said, Hey, we have actually employed new data scientists. These data engineers and data scientists don't come cheap, right? They're very heavily skilled, talented, talented professionals. So you employ them. And now we're working backwards. Now we are trying to do what we can do with the data models and there's so much problem we are facing. We don't know what data is good data to be analyzed, what data we can delete, what data is cold data that we can send to archives and what do we need to, what are the use cases that we need big data analytics for? So they're working backwards and they're not able to leverage and capitalize on all the resources that they've spent on hiring these kinds of data scientists and data engineers. So I think they need to start that. Organizations need to get a hygiene about their data first and then take the next step around analytics and hiring these kind of data scientists is the first step. Sorry >>are tryna just, I was curious if you could comment on a statement that Sanjay Mirchandani made this morning. He says we need to rethink the kind of the lines and into definitions between primary and secondary storage. What do you think of that statement and where do you think vault ultimately will fit in the broader marketplace? >>You's quite aligned with what I see when I talk to customers as well. So, so companies, data is growing and it's fragmented, but at the same time the lines between primary storage and secondary storage are blurring as well. So the data that's cold today may be hot data tomorrow. So they need to understand, get visibility into data. Just 10% of data is hard data today. So that data needs to sit in the most expensive storage environments. They can leverage it and the rest needs to be, needs to go into tiered, into other colder storage, cheaper alternatives. But at the same time, when you want to access that data, it should not be difficult because now when you push it to a cloud archive your, that's your archive and be damned, right? You're not going to get that data back on in the format you want at the time you want, at the cost you want. So you need to make sure that you invest in storage technologies and you make that data tiering in such a way that when that called data is suddenly becoming warm data or hot data, you need to have access to it instantly in the format you like. Archna thank you for sharing your insights and recommendations and just your view on the industry and combat. We appreciate your time. No problem at all. Thank you very much. First, zoom and a man. I am Lisa Martin and you're watching the cube from combat go 19.

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combalt. >>Hey, welcome back to the cube Lisa Martin with steam and man we are live on the show floor of comm vault go 2019 fourth annual event, a couple thousand customers here and Steve and I are welcoming back the COO of combo. Chris pal. Chris, welcome back. Thanks. Great to be here. We're excited to be here. We just came out of the keynote. Some interesting news to talk about but let's, let's to talk about what's happened. Combat is a 20 year young company, tremendous amount of acceleration in the last nine months. Lot of leadership changes he must be going to hold onto the table cause you got like the whiplash, right? So tell us, here we are at the fourth annual go news in terms of sales leadership changes go to market opportunities with metallic, with a new partner programs for the enterprise. Tell us what are some of the things that are exciting to you and how come vault is really in 20 FYE 2020 position? Like, Hey, we're listening to our customers and partners. >>Yeah, yeah. Well, and a lot of the things that you're seeing here at this show is just that it's, it's, it's market-driven. It's us responding to what we're seeing in the market, working with our partners. And a show like this is all about working with partners. Our customers and the, the announcements that we're making here are really releasing a completely new combo that the brand refresh that we've done just over the last month or so is been tied to a lot of the things that are changing with regards to the product portfolio. Uh, that Hedvig acquisition and a lot of the different leadership changes that you're seeing and the leadership changes are really driving a lot of this shift of focus. And really, I shouldn't say shift really extended focus for the organization from a technological standpoint as well as from working with our partners. >>Yeah, it's interesting. The news ahead of the show of metallic Convult now a SAS providers. So it's interesting to get you give us your, your view as a marketer. On the one hand you need to be the trusted enterprise supplier with a lot of customers. And the other one, you know, they've got cloud microservices, all the latest buzz words and you know sasses the model that a lot of customers want to be able to consume their software standpoint. So, so >>I know you have Rob Kalusi and who's going to be coming on. So I'll steal some of his thunder and I'll try not to steal too much to don't tell them the what excites me so much about the metallic product when leap, when we first started down this path, it was we, we really started looking at the market and the challenge that came from Sanjay when he just first entered the building really was we have industry leading technology. A lot of folks will talk about how we have industry leading technology. But if you really took a step back, you would have to have an honest view and say, sometimes they would say, well look, if it's a, if it's a really straight forward installation, maybe Commonwealth and might be a bit bring too much to the party, so why don't you look at some of the other solutions. >>And as we were talking to different customers out there, they were looking for SAS solutions and but they at the same time, they didn't want to make any compromises. And so much of the research that Rob and team working with Janet and with David, no, we're seeing is that as they were going out there, the Seuss solutions that were available today, and this sounds like marketing spin, right? But it's really what we were hearing back, that they weren't very good there, that they weren't SAS solutions. They're supposed to be easy. The customers really didn't see them as easy. They were running into scale issues, they were running into flexibility issues. So from the standpoint of building the solution, what we quickly realized is if we could reach Sanjay's challenge to us, which is bringing this fundamentally solid technology to a broader audience with a simplified use cases that there's a great opportunity for us to bring value to more companies. So that's, that's where this went. And then the beginning reviews of this as we brought this into beta and different people were seeing at different customers, different partners, they even came into the conversation a little bit pessimistic and they all left excited about what they were seeing. It's it's, it's really good. It's really good. >>So targeted towards mid market companies with around 2,500 or 500 to 2,500 employees. Give me just a little bit of a perspective on the choice that Commonweal is now offering the midmarket with complete backup and recovery. That's one of your flagship and metallic. >>So the the metallic offerings your men for some of the most common use cases that are out there. So 65 and the what we're, what we're trying to inject into the market and the target of 500 to 2,500 employees is really just where we see the sweet spot of most of the customers of those sizes are the ones that are looking at SAS solutions right now. But that's not to say as we've talked to larger enterprises, many of them are considering the addition of metallic as into their either subsidiaries or other areas of their business. And what Sanjay talks about, he sort of refers to as the data brain is really bringing this together where you can add SAS solutions onto your existing on prem solution. So if you're running combo complete, you can also be running metallic across other aspects of your business. So that's, that's one of the things that makes it powerful upmarket, but then we're also targeting the more common use cases that are more turnkey down-market. Yeah. >>Let's switch gears a little bit. So your team had a little bit of fun opening up the keynote. You had some of the stunt doubles a for Thor from Starwood and the woman has done both star Wars and Marvel on and talking about the unsung heroes behind the scenes. Kind of like your, your customers here. But there was another connection because they were vendors and con vault is, I believe it's the global Avengers and it has to do with sustainability, which I know is something near and dear to your heart. So explain a little bit about why that's important in what it is. >>So it's definitely a passion of mine and something that we accumbent are looking to every company as we're driving this should try to stand for something bigger than themselves. And as we look at this all started two years ago when we sponsored and I joined Robert Swan's expedition to the South pole. We were the data sponsor for that expedition and it was the first expedition to rely solely on renewable energy. And what has evolved from that from different conversations, we started having discussions throughout about the carbon footprint of data and with 5g the internet of things coming and more and more data on the horizon. The people that we're speaking with. And the reality I think that tech has come to is that we can't be part of the problem. We have to be part of the solution. So through a series of connections, we ended up speaking with the folks who were responsible for the UN global goals. Um, it's the 17 global goals around the world that were endorsed by all of the UN countries five years ago and there's 10 more years of it. And Kamahl is extremely proud to be joining some of the largest companies in the world. Coca Cola, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, many in our industry and outside, obviously to sponsor one of the global global goals. But the way the program works is it 17 global goals and there's one company for each one of them in order to try to represent it and drive it forward. >>Chris, you actually took a few of us around the show floor before it opened last night. We know conferences can have a bit of an impact from a negative standpoint. So tell some of what Combolt's doing to make sure that this conference, you know, doesn't have such an impact. >>So as you mentioned before, it's about 2000 people that are here and I was shocked to learn and a lot of this is all in education. As you go through life, the, an event of this size typically will generate 25,000 pounds of rubbish of trash. So what we've done is partner with our good customer, which is the Gaylord Gaylord hotel systems and leaf put together a model where we're trying to minimize the overall footprint. So we donate a lot of what you see around here. Construction materials are donated to schools and local organizations. We're using all of the natural plants that will go back into the, uh, into the environment after this. Um, no plastic. I'm trying. And then the, uh, the cups you see here on the table are all plant based. So we're, we're trying to be very conscientious about everything that we're doing here at the show and minimize the footprint. >>When you're talking with customers, as I'm sure as cou are doing a lot, we talk, we often Sue and I and the rest of the cube crew. Sustainability is a topic that comes up at every event. We're, is that when you're talking with customers in any industry, whether it's healthcare or oil and gas, where is sustainability in >>terms of conversation? Is that one of the key things that comes up? That was also really important for Commonwealth to say, Hey, we want to be able to make sure that the technologies we're delivering are going to help our customers meet their sustainability goals. >>Absolutely. And it's, it's increasingly part of some, a number of RFPs. They will come in for Combalt. So they're there. Companies are looking to have us be able to really represent what our sustainability, what our corporate social responsibility systems are and what we put in place. And so we look at this through the lens of what do we do within our facilities? What do we do in events like this? And then also what can we do with our customers? So it's increasingly relevant and their sons of research, I'm sure you guys have seen the, the, as the millennial generation becomes more and more part of either significant influencers or decision makers, they're looking for companies that have a mission, you know, and that that stand for something all. >>So Chris, we're talking about sustainability is something you're passionate about. How does that tie into the broader brand discussion of Convolt companies going through, we talked about the executive change and you've got a lot of new products. So when people leave Combalt go 2019 how do you want them to think of Convult? >>That's a great question. I think what we're hoping that we were really using combo Alco as a combination of so many of the things that have been happening over the last couple of quarters. And certainly as I looked through what we're representing now, it's what are we as an organization, what's the story we're trying to tell? So we launched just in the last few weeks a new tagline, which is be ready. And that whole concept of data readiness is something that we're having within this show and it'll be in a lot of our messaging as we move forward. So this, I'm thinking of as the organization that enables you to be ready and then extending that should of saying, well what does that mean? And that's around how we protect the data, help you control where it resides, help you manage it for compliance and different regulatory needs, and then help you use it and get value from it. So that's the big takeaway we're hoping that people have. The other piece of this that we have each year is we expose people to such expertise here at the show. This is not combo talking about combo. 70% of our sessions in the breakout theaters are partners or customers or other influencers. So we want people to come here and really see convolve as data experts, as the people who are willing to work with them. >>Yeah. One little nugget you shared also, you've been growing. How many developers you bring from internal to the show. I have to think that Sanjay has a little bit of push from that based on his last. Yeah, yeah. >>Roll. Yeah. Certainly the DevOps community is increasingly, especially with some of the moves we've made in Hedvig, the dev community is going to be increasingly an audience for us to, to engage with. But the, we bring 45 developers to the show this year. It's about 40 from a combo and five more that have joined with Hedvig and they have 30 or 60 minute whiteboard sessions and they're completely jam packed. There's, I think last year there was over 150 whiteboard sessions over two days with customers just coming in and going through the details of this because a lot of organizations, they're there, they're faced with right now and in Sanjay's words, they have to move from something to something and they need people to be able to sit down and have honest conversations with them. Um, I joke with people sometimes that one of the terrible things that happened has happened to marketing with the advent of technology is we have to be truthful now when you know you can't, you can't just spin things. And so we're stuck having to tell the truth. But, but combo has a great truth that sets, we've got a really solid truth to tell. We just need to tell it. >>Well, and I love how marketing is so scientific these days. You're right, you have to tell the truth. But you also have, if you have the right foundation within your organization, the ability to access data actually glean insights from it, develop, whether it's a new partner program or new technologies, new routes to market. That's the power of that. Having visibility and access to the data can deliver to any type of organization. When you, when you talk with customers who've been, we've got some on the show today, Hey, we've been using Convolt for 10 years. When you talk to them today, this theme of be ready more than ready. How are they perceiving their foundation with combo and all of the changes that you've made, not just in the last 10 years, but in the last nine months alone. Which like customer feedback. Yeah, >>the customer feedback has been tremendous. I think they, they, so many customers are something that's so great about combo. Does our customers want us to succeed and they, they see this market shifting tremendously. They've been with us for a while and they want us to succeed. When they look at the changes that they're having to overcome, they're excited about really beginning to learn that as they move from something to something that we can help them on that journey. That they don't have to go somewhere else for that journey. So whether that's looking into SAS areas, whether it's modernizing their infrastructure, whether it's moving to multi-cloud and those environments, we, we have the right solutions in the right way for them to be able to make this transition for their company. So >>Chris, we're relatively early still in this show, so I hate to ask, but give us a little bit of a go forward. Lot of change in the last nine months. What should your customers be expecting from comm vault through the rest of the year? And by the time we come back to Convolt go 20, 20? >>Well, I think when you talk to Sanjay, he always says, puts me back on my heels a little bit and tells me that it's a, there's more coming, there's more coming, we're going to keep going. So it, Sanjay is a very dynamic leader and he's looking to make sure that the company isn't just driving to combo go and then it's going to sort of be smooth sailing with these things. I think this is an exciting time to be here at combo. This is an exciting time to be in the industry. So as we look forward to, um, the new leadership that's come in and some of the things they'll be able to do in terms of our go to market, I think we're going to be exciting. Avinash coming into this organization and his expertise, his skill set and all of the brilliant engineers he's, he's brought in to sort of join our industry leading engineering team. Uh, it's, it's going to be, uh, I can't wait to see what they come up with from a marketing standpoint. You know, we, we had a solid product for a number of years, but it's always challenging to sort of continue to tell a story and come up with new ways to tell it. As you get new things in your, in your box to be able to talk about, it's, it's great to be here. >>Well, Chris, we want to thank you for joining us on the queue today. We're excited about the next two days of all of the folks, leaders, new leaders, customers, partners that we're going to be talking to you and really unpacking what being ready means to them. So we thank you for your time and we look forward to a great event. Thanks very much for Steven. Amen. I am Lisa Martin. You're watching the Q from ball go 19.

>> [Announcer] Live from Los Angeles, it's The Cube, covering E3 2018. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Hey, welcome back here, we're ready, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Los Angeles Convention Center at E3, it's amazing. It's like 68,000 people. They're in every single hall, they're out in the streets, they're in the hotels, they're at LA Live, they're all over the place, for really the biggest gaming conference I think in the world, and we're excited to have our next guest, he's Dana Jan, he's a design director for Ready at Dawn, and you just introduced a new game, right? Great to see ya. >> Thank you very much for having me. Yes, that's true. We just announced Echo Combat last year in October, and today we're showing off on the floor. >> Private beta still or are you going to public beta you said soon? >> Yeah, we just had a closed beta actually. We're moving into open beta, and that's gonna be June 21st. >> Right, pretty amazing though, you guys have not been around that long, and this is already your third game. >> Well, the studio's been around for a while, so we've been making games for a long time. This is actually kind of a new foray for us though going into VR. We released a game called Lone Echo last year, and Echo Arena was a multi-player mode that we also launched simultaneously with Lone Echo, so yeah, this game is new and fresh, but it's, we've been developing VR now for a little over two years. >> Right, so from a design perspective in the VR space, what is some of the special considerations you have to be thinking about, either challenges and opportunities? >> Yeah, I mean some of the challenges are obviously, performance is a big deal for us. The game has to run at 90 frames per second on Oculus per eye, so that's rendering essentially like two different-- >> [Jeff] 90 frames per eye? >> Yeah, it's really fast. You have to render 90 frames per second, otherwise it gets really uncomfortable for the user, so we optimize a lot of our experiences. And it's even like, some of the ideas that we have, we have to figure out how to make them viable at that frame rate. And we have a lot of high-fidelity body movement going on in Lone Echo, Echo Arena, and now Echo Combat. We do a lot of IK work to kind of represent a full body avatar that honors essentially head, hands, and because our game takes place in zero G, we have this floating body that has to convincingly flow behind you wherever you go. >> [Jeff] Right >> Yeah, it's actually, it's a pretty big challenge for us as both designers, developers, and just on a technical standpoint to get all that to kind of harmoniously work together. >> Right, so other thing, just in terms of the game play inside VR, 'cause the other thing is right, you don't necessarily control which direction they're looking. I mean, how do you kind of direct the player to where you want them to look, and where you want them to participate? >> That's a great question. Actually, so part of the beauty of VR, is we try to do some of that like you would for a conventional game, trying to use lighting, trying to basically design environments with things, cues, details that would maybe help people along, but ultimately you're as free as you are, just like right now you and I, we can look all over the place. >> [Jeff] Right. >> We don't really want to restrict that. Part of the beauty of VR is that ultimate freedom. If you wanna of kind of go, look in that little corner underneath you for the whole game, you really can, and we try to as much as possible make that something that's beneficial too. We try to code every little bit of our world with something that's interesting to find, discover, so. >> Right, right. >> Yeah, it's freedom of movement, freedom of wherever you wanna be, whatever you wanna do. >> Right, so we're doing this as part of the Western Digital data makes possible program, and really as we get closer and closer to infinite store, infinite compute, infinite networking, you just said you've got designs, and you've got ideas that even today you can't necessarily put into place. So as you look forward for the opportunities when all these things are basically gonna be close to infinite, at close to zero cost, what are some of the things that excite you? Where do you see kind of using that power to do a better job, or different job in your storytelling? >> Yeah, I mean the horsepower that you need to run these kind of games is actually pretty staggering. We compute a lot of stuff on the GPUs, the CPUs, we have a lot of physics-oriented things in the game because VR is really big into like letting you kind of touch everything, and manipulate stuff, and it doesn't feel like you're really somewhere, you don't feel present unless you can actually interact with the environments. And for that we have to basically create tons, and tons, and tons of objects, we have physics constraints and things that are costly for the computation cycles. And then there's like memory issues. We have streaming that we have to kind of get better at. These worlds are very large, and so to store the things that you're gonna see and do, takes a lot of actual hard drive space, and the speed at which we can load and unload things, is a critical factor in terms of unlocking the freedom of your experience. >> Right, so when you get more horsepower, a new processor comes out, and you get more memory, whatever, I mean do you already have stuff keyed up where you want to use that? Is it more a realistic nature of the graphics, is it speed, I mean what are some of the priorities that you would immediately apply if you had some more horsepower tomorrow? >> Yeah, certainly I mean there are things that we absolutely know about like there's texture resolution, there's like I said, there's physics objects, there are just things that we end up going, that's too costly to do, we're gonna have to maybe stop doing that or cut back on it, or scope back. We do look at creating settings and things where our users who actually have more high-end machines, to actually turn that stuff back on, but I think every time we kind of go into another design kind of exercise and sort of looking at what do we want to do in VR, I think we're surprised at what does it take to actually accomplish it. And so I'm not sure I know right now fully what we're gonna start getting into and what kind of hardware that might require, but every day's just a different challenge, and that's part of the excitement of working in VR. >> Right, right and I was gonna say and also obviously the trade-offs. I mean you could go bananas on the texture, but at some point is it the law of diminishing returns in terms of the storytelling, in terms of the experience 'cause you can't optimize across all the potential variables. >> Yeah, no, you have to pick and choose, and you're right, like basically we look at what are our goals, what are we trying to get out of this experience, what do we want the user to really get out of it? And then we have to compromise. We have to make some of those smart choices. But I do think at some point, we'll have to make less compromises as the technology gets better, and certainly things like resolution, if the headsets have higher resolution then it makes sense to put more resolution into the textures because now you can actually see it, and so we kind of hit that synergy where both of those are unlocked, it'll never be infinite obviously, but to where they're more in sync with each other, maybe we can make that compromise now, but maybe in the future we won't. >> Yeah, the headset's a whole 'nother bucket of technology. >> It is yeah. >> That you guys have to account. >> But they're awesome I mean, yeah we're doing, I think it's really impressive to me how far we've come with the headset technology. And I think in the next few years, we're just gonna see even crazier advances. So I'm really excited about that. >> Not just slap on the phone in the cardboard box, like a couple years ago. Here's your VR box. >> I know, right? That's not that long ago if you think about it really. >> All right, Dana, well give a shout out, what's the date for the public beta so people know where to go and how to get involved. >> Yeah, our open beta's gonna be starting June 21st. They can sign up on oculus.com. And yeah, we're looking forward to people getting in there and seeing what their impressions are, and taking the feedback. >> All right, well, Dana, thanks for taking a few minutes and stopping by. >> Great, thank you very much. >> All right, he's Dana, and I'm Jeff. You're watching The Cube from E3 at the LA Convention Center. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)