>> From Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE. Covering Actifio 2019 Data Driven. (upbeat techno music) Brought to you by Actifio. >> Hello everyone and welcome to Boston and theCUBE's special coverage of Actifio Data Driven 19. I'm Dave Vellante. Stu Miniman is here. We've got a special guest, John Furrier is in the house from from Palo Alto. Guys, theCUBE we love to go out on the ground, you know, we go deep. We're here at this data theme, right? We were there in the early days, John, you called me up and say, "Get your butt here, we're going to cover the first of Doop World". And since then things have moved quite fast. Everybody thought, you know, Hadoop Big Data was going to take over the world. Nobody even uses that term anymore, right? It's kind of, now it's AI, and machine intelligence, and block chain, and everything else. So what do you think is happening? Did the early Big Data days fail? You know, Frank Genus this morning called it The experimentation phase. >> I mean, I don't really think Frank has a good handle on what's going on in my opinion, cause I think it's not an experimentation, it's real. That was a wave that was essentially the beginning of, not an experimentation, of realization and reality that data, unstructured data in particular was real and relevant. Hadoop looked good off the tee, mill the fairway as we say, but the thing about the Hadoop ecosystem is that validated big data. Every financial institution jumped on it. Everyone who knew anything about data or had data issues or had a lot of data, knew the value. It's just that the apparatus to build via Hadoop was too expensive. In comes Cloud computing at scale, so, as Cloud was accelerating, you look at the Amazon Web Services Revenue Chart you can almost see the D mark where the inflection point is on the hockey stick of Amazon's revenue numbers. And that is the point in time where Hadoop was on the declining of failure. Hortonworks sold the Cloudera. Cloudera's earnings are at an all-time low. A lot of speculation of their entire strategy, and their venture back company went public, but bet the ranch to be the next data warehouse. That wasn't the business model. The data business was a completely new industry, completely being re-transformed, and, far from experimentation, it is real and definitely growing like a weed, but changing because of the underpinning infrastructure dynamics of Cloud Native, Microservices, and that's only going to get highly accelerated and the people who talk about context of industry like Frank, are going to be off. Their predictions will be off because they don't really see the new picture clear enough, in my opinion, >> So, >> I think he's off. >> So it's not so much of a structural change like it was when we went from, you know, mainframes to PCs, it's more of a sort of flow, evolution into this new area which is being driven, powered by new technologies, we talk about block chain machine intelligence and other things. >> Well, I mean, the make up of companies that were building quote, "Big Data Solutions", were trying to build an apparatus or mechanisms to solve big data problems, but none of them actually had the big data problem. None of them were full of data. None of them had a lot of data. The ones that had problems were the financial institutions, the credit card companies, the people who were doing a lot of large scale, um, with Google, Facebook, and some of the hyperscalers. They were actually dealing with the data tsunami themselves, so the practitioners ended up driving it. You guys at Wikibomb, we pointed this out on theCUBE many times, that the value was going to come from the practitioners not the suppliers of so called technology. So, you know, the Clouderas of the world who thought Hadoop would be relevant and growing as a technology were right on one side, on the other side of the coin was the Cloud decimation of that sector. The Cloud computer just completely blew away that Hadoop market because you didn't have to hire a PhD, you didn't have to hire specialty skills to stand up Hadoop clusters. You could actually throw it in the Cloud and get agile quickly, and get value out of data very very quickly. That has been real, it has not been an experiment. There's been new case studies, new companies born, new brands, so it's not an experiment, it is reality, and it's only going to get more real every day. >> And I add of course now you've got, you mentioned Cloudera and Hortenworks, you also got Matt Bar reeling Stu. Let's talk about Actifio. So they coined the term Copy Data Management, they created the category, of course they do a lot of backup, I mean, everybody in this space does a lot of backup. And then you saw the Silicon Valley companies come in. Particularly Cohesity and Rubric, you know, to a lesser extent he got some other guys like Zerto and Durva, but it was really those two companies, Cohesity and Rubric, they raised more money in their D round than Actifio has since inception. But yet Actifio keeps, you know, plodding along, growing, you know, word is they're profitable, you know, they're not like this really sectioned very East Coast versus kind of West Coast mentality. What's your take on what's going on? >> Yeah, so, Dave right, you look at the early days of Actifio and you say great, Copy Data Management, I have all these copies of data, how do I reduce my cost, get greater utilization than I have and leverage the data? I love the title of the show here, Data Driven. You know, we know at the center of digital transformation if you can't become data driven, like the CMO Brian Regan got up on stage talk about that industrialization of data. How am I going along that journey being this, I collected data versus now, you know, data, you know, is the reason that I make decisions, how I make decisions, I get smarter. The Cloud of course is a huge enabler of this, there's all these services that I can instantly access to be able to get greater insight, and move along with that environment, and if you look underneath all of these backup companies, it's really how I can change that data into business value and drive my business, the metadata underneath and all those pieces, not just the wonky storage and technical solutions that make things better, and I get a faster ROI. It's that data at the core of what we do and how do I get that as a business to accelerate. Because we know IT needs to be able to respond back to the business and data needs to be that rocket fuel. >> Is it the case of data haves and data have-nots? I mean, Amazon has data >> I mean, you're right-- >> and Facebook has data. >> We're talking about Actifio, you brought that up, okay, on this segment, on the inside segment, which is cool, they're here at the event, but they have a good opportunity but they also, they got some challenges. I mean, the thing about Actifio is, to my earlier point, which side of the wave are they on? Are they out too much out front with virtualization and Amazon, the Cloud will take them away, or are they riding the Cloud wave, making that an enabler? And I think what really I like about Actifio is because they have a lot of virtualization capabilities, the question is can they scale that Stu, to containers and microservices, because, the real opportunity in this market, in my opinion, is going to build on the virtualization trend, and make container aware, microservices capabilities because if they don't, then that would be a tell sign. Now either way it's a hot M&A market right now, so I think being in the market, horse on the track as you say. You look at the tableau sales force deal monster numbers we are in clearly a hot IPO market and a major roll up market on the M&A side. I think clearly there's two types of companies, old and new, and that is really what people are looking at, are they part of the old guard, are they the new guard. So, you know, this to me is going to be a tell sign of what they do next, can they make the data driven value proposition, you articulated Stu, actually a reality It's going to come from the technology underneath. >> Well I think it's a really interesting point you're making because, Stu as you probably know, that Amazon announced the Amazon backup service right, and you talked about the backup guys and they're like, "Ah yeah it's backup, but it really doesn't do recovery, it's really not that robust". It's part of me says, "Uh oh"... >> Watch out. >> You better move fast", because Amazon has stated, "Hey if you don't move fast we're going to just keep gobbling", and you've seen Amazon do this. What are your thoughts on that? Can these specialists, can they survive, John's talking about M&A. Can the market support all these guys along with the big, you know, traditional guys like Veritas, and Dell EMC, and IBM and Combol? >> Right, well so Actifio started very much in the data center. They were before this Could wave really took off. It's really only in the last year that they've been sassifying their product. So the question is, does that underlying IP, which wasn't tied to hardware, but, you know, sat at really more of, you know, reminded us of that storage virtualization battles that we talked about for years, Dave, but now they are going in the Cloud. They've got all the partnerships in the Cloud, but they are competing against those new vendors that you talked about like Cohesity and Rubric out there, and there's big money chasing this environment. So, you know, I want to talk to the customers here and find out, you know, where they are using them, and especially some of those first customers using this--. >> Well they clearly need a Cloud play cause that's clearly where the action is. But if you look at what's going on with Amazon, Azure, and Google you see a lot of on premises, Stu, because that's where the customers are. So just because the customers are currently not migrating their existing workloads to the Cloud doesn't mean it's not going to happen. So I think there's an opportunity for any company like Actifio, who may or may not be on the curve on the tech side, one little misfire on a tech bet could cripple the company and also make the company. There's a lot of high risk, reward ratio. How they handle containers. How they build on virtualizations. Virtualization going to to be part of the future with Cloud. These are the kind of the dynamics that are going to be in play, and they got some time on their hands because the on premises growth is because the clients are trying to figure out what to do and they're not going to be migrating, lifting, and shifting workloads all off to the Cloud. New will be Cloud based, but enterprises have proven why we are in multi-Cloud and hybrid-Cloud conversation, that... The enterprise on premises is not going away anytime soon. >> I want to ask you guys, John you specifically, about this sort of new Silicon Valley growth model and how companies are achieving escape velocity. When you and I made our first trip to Barcelona, I was having dinner with David Scott who was the CEO of 3PAR and he said to me, When I came to 3PAR the board said, "Hey we're willing to invest 30 million dollars in this company". And David Scott said to them, "I need way more, I need 80 million dollars". Today 80 million dollars is nothing. You saw, you know, Pure Storage hit escape velocity, was just throwing money, and growing at the problem. You're seeing Cohesity-- >> Well you can debate that. I mean, If you have to build a rocket ship, hit critical mass and you want to fund that, you're going to to need an enterprise. However, there's arguments on the south side that you can actually get fly wheel effect going early with less capital. So again, that's 3PAR-- >> But so that's my point. >> Well so that's 3PAR, that was 2009. >> So, yeah that was early days so that's ancient history. But software is generally supposed to be a capital efficient market, yet these companies are raising many hundreds and hundreds of millions, you know, half a billion dollar raises and they are putting it largely in promotion. Is that the new model, is that sustainable, in your view? >> Well I think you're conflating capital market dynamics with viable companies to invest in. I think there's a robust seed in series A market but the series A market and Silicon Valley is you know, 15 to 25 million, it used to be 3 to 5. So the dynamics are changing on funding. There's just not enough companies, horses on the track, to deploy capital at tranches of 30, 50, 80 million. So the capital markets are clearly going to have the money available so it's a market for the startups and the broke companies. That's separate from actually winning. So you've got slacks going public this weeks, you have other companies who have built business on a sass fly wheel, and then everything else is gravy in terms of the go to market, they got a couple hundred million. I think slack got close to a billion dollars in cash that they've raised. So they're flooded with cash, they'll never spend it all. So there are some companies that can achieve success like that. Others have to buy market share, they got to push and build out a sales force, and it's going to be a function of the role of customer, customization, specialism, and whatnot. But with AI machine leaning there's more efficiencies coming in so I think the modern company can do more with less. >> What do you think of the ride sharing on IPOs, Uber and Lift, do you abol? Do you like 'em or do you think it's just, they're losing too money and can't sustain it? >> I was thinking about that this morning after looking at the article in the Wall Street Journal in our coverage on Silicon angle. You look at Zoom communications, I like models that actually can take a simple concept and an existing mature market and disrupt it by being Cloud efficient and completely sass and data driven. That is an example of success. That to me, Zoom Communications and Zscaler, another company that we talk to, these are companies that were built with a specific value proposition that made the product and they were targeting mature markets with leaders in it. Video conferencing, Webex, Citrix, Zoom came out of nowhere, optimized on simple value proposition, used Cloud scale and data, and crushed it. Uber, Lift, little bit different issue. They're losing money but I would bet on the long term that that is going to be the used case for how people will have transportation. I think that's the long game and I think that without regulatory kind of pressure, without, there's regulatory issues that's really the big risk. But I believe that Uber and Lift absolutely will be long brands and just like Facebook was early on, although they threw off a lot of cash, those guys are building for penetration, and that's where the funding matters. Penetration is critical. Now they're the standard, and people really don't take taxis anymore, but they're really using the ride sharing. And you get the scooters, you get the bikes, they're all sequencing into these adjacent markets which drains more cash but builds the brand, builds the footprint. >> Well that's what I want to ask you. So people compare the early Uber, Lift, Taxi, Ride sharing to Amazon selling books, but there's all these other adjacencies. You have a thought on this? >> Well, just, you know, right, Uber Eats is a huge opportunity for that environment and autonomous vehicles everybody talks about, but it's still quite a ways out. So there are a lot of different- >> Scooters are the same, we're in San Diego, there are 8 gazillion scooters. >> San Diego had fun, you know, going around on their electronic scooters, boy, talk about the gig economy, they pay people at the night, to like go pay by the recharge you do on that, what is the future of work, >> Yeah, that's a great point. >> and how can we have that-- >> Uber going to look a lot like Amazon. You subsidize the front end retail side of the business, but look at the data that they throw up. Uber's data that they're gathering on, not only customer behavior, but just mapping services, 3-D mapping is going to be huge, so you've got these cars that are essentially bots on the road, providing massive mapping and traffic analysis. So you're going to start to see data driven, like Actifio slogan here, be a big part of all design decisions and value proposition from any company out there. And if they're not data driven I think they're going to be toast. >> Probably could because there's that data and that machine learning underneath, that can optimize, you know, where the people are, how I use the system, such a huge wave that we're watching. >> How about one last topic which is heavily data driven, it's Facebook. Facebook is obviously a data driven company, the Facebook crypto play, I love it, I love Facebook. I'm a bull on Facebook, I think it's been beat up. I think, two billion users is hard to replicate, but what's your thoughts on their crypto play? >> Well it's kind of a middle finger to the United States of America but it's a great catalyst for the international market because crypto needed a whale to come in and bring all those users in. Bad timing, in my mind, for Facebook, because given all the anti-trust and regulatory conversations, what better way to show your threat to the world order when you say we're going to run a banking system with a collection of international companies. I think the US is going to look at this and say, "Oh my God! They can't even be trusted to handle personal information and we're going to now let them run a banking system? Run monetary, basically World Bank equivalent infrastructure?" No frickin way! I think this is going to to be a major road to home. I think Facebook has to really make this an ecosystem play if they want to make it work, that's their telegraphic move they're saying, "Hey we want to do for the community but we got our own wallet and we got our own network". But they bring a lot to the table so it's going to be a really interesting dynamic to see the coalescing around Facebook because they could make the market. Look what Instagram did to Snapchat. They literally killed the company, took all their users. That is what's going to happen in the digital money economy when Facebook brings billions of users user experience with money. What happened with Snapchat with Instagram is going to happen to the World Bank if this continues. >> Where do you stand on the government breaking up big tech? >> So Dave, you know, you look in these companies, it's not easy to pull those apart. I don't think our government understands how most of big tech works. You know, take Amazon and AWS, that's one company underneath it. You know, Facebook, Microsoft. You know, Microsoft went through all these issues. Question Dave, we've had lots of debates on Twitter you know, are they breaking the law, are they not doing trust? I have some trust issues with Facebook myself, but most of the big companies up there I don't think the anti-trust kicks in, I don't think it makes sense to pull them apart. >> Stu, the Facebook story and the YouTube story are simply this, they have been hiding under the platform rules, of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and they are an editing platform so you can't sue them. Okay, once they become a publisher they could be sued. Just like CNN, Fox News, and everybody else. And we're publishers. So they've been hiding behind the platform. That gig is up. They're going to have to address are you a platform or are you a publisher? You're making editing decisions around what users can see with software, you are essentially editing the feed, that is a publisher role, with that becomes responsibility, and then obviously regulartory. >> Well Facebook is conflicted right now. They're trying to figure out which side of the fence to go on. >> No no no! They want one side! The platform side! They're make billions of dollars! >> Yeah but so they're making decisions about you know, which content to show and whether they monetize it. And when it's controversial content, they'll turn down the ads a little bit but they won't completely eliminate it sometimes. >> So, Dave, the only thing that the partisans in politics seem to agree on though is that big tech has too much power. You know, What's your take on that? >> Well so I think that if they are breaking the law then they should be moderated. But I don't think the answer is to go hard after Elizabeth Warren. Hard after them and break them up. I think you got to start with okay, because you break these companies up what's going to happen is they're going to be worth more, it's going to be AT&T all over again. >> While you guys were at Sysco Live, we covered this at Amazon Web Service and Public Sector Summit. The real issue in government, Stu, is there's too much tech for bad on the PR side, and there's not enough tech for good. Tech is not bad, tech is good. There's not enough promotion around the apps around there. There's real venture funds being created to promote tech for good. That's going to where the tide will turn. When does the tech industry start doing good stuff, not bad stuff. >> All right we've got to wrap. John, thanks for sitting in. Thank you for watching. Be right back, we're here at Actifio Data Driven 2019. From Boston this is theCUBE, be right back. (upbeat techno music)