(upbeat funk jazz music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, California for another CUBE Conversation, where we go in depth with thought leaders driving innovation across tech industry. I'm your host, Peter Burris. What does every CIO want to do? They want to support the business as it evolves and transforms, using data as that catalyst for better customer experience, improved operations, and more profitable options. But to do that we have to come up with a way of improving the underlying infrastructure that makes all this possible. We can't have a situation where we introduce more complex applications in response to richer business needs and have that translated into non-scalable underlying technology. CIOs in 2020 and beyond have to increasingly push their suppliers to make things simpler. And that's true in all domains, but perhaps especially storage, where the explosion of data is driving so many of these changes. So what does it mean to say that storage can be made more simple? Well to have that conversation we're going to be speaking with Eric Herzog, CMO and VP of Global Channels at IBM Storage, about, quite frankly, an announcement that IBM's doing to specifically address that question, making storage simpler. Eric, thanks very much for coming back to theCUBE. >> Great, thank you. We love to be here. >> All right, I know you got an announcement to talk about, but give us the update. What's going on with IBM Storage? >> Well, I think the big thing is, clients have told us, storage is too complex. We have a multitude of different platforms, an entry product, a mid-range product, a high-end product, then we have to traverse to the cloud. Why can't we get a simple, easy to use, but very robust feature set? So at IBM Storage with this FlashSystem announcement, we have a family that traverses entry, mid-range, enterprise and automatically can go out to a hybrid multicloud environment, all driven across a common platform, common API, common software, our award-winning Spectrum Virtualize, and innovative technologies around, whether it be cyber-resiliency, performance, incredible performance, ease of use, easier and easier to use. For example, we can do AI-based automated tiering from one flash array to another, or from storage class memory to flash. Innovation, at the same time driving better value out of the storage but not charging a lot of extra money for these features. In fact, our FlashSystems announcement, the platforms, depending on the configuration, can be as much as 50% lower than our previous generation. Now that's delivering value, but at the same time we added enhanced features, for example, the capability of even better container support than we already had in our older platform. Or our new FlashCore Modules that can deliver performance in a cluster of up to 17.2 million IOPS, up from our previous performance of 15. Yet, as I said before, delivering that enterprise value and those enterprise data services, in this case I think you said, depending on the config, up to as much as 50% less expensive than some of our previous generation products. >> So let me unpack that a little bit. So, historically, when you look at, or even today, when you look at how storage product lines are set up, they're typically set up for one footprint for the low end, one or more footprints in the mid-range, and then one or more footprints at the high-end. And those are differentiated by the characteristics of the technologies being employed, the function and services that are being offered, and the prices and financial arrangements that are part of it. Are you talking about, essentially, a common product line that is differentiated only by the configuration needs of the volume and workloads? >> Exactly. The FlashSystem traverses entry, mid-range, enterprise, and can automatically get you out to a hybrid multicloud environment, same APIs, same software, same management infrastructure. Our Storage Insights product, which is a could-based storage manager and predictive analytics, works on the entry product, at no charge, mid-range product at no charge, the enterprise product at no charge, and we've even added, in that solution, support for non-IBM platforms, again. So, delivering more value across a standard platform with a common API, a common software. Remember, today's storage is growing exponentially. Are the enterprise customers getting exponentially more storage admins? No. In fact, many of the big enterprises, after the downturn of '08 and '09 had to cut back on storage resources. They haven't hired back to how many storage resources they had in 2007 or '8. They've gotten back to full IT, but a lot of those guys are DevOps people or other functions, so, the storage admins and the IT infrastructure admins have to manage extra petabytes, extra exabytes depending on the type of company. So one platform that can do that and traverse out to the cloud automatically, gives you that innovation and that value. In fact, two of our competitors, just as example, do the same thing, have four platforms. Two other have three. We can do it with one. Simple platform, common API, common storage management, common interface, incredible performance, cyber-resiliency, but all built in something that's a common data management infrastructure with common data software, yet continuing to innovate as we've done with this release of the FlashSystem family. >> OK, so talk about the things that, common API, common software, also, I presume, common, the core module, that FlashCore Module that you have, common across the family as well? >> Almost all the family. At the very entry space we still do use interstandard SSDs but we can get as low as a street price for all-flash config of $16,000 for an all-flash array. Two, three years ago that would've been unheard of. And, by the way, it had six lines of availability, same software interface and API as a system that could go up to millions of dollars at the way high end, right? And anything in between. So common ease of use, common management, simple to manage, simple to deploy, simple to use, but not simple in the value proposition. Reduce the TCO, reduce the ROI, reduce the operational manpower, they're overtaxed as it is. So by making this across the portfolio with the FlashSystem and go out to the hybrid multicloud but bringing in all this high technology such as our FlashCore Modules and, as I said, at a reduced price to the previous generation. What more could you ask for? >> OK, so you've got some promises that you made in 2019 that you're also actually realizing. One of my favorite ones, something I think is pretty important, is storage class memory. Talk about how some of those 2019 promises are being realized in this announcement. >> So what we did is, when we announced our first FlashSystem family in 2018 using our new NVMe FlashCore Modules, we had an older FlashSystem family for several years that used, you know, the standard SaaS interface. But our first NVMe product was announced in the summer of 2018. At that time we said, all the way back then, that in early '20 we would be start shipping storage class memory. Now, by the way, those FlashSystems NVMe products that we announced back then, actually can still use storage class memory, so, we're protecting the investment of our installed base. Again, innovation with value on the installed base. >> A very IBM thing to do. >> Yes, we want to take care of the installed base, we also want to have new modern technologies, like storage class memory, like improved performance and capacity in our FlashCore Modules where we take off the shelf Flash and create our own modules. Seven year media warranty, up to 17.2 million IOPS, 17 mites of latency, which is 30% better than our next nearest competitor. By the way, we can create a 17 million IOP config in only eight rack U. One of our competitors gets close, 15 million, but it takes them 40 rack U. Again, operational manpower, 40 rack U's harder to manage, simplicity of deployment, it's harder to deploy all that in 40 rack U, we can do it in eight. >> And pricing. >> Yes. And we've even brought out now, a preconfigured rack. So what we call the FlashSystem 9200R built into the rack with a switching infrastructure, with the storage you need, IBM services will deploy it for you, that's part of the deal, and you can create big solutions that can scale dramatically. >> Now R stands for hybrid? >> Rack. >> Rack. Well talk to me about some of the hybrid packaging that you're bringing out for hybrid cloud. >> Sure, so, from a hybrid cloud perspective, our Spectrum Virtualize software, which sits on-prem, entry, mid-range and at the upper end, can traverse to a cloud called Spectrum Virtualize for Cloud. Now, one of the keys things of Spectrum Virtualize, both on-prem and our cloud version, is it supports not only IBM arrays, but through a storage virtualisation technology, over 450 arrays from multi-vendors, and in short our competition. So we can take our arrays, and automatically go out to the cloud. We can do a lot of things. Cloud air gapping, to help with malware and ransonware protection, DR, snapshots and replicas. Not only can the new FlashSystem family do that, to Spectrum Virtualize on-prem and then out, but Spectrum Virtualize coming on our FlashSystem portfolio can actually virtualize non-IBM arrays and give them the same enterprise functionality and in this case, hybrid cloud technology, not only for us, but for our competitors products as well. One user interface. Now talk about simple. Our own products, again one family, entry, mid-range and enterprise traversing the cloud. And by the way, for those of you who are heterogeneous, we can deliver those enterprise class services, including going out to a hybrid multi-cloud configuration, for our competitors products as well. One user interface, one throat to choke, one support infrastructure with our Storage Insights platform, so it's a great way to make things easier, cut the CAPEX and OPEX, but not cut the innovation. We believe in value and innovation, but in an easy deploy methodology, so that you're not overly complex. And that is killing people, the complexity of their solutions. >> All right. So there's a couple of things about cloud, as we move forward, that are going to be especially interesting. One of them is going to be containers. Everybody's talking about, and IBM's been talking about, you've been talking about this, we've talked about this a number of times, about how containers and storage and data are going to come together. How do you see this announcement supporting those emerging and evolving need for container-based applications in the enterprise. >> So, first of all, it's often tied to hybrid multi-cloudness. Many of the hybrid cloud configurations are configured on a container based environment. We support Red Hat OpenShift. We support Kubernetes environments. We can provide on these systems at no charge, persistent storage for those configurations. We also, although it does require a backup package, Spectrum Protect, the capability of backing up that persistent storage in an OpenShift or Kubernetes environment. So really it's critical. Part of our simplicity is this FlashSystem platform with this technology, can support bare metal workloads, virtualised workloads, VMware, HyperV, KVM, OVM, and now container workloads. And we do see, for the next coming years, think about bare metal. Bare metal is as old as I am. That's pretty old. Well we got tons of customers still got bare metal applications, but everyone's also gone virtualized. So it's not, are we going to have one? It's you're going to have all three. So with the FlashSystems family, and what we have with Spectrum Virtualized software, what we have with our container support, we need with bare metal support, incredible performance, whatever you need, VMware integration, HyperV integration, everything you need for a virtualized environment, and for a container environment, we have everything too. And we do think the, especially the mid to big accounts, are going to try run all three, at least for the next couple of years. This gives you a platform that can do that, at the entry point, up to the high end, and then out to a hybrid multi-cloud environment. >> With that common software and APIs across. Now, every year that you and I have talked, you've been especially passionate about the need for turning the crank, and evolving and improving the nature of automation, which is another one of the absolute necessities, as we start thinking about cloud. How is this announcement helping to take that next step, turn the crank in automation? >> So a couple of things. One is our support now for Ansible, so offering that Ansible support, integrates into the container management frameworks. Second thing is, we have a ton of AI-type specific based technology built into the FlashSystem platform. First is our cloud based storage and management predictive analytics package, Storage Insights. The base version comes for free across our whole portfolio, whether it be entry, mid-range or high-end, across the whole FlashSystems family. It gives you predictive analytics. If you really do have a support problem, it eases the support issues. For example, instead of me saying, "Peter send me those log files." Guess what? We can see the log files. And we can do it right there while you're on the phone. You've got a problem? Let's make it easier for you to get it solved. So Storage Insights across AI based, predictive analytics, performance, configuration issues, all predicatively done, so AI based. Secondly, we've integrated AI in to our Spectrum Virtualize product. So as exemplar, easier to your technology, can allow you to tier data from storage class memory to Flash, as an example, and guess what it does? It automatically knows based on usage patterns, where the data should go. Should it be on the storage class memory? Should it be on Flash core modules? And in fact, we can create a configuration, we have Flash core modules and introduce standard SSDs, which are both Flash, but our Flash core modules are substantially faster, much better latency, like I said, 30% better than the next nearest competition, up to 17.2 million IOPS. The next closest is 15. And in fact, it's interesting, one of our competitors has used storage class memory as a read cache. It dramatically helps them. But they go from 250 publicly stated mites of latency, to 125. With this product, the FlashSystem, anything that uses our Flash core modules, our FlashSystems semi 200, our FlashSystem 9200 product, and the 9200-R product. We can do 70 mites of latency, so almost twice as fast, without using storage class memory. So think what that storage class memory will offer. So we can create hybrid configurations, with StorageClass and Flash, you could have our Flash core modules, and introduce standard SSDs if you want, but it's all AI based. So we have AI based in our Storage Insights, predictive analytics, management and support infrastructure. And we have predictive analytics in things like our Easy Tier. So not only do we think storage is a critical foundation for the AI application workload and use case, which it is, but you need to imbue your storage, which we've done across FlashSystems, including what we've done with our cloud edition, because Spectrum Virtualize has a cloud edition, and an on-prem edition, seamless transparency, but AI in across that entire platform, using Spectrum Virtualize. >> All right, so let me summarize. We've got an absolute requirement from enterprise, to make storage simpler, which requires simple product families with more commonality, where that commonality delivers great value, and at the same time the option to innovate, where that innovation's going to create value. We have a lot simpler set of interfaces and technologies, as you said they're common, but they are more focused on the hybrid cloud, the multi-cloud world, that we're working in right now, that brings more automation and more high-quality storage services to bear wherever you are in the enterprise. So I've got to ask you one more question. I'm a storage administrator, or a person who is administering data, inside the infrastructure. I used to think of doing things this way, what is the one or two things that I'm going to do differently as a consequence of this kind of an announcement? >> So I think the first one, it's going to reduce your operational expenses and your operational man power, because you have a common API, a common software platform, a common foundation for data management and data movement, it's not going to be as complex for you to pull your storage configurations. Second thing, you don't have to make as many choices between high-end workloads, mid-range workloads, and entry workloads. Six lines across the board. Enterprise class data services across the board. So when you think simple, don't think simple as simplistic, low-end. This is a simple to use, simple deploy, simple to manage product, with extensive innovation and a price that's- >> So simple to secure? >> And simple to secure. Data rest encryption across the portfolio. And in fact those that use our FlashCore Modules, no performance hit on encryption, and no performance hit on data compression. So it can help you shrink the actual amount you need to buy from us, which sounds sort of crazy, that a storage company would do that, but with our data reduction technologies, compression being one of them, there's no performance hits, you can compress compressable workloads, and now, anything with a FlashCore Module, which by the way, happens to be FIPS 140-2 certified, there's no excuse not to encrypt, because encryption, as you know, has had a performance hit in the past. Now, our 7200, our 5100 FlashSystem, and our FlashSystem 9200 and 9200R, there's no performance on encrypting, so it gives you that extra resiliency, that you need in a storage world, and you don't get a non-compression, which helps you shrink how much you end up buying from IBM. So that's the type of innovation we deliver, in a simple to use, easy to deploy, easy to manage but incredible innovative value, brought into a very innovative solution, across the board, not just let's innovate at the high end or you know what I mean? Trying to make that innovation spread, which, by the way, makes it easier for the storage guy. >> Well, look, in a world, even inside a single enterprise, you're going to have branch offices, you're going to have local this, the edge, you can't let the bad guys in on a lesser platform that then can hit data on a higher end platform. So the days of presuming that there's this great differentiation in the tier are slowly coming to an end as everything becomes increasingly integrated. >> Well as you've pointed out many times, data is the asset. Not the most valuable one. It is the asset of today's digital enterprise and it doesn't matter whether you're a global Fortune 500, or you're a (mumble). Everybody is a digital enterprise these days, big, medium or small. So cyber resiliency is important, cutting costs is important, being able to modernize and optimize your infrastructure, simply and easily. The small guys don't have a storage guy, and a network guy and a server guy, they have the IT guy. And even the big guys, who used to have hundreds of storage admins in some cases, don't have hundreds any more. They've got a lot of IT people, but they cut back so these storage admins and infrastructure admins in these global enterprise, they're managing 10, 20 times the amount of storage they managed even two or three years ago. So, simple, across the board, and of course hyper multicloud is critical to these configurations. >> Eric, it's a great annoucement, congratulations to IBM to actually delivering on what your promises are. Once again, great to have you on theCUBE. >> Great, thank you very much Peter. >> And thanks to you, again, for participating in this CUBE conversation, I'm Peter Burris, see you next time. (upbeat, jazz music)

>> Narrator: Live, from Denver, Colorado. It's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we are at Commvault GO '19 in Colorado. Stu and I are pleased to welcome a couple of guests joining us this next segment we have Kevin Haro, Infrastructure from Quad, and Matt Tyrer, Senior Manager, Solutions Marketing from Commvault. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. >> Oh, it's great to finally be here! >> Yeah, exciting stuff in the last couple days. So Kevin, let's start with you. Give our audience an understanding of Quad, what kind of business you're in, what services and products you deliver. >> Quad is first and foremost a printer so we do large-scale, long-run printing. We've got locations across the country and Latin America and Europe. So from a data perspective we have our own internal apps and stuff, obviously, but for the most part our large chunks of data come straight from our customers, so. >> Lisa: And what kind of customers are we talking about? >> Customers, magazines, books, anything of that nature. Anybody who needs long-run signs, we do it all, packaging. >> Okay, so talk to us about kind of your role and from a data perspective how it's exploding. (Kevin & Matt laugh) >> It seems to be growing every day, that's true. So the data that comes in from our customers we treat it, we improve it, we add to it and then we have to get it back to them, make sure everything's okay, and then it goes to the printers and then it needs to be saved. So you can imagine that piles up pretty quickly. >> Now is it just that the actual images themselves are getting bigger? Like the content that's coming towards? Or is it also that your customer base is growing and expanding too? So it's the individual customers are getting bigger but also you're getting bigger as well from a Quad perspective. >> Yes, both, all three actually. So you can imagine just the amount of images that go into a catalog and how every single one of those came in. Even though it might be an inch or two big on your page it came in full-res, so it adds up quick. >> All right, Kevin why don't you walk us through what led you down the path to Commvault. If you can give us a little bit of the before, and the process that led to choosing Commvault. >> The initial reason we came into Commvault was actually partially backup related, but we were actually in the middle of a site lifecycle so we were looking to upgrade the hardware at 12 different sites and we wanted to switch the hypervisors at those sites and Commvault provided us the means to do that quickly and easily without us having to rebuild all of those systems. So that was our first introduction to it. That went very well for us. We're doing another round coming up here very soon. And so we've done all that, and now actually we're taking a step back and actually going with a Commvault backup solution itself. >> And what was the hypervisor before and now? >> Those were VMware to HyperView. >> Okay, yeah, Matt, maybe walk us through is that a typical use case that you see out there? Migrations are often one of the most challenging things for infrastructure people. We used to say it was the four-letter word when you're told to migrate something. (Matt laughs) But yeah, take us inside. >> Well I mean, you see, it doesn't have to be just a hypervisor to hypervisor migration. You see it just every day with people shifting workloads into the cloud. And in this case here, it's not a same-for-same movement necessarily. So it could be VMware on one site like what you guys were doing, changing into HyperV. Or it could be simply moving from VMware maybe on-premises to native AMIs in AWS. So you're seeing a lot of people kind of decoupling from that hypervisor layer or at least abstracting it, because it's more about the data itself, and less where the data happens to reside. So I think that's going to continue to be something that we see more and more of, as people continue to move into that multiple cloud environment. Did you guys also move in to the cloud too, as part of this? Or this is just in on-prem? >> Kevin: We have not made a huge on-cloud investment at this point in time. But the story that we've been hearing on the cloud the multicloud and the avoiding the lock-in holds true for us, just at the hypervisor level. We don't want to be kept to decisions that were made five, 10 years ago just because it's hard to get off of a specific hypervisor or piece of software. >> Matt: Yeah. >> So it gives us the flexibility to do what we're looking to do. >> So we talked a little bit about the proliferation of data, both from the actual images and the files getting larger and larger and larger, then growth in the Quad customer base. Talk to us about what you were doing to backup data before because you were using somebody else before you decided to make the move over to Commvault. >> We have been using somebody else. We've actually been using four somebody elses. >> Lisa: Can you tell us who those four somebody elses are? >> Our primary one's were EMC, but aside from that, in smaller offices we had other solutions as well. So we've heard the complexity of Commvault is an issue and we were afraid of it as well but that complexity really doesn't stand up to teaching someone how to restore off of four potentially different systems and four different architectures in general. So getting everything under that one pane of glass is an end goal for sure. >> Was it really the compelling event? or was there maybe an issue like we were hearing on stage this morning with one of the Commvault customers saying "Hey, we had a big failure"? Was there a compelling event or was it, we've got four different solutions in here. We need that single pane of glass 'cause the data has so much value but if we can't see it. >> Kevin: It's really the single pane of glass. I mean, in order to maintain that interconnected web of backups we actually had to home grow our own system just to be able to look up where the backup was to begin with. And while that works, it's effective, it's an extra step that has to be taken in the middle of a recovery process. >> Well, Matt, you started your time at Commvault in the field so bring us a little bit, some of the competitive landscape that you see out there. Consolidating onto a single vendor, obviously, is something we see all the time when there's M&A activity or you've got branch offices and the like. >> Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not uncommon to come across customers in Quad's situation where they've got one product over here one product over there. And I think a lot of it stems from IT was in such a reactive mode for so long that it's almost trying to play catch up. It's like, well we have to address protecting the virtual machines. Okay, we'll draw up a solution in for that. We have to protect the data at the remote site. Well, I can't get my enterprise solution there so I'll drop another band-aid solution in out there. And we're finally getting to that maturity where people are able to go back and re-examine some of those infrastructure decisions made five, 10 years ago and starting to rectify it by being able to bring that data together and consolidate. And so that's kind of what I've always liked about from a Commvault perspective, is that comprehensive coverage Pretty much whatever it is, wherever it is you can get that single pane of glass. And there's a lot of stuff that we can do and data environments are certainly not getting less complex (laughs). >> Well, talk to us about the complexity, Kevin, 'cause at all the shows that we go to complexity is always a topic that we hear for every technology and every customer is looking to reduce complexity, increase agility, all the buzz words right, flexibility, simplicity. You said, very candidly, that when you were looking at the hypervisor switch and when it came time to evaluate the backup solutions, you were concerned about Commvault's complexity. We've heard a lot in the last day and a half about simplicity, reduced complexity. How have you found this implementation in terms of the previous complexity concerns and do you have that single pane of glass that you were looking for? >> Kevin: The complexity, the problem didn't really occur to us. I mean, we were walked through by our vendor very nicely. They got us through, they got us our SOP's built. We've been able to roll it out successfully. We started with some of our hardest sites after that migration product. We started with the ones that were behind double nets and are actually at customer locations behind fire walls we don't own. The ones that have been a problem for us for years to secure those backups and those were where we started and that's where we've actually had some pretty decent success. I mean there is obviously a lot of settings and stuff to be worked through and to have a guide sit there and walk us through and make sure we're getting the backup and the retention that we need. At the end of the day, we've got the backups going and they're working well. >> And that's kind of what we were striving to do when we introduced the Commvault command center was for the customers that don't need to go to that level of detail provide a much more streamlined interface with a lot of the heavy automation elements in it. So customers that don't need those deep controls and customizations can work within that command center. But the ones that do, and actually what's entertaining is a lot of our long-term customers prefer working in that deeper complexity. Because it's like "Oh, I like how I can tune it like this "or I can flip it like that." So it's nice that our customers have the option of working where they feel most comfortable. >> And Matt, I'd love to get your perspective you've been with Commvault for 12 years. >> Matt: Almost, yeah. >> We feel like the last day and a half and we'll say Sanjay really kicked this off yesterday by saying #newCommvault. (Matt laughs) And it does feel like that with the changes to the leadership, the changes to the partner organization and partner programs, the focus on mid market with Metallic, with the Hedvig acquisition. Your perspective on being at Commvault for quite a long time, how do you see the company now? >> It's refreshing when you've been with a company for a long time just to see how we're able to shift how we're talking about ourselves, and it's almost like a brand new level of confidence. You see the smash of color everywhere and just the way that we talk about the solutions, the way we talk about the company as well. It's been a lot of change going on, but it's been exciting to kind of see that next evolution of the company in terms of taking that company to the next step and see what the future holds. So I've been really excited to see all of these changes over the past year and continue to see. (laughs) >> So Kevin you've walked us through from the migration that you did initially to the solutions that you're using today. Where are you looking forward for what you might use with Commvault? And any of the new things that were announced this week catch your eye that you might want to be looking into further when you get back to the office? >> Obviously Kubernetes has been floating around for a while so there's solutions here that we've been looking at, but we really want to get our fundamental backup and retention system to the point where it is no longer consuming whole days of FTEs. So where there's a report that comes out, we can check it, we know that it's good. We don't have to babysit that product, and we can get on to some other larger projects, things of that nature. We can get on to worrying about some of the bigger issues making sure that we're ready for a cyber event, things of that nature. >> All right, you did mention Kubernetes. Where are you as a company with that? Data protection, obviously you need to-- >> Matt: I knew you were going to go there (laughs) >> Worry about, even multicloud. I'll be at KubeCon, maybe see you there. (laughs) >> The first ones have just been rolled out recently they're in, they're up, that's about where that is. >> Matt: Just starting, baby steps. >> Baby steps, yes. But we'd like to do the baby steps correctly so technologies that make sense. >> That's great that you're kind of shifting or it looks like anyway to getting a lot more automated in terms of what you're doing within the Commvault. I met with or I was manning a customer panel yesterday with just a bunch of customers sharing what they were doing from moving towards that self-driving backup or at least backup or managing by exception where the less hands-on you can be, the more time that you've got back into your day to focus on other projects, so yeah. >> Exactly. So yeah, I mean, we're at a point right now where we are obviously switching, so we want to look ahead and make sure that we're set and ready to go for the future. >> So Kevin, last question for you, in the last nine months there's been some pretty big changes at Commvault the new leadership, new focus on routes to market, how do you internalize that, in terms of this direction, this Commvault 2.0, this new Commvault as an existing customer? >> Well, we're a new customer to them so to see the energy that's coming at us is refreshing. To see them placed in the upper quadrants obviously helps sell the product to us for management to back our decisions up, so in general the whole range seems to be getting met and we're not having to say this does everything except X, Y, and Z. >> Excellent, well, Kevin, Matt, thank you for joining Stu and me on the program this afternoon at GO we appreciate your time. >> Thanks. >> Thanks for having us. >> Lisa: Our pleasure >> Take care >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Commvault GO '19 (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live, from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's theCube, covering .NEXT conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> It's not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. Or where the doer of deeds, could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marked by dust, and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errors, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error in shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end of the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Those words by Theodore Roosevelt were in this morning's keynote by Dr. Brene Brown. Welcome to theCube's coverage of Nutanix.NEXT 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, with Keith Townsend here to break down, give our critiques as well as understand that Nutanix, while they are a public company, been striving and succeeding greatly. 5500 people here at this conference, very enthusiastic, great party last night, so Keith, we talked about it, our show opened yesterday, been your first show, got to talk to a bunch of customers, talked to a bunch of partners. Give us impressions and overall experience. >> So you know, you can't go to a show like this and not get hero numbers. 70,000 people in the Nutanix community program. 61,000 certified individuals. Customers making statements such as, Nutanix, humble company, Nutanix, not feeling entitled to the sale. Needing to work for the dollar. Customers extremely excited about the announcements, the direction of the company for key core areas I saw from a technology perspective, in which they made some really aggressive announcements and bets. So you know what, this has been a very high energy conference. >> Yeah, absolutely, talk about, from a financial standpoint, they're doin' well. Wall Street's been rewarding them greatly for the move to move to software only. Company's over nine billion dollars in market cap. Amazing. Had to go for a thousand customers a quarter. Very good for the space that they're playing in. Things like their file system, AFS, their fastest growing products. Building on that base infrastructure, but then yes, as you said, bold direction, they've got the kind of three axises that they're trying to build on. Build out HyperVage's support, build out cloud support. They're going to talk about how we think, where Nutanix fits in this cloud world. Building out their software portfolio. Where do they have IP, where are they growing? They've done four acquisitions so far in the software space. Some of those are starting to show through. We did interviews with the former CEO of Minjar and it NetSill, and- >> Bot Metric. >> Yeah, yeah that's the Netsill Bot Metric piece there. So products that are now, some of them are shipping. And as well as getting some vision. They had their first SAS product in Beam. Really interesting, something that really was targeted at AWS and Azure. Not the data center, but they're trying to make that hybrid-hybrid message as well as giving some of the vision. Nutanix Era is a big directional piece. Project Sherlock. Of course the big brains here working on that. Really interested in Edge and IOT. So a lot of pieces there, what's your take? >> You know what? I think I'm a bit overwhelmed actually. Which is a great thing, you look at COM was over the past couple of months, their Com platform was evened out by adding micro-segmentation. Which, against their biggest competitor VMware was a essential piece. They've been unabashful with going after it. You know what, AHV can now compete head-to-head with VMware just as long as you don't need memory over commit, and metro clustering that AHV, the term that they use in "game on." So Nutanix is, you know we talked to Duraj, a couple of years on theCube, asked him, you know what, is Nutanix a platform company? He say, you know what, no, (mumbles) too humble to accept that mantle of being a platform company, there's a lot of work to do. You look out onto the show floor, 80 partners and sponsors, who are all offering solutions tied to AHV. Which we talked about a little bit. A lot of adoption, but it doesn't seem like there's much VMware. Market penetration and stealing customers from VMware as much as HyperV. There're a lot of customers we talked to we said, you know we tried HyperV on Nutanix, not so much so we went to AHV. >> Quick point, and I felt a few years ago, the conversation wasn't about HyperV when you talked about Microsoft. It wasn't the, for years it was, when will it catch up to what VMware's doing? VMware's still dominant in the space, customers here, and lots of 'em are usin' Vmware. Yes, there's that tension between Vmware and Nutanix, but Nutanix, do they poke and prod a little bit at some things? Yes, but at the show, very much focusing on what they're doing, and focusing on their customers, not sending pot shots or anything like that. But when it comes to Microsoft, you're right Keith, there were a number of customers I talked to that were like, well in a Microsoft shop, and we know what applications used to live on VMware. Number one thing was always Microsoft. Many of them, I tried HyperV, didn't really like the experience. And therefore it was a smooth path to go over to AHV. Lot's of customers that are doing both VMware and AHV and sorting that out. And it's like oh, well over time, if Nutanix becomes 80, 90, even some of them gettin' towards 100% of heir deployment, AHV becomes a bigger piece of the portfolio. >> And you know, we thought that this whole multi-HyperVisor argument was over. Like, you know what, just go to one HyperVisor. A lot of Nutanix customers are showing that multi-HyperVisor is a legit way to go that we haven't ran with anyone who said, No, we're having management pains, running AHV side-by-side with VM or Vspare. >> I would like to see from Nutanix, more partnerships with Microsoft though. You talk Azure, absolutely huge growth, number two out there. Yes, they support it, but you know, of course they have much more showing at the Amazon show. They've got a strong partnership with Google. Got to highlight that with the Brian Stevens interview. And know that later this year, as Zai really starts to roll out, that we will see much more of that. But Azure, not only in the public cloud piece, but Azure's stack is starting to grow. I've been talking to Lenovo, HP, Adele, Cisco, all of them have pent-up demands, service writers that are starting to roll at Azure's stack. And while Azure's stack really is kind of a closed ecosystem there, I think there is opportunity for Nutanix to play in there, I expect them to hear from the customers who'd love them to do more with Microsoft. We heard from customers that they'd actually love to hear Nutanix do more with Redhat, and in general be a deletega system, yes, show floor, it's growing, it's vibrant but absolutely, it's always, what more? >> OF course, we always, and I think we get our friends at Nutanix always pokes us about staying positive. But it is a positive, they're a software company now. And as a software company, you have to integrate with other software company services. The Azure stack thing, while it's mainly a hardware play for companies like Dale, Lenovo, Fujitsu, there has to be software integration. The folks with the Google and Nutanix partnership, did a really great job of doing push-button, at least showin' us on stage, push-button deployments of VM's, from Zai to Nutanix instances in the cloud. This is Nutanix in the cloud. That won't probably play with Azure and Azure Stack. So Nutanix really needs to figure out a way to get into that relationship with Microsoft. >> Yeah, true simplicity takes genius, is a quote that I had out of this show in the early years. And Nutanix will make a bold claim. Oh, database migration, we're going to make that really easy. Well, show me (laughs) Anybody that's worked with databases- >> That's like sayin' DR is easy. Yeah, gettin' the stores from one point to another one is easy. Processes, not so much. >> Some of that Project Sherlock, oh yeah all that tensor flow, cumbrineties, functions of the service, we're going to make it push-button easy so that we'll make that invisible. How much is a distraction, what's in the weeds? You know, the networking, there's so many pieces in there that love the vision. Of course customers want it simplified, but we want to talk to the customers, and understand what works, what still needs to be tweaked, where do they have to build out some services, partnerships, even more than they've done today to go further, what have you been seeing and hearing? >> So, Nutanix, the enterprise cloud company. I've poked at the whole cloud marketing term. Matter of fact, on Twitter, one of the, I'll read this. Cloud really, no AI, no databases or severs. No server-less, does that even, doesn't even have a presence at Cubrineties events. Fake cloud story for IT, ah! So you know what, let's pick that apart a little bit. DV as a service, they announced basically yesterday, that's there. AI, Satium Gatupum said a really nice story with Sherlock there, absolutely looking at it. Cubrineties integration, ACS, 2.0 will come out the gate as a Cubrineties manage distribution. They announced Zai integration with Cubrineties and push-button. Now you may pick on the cloud part. Nutanix still very much talks to the infrastructure group. Their customers are the infrastructure group, and you can't talk cloud without having a relationship with application developers. So I think the next step as Nutanix matures, these offerings on, their cloud offerings, is that they have to start to have a deeper relationship. They have to go side-by-side with their IT sponsors and organizations to start to have conversations with application developers. >> Yeah, and I love the online, the cloud-eraderie if you will, out there. Well, we understand, this is the architecture of the future. Where it should go, I love hangin' out with the cloud native crew. But for me, it goes back to talking to their customers. And when the customers, if they're like here's what we've done, here's the proof as to how I get faster time to market, how I'm accelerating my development teams insight. I'm creating, one of the interviews we did, IT as business, is how we run things. These are real digital transformation stories. Impressive stuff, and it's cloud. And it's not virtualization with a little layer on top. It's real change inside customers, and Nutanix, I'll say, as a platform to help us get from where I've been, to where I'm going. >> Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, Nutanix customers are not listening to the cloud-eraderie. They absolutely love the platform. You know Stu, I don't think I've run into a negative customer at the show. I haven't run into a customer that says, you know what, Nutanix isn't meeting my need in X or Y area. Home Depot won the innovation award at the show. Then Home Depot is a forward thinking customer, truly embracing parts of the platform. I'm sure there's some cloud native pieces. >> They're a big Google cloud platform customer. One of Pivotal's big one on GCP. So absolutely, and we have, I've talked to a number of customers big on Amazon, developer shops, absolutely public cloud to piece of it. Yeah, if the criticism I should have, I always look and say, if I said public cloud and private cloud, where's your center of gravity? Of course Nutanix is going to go, leaning a little bit more towards the data centers, hosted service providers. That's where they live today. But they're not blind to it, they're embracing it. They have a full SAS product, they're going to be expanding that. They are software at their core, distributed architectures where they're going. >> You know Stu, one of our favorite comments is that, company X likes to move, moves at the pace of the CIO. I think it's safe to say, Nutanix is a little bit faster than the CIO. And they're enabling the old stuff. You know what, let's make that push-button easy, and as we're looking, have a eye to the future, looking at the new stuff, let's see how we can get there, push-button easy. There's a lot of work to do. But I think they're making some really interesting and probably the right moves for their customer base. >> Aright well, Keith, first of all, I want to thank you for all of your help here this week. The CTO advisor, always great to dig in with customers. Really get in, it's been exciting to watch you kind of get to know a little bit more about this. I've had the pleasure of tracking Nutanix in the really early days, been at every one of these shows. It is a great community, kudos to Nutanix. Thank you for sponsoring us, and if not familiar, if you look at the bottom of the videos we're playin' right now, we mention who sponsors, we're tryin' to be transparent. Keith and I though, we're out here in the field. If you have questions for us, or you know, want us to ask something, or question what we're doing, hit us up, we're really easy to reach on Twitter. Always happy for feedback from the community. And as always, check out thecube.net for all the upcoming shows, everywhere we're going. For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman, thank you so much for watchin' theCube's presentation from Nutanix.NEXT 2018 in New Orleans, and see you at lots more shows. (futuristic music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris. Welcome to another Cube Conversation from our beautiful studio here in Palo Alto, California, and once again I'm joined by Eric Herzog. Eric is the CMO and vice president of channels in IBM Sports Group, Eric? >> Well thank you, we love coming to see theCUBE. And by the way, I'm a Palo Alto native! >> Hey, I've heard that! You know, I don't think we're going to get into that today. Maybe some other time we can talk about that. But what I do want to talk about is, storage has historically been way down in the food chain of strategy, of business strategy. >> Eric: Right. >> Now we're talking about digital business. And digital business at least from our perspective, and I think you would agree, is predicated on the idea that you use data as an asset. In fact, Wikibon says that the difference between business and digital business is that digital businesses use data as an asset. Now, since storage is where you put that data, and is responsible for availability, throughput, reliability, flexibility, in how you do things differently with data, that kind of elevates storage's position as part of a strategic digital business capability. But nobody talks about it. So, as a smart guy in the storage community, I'd like to talk to you about that. First off, do you agree with my proposition? >> Ah yeah, I would posit that in today's digital business world build around private clouds, storage is, if not the critical foundation, one of the top two critical foundations you have to rely for your digital business. So if you're the CEO or you're the CFO and you know you're gone digital business, if the storage goes down or the storage is slow, your digital business and the value of that data you're driving both internally and for your customers just dramatically shrank. So it's critical, critical. Just as when you're building a giant building in downtown San Francisco or downtown New York or downtown Singapore, if you don't have that foundation right, the building literally can fall right down. >> And in San Francisco, one of the big buildings is actually starting to lean about two or three degrees. It's got a bunch of people pretty freaked out. But let's talk about, therefore what are the strategic digital business capabilities that are associated with storage that CXOs have to start thinking about? You mentioned one, we call it true private cloud. >> Right. >> The idea that you're still going to need some capacity where the data has to be. Because you're not going to be able to put everything in the public cloud. So a true private cloud is going to be one of them. >> Eric: Right. >> What's another one? >> So I think the big thing here is modern data protection. In the modern data protection scheme, because you're a digital business, which means you probably have test guys, you have some DevOps guys, inside, that are constantly playing with your own code or commercial code that you've bought. To optimize for your digital business, you've got to be able to give them real data sets to work with. Now that doesn't mean you can't track it in case there's a data leak or whatever, but the bottom-line is you want those developers to be A, always be able to get it, B, have it to be self service, because the IT guys are keeping your digital business up and going, they can't be bothered with hey can you get me real data set? The quality of the data that those developers produce for you goes way up, so you have less downtime which by the way, if you're a digital business you don't want to have any downtime. >> Peter: Right. >> And it gets it faster. So if you're playing with some commercial software writing your own that you're using in a digital business, you want to get there before your competitors do. >> Peter: Right. >> So you want those DevOps guys constantly working, and you want to be able to do that. Yet at the same time the IT guy can focus on what they need to do. And by the way, they can track where all those copies of the real data sets are. So everybody wins and it makes it work well. >> So in other respects, what you're saying is that availability, which used to be associated with the performance of an individual application, is now associated with digital business strategy. Because you need to be able to test new business ideas, pursue new business ideas, be fast in bringing things to market. And the whole notion of availability extends beyond just making sure the data is where you need it to be, or where the application says it needs to be, to now using availability as a metric for ensuring that the data can be where it needs to be within the business, so the business can make the appropriate changes and adjustments and extensions to what its strategy is. >> Well, think of this as you've got a data set. The more you use that data set, not just for the primary storage that's used by the end users that are coming to your digital business, but for everything else. Back it up, okay great. Check box. Okay, interface with common API so the DevOps guys can use it. Another check box. Making sure that the test guys can test real data sets, not faux ones, guess what? Faster test time, more accurate test time, boom, better impact for your digital business. So extending the value of the data from just primary storage throughout your entire digital software development process is critical. And in today's world, that's what you can do with the modern data protection that, for example, we have with our IBM solutions. >> So let me build on top of that, because I think another capability might be increasing the association with speed of development. It used to be, again, that storage was very closely aligned with what your server needed. Increasingly, we're starting to see the concept of data protection and the concept of data availability actually start to mean something very, very different to developers. Are we now seeing developers and the developer ecosystem start to drive more of what's required in storage? >> Well, you've got to look at it, the developer wants to be able to spin things up quickly on their own. So in the old world, you do a ticket, you give it to the VMaura guy, the HyperV guy, the IT guy, takes a week or so. You don't want to do that. So with our stuff, for example, you could check in and check out, it integrates with all their APIs, they can quickly do their work. It's a real data set, not using fake data, so that makes it better from a reliability perspective, and it gets done faster and they know how it really is going to work when you deploy that in your digital business. They can check it in and check it out themselves, so it happens way faster. So all that means for you as a digital business guy is better time and faster time to market with more reliable products for your end users and your clients. >> And that's kind of a key, that's kind of what the goal is. So we've got three thus far. This notion of true private cloud, where we need resources where the data demands. This notion of modern data protection, which is to say that the notion of availability is beyond just backup and restore, >> Right. >> Peter: So now the multiple ways to use it. New communities are going to be more closely associated with storage capabilities like the developer world. >> Eric: Right, the DevOps. >> Are there multi-cloud? Are there other kind of strategic business capabilities that CXOs have to think about as they envision their digital business strategy and the role that storage is going to play in either constraining it or facilitating it? >> Well, I think there's a couple things. First of all, you can look at it in three buckets. Item one is that your storage infrastructure, you still may have some of your older tuff. You still may be using Oracle, not yet using Hadoop. And using an Oracle data warehouse versus Hadoop big data analytic workload. >> I hear there's some customers out there that still have z-series installed, running things. >> So, you've got to be able to take the thing and cut costs on your traditional infrastructure, and your traditional applications workloads and use cases, while you're going to the next generation and modernizing. So you want to be able to handle the older workloads and cut their costs, at the same time invest more in things like Hadoop and Spark and Mango. And Cassandra. You want to be able to do both. At the same time, as you create your private cloud infrastructure, you want to be able to use new paragons, such as containers. And if you're going to do that, you want a set of storage solutions, both software and array infrastructure that can support that. And that's a critical element, is being able to A, modernize and cut costs of your older while you're moving to the new. For all your new stuff you want to be out that it's optimized and the DevOps guys can work it and you've got all the right APIs. And then, for the true private cloud, you're going to containerize model just like the public cloud guys do, because you want every advantage for your own digital business that the public does, and we can do all of that, but it's critical that you do all of that continuum, from the newest of the new, to the application in the middle, but you still have the old stuff while you're getting the new stuff up and running. So it's critical, if I'm the CEO, to make sure that my storage does all of that. 'Cuz if I fall down on the old stuff, well that's a problem. I can't bill, I can't invoice, I can't ship things. >> Right. >> If I fall down on the new stuff, guess what? I'm completely uncompetitive. >> Mm hm. >> Right? If I fail on the container world, what I'll call the refactoring of my infrastructure, I've totally lost the game because I'm not making it fast, I'm not making it resilient, I'm not cutting my costs, because everything is cost competitive. If data is the value, everything is built around that data, that doesn't mean you want your data to be super expensive, got to figure a way to do it cost-effectively, yet still deliver the value in your digital business that the end user wants. >> And it's got to be flexibility across the board. Okay, so we've got some strategic capabilities that CXOs have to think about that storage is going to enable. It's February 2018, we're looking at say, October 2019, next 18 months. What's going to be the one or two biggest changes in the storage world do you think? >> Ah, okay. First thing is going to be the automation of storage software across the board. Not just for the storage guy, not that all storage companies don't love the storage guy, but increasingly there's a move to DevOps and other functions. So, while each company is managing eons and eons and eons of more storage capacity, they're not adding eons and eons of storage admins. So you've got to have the docker guy, you've got to have the application guy, be able to backup, be able to optimize their workloads, be able to go ahead and spin up a new container without calling the IT guy, because the IT guys are overworked. So that's item one, is integration with all the coming APIs, automation, self-service are critical. The more it's automated the more self-serve is is, the more you can factor in the non-storage guys into creating a true digital business. That's on number one. Second thing you've got is a new technology known as NVME. This is a very high performance storage interface, it's new to the market, all the big storage vendors are working on it including IMB. We did an announcement on February 20th all about NVME. The value there is more and more applications and workloads, because the performance of the system itself, which is already highly resistant, highly available, and highly capable of handling any failure mode, is it's super fast, which means you can put more and more applications and workloads on a physical infrastructure, which saves you time and saves you money. So those are two critical things. The rise of this automation paradime, and the self-service paired across all of your storage software, and integrating it with your application layer, being able to use real data sets, right, as modern did, and then this new high-performance storage interface that will dramatically allow more workloads for every ounce of storage you buy, saving you money, and also making highly performing to meet your digital business SLAs. >> I think those are two great ones. I'm going to add one more and I'm sure we're going to be talking more about this. I think over the course of the next year and a half we're going to see even greater understanding of the relationship between storage and data, and new rules, new conventions, new approaches to how to think about that relationship so that all this great stuff that's happening when the storage actually does become a strategic business capability. >> Yeah, you could say that storage managing software will morph into data management, or at least a hybrid of partially managing the storage but actually also managing the data. And things like what is the metadata and how can you use metadata to more effectively manage your business. And we're going a whole bunch of that with IBM and we've already announced several things around that, so that's an actually great observation. >> And it's not too far from there to say digital asset management. Not in a traditional marketing sense, but overall how it works. Eric Herzog, CMO, vice president of channels, IMB storage, once again thanks for coming theCUBE and talking to us about some of the things that are going to happen over the next 18 months in the storage world. >> Great, thank you very much, we always apprecite being with you, and thanks again. >> I'm Peter Burris, once again this has been a Cube conversation from our Palo Alto studios with Eric Herzog of IBM. Until next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusets, it's theCUBE. Covering VTUG Winter Warmer 2018 presented by siliconANGLE. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is siliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE at the VTUG Winter Warmer 2018. It's the 12th year of the event, the fifth year we've actually had theCUBE here. Dave Vellante, my boss, was here the first year. Every other year, I've been kind of manning it solo. Great community here, I talked to a lot of users and really looking at, you know, some of the transitions that are happening in the industry. This event is all about virtualization and Cloud, and to help me put an exclamation point on everything we've been looking at here, and what's happening in the industry, happen to welcome back to the program Rob Strechay who is the SVP of product at Zerto, someone I've known for longer than I even realize, and you know, been on the program many times, But first time since you've been at Zerto. >> Yeah, first time since I was at Hewlett-Packer Enterprise. So, I'm glad to join you guys here, and great event, glad to be able to get down here today. >> You know, Zerto, company we've known for many years. I happen to know one of the earliest investors in the company, and you know, when I look at two of the biggest industry shows, when you talk about Virtualization and Cloud, it's VMworld and it's Amazon's Reinvent show. >> Right. And, I remember like the first or second year we did Amazon Reinvent, the Zerto booth was like right behind us, and so your company that really spans that gammon, helping customers with that, so I want to get your viewpoint, you talked about why people come here, but what are you hearing from the users? What are some of the big challenges they're facing, and how are they looking to manage some of those transitions? >> Yeah, I think it's really critical to have events like this that are, you know, a lot of different vendors that are here because I think when we see a number of companies going out and looking, and I was with a customer down in New York City yesterday, the software for FinTac. And what they were looking at is, how do we leverage multi-cloud? It becomes very important. They're looking at, it's not going to just be Amazon, it's not just going to be Azure, it's not going to be VMC on AWUS, they're looking at how they're going to have a multi-cloud strategy. And I think that when, what we're hearing from customers is there's a lot of confusion in the market, and I think that's why this program and others are really great at cutting through what is real, what's not real, how do you look for the ability to have that data mobility between clouds but with security. Especially today's like Privacy Day, you know, on the 25th, so, you know, you start to look at it and go, hey, security's a big thing, and a big theme from what people were saying here today too. >> Yeah, and one of the user interviews I really loved today talked about one of the biggest challenges he saw, he said, gosh, security, think about the Intel discussion there, what's that going to mean? And he actually said, performance issue actually doesn't fit, isn't a big deal for him from an architectural standpoint. Security? Oh my gosh, he's in healthcare. (laughs) If he's in violation, or if patient information gets out there, you know, this is the kind of things that put companies out of business. >> Absolutely, yeah, and I think that's what we're hearing. I mean, especially yesterday, it was okay, how do you layer encryption on top of your solution? How do you utilize the different types of secure transfers? How do you make sure the data is secure? There's a lot about that resiliency of the data, and making sure you can get it back, and it's immutable for that matter. >> Yeah, one of the things when we talk to customers, it's funny, in the industry we're always arguing as to what's the right terminology? It's like, I still get to have a company that said they had a convergence problem that they were trying to fix, and also it's like, hyper-cloud, multi-cloud, no, they have a Cloud strategy. And yes, they're using sass, yes, they're using public Cloud, and yes, almost everybody's got something in their data center. How do we get our arms around it? How do I have the services that work with me wherever I am, whether that's data protection, security, replications. So where's Zetro fit in that discussion, and how are customers doing at getting their arms around these challenges? >> So I think a lot of when I'm out talking to the CIO's and the VP's of infrastructure and having those conversations, a lot of what we help them understand is here's where you need to go, and here's the choices you need to make. Are you going to use Azure? Do you have an EA with Microsoft? Because you've probably been paying for Azure credits that you're not using, so start there. It's simple, it cost you nothing extra. Get your feet wet, dip your feet in there. We see a lot of customers of ours that use DR's as a service as the first stepping stone to getting into the Cloud. It's a nice, easy way in, they can get their feet wet, they can test out the performance, the security, they can do user acceptance testing without actually having to go there. They can also get a realistic view of the cost. I think that was talked about earlier today too. With some of the Amazon stuff is that really, you have to understand the cost. It's not the same as owning it on Prime. But then again you're not having the on Prime anymore, so if you can get away with that, when we see people taking strategies, a lot of it is data center consolidation, but maybe now I'm down from six data centers to two. And I still need to have that third copy. Where do I put that third copy? Do I put it at another data center? Do I go to a manage service provider, cloud service provider, or do I go to the public cloud? So, what we try to do is offer them a platform, the Zerto platform, that can actually take them to all those different places. We can take them there and bring them back. Yes, people use use for DR, but really that data mobility and the data flexibility really helps them stay away from the vendor lock-in as well. >> What are you hearing from customers when they talk about vendor lock in? There's very few companies out there that do a good job at being, it's like, oh, the VM ware, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, we can actually help you across the board there. >> Rob: Yeah. >> How much is lock-in a concern, and how do you as a software company stay agnostic and still fit into all of those environments? >> Yeah, the staying agnostic is really tough because some people are nicer than others, you know, to work with, and you know you try to not pick your favorites, but a the same time, we let our customers drive us to where they are going. I think that when we started to look at the bigger picture, people start out, you know, Amazon's the 800 pound gorilla in the space, everyone tries Amazon first. Maybe they didn't like or have the experience they thought they would, it was a lot more work than they thought it was going to be, so they start to look at other options. So when we started out, in 2014 we've been shipping our to Amazon, DR to Amazon part of our platform. Now, over the last year, we've added in the go-to and go-back from Azure, and we'll soon release the next iteration of that next month that will take even further among and across those different platforms. And I think to your point, it's a how can we give our customers choice? If you want to use a manage service provider, such as an IBM where they're based on Cloud foundation from VMWare, you can use that. If you want to then go from there to Amazon, our product will actually enable you to do that. And I think that's what we can do is look at our customers, and they've, luckily enough, driven us to this heterogeneous cloud environment. >> I want to get your comment on something. When people talk about compute moving to a more utility model, but it's not the way utility was where if I'm getting energy, as a consumer, from one place or another, I don't care whether it's wind, solar, or coal, nuclear, because I'm just getting it. When I look at Cloud computing, even infrastructure's a service. There's things that need to happen. When I talk to most software companies, it's yes, I'm going to support across the board, but there's special integration. There's things that I can do to make Amazon better, Azure better, Google better, and it's all a little bit different, and even with things like cooper netties, it's not homonogizing IT. The big problem we see out there is IT is a heterogeneous mess. There's never killing anything, it's all add this and add this, and now we've got a bad episode of Hoarders. >> Yes. (laughing) >> Is what we got, so I'm curious from a customer standpoint and from a product standpoint, maybe you know you could talk a little bit about that. >> I think our customers have been very clear to us that's simplicity, and I think that's what you're getting at is that simplicity is job one for us. If we're not being simple about what we do, and we're not really trying to make it all that one platform, we're not doing our job. We're doing a disservice our customers. So our Azure product looks identical to our AWS looks identical to our IBM looks identical to one of my other cloud service provider's products. Looks the same as your on Prime VMWare to VMWare or VMWare to HyperV for that matter. I think that part of it is that we've taken an approach that, exactly that. We got to be heterogeneous, but we've got to make it all look the same and be the same user experience. So, I think what we as an industry can do better is really focusing on user experience and single platform to help across these because like you said, we have a customer, he uses both AWS and Azure. And he was on of our first customers on AWS and one of our first customers using our Azure product. He said that certain Linux systems actually run better on Azure than they did on Amazon, and that surprised him. But he was able to go up and test them out, put them up there, felt them over, and do them in a test bubble, and see how well they ran, and I think to your exact point it's that was a surprise to him, and I think it's that your mileage will vary with the different clouds, and being able to go there and test on them is very important 'cause you're going to find that, like he did, he's a smaller company, it's a refabrics manufacturer, TenCate, they really focused on having that multicloud strategy because for them, they didn't want to have all their eggs in one basket either, but they found that certain applications ran better on Azure, certain ran better on AWS, so they're going to have that multicloud strategy. >> Alright, Rob, help bring us home. What brings Zerto to an event like this, kind of user groups in general, to VTUG specifically? >> Yeah, so the VTUG, we've been a long term supporter of this, I think since pretty much the founding of the founding of the company, so one of the reasons is a lot of out customers come to... So, we want to support them getting more knowledge out there, obviously we get to reach more customers and more potential customers, but at the same time, it's about the community and building that community. We look for more, in fact, we're starting to do even local user groups of our own. We've seen that the user groups have fallen off, and in particular around disaster recovery, in the IT resiliency, there's really no place to go. You had ISACA, you had different organizations for certifications, but really, that community where I can go and understand what are my peers doing, and get that group learning is so important, and that's why we've been a long term supporter of this. >> Alright, well Rob Strechay, really appreciate you helping me wrap up, put an exclamation point on what's going on here at the show as well as in the industry are all the major changes happening, virtualization and Cloud. Make sure to check out TheCUBE.net for all of our coverage. We have a huge line up of 2018 events. Feel free to reach out to the team. As always, I'm really to get on Twitter, I'm just @stu, @-S-T-U, and thank you so much of watching, I'm Stu Miniman, and you've been watching theCUBE. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Nice, France. It's The Cube covering .Net's Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to The Cube. I'm Stu Miniman, happy to be joined on the program by two gentleman from Intel. We have Michael Kawalik, Michal Kowalik, sorry, and Justin Wheeler. Thank you both for joining us today. >> Michal: Pleasure. >> Michal let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about, you know, your role, how long you've been at Intel, a little bit about your background. >> I might skip how long I've been at Intel because it would reveal how old I am. But I run Sale Swift ISV's so as you can imagine Nutanix is one of our top partners and hyper converged. And it's a pleasure to be here in Nice and see all those crowds interested in software defined, so happy to be here. >> Alright so you say you've been through a couple of cranks and more cycle... >> It's been a long seventeen years now. >> Yeah we say bring the Intel people, tick tock. We keep you moving. >> Yes. >> Alright Justin same question for you. Tell us a little bit about your background and how long you've been at Intel. >> Yeah, I'm a storage solutions Architect with the non volitile memory solution's group, thankfully called NSTRY for short, one of the good uses for acronyms. So basically I talk about anything flash, anything solutions oriented around storage. Quite a broad range subject but very insaning one, and one that I enjoy immensely as well. >> Alright, so Michal, what brings Intel to the event of course, you know, most of the Nutanix deployments run on some flavor of your processors but maybe take us a little beyond that as to you know, what the partnership looks like. >> Sure, I understand. So the reason we're working with Nutanix is because we believe that they're our key partners to change the market of the software defined and the general data center and to the hyper converged. So we're working with the key partners and the fastest running rabbits like Nutanix to talk to our end customers for them to see the benefit. What is a hyper converge, what is software defined center. And with Nutanix we're able to turn those customers into the newest technology that is the fastest. It's more about the new technologies. It's more about new work loads, new use cases. That's why we're here. We really appreciate the business of Nutanix but we're here to make it faster, better, bigger. >> Justin, you actually give a presentation here at the show. Sounds like it ties in a lot of this. Why don't you give us a little bit of thumbnail of what you we're talking about. >> So basically building on what Michal was saying, technologies evolve massively, you know, the way people are thinking about infrastructures especially from a storage perspective, the agility, the new solutions provider and hyper convergents. You know, really the technology that enables that is main part of what that talk was this morning. So Envyame becoming more mainstream as devices where the prevalence of you got two in connectivity of choice in most service now a days. So really kind of like dropping the shackles of the old ways of doing things and how we fit in with that from CPU, storage and networking perspective. >> Yeah I heard in the key note this morning, you know Skylike and Envyame were the two things that you know, made me think of what your organization is doing. >> Very much so, and I think we're still actually involved in the run, as I mentioned in the conversation this morning. There's so much more development that can be done. It's an exciting time to be involved. You know, be in point with these guys at Nutanix is one of the key things. You know this is storage sanctual for us. You know, the story that we have is very much hand in glove with what these guys, you know, want to achieve as well. >> Yeah, I'm curious, you know, when we think about customers one of the challenges they always have is upgrade cycles. And upgrade cycles have actually been useful for Intel but when we go to hyper converge, in some ways I think it would make it easier for, you know, how we manage those upgrades. Is there any commentary on that? >> Sure, so we're working with Nutanix ongoing basis and we had a very interesting meetings in Dubai two weeks ago when we sat with Nutanix, okay. How can we turn the customers using current infrastructure which very often is really softer defined but this is like a few years ago. And they just said we need to go there with the demo kits. You know you're talking about the small computers, three tiers and we're just showing them, look. You just plug it in, you put a few work loads bubbles your ankle. So that's how we can accelerate together the, refresh the replacements and basically make their lives better and easier. >> The moral of this story is quite something that most people's blood would run cold in especially if you're on the south side of things. But given, like Michal was saying there, we got minish and nucks that we can actually go out and we can run what was previously considered an enterprise class storage solution on a couple of desktop PC's in effect now. You know, the agility is really the key thing here. You know, when you're talking about hyper converge software defined, converged solutions, whatever alteration you're looking at there, the agility this brings to you now a days is just fantastic and it's a compelling story. And it's getting out there and telling the people about it. You know, shout it from the rooftops you know. But it's not just the technical, it's also the business case around it. It's hand in glove again. >> How does Ageve fit in to that? Is Intel pretty much agnostic on that or is there anything special from the hypervisor stand point? >> No, that's one of the best things about Intel. I mean previous jobs I've had, I've been one trick pony or you know only talk about storage. I mean, as I said early on, we've got all three major components of any solution now days. So that's a network computing storage, we work across them. Same with the application perspective. Workloads for us, we don't have to be specific about it. We talk about what's good for the customer. What they want from their storage infrastructure. And it's not just from technical perspective. It's how they view their business evolving. Again we come back to the agility work. >> And it's exactly how we do it. So Intel is well known and sometimes a little bit you know, too well know of putting a lot of bench marks, those features. So what we're doing right now with all the hypervisors and basically the software defined centers is we're showing the use case bench mark. So our customer, you have an SQL on your bare metal. Here's the bench mark. Here's how faster it's going. Here's more availableness or here's the adjuster recovery stuff we have together. So we're no longer talking about the pure performance. We're talking about what is the value for our customer for implementing obtains or implementing skylights or any other technology. >> You've got commonality that needs to be maintained. People have invested a large amount of money and skills sets of individuals in their department. You know, you've got to take into consideration also the cloud strategy, whatever that may be. Whether it be hybrid or whether that be for cloud. You know, moving migrating work loads data in and out. You know, it's a big part of it, so it's not a one solution fits all. Everyone's built differently. People look at ESXI, you have the one Acropolis, the one at Cavium, the one Hyperv. We play across all of those. That's the fun part of the job. >> What feedback are you getting from customers, you know, at the event or just in general or Nutanix space? >> Is it a deploy for starters. It's a highly skilled sales force. Very good technical support. And we're trying to follow Nutanix. We have an engineering support on our side as well. So wherever we can help, whatever we can... improve or increase velocity of those replacements, we're going together. But customers are generally happy with Nutanix, which we're very happy with, because for us, again one of the key partners to drive the hyper converge infrastructure. >> I mean as we mentioned earlier on the story resounce you know, it's a good story to tell. You just got to look at the attendance here today to see how well Nutanix hours company. And as I mentioned earlier, you know we just sort of bought and run here. You know, when you actually talking about replacement of traditional storage systems towards a hyper convergent you want to make sure that that is something that's easy to deploy, easy to manage, cost effective. There's not a lot not to like about Nutanix Solutions. So you can see that attendance here, everyone speaks very highly of it. You know, and I think it's just a snapshot of the people that's here. Technically it makes sense, commercially it makes sense. >> Justin any tips from your presentation for customers as to help them get things done even simpler than what they've been doing before? >> I thought when you we're talking about tips, about the thing that I was going to say, don't drink Red Bull before you give a good presentation. But no, consultative approach really the way to go about it. Don't believe everything that you hear. I'm self confessed, you know, not a great fan of bench mark figures because they're unrealistic in many workloads that's out there now a days. The key thing for us is come to talk to us. Let us consult with you with our partners. Understand your business, your workloads. Deployment side of things comes very easy after that. You've got to do the groundwork but you can't just dismiss good design practice or good best practice. >> Yeah I mean for the entry point to start playing and doing things with Nutanix is pretty well. They make it easy to test things out and almost every customer I talk to is like, they have to prove themselves and it's a testament to Nutanix that, you know, they've got so many customers and they keep growing because if they couldn't deliver on what they said they wouldn't be where they are. >> That is correct and the funny thing is in a conversation with Nutanix, how can we help them to accelerate the deployments or accelerate the demos so this very beginning, they said we actually don't want to use the full fledge boxes because the customers don't want to give them back. So we have to have something smaller so they need to buy it at some stage. It was a very good comment that it means it works and that Nutanix knows how to do it. >> Yeah I think if I read, Derodge was like he loves his thing and that they can fit in a processor in the palm of his hand 'til we stick it in a drone. I think he wants to be able to deliver it to the customer, have them demo it and then he'll remote control it back after a certain... >> That's already possible with Intel technology and a pleasure to deploy it. >> I mean as with everything you know, it's use the architectural set, it's everything that's sturdy, that's lasted years it's been built on solid foundations. You get foundations right on any infrastructure, and it's the same with that, it will be there. You can build on it. You can, you know, continue on and evolve as business grows. So rather build something that you can roll with. >> Well Justin, Michal, really appreciate you sharing the update on Intel's partnership with Nutanix. We'll be back here with lots more coverage from Nutanix .Next in Nice, France. I'm Stu Minnamin and you're watching The Cube. (electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Nice, France, it's the Cu...