>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. Hey, >>welcome to the cube at Lisa Martin in Colorado at convo go 19 I'm assuming a man and stew and I are pleased to welcome back to the cube and Alon my who hasn't visited us in awhile, but he's kind of a big deal is the CEO of Commonwealth's on Jay Mirchandani. Sanjay, welcome back. >>Thank you Lisa. Good to be a good too. >>So exciting. This is the fourth go. I love the name go and lots of stuff. So you have come onboard to combo in about about nine months ago and man, are you making some changes? You know the analysts said combo, you gotta, you gotta upgrade your sales force, you gotta expand your marketing, you've gotta shift gears and really expand your market share. And we've seen what Combolt is doing in all three of those areas along with some pretty big announcements in the last couple of days. Talk to us about this, this first nine months here. And really maybe even, I would start with the cultural change that you have brought to a company that's been run by the Bob hammer for 20 years >>right now. Firstly, I'm very fortunate to be here because the company is, it has incredible foundation. The bones of the company, if you would, are solid a great balance sheet, um, over 800 patents, no debt, cash on the books, profitable. It's just, you know, and great, great technology wrapped around some amazing people. So when I look at the, when I look at it and you go, this is this, this is an incredible asset. My role really when I came in when I transitioned with Bob and Al for a period of time was really about making sure we didn't break anything, making sure that we kept the momentum, understood the culture, took time to talk to customers, talk to partners, talk to our employees, shareholders and understand, um, what are the focus areas that we needed to go after. And the last nine months has been about, you know, a lot of learning on my part. >>But also a very receptive group of employees and partners saying, you know, we'll give you a chance. Let's get this done, let's see where it goes. So that's where the nine months had been around and it's been a, it's been fabulous. >> So that's actually one of the things I've heard from your team is you've come in loud and clear with the voice of the CIO. Having been a CIO yourself, that's something you want them to focus on. Everybody, we always talk about listening to the customers, but you know, the role of the CIO has changed an awful lot. You know, since you first became a CIO, clouds change everything in a Nicholas CARF said for a while, does it even matter? Right. Um, so you know, Ferguson side a little bit as to how you want to make sure you're delivering for what the CIO is need. >>Not necessarily what, you know, they were saying that they want. No, it's fair. And, and as much as the role of the CIO has evolved, I don't think it's changed fundamentally. They still, you know, the guardians of the data, the, you know, the compliance and everything else and of course more than anything else, the productivity and the competitive edge that businesses need, technology and business, regardless of which business you're in, are interested intrinsically tied. Your delivery of anything you do today is tied to technology. If you, if you want to be future proof. So if anything, the role of the CIO has only been elevated. I'm, I say this playfully, but I do say it. I said, if I wasn't running this great company that I am now, I'd love to be the CIO of a dysfunctional it organization at a large company because there's so much you can do. >>Many of the decisions that we would spend an inordinate amount of time on the infrastructure, the application, how do you bind it, what are the protocols? Which data center, how much, who runs it, which partner? I kind of dissipated if you're not going to the cloud in some form of fashion, come on, right? If you're not building cloud native applications, come on. If you're not using dev ops, come on. So you've got all this time back now where you're not hopefully having conversations that don't matter and you're really go and building new things. So I think it matters. That's great stuff. And absolutely we agree. We've talked many times on the cube. It definitely actually matters more than today. If anything. Not only did they need to be responsive to the business, but oftentimes it can be one of those drivers for innovation in change in the business. >>Um, I love something you said in your keynote, you said data is at the center of everything you do because right. Most CEO's, hopefully infrastructure is something they might have under their purview, but it's not what drives the business. It's the data, it's the application, it's their customers that matters. So to speak a little bit to the role of data has changed a lot. You know, you and I worked for that big storage company where we even didn't talk as much about storage back about data back in the day. Today it's the life blood of the company. It's everything like that. >> And you know that that is one of the reasons I'm at Convolt because for the past 30 years I've been in technology, I've done app side, I've done infrastructure side, I've done a mix of all of those. And the more I think of an dev ops, I've done that. >>The more I think about it. If I were, if I was sitting with a CEO today and having a conversation about what matters in technology, who's maybe a CEO is not a technologist, I would say data matters. I would say the asset of your company is the data. It's gone from something that you used to manage down, compress deduplicate and hope it went away and you wanted to minimize its footprint to something where you want to maximize its value. And those aren't just words. I mean that is what makes great companies, great companies today, the way they use data to their competitive advantage. So this is, this is exactly the mindset where the mindset, the Guppy do to convo because all we do, all we do is help our customers be data ready. As I was saying this morning, that's, I love that term because that kind of encapsulates it for me. So that's, that's where my head's at. >> Yeah. I mean, we've always said that the thing that defines a company that's gone through debt, that digital transformation is that data drives the business. >>It, it absolutely should, but we're, when you talk with customers that have, whether it's a big university, a research university, healthcare organization or whatever type of organization that has multiple departments, so much data that potentially has a tremendous amount of value that they actually aren't managing well or can't get visibility out of. When you say we want to help you be data ready, w what does that mean to them? >>It means a few things. You summed it up perfectly. That's the world, the customer, the chaos that customers could live in because fundamentally, Lisa, if I had over-simplified applications, we're intrinsically to date data that you use for tied intrinsically to the application to build. So if you had an SAP system, your data was very tightly tied to that. If an Oracle ERP system, it was very tight detail yet it'll supply chain system. You were tied to that. And once data side of getting released from the abstracted, from the system that was built on, you've got a little bit of chaos, then you had to figure out who had access, where, how, how are you replicating and how are you backing it up over the policies, your plan compliance. And then it became chaos. And what I say to customers being data ready, saying do you have a strategy and a capability, more importantly to protect, manage, control and use that information in the way you wish to for competitive advantage. >>Just protecting it is like a life insurance policy, controlling, managing and using it as where you get the value out of it. Right? And so as companies become more data driven, this is where we help them. So the whole concept of the show, what we're sort of bringing to market is the fact that we can help our customers be data ready. And some of the technologies we've talked about today lend themselves to exactly that. Alright. So Sanjay, one of the questions many of us had coming into the show is how exactly Hedvig your, your first acquisition was going to play out. You made a comment in your, your opening keynote this morning that we need to rethink primary and secondary storage. So some of us read the tea leaves and be like, well, you know, you're selling an SDS storage, your, you're in the primary storage market as we would've called it before. >>Yes, the lines are blurring. I don't think those there. So I want to give you the chance to let us know where we're going. Years primary and secondary storage as we classified them, we're looking grayer and grayer mean they'll always be primary storage because there's always a certain user use cases for, for high-performance scale up capabilities. But a lot of the stuff was getting murky. You know, is it really primary? Is is it lower end primary, is it secondary and it doesn't, it shouldn't really matter. And with that, would that segmentation game a set of other capabilities like Oh, you know, file block, object cloud, more, more segmentation, more silo and more fragmentation. And I'm a big believer that this is all about software. The magic is in the software. And if you, if you forget for a minute that it's software defined storage as we call it today, but a set of capability's, a universal plane that allows you to truly define how customers get that ubiquity between any infrastructure that they run. >>Okay. Which in turn gives them the abstraction from the data that they bill. Okay. We've just taken a lot of workload and pressure off the customer to figure all that stuff out, keep whole manage. So I wouldn't get, I wouldn't get wrapped up on the whole storage thing as much as I would on the SA on the universal data plane or the data brain as I called it, nicknamed it in the show, you know, earlier as the left and right side one size, the data management, the other sizes, you know, traditional storage management. Yeah. Maybe I was reading too much in this. There's two brains. I think you've, you turn them sideways. They look like clouds too. But uh, yeah. Yeah. Um, partners wonder if you could speak, you know, we're talking about obviously the channel hugely important, we're going to talk to a lot of your team, but from a technology standpoint, you've got a lot of those hardware providers as well as different software companies that are here in the expo hall. >>Does metallic and Hedvig in those, you know, how will that change the relationships? I mean there's one, I've never built a business in my life that wasn't partner centric and partnerships to me is where both sides feel like they won. They went together. And so I've been very clear with our team, our channel, our board, our ecosystem that we're not doing this alone. That's not my intent. And our goal is to work together. Now we have partners in across the spectrum, cloud partners, technology partners like NetApp, HPE, Cisco. We've got ecosystem partners, the up the, the startups that are building new capabilities that we want to be, they want to be part of our ecosystem and vice versa. Traditional channel. Okay. so we've got the whole run of those, of those partnerships and we've been very focused. But we've also being very clear that we're in this for the long haul with them. Hedvig is today sold through channel and will continue to and metallic is built to be only sold through the channel. >>And you guys also, I was looking at some of the strategic changes that you've implemented since you've been here. Leadership changes to the sales organization, but even on the marketing side go to market. You mentioned that the channel opportunities for Hedvig as well as metallic, but also you guys have a new partner programmed, really aimed at going after and cultivating those large global enterprises with your SIS. So in terms of of you know, partner first, it really seems like the strategic directions that you're moving in are really underscoring that. >>Absolutely. Everything we do, every single thing we do is, you know, the question, the reviews we do, the internal inspection we do with the business. The, the way I look at the, the, the go to market conversations as to uh, the, you know, the pipeline is always about which partners involved, who's the partner involved, you know, and on an exception where we don't have a partner involved. My um, my F it's a flag to me going why? Um, no, we're, I don't know if you're speaking with Ricardo today or at some point he'll, he'll, he'll let you know exactly what we're doing there and how we think about it. And then we've just hired Marissa Rowe, I don't know, you know, Mercer and so Mercer's just come on board as our sort of partner lead worldwide. Yup. >>We're going to be talking with him as well. >>It's a cultural shift folks and we're completely committed to it. 100% committed. >>So one of the things that, that Stu and I were chatting about earlier today that you guys talked about in the keynote is in terms of how quickly metallic was conceived, design built really fast. Does that come from kind of a nod to your days at puppet where you are used to much shorter cycles? And how did, how did internally, the Combolt folks kind of react and we're able to get that done so quick. >>They embraced it. And I'll tell you, I'm, people will tell you that I'm used to saying this, this, this thing. I say that competition and time are not our friends. So we have to, we have to get out there before somebody else does. And if you're coming out with something, it's gotta be better than anybody else has. And so we all agreed there was a need for world-class solution, but we also understood that we had to do a differently doing it the way we've always built something probably probably wasn't the best answer. We needed to go shake things up because it's a different audience, a different delivery capability. But the beauty of the whole thing was that we had core technology at vault that was truly multi-tenanted, truly secure, truly scalable, which we had. This was years of, of great IP, which we took and we built on top of. >>And so we ended up focusing on the user experience and the capabilities of a SAS solution, the modern SAS solution as opposed to putting a wrapper of SAS around substandard technology. So in full credit to the team, we do 90 day releases on our core technology today. Right. So yeah, I think, I think that refresh cycle is what customers expect of us. That you know the and, and then that's what we do today. Right. So something, I don't think it's, I'm not giving myself any credit for it. Yeah. And Sanjay actually we had a customer on earlier talking about that cadence release cycle and he said to Combolt's credit, they're hitting it and it makes my life more predictable when the channels yeah. You know, and so they know when to expect something. So we have a 90 day and Tom will talk to you about this when he, when he comes on, how we get our channel ready for it, how are we enabled them, our own support so we give, so we are completely buttoned up and taking advantage of that release cycle. >>All right. Great. Sunday, nine months, you've already made quite a few moves in the test board, making a lot of pieces there from what we hear, you know, this is just the beginning. Give us a little bit going forward though those people watching what does Sanjay's next nine to 12 months, you know, foretold and as much as you think it's a lot of moving parts that we've, we've changed, um, there we're all part of a, of a roadmap that and so that, and I've been very open and public about it. When I came in there was a lot we had to do and I wanted to be really focused about getting this company back to growth and really helping you realize the potential that it had with, with its heritage of great technology, great customer base, great ecosystem. So I laid out a very simple three point plan, simplify, innovate, execute and tell. >>People are tired of me talking about it and giving me proof points that I'm done. I'm going to keep talking about it. And so simplify is everything about how we use the product, the user experience with us and how you engage with us. OK. innovators innovate in everything we do, products, experiences, everything we have to, we have to challenge the status quo and say it's a smarter way of doing it. Metallic is a complete encapsulation of that, of that energy. Okay. And the last is execute. It's all about getting out there and getting it done. Doing what we say and saying what we do. Just get it out there, get it done. And um, and I think the team has been amazing. They've just rallied around it. And if I embraced it, this is what I think this is what they want. So the changes, sorry, just sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off but it, I'll sum it up by saying that, you know, the nine months have been very focused in the direction making. Now it's about really making sure we help the company and how customers realize its true potential because the technology is great. The people are great. We're a good company. People love our technology. They stay with us forever. Because it does what it's supposed to. We just think we have a lot more to offer. Now. >>I know we're only day one at the show. Things did kick off a little bit yesterday with partners. What's some of the feedback that you've heard from those customers? Either those that have been using vault for 10 years or those that are maybe newer to the bandwagon? >>Well, somebody asked me if I had 10 cups of coffee before I went on stage in the sporting, but I think it's a good proxy for what I feel on the show. I feel incredible energy. I think that the customers, the partners, our own people, it's just, there's a buzz and you've been to shows before and some of them are just, you know, some of them have that energy and some of them are flat. Well this one's just full of energy and uh, and it's, it feels like a lot of adrenaline here and this people are excited and um, you know, I'm excited to go walk the floor. >>Well, your competitors are taking notice. There was some interesting digital signage yesterday at the airport. I noticed that that wasn't okay. I didn't, I missed it. Invitation. Highest form of flattery. Sanjay, >>I got the notice that there's, there's a lot of investment that goes into this. Uh, this, this segment of the market. It's been really hot. Um, what, what's your take on all the startups in as well as the, the, the big companies that have been putting a lot of it that it's an important space, right? Um, it's, it's, it's in the top three to five depending on which study you look at data protections back because it's one thing to have data and nothing to know that it is the way you want it. It's also a testimony to the a, it's not an easy space to get into when you're telling your customer that you're protecting them. That's a big word. Okay. I believe that you earn your way there day on day release, on release. And we've done that. I mean the animals the same good things about as in half a years we had customers on stage, you know, and it, customers don't just come up on stage and they, they really believe it. We have a, we had a pretty decent turnout at the partner event yesterday. You know, I think we're, we're in a great space at a great time and we've got 20 years of, of great pedigree that I don't take for granted as much as people sort of go, Oh, you're an old company. I go, Oh, don't mistake pedigree for anything else. You know, we've got some incredible IP over 800 active. >>Yes. >>You were sharing some of those thoughts this morning. I was looking to see where I put them. How are you guys leveraging the data that you have under management to make combos technology even better and to help make some of those strategic, >>it's this deep learning. It gives as much, you know, we applying AI implicitly. I don't want it to be an AI washing my technology for my customers. It's in there. It just works for them and it's my job to make my product better so they get more value out of it as opposed to for them to bolt on something to make my product better. So I don't, I really don't care what other shit about it. What I care about is I'm building that right into, into the intelligence. We have all the data, we know we, our customers use it, how they back it up, what their expectations are, what the SLS are, what their protocols are. We know this stuff and you, you have to, you know, we've been around enough to know this stuff. So now we're taking all of that with technologies like deep learning and machine learning and making the product better. >>So Sunday, one of the toughest things to do out there is have people learn, learn about somebody again for the, for the second time, you know, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So maybe I'd love your insight. You've been on board for nine months, you know, everybody knows Combolt it has a strong pedigree as you said, has a lot of patents. There's the culture there, but anything you've learned in the last nine months that you didn't know from the outside, he was still a pretty good secret. And there's a lot of people that don't know us as long as even though we've been around in the enterprise and and have have achieved a ton, there's still a ton of customers that don't know us and you know in our chops to get it out there. And if you've looked at our digital presence, if you've looked at how we're engaging online, it's a different Convolt. In fact, one of my favorite hashtags that's a, that that's trending at the show is a hashtag new comm vault. Is that right? I like that one. >>As I say, I might have started it, I don't know. But it is, it's an opportunity, right as to said, you know, we all wish sometimes in certain situations we could make a first impression. Again, I think you have that opportunity is you're saying there's, you have I she was saying close to 80% of, I think I read the other day, 75 80% of Commonweal's revenue comes from the fortune 500 you have the big presence with Bleagh global enterprises. This sustainability initiative that you were doing with the U N that Chris talked about. So there's, there's a lot of momentum behind that as well to take and really kind of maybe even leverage the voice of those enterprises to share with the world the benefits that Convolt provides. Like you said, data protection is hot. Again, if you have the data and it's, and you don't have the insight and it's not protected and you can't recover it quickly, then what value >>or used, if you can't use that know, why does it have to be compartmentalized where you say, Oh, that is my archive. Why can't I, why can't I say that? Yes, it is my archive, but I can, I can leverage that data for other things in my business. Okay. And so our product orchestrate allows customers to discovery to do, sorry, activate, not orchestrate to do eDiscovery, to curate information to use it for R and D to have a policy on sensitive governance needs. There's so much we can do with that, with with the data that's just sitting there, that and from different sources that I believe that at some level, protecting and protecting, managing and controlling our almost table stakes. So I'm raising the stakes uses where the magic is. >>All right, raising the stakes. Well, Sanjay, thank you so much for joining Stu and me on the cube today. Can't wait to see where those stakes are going to be. Combo go 2020 hashtag new comm volt hashtag new comm vault. Thanks Lisa. Thanks. Thank you so much. Hashtag new cobalt for Stewman eman and Sanjay Mirchandani and Lisa Martin, you're watching the cube from Cannonball. Go.