(dramatic music) >> Welcome to this special Cube Conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier here with Shay Mowlem, Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy at Rubrik here in theCUBE Talk. Thanks for coming in today, great to see you. >> Pleasure, John, pleasure to see you. >> So the thing is, you joined Rubrik, Senior Vice President, last time we spoke to you in theCUBE, you were at Splunk. And then you did a stint at Mulesoft, famous public company, sold to Salesforce for massive amounts of money. Now you're here at Rubrik, thanks for comin' on. What's the story, what happened? >> Well, you know, Bipul, our founder and I, met a few years ago, we were introduced. I guess it was about two and a half years ago. I was running product manager and product marketing at Splunk at the time. And he just impressed me with his vision of what he was trying to do through Rubrik. The company was significantly smaller than it is today. And talked about his vision to really disrupt this 30 billion dollar market. And do it in a way that was very cloud-based, revolutionary. Allow companies to extract much bigger value out of this secondary storage arena. I thought, wow, sounds exciting. But at the time, I was just about to take a bigger role at Splunk, my timing was off. So it didn't work out, but we kept in touch. And we touched base again earlier this year. And I was just so impressed by what he had accomplished with Rubrik. In less than four years from zero to 300 million run rate. The executives that he assembled around the company, the progress that the business had made, the customers, the expansion into cloud arena, the innovation. It was just one of those opportunities you can't walk away from, and so I jumped on it. >> It's a classic Silicon Valley enterprise story. If you look at, he's been on theCUBE, so the folks watching, check out theCUBE video on Youtube or thecube.net. Bitpul, CEO, Founder of Rubrik, great interview. But it's interesting, I mean there's a lot of money thrown at Rubrik. They're growing like crazy. It's the classic rocket fuel going after the story. But there's a unique product angle that I think's interesting. And you're in charge of products and technology for the company. But you've also had a journey in the enterprise. Splunk was a very successful company. Mulesoft, very successful. Saas company sold to Salesforce. Huge tower in San Francisco. There's a new, kind of, generation shift happening with cloud computing that's forcing enterprises to change their infrastructure. And this is beyond just backup and other things. >> Yeah. >> This is a generation, once in a generation shift. >> Yes. >> In BTB, how has it changed things? And you've seen a lot of the enterprise action over the past decade or so and more. But right now, it's more than ever. What's the big shift? And I'll say, cloud force is a lot of change. What's the impact to the customer? >> You know, I think there are two phases to that. There's one that we are serving a market, this backup recovery market, represents a massive area of investment for companies. I've seen stats that suggests that there's 6x as much spend on storage infrastructure for the secondary arena than there is for production grade systems. But yet, this market just hasn't seen innovation since data domain. >> So tons of money, but nothing happening. >> Nothing happening. So we came in initially with a whole new, very customer centric approach, that delivered all of the complexity that this market had seen before, shrink wrapped into a modern era software platform running on commodity hardware. Our customers can be up and running in less than an hour. They can archive and leverage the cloud. And so it's driving both TCO benefits, agility of the business, and allowing them access to move workloads to the cloud, manage the cloud in ways that they'd never seen before. And so I think, certainly that has been one big part of the success of Rubrik. But I think, more broadly on the cloud, we're seeing many companies are really in a hybrid mode. They are moving from on-prem, they're leveraging MSPs, they're starting to build certain businesses in the cloud, and the ability to manage all that centrally, and in a way that is governed properly and allows them to extract real value from it, is something that's really resonating for our customers. >> What was the reason why you joined Rubrik. I mean, everyone has a reason. >> Obviously, you met Bitpul, you guys keeping in touch. Was it the team, was it the technology? What was the one thing that you were attracted to, that put you over the top? >> One thing, I've got so many. >> The most important thing. >> You know, I think I'm going to force you with three answers on that one. >> I'm supposed to ask you to rank them by one two and three. >> Alright, sounds good, I'll end with the last one on the product. >> Alright. >> I fell in love with Bitpul, quite honestly. I mean, remarkable guy, quite humble. Such tenacity, such a focus on customers. They team that he's assembled, to me, was just so paramount. I wanted to be part of this organization. And honestly, I'm humbled to be sitting around the table with folks like Murray Demo, who's our CFO, and Mark Smith, our head of sales from Arista, you know, Kara Wilson, our CMO. And we just keep bringing these incredible individuals to the company and the org. I'm truly humbled to be sitting around the table with them. So that excitement by the way, goes all the way down. The folks that have been hired into the organization are quite remarkable. But the thing that really, from a product perspective, that really is exciting to me, is that, not only are we disrupting this 40 billion dollar market in a way that's really connecting for our customers, we're doing it in a way that is thinking ahead. We're not treating this backup arena as some blob that's going to sit on tape somewhere. We're building it as part of an integrated management platform that then allows our customers to extract higher value services and insight from that in a way that they've never seen before. So radar is, we've had some incredible innovation over the last four months that I've been with the company. With the release of Rubrik Alta 4.2, the new product Radar for Ransomware protection. We've talked about our AWS competency and advancements there. But Radar is an example of a service that we're building on top of this data management platform that delivers higher value for our customers. And I am so excited about the exponential growth in value that we're going to deliver to our customers as we continue to deliver more of these services. >> Yeah, get the technology, got the great team. Yeah, the code of market is going to be interesting. With cloud, you've got marketplaces, you've got consumption by the users, the customers if you will, on your end, is changing, I think Saas is being a big part of it. How has the product road map shifted from classic old school product to now? Because it has to be a service. This service is out there, still commodity hardware. Software's driving the value. That's where the hardware gets sold. That's where the cloud gets sold on. It used to be the other way around. Your hardware drove what you can do with software. So that's a been flipped. >> Yes. >> How are you guys working that in the equation? Software first, cloud first? I mean, how do you explain that to customers? >> Well we're always a software company. And we built Rubrik as a very modern era expandable platform that runs on commodity hardware. And can archive and move workloads to the cloud at its core. I mean, our founders came from companies like Google and Facebook, and had really come from this world. And so, our customers were able to get that value quickly. And I think that was a big part of what attracted them to Rubrik. But if you really fast forward into the future, our vision is to have a ubiquitous centralized data management platform from which our customers can govern, manage, and establish rules that govern all of their applications that they protect across cloud boundaries, across private clouds, traditional infrastructure, cloud workloads, and we really think that's connecting for our customers. >> So about the product road map. Obviously, you're in charge of product and strategy, so you have a great market entry, the success has been documented. You guys have been one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley the past couple of years. I've seen the success. You always have a big party at VM world. Your big show there, lookin' forward to this year. >> Going to happen again this year. (laughing) >> I heard there's a big performer there coming. Last year, it was great to see the Warriors there. So, but product is interesting. 'Cause at your start up, you want to have a beachhead, secure a core positioning, and then look at, kind of holistically, what the customers might want. >> Yeah. >> Can you share some insight into what that product roadmap is? And how are you guys fortifying your core and what are you adding onto the roadmap? >> Yeah, you know, the first thing that we did when we came out, was to provide this capability to protect your data and make it really easy to use, archive to the cloud, and we focused on the VMware and hypervisors, and it was very well received. And over the years, we've expanded to support other areas, other data, other applications. And so our strategy, certainly is going to continue to do that with the vision of protecting all of our customer's applications and data, regardless of where they reside. Whether they are traditional infrastructure applications running on PRIM, in private clouds, or new modern architectures that are running in the cloud. The ability to manage all of that. And that's certainly going to continue to be one of the directions of the roadmap strategy. The other is, as I mentioned, we're not really looking at these protected images as black boxes or tape images. We're going to enable our customers to extract value out of them in a way that they haven't seen before by introspecting this data and revealing insights from it. >> What's the current situation? So why can't they get that today? >> Well I think, typically, these images are stored in a proprietary blob form. And you can't really see much in there. >> You can't unlock it at all. >> You can't unlock it. And you can't really know much about what's even in the black box. And so, from the beginning, we started capturing meta-data that allows customers to classify this data and get insight into, well what applications are actually running in this particular snapshot. And so we continue to extract that level of value that is really connecting for our customers in allowing them to resurrect, move workloads, introspect for compliance reasons or otherwise in ways that, I think, are just really important. >> Yeah, things like GDPR for instance, alone. It gives it as a great use case. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, so what's the big picture? If you had to go talk to your friends and say, hey I joined Rubrik. And they say, I've never heard of Rubrik, what do they do? You don't say backup company, you say data company. How do you describe the company? >> I talk about a company that's providing data management for non-production systems. And allowing customers to extract value in ways that they haven't seen before. And I think, candidly, John, I have been very fortunate to work with some great companies. I have never seen an opportunity as exciting and as big as what Rubrik represents. It's just so important to our customers. Everybody has to protect their apps. And we're able to do it an a way that's going to allow them to extract so much more value. >> And what was your official start date? You started a couple months ago? >> April first. >> April first, four months roughly, yeah. >> Exactly, thrilled. >> And your impression, as you walk in. What's the DNA, what's the vibe of the company? If you had to describe the DNA of the company. >> You know, I'm really thrilled. I am really thrilled to be part of this organization. There's a deep sense of culture. One of the things that attracted me early on was there was an article written about Bipul talking about radical transparency. Open board room meetings, I'd never seen that before. And you know what it's about? It's about employee empowerment, he is so committed to that. To making sure that we are able to set everybody up to deliver their best in the organization. And I think it's spot on. It's why we're innovating so quickly. It's why we're attracting such top talent at all levels of the organization. And it's why I'm so confident about the future of this company. >> That's great. And you know, one of the things too that I want to get your thoughts on. Because you see in cloud disrupt a lot of things, and a great opportunity for you guys. You know, we're seeing it out there, and we talked to end-user enterprises. That the common answer is, you know clouds, that we got to go there. But the one thing that's interesting, is they all say, no matter what we do, when we talk about cloud for them, it makes them change their infrastructure. >> Yes. >> On premises, and what they do in the cloud. So it's a rethinking of things. So that's one. So that's opening up new markets. So question for you we have is, as you guys look at new markets, things like public sector for instance. We're seeing, I wrote a story today, it's looking like Oracle is challenging Amazon for the Department of Defense Deal. So public sector and global public sector. Not just in United States is a very interesting market. How are you guys doing in say that market? I know you're strong in the enterprise, but what's the sector angle? You guys competing there, you winning, what's the story? >> We are, and I would say there are multiple motions in addition to the public sector example. We're seeing a lot of Global 2000 organizations moving to manage service providers. And so that's an example of a private cloud model that really works for a lot of folks in federal organizations as well. Really looking to have a tenant, well-secured service model for their various agencies. And that is very aligned with what we're doing. In fact, in our Alta 4.2 release, we talked about Envoy that really advances how service providers can, and manage service providers even within organizations, can actually enable more self servicing capability in that regard. We see these varying segments. >> So you see public sector as an opportunity for you guys? >> No doubt. In fact, if you look at the rubric customer base today, it really spans the gamut of markets across the board, including public sector and state local agencies as well. >> Well we know you got a great relationship with Amazon Web Services, AWS. You're a competency partner with them, which is the highest award or level you can get. What is your relation with the other clouds, Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, and others? How do you guys relate to those other clouds? >> Our customers run on all platforms. And Rubrik does have a relationship with Microsoft, certainly. In fact, we have a co-sale agreement with them. We support Ajar at a relatively deep level. Same thing with Google Cloud. We enable our customers to. >> You're agnostic on cloud, basically. >> We are agnostic, and the point is, I think every one of these cloud platforms has their own unique angle and value, and we want to enable our customers to really leverage the platform of their choice. >> So a lot young people are lookin' at career choices. And some of the jobs are out there that haven't even been invented yet. At school starts to figure out curriculum, starting to see computer science. Women in tech is booming. You're seeing a lot of different, new kinds of jobs around data science, for instance. What do you advise young people, who are either in high school or college, who are thinking about careers? You don't have the classic, I'm going to be a software engineer. You could be a software developer, software artist, there's different jobs in management, marketing. All kinds of different scopes. What's the current track that you would recommend people to explore if they're interested in getting in tech? >> You know, I think it's remarkable to me to see how the internship programs have evolved. And how active they are. I was initially recruited into Oracle directly out of college. It was a very regimented process of recruiting from college. Well now you've got these internships. And I tell you, some of the interns that have worked with companies that I have been a part of just impress the hell out of me. So that's a great way to get in, to see what's about, and to have an opportunity to add value. And every single time one of those interns does something remarkable, and it happens all the time, there is an offer on the table for them to come back, too. So I think that's a very good way with many of these organizations to get in. >> I mean, it's so interesting. We do a lot of interviews. And there's no classic cookie cutter job anymore. I think you're starting to see interdisciplinary opportunities that are coming up. Some computer science, little bit of sociology, or business mixed, it's very interesting. Almost an alchemy of different projects out there that people can get involved in. >> Absolutely. >> Open source certainly is a big one. >> And it's fun because when we get new college grads, we just give them the opportunity to do a lot of different things in rotations. And that helps them also sort of get a sense of where their passion lies and what they want to do. And it's exactly the right thing to demand as you're coming into the workforce. >> It's interesting, at Google Cloud, I was talking with some folks over there. And you know, the women in tech conversation, and opportunity recognition and to level up. So many new opportunities that anyone of any gender or race can come in and quickly level up. >> Yes. >> 'Cause it's so new, the technology with Cloud. It's kind of interesting. >> Yes, I mean, I think it all comes down to your personal ability and commitment and work ethic and drive. And there's no end in sight to what's possible. >> That's right, well thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great to see you, and congratulations on your new role at Rubrik. Great company, right down the street here in Palo Alto. Rubrik, new Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy here inside theCUBE. For Cube conversation, I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto in our studios. Thanks for watching. (dramatic music)