(Latin music) >> Narrator: Live, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, it's theCUBE! Covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to by Blockchain Industries. (Latin music) >> Welcome back to our exclusive Puerto Rico coverage, here, this is theCUBE for Blockchain Unbound, the future of blockchain cryptocurrency, the decentralized web, the future of society, the world, of work, et cetera, play, it's all happening right here, I'm reporting it, the global internet's coming together, my next guest is Fred Krueger, a founder and CEO of a new innovative approach called WorkCoin, the future of work, he's tackling. Fred, great to see you! >> Thank you very much, John. >> So we saw each other in Palo Alto at the D10e at the Four Seasons, caught up, we're Facebook friends, we're LinkedIn friends, just a quick shout out to you, I saw you livestreaming Brock Pierce's keynote today, which I thought was phenomenal. >> Yeah, it was a great keynote. >> Great work. >> And it's Pi Day. >> It's Pi Day? >> And I'm a mathematician, so, it's my day! (Fred laughs) >> It's geek day. >> It's geek day. >> All those nerds are celebrating. So, Fred, before we get into WorkCoin, I just want to get your thoughts on the Brock Pierce keynote, I took a video of it, with my shaky camera, but I thought the content was great. You have it up on Facebook on your feed, I just shared it, what was your takeaway of his message? I thought it was unedited, obviously, no New York Times spin here, no-- >> Well first of all, it's very authentic, I've known Brock 10 years, and, I think those of us who have known Brock a long time know that he's changed. He became very rich, and he's giving away, and he really means the best. It's completely from the heart, and, it's 100% real. >> Being in the media business, kind of by accident, and I'm not a media journalist by training, we're all about the data, we open our datas, everyone knows we share the free content. I saw the New York Times article about him, and I just saw it twisted, okay? The social justice warriors out there just aren't getting the kind of social justice that he's actually trying to do. So, you've known him for 10 years, I see as clear as day, when it's unfiltered, you say, here's a guy, who's eccentric, smart, rich now, paying it forward? >> Yep. >> I don't see anything wrong with that. >> Look, I think that the-- >> What is everyone missing? >> There's a little jealously, let's be honest, people resent a little bit, and I think part of it's the cryptocurrency world's fault. When your symbol of success is the Lamborghini, it's sort of like, this is the most garish, success-driven, money-oriented crowd, and it reminds me a little bit of the domain name kind of people. But Brock's ironically not at all that, so, he's got a-- >> If you look at the ad tech world, and the domain name world, 'cause they're all kind of tied together, I won't say underbelly, but fast and loose would be kind of the way I would describe it. >> Initially, yes, ad tech, right? So if you look at ad tech back in say, I don't know, 2003, 2004, it was like gunslingers, right? You wanted to by some impressions, you'd go to a guy, the guy'd be like, "I got some choice impressions, bro." >> I'll say a watch too while I'm at it. >> Yeah, exactly. (John laughs) That was the ad tech world, right? And that world was basically replaced by Google and Facebook, who now control 80% of the inventory, and it's pretty much, you go to a screen, it's all service and that's it. I don't know if that's going to be the case in cryptocurrencies, but right now, initially, you sort of have this, they're a Wild West phenomenon. >> Any time you got alpha geeks, and major infrastructure application developer shift happening, which is happening, you kind of look at these key inflection points, you need to kind of have a strong community self-policing policy, if you look at the original DNS days, 'cause you remember, I was there too, Jon Postel, rest in peace, godspeed, we all know what he did, Vint Cerf with TCP/IP, the core dudes, and gals, back then, they were tight! So any kind of new entrants that came in had to prove their worth. I won't say they were the most welcoming, 'cause they were nervous of people to infect the early formation, mostly they're guys, they're nerds. >> Right, so I think if you look back at domain names, back in the day, a lot of people don't know this, but Jon Postel actually kept the list of domain names in a text file, right? You had basically wanted a domain name, you called Jon up, and you said, "I'd like my name added to the DNS," and he could be like, "Okay, let me add it "to the text file." Again, these things all start in a very sort of anarchic way, and now-- >> But they get commercial. >> It gets commercial, and it gets-- >> SAIC, Network Solutions, in various time, we all know the history, ICANN, controlled by the Department of Commerce up until a certain point in time-- >> Uh, 'til about four years ago, really. >> So, this is moving so fast. You're a student of the industry, you're also doing a startup called WorkCoin, what is the formula for success, what is your strategy, what are you guys doing at WorkCoin, take a minute to explain what you guys are doing, your team, your approach-- >> So let's start with the problem, right? If you look at freelancing, right now, everybody knows that a lot of people freelance, and I don't think people understand how many people freelance. There are 57 million people in America who freelance. It's close to 50%, of us, don't actually have jobs, other than freelancing. And so, this is a slow moving train, but it's basically moving in the direction of more freelancers, and we're going to cross the 50% mark-- >> And that's only going to get bigger, because of virtual work, the global workforce, no boundaries-- >> Right, and so it's global phenomena, right? Freelancing is just going up, and up, and up. Now, you would think in this world, there would be something like Google where you could sit there, and go type patent attorney, and you could get 20 patent attorneys that would be competing for your business, and each one would have their price, and, you could just click, and hire a patent attorney, right? Is that the case? >> No. >> No, okay. >> I need a patent attorney. >> So, what if you have to hire a telegram manager for your telegram channel? Can you find those just by googling telegram manager, no. So basically-- >> The user expectation is different than the infrastructure can deliver it, that's what you're basically saying. >> No, what I'm saying is it should be that way, it is not that way, and the reason it's not that way is that basically, there's no economics to do that with credit cards, so, if you're building a marketplace where it's kind of these people are find each other, you need the economics to make sense. And when you're being charged 3.5% each way, plus you have to worry about chargebacks, buyer fraud, and everything else, you can't built a marketplace that's open and transparent. It's just not possible. And I realized six months ago, that with crypto, you actually could. Not that it's going to be necessarily easy, but, technically, it is possible. There's zero marginal cost, once I'm taking in crypto, I'm paying out crypto, in a sort of open marketplace where I can actually see the person, so I could hire John Furrier, not John F., right? >> But why don't you go to LinkedIn, this is what someone might say. >> Well, if you go to LinkedIn, first of all, the person there might not be in the market, probably is not in the market for a specific service, right? You can go there, then you need to message them. And you just say, "Hey, your profile looks great, "I noticed you're a patent attorney, "you want to file this patent for me?" And then you have to negotiate, it's not a transactional mechanism, right? >> It's a lot of steps. >> It's not transactional, right? So it's not click, buy, fund, engage, it just doesn't work that way. It's just such a big elephant in the room problem, that everybody has these problems, nobody can find these good freelancers. What do you end up doing? You end up going to Facebook, and you go, "Hey, does anybody know any good patent attorneys?" That's what you do. >> That's a bounty. >> Well, it's kind of, yeah. >> It's kind of a social bounty. "Hey hive, hey friends, does anyone know anything?" >> It's social proof, right? Which is another thing that's very important, because, if John, if you were-- >> Hold on, take a minute to explain what social proof is for the folks. >> Social proof is just the simple concept that it's a recommendation coming from somebody that you know, and trust. So, for example, I may not be interested in your video services, John, but I know you, and I am in the business of a graphic designer, and you're like, "Fred, I know this amazing graphic designer, "and she's relatively cheap." Okay, well that's probably good enough for me to at least start looking at her work, and going the next step. On the other hand, if I'm just looking at 100 graphic designers, I do not know. >> It's customized contextual data, around a specific transaction from a trusted source. So you socially, are connected to, or related. >> It, sort of, think about this, it doesn't even have to be a source that you know, it could be just a source that you know of, right? So, to use the Brock example again, Brock's probably not going to be selling his services on my platform, but what if he recommends somebody, people like giving the gift of recommendation. So Brock knows a lot of people, may not be doing as well as him, right? And he's like, "Well, this guy could be a fantastic guy "to hire as social media manager," for example. Helping out a guy that needs a little bit of work. >> And endorsement's a major thing. >> It is giving something, right? You're giving your own brand, by saying, "I stand behind this person." >> Alright, so tell me about where you are with WorkCoin, honestly, people might not know your background, if you check him out on LinkedIn, Fred Krueger, mathematician, Stanford PhD, well-educated, from a centralized organization, like Stanford, has a good reputation, you're a math guy, is there math involved? Obviously, Blockchain's math related, you got crypto, how are you guys building this out, share a little bit of, if you can, show a little leg on the tech-- >> The tech is sort of simple. So basically the way it is, is right now it's built in Google Cloud, but we have an interface where you can fund the thing, and so it's built, first of all, that's the first thing. We built it on web and mobile. And you can basically buy WorkCoins from the platform itself, using Ethereum, and also, we've integrated with Sensei, a different token. So, we can integrate with different tokens, so you're using these tokens to fund the coin, to fund your account, right? And then, once you have the tokens in your account, you can then buy services with them, right? And then the service provider, the minute they finish delivery of the service, to your expectation, they get the coin in their account, and then they can transfer that coin back into Ethereum, or Bitcoin, or whatever, to cash out. >> Okay, so wait, now that product's built, has the coins been issued? Are you guys doing an ICO? Are you raising money? >> So we're in the middle of an ICO-- >> Private? >> Private, only for now. So we've raised just under $4,000,000-- >> Great, congratulations. >> I have no idea if that's good or not-- >> Well, it's better than a zero (laughs). >> It's better than zero, right? It is better than zero, right? >> So there's interest obviously. >> Yeah, so look, we've got a lot of interest in our product, and I think part of the interest is it's very simple. A lot of people can go, "I think this thing makes sense." Now, does that mean we're going to be completely successful in taking over the world, I don't know. >> Well, I mean, you got some tailwinds at your back. One, the infrastructure in e-commerce, and the things that you're going after, are 20-year-old stacks. Number two, the business model, and expectation of the users, is shifting radically, and expectations are different, and there's no actual product that does it (laughs), so. >> So a lot of these ICOs, I think they're going to have technical problems actually building into the specification. 'Cause it's difficult, when you're dealing with the Blockchain, first of all, you're building on some movable platform, right? I met some people just today who are building on Hash-Craft, now, that's great, but Hash-Craft is like one day old, you know? So you're building on something that is one day old, and they've just announced their coin five minutes ago, you know. Again, that's great, but normally as a developer myself, I'm used to building on things that are years old, I mean, even something that's three years old is new. >> This momentum going on, that someone might want to tout Hash-Craft for is, 'cause it's got momentum-- >> It's got total momentum. >> They're betting on an ecosystem. But that brings up the other thing I want to get your thoughts on, because we've observed this at Polycon, we've been watching the industry landscape now, onto our 10th year, there's almost an ecosystem stake in the ground. The good news is, ecosystem's developing. You got entrepreneurs, you got projects, you got funding coming in, but as it's going to be a fight for the ecosystem, because you can't have zillion ecosystems, eventually they have to be-- >> Well, you know-- >> Or can you? >> Here's the problem, that everybody's focused on the plumbing right now, right, the infrastructure? But, what they should be focusing it on is the app. And I've a question for you, and I've asked this question to my advisors and investors, which are DNA Fund, and I say-- >> Let's see if I get it right, it's a test here on the spot, I love this, go. >> Okay, so here's the question, how many, in your wallet right now, on your mobile phone, show me how many Blockchain apps you have right now. >> Uh, zero, on my phone? >> Okay, zero. >> Well I have a burner phone for my other one, so (laughs). >> But on any phone, on any phone that you possess, how many Blockchain apps do you have on your phone? >> Wallet or apps? >> An app that you-- >> Zero. >> An app, other than a wallet, zero, right? Every single person I've asked in this conference has the same number, zero. Now, think about this, if you'd-- >> Actually, I have one. >> Uh, which one? >> It's called Cube Coin. >> Okay, there you go, Cube Coin. But, here's the problem, if you went to a normal-- >> Can I get WorkCoin right now? >> Yeah, well not right now, but I have it on my wallet. So for example, it's in test flight, but my point is I have a fully functional thing I can go buy services, use the coin, everything, in an app. I think this is one of the things-- >> So, hypothetically, if I had an application that was fully functional, with Blockchain, with cryptocurrency, with ERC 2 smart contracts, I would be ahead of the game? >> You would be ahead of the game. I mean, I think-- >> Great news, guys! >> And I think you absolutely are thinking the right thinking, because, everybody's just looking at the plumbing, and, look, I love EOS, but, it's sort of a new operating system, same as Hash-Craft, but you need apps to run on your thing-- >> First of all, I love chatting with you, you're super smart, folks out there, Fred is someone you should check out, you got great advisor potential. You're right on this, I want to test something out with you, I've been thinking about this for a while. If you think about the OSI model, OSI stack, for the younger kids, that was a key movement that generated the key standards in the stack for inner networking, and physical devices. So, it was started from the bottom up. The top of the stack actually never standardized, it became the presentation session layer, they differentiated, then eventually became front end. If you look at what's happening now, the top of the stack is really the ones that's standardizing, or standardizing with business logic, the bottom of the stack has many different versions of say, Blockchain, so the question is is that, it might be the world that will never have a TCP/IP moment, it might be that the business app logic will dictate to some sort of abstraction layer, down to programmable plumbing. You see this with cloud with DevOps. So the question is, do see it that way? I'm thinking out loud here, but when I'm seeing the trend here, it's just that, people who make the business logic decisions first, and nail those, that they're far more successful swapping out and hedging on the plumbing. >> Look, I think you mentioned the word alpha geek, and I think you've just defined yourself as an alpha geek. Let's just go in Denzel Washington's set in the movie Philadelphia, talk to me like I'm a five year old, okay? What is the problem you're solving? >> The app, you said it, it's the app! >> My point is like, everybody is walking around with apps, if the thing doesn't fit on an app, it's not solving any problem, that's the bottom line. I don't care whether you're-- >> You're validating the concept that all that matters is the app, the plumbing will sort itself out. >> I think so. >> Is that a dependency, or is it an interdependency? >> What do you need in a plumbing? Here's how I think you should think. Do I need 4,000 transactions per second? I would say, rarely, most people are not sitting there going, "I need to do 4,000 transactions per second." >> If you need that, you've already crossed the finish line, you probably want a proprietary solution. >> Just to put things in perspective, Bitcoin does 300,000 transactions per day. >> Well, why does Ripple work? Ripple works because they nailed the business model. >> I'll tell you what I think of Ripple-- >> What's your take? >> Why ripple works, I think all, and I'm not the first person to say this, but I think that, the thing that works right now, the core application of all this stuff, is money, right? That's the core thing. Now, if you're talking about documents on the Blockchain, is that going to be useful, perhaps. In a realist's say in the Blockchain, perhaps. Poetry on the Blockchain, maybe. Love on the Blockchain? Why ban it, you know? >> Hey, there's crypto-kiddies on the Blockchain, love is coming next. >> Love is coming next. But, the core killer app, the killer app, is money. It's paying people. That is the killer app of the Blockchain right now, okay? So, every single one of the things that's really successful is about paying people. So what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is super great, for taking money, and moving it out of China, and into the United States. Or out of Nigeria, and into Switzerland, right? You want to take $100,000 out of Nigeria, and move it to Switzerland? Bitcoin is your answer. Now, you want to move money from bank A to bank B, Ripple is your answer, right? (John laughs) If you want to move money from Medellin, Colombia, that you use in narcos, Moneiro is probably your crypto of choice, you know? (John laughs) Business truly anonymous. And I think it's really about payment, right? And so, I look at WorkCoin as, what is the killer thing you're doing here, you're paying people. You're paying people for work, so, it's designed for that. That's so simple. >> The killer app is money, Miko Matsumura would say, open source money, that's his narrative, love that vision. Okay, if money's the killer app, the rest is all kind of window dressing around trying to race to-- >> I think it's the killer, it's the initial killer app. I think we need to get to the point where we all, not all of us, but where enough of us start transacting, with money, with digital money, and then after digital money, there will be other killer apps, right? It's sort of like, if you look at the internet, and again, I'm repeating somebody else's argument-- >> It's Fred Krueger's hierarchy of needs, money-- >> Money starts, right? >> Money is the baseline. >> The initial thing, what was the first thing of internet? I was on the internet before it was the internet. It was called the ARPANET, at Stanford, right? I don't know if you remember those days-- >> I do remember, yeah, I was in college. >> But the ARPANET, it was email, right? We had the first versions of email. And that was back in 1986. >> Email was the killer app for 15, 20 years. >> It was the killer app, right? And I think-- >> For 15 or 20 years. >> Absolutely, well before websites, you know? So I think, we got to solve money first. And I bless everybody who has got some other model, and maybe they're right, maybe notarization of documents on the internet is a-- >> There's going to be use cases for Blockchain, some obvious low-hanging fruit, but, that's not revolutionary, that's not game-changing, what is game-changing is the promise of a new decentralized infrastructure. >> Here's the great thing that's absolutely killer about what this whole world is, and this is why I'm very bullish, it's, if you look at the internet of transmitting value, from one node to another node, credit cards just do not do a very good job of that, right? So, you can't put a credit card inside a machine, very well, at all, right? It doesn't work! And very simple reason, why? Because you get those Amex fraud alerts. (John laughs) Now the machine, if he's paying another machine, the second machine doesn't know how to interpret the first machine's Amex fraud alerts. So, the machine has to pay in, the machine's something that's immutable. I'm paying you a little bit of token. The classic example is the self-driving car that pays the gas pump, 'cause it's a gas self-driving car, it pays it to fill up, and the gas pump may have to pay its landlord in rent, and all of this is done with tokens, right? With credit cards, that does not work. So it has to be tokens. >> Well, what credit cards did for other transactions a little bit simplifies your things, there's a whole 'nother wave coming, that just makes it easier and reduces the steps. >> It reduces the friction, and that's why I think, actually, the killer app's going to be marketplaces, because, if you look at a marketplace, whether it's a marketplace like ours, for freelancers, or your marketplace for virtual goods, and like wax, or whatever it is, right? I think marketplaces, where there's no friction, where once you've paid, it's in. There's no like, I want my money back. That is a killer app, it's an absolute killer app. I think we're going to see real massive consumer adoption with that, and that's ultimately, I think, that's what we need, because if it's all just business models, and people touting their 4,000 transactions a second, that's not going to fly. >> Well Fred, you have a great social graph, that's socially proved, you got a great credentials, in mathematics, PhD from Stanford, you reinvent nine, how many exits? >> Nine exits. >> Nine exits. You're reinventing freelancing on the Blockchain, you're an alpha geek, but you can also explain things to a five year old, great to have you on-- >> Thank you very much John. >> Talk about the WorkCoin, final word, get the plugin for WorkCoin, can people use it now, when is it going to be available-- >> Look, you can go check out our platform, as Miko said, Miko's an advisor, and Miko said, "Fred, think of it as a museum, "you can come visit the museum, "you're not going to see a zillion, "but you can do searches there, you can find people." The museum is not fully operational, right? You can come and check it out, you can take a look at the trains at the museum, the trains will finally operate once we're finished with our ICO, we can really turn the thing on, and everything will work, and what I'd like you to do, actually, you can follow our ICO, if you're not American, you can invest in our ICO-- >> WorkCoin dot-- >> Net. >> Workcoin.net >> Workcoin.net, and, really, at the end, if you have some skill that you can sell on the internet, you're a knowledge worker, you can do anything. List your skill for sale, right? And then, that's the first thing. If you're a student at home, maybe you can do research reports. I used to be a starving student at Stanford. I was mainly spending my time in the statistics department, if somebody said, "Fred, instead of grading "undergrad papers, we'll pay you money "to do statistical work for a company," I would be like, "That would be amazing!" Of course, nobody said that. >> And anyways, you could also have the ability to collaborate with some quickly, and do a smart contract, you could do some commerce, and get paid. >> And get paid for it! >> Hey, hey! >> How 'about that, so I just see-- >> Move from the TA's grading papers payroll, which is like peanuts-- >> And maybe make a little bit more doing something that's more relevant to my PhD. All I know is there's so many times where I've said, my math skills are getting rusty, and I was like, I'd really wish I could talk to somebody who knew something about this distribution, or, could help me-- >> And instantly, magically have them-- And I can't even find them! Like, I have no idea, I have no idea how I would go and find people at Stanford Institute, I would have no idea. So if I could type Stanford, statistics, and find 20 people there, or USC Statistics, imagine that, right? That could change the world-- >> That lowers the barriers, friction barriers, to-- >> Everybody could be hiring graduate students. >> Well it's not just hiring, collaborating too. >> Collaborating, yeah. >> Everything. >> And any question that you have, you know? >> Doctor doing cancer research, might want to find someone in China, or abroad, or in-- >> It's a worldwide thing, right? We have to get this platform so it's open, and so everybody kind of goes there, and it's like your identity on there, there's no real boundary to how we can get. Once we get started, I'm sure this'll snowball. >> Fred, I really appreciate you taking the time-- >> Thanks a lot for your time. >> And I love your mission, and, we support you, whatever you need, WorkCoin, we got to find people out there to collaborate with, otherwise you're going to get pushed fake news and fake data, best way to find it is through someone's profile on WorkCoin-- >> Thanks. >> Was looking forward to seeing the product, I'm John Furrier, here in Puerto Rico for Blockchain Unbound, Restart Week, a lot of great things happening, Brock Pierce on the keynote this morning really talking about his new venture fund, Restart, which is going to be committed 100% to Puerto Rico, this is where the action will be, we will be following this exclusive story, continuing, we'll be back with more, thanks for watching. (soothing electronic music)

>>VM is one of the more interesting stories we've covered in the past decade. Born in 2006 with a simple premise to make backing up virtualized systems easy, fast, consistent and cost effective. The company's timing was perfect as it rode the coattails of the virtualization trend with a laser focus on developing great products that just work. That's the tagline fast forward to 2021 and the team has surpassed the billion dollar mark in revenues and is transformed into a leading the, leading the number one independent pure play company for backup and data protection. Software company is expanding its tam extending from its on prem routes into cloud, cloud data backup containers and SAS data protection and with me to talk about its progress and how it thinks about the future of Bill Largent is the Ceo and chairman of VM and Jim Krueger. The CMO at the company. Gentlemen welcome, Great to see you again. >>Hey, great to see you again. Dave. >>Thank you, Dave, Great to be here. >>It's great, great introduction but I appreciate that set up >>following you guys for a long time but you know, you don't sit still so give us the business update. I mean you guys are cranking you just put out a press release on your progress. You're pretty transparent for a private company. We love that. But give us the update bill. >>Yeah, thanks very much. I'll do that really. We're pretty excited about the press release. We said Q one how we're 25% up air our growth, we've made a great transition with our team um super strong on our performance, our economic performance. We like being transparent were transparent with Clearly our owners now insight venture partners and that's been a big transaction that occurred in the last 15, 14 months. And we're we're transparent with our customers, our partners, our distributors, so and our vendors. So we're just that way we like to make sure we're good partners with all those along the line and we care quite a bit about him. So I think that transparency helps us with our customer base and where we're going with our product and what we've had to offer. We're now over 4500, employees strong around the globe. 40 plus countries operating uh, well, in all those jurisdictions with the covid being coming out of, I would say, coming out of hopefully coming out of the rough time period from from the geographical geopolitical covid issues. So we believe we've done extremely well through then businesses continued to grow for us. So we're really excited about where things are, insight has done a great job and helping us advance our business and thinking about looking at new tams to go after. And we're pretty excited about it. So. Well >>I had 13 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for a company of of of your age and size is is very impressive. You don't see that often. >>Yeah we've we work pretty hard at that. It's I'd say we really focus on that year to year even though our quarters just keep popping along very nicely for us. You know, starting back in oh six, having been around since then we did start at absolute zero. We didn't have a didn't have a bit in the bank at that time. Uh Now it's a whole different story with our second year over a billion dollars. And when you look at A. T. C. V. Kind of calculation and us transforming into an A. R. R. A. Heavy perpetual base. So we've transitioned with new product offering being all subscription base. So that's uh that's making us um making us even more competitive than than we have been passed. >>I like how you couch that because you don't want to be trapped into that, you know, the quarterly shot clock, but still it's quite impressive performance. And with the A. R. R. That sort of smooth things out, jim I want to ask you about vermin again, virtual this year, second year in a row. Uh You know, it's been it's been frustrating because we can't be face to face, but well, what have you learned about the sort of virtual events? How is it performed for you? Do you see that continuing in some way, shape or form when you get back to physical? How are you thinking about that? >>Yeah, we had, we had two major virtual events last year. And so to your point, we we did learn a lot in terms of what works, what doesn't work, and we've continued to refine refine the plans. Uh One thing that it does is it just really opens the doors for a much broader audience. Typically we get about 2000 ISH people Uh that attend in person for vermin. Uh and uh and last year we had actually about 28,000 people representing 150 countries that registered for the event, and we had over 11,000 that actually attended. Uh and the engagement was, was really good and we, we were our scores in terms of satisfaction, we're, you know, four plus out of five. And so I think we did a pretty good job, but we continue to learn one of the things that you need to do is you need to sort of shorten the agenda because the attention span is not not very long. So all of our sessions are 30 minutes or less and we've actually uh put it over two days where it's about 3.5 hours each day, so we try to keep it a little bit lighter. We still have 30 different breakout sessions. We have keynotes, um, uh, some great speakers that are coming, some great customers that are coming, but you have to integrate some fun, some incentives, things of that sort. So we've been creating a lot of buzz leading up to Vermont with um, a lot of social activity. We have some some new uh, VM Nike kicks that people can win, which has generated a lot of excitement uh, and uh, and we'll be doing a lot of incentives and prizes and things as a part of the event. Uh, so, so that that's a key learning that we, we, we know that people love and just creates a lot of us in addition to of course the great content >>VM has good swag too, is an analyst. I always appreciate that VM and pure storage as you guys are at the top of the living >>area and a >>big thanks for that. But I gotta ask you, so one of the hard parts because you guys are all channel, 100% channel have been from day zero. That's some, that's gotta be tough because we've been in this business a long time doing hybrid for a long time and the sellers love to be belly to belly. They never wanted sort of hybrid. So it's gotta be tougher for the partners as well who are big channel. So how do you integrate the partners? What can we expect, you know, in these types of things going forward? >>Yeah. So I can start with just with the man bill and then we can talk a little bit more, but for the moment we actually have a really strong partner registration, so partners are attending Vermont as well, we have separate sort of cordoned off content specifically for our partners, so they're definitely a key part of that. We have 38 uh sponsors uh that uh you know a part of our ecosystem uh and uh so you know, partners kind of overall are a really key part of iman in addition to to customers attending as well. Uh So that's one way that we continue to connect with with our partners >>bill, that's part of the tam expansion, obviously it's leverage. Right? >>Absolutely. It is and you know, we'll stay with that two tier distribution system that we have affected with those partners and distributors as to how we work through them. Uh Partners are absolutely key key for us all around the globe. Different kinds of partners in the U. S. A rather large wind sell a lot of small ones uh same in the media and same in A P. J. So we'll keep that network going. Why? Because they're they're an extension of the VM arm of our internal sales group that numbers well over 2000 of our people that focus on the selling. But the partners are key. They've adapted nicely I believe, to a lot of virtual events like we're going through now and they to sound like they're as excited as we are about getting things back in uh in person. >>So I always been fascinated by tam expansion. It's part of the Ceos job you have. You know, I love the fact that that incite the board promoted from within somebody. They tapped a Ceo who knew the business. You have to do a reset your at $5 billion Mantra. And so when you're thinking about your tam expansion, cast an acquisition cloud, uh, you guys have been into the SAS backup world for for a bit now it's starting to produce. How are you thinking about the future and opportunities ahead. >>We've got great opportunities with cast and so into the cooper Nettie space. That's a huge uh, market expansion for us in an evolving marketplace. So our goal was, let's be that thought leader. Let's get the best technology that's out there and then you'll see us execute really well. This on the sales side. This uh, this year also 2021 here and beyond the public cloud. Peace with azure with aws with our Google offering. So we're continuing to bring those up the up to up to speed in a sense of size because there's this tremendous future there, that's a big expansion of our team. Also I think Jim might talk a little bit about jumping into that security space a little bit. That is going to be big, It's big for us, It's a selling um selling feature that I think has come a long way. So it is about expanding that tam and our focus is always long term. It is, yeah, evaluation is important, but more important is that, you know, that long term customer service uh meaning new products for them like Office 3 65 that we brought out that has had tremendous growth for us. Uh so we're really excited about the growth, but again, our focus is on for that customer over the long term. It's uh it's years out, it's not the quarters and it's not about that valuation, it's really about how we keep them going in their business. >>So jim talk about that positioning, I mean, you're not a security company, you're not like building firewalls and and perimeters and so forth. But the notion of security and data protection plays in there. I mean, you think about these ransomware attacks, if I can actually recover from a ransomware attack, I got way more leverage and you're part of that recovery process. So those lines are blurring. How do you think about it? >>Yeah, that's that's definitely a key benefit that our solution provides in terms of protection from that. Uh And as we've had new releases into the market v 10 last year, the 11 this year, we've continued to up the ante relative to the protection from ransomware that's obviously a hot topic in the marketplace. And uh, and and we have some some great differentiators that we brought to market. And I think that that's part of why we're seeing the, you know, the strong growth, Uh, B 11, you know, Focus on ransomware, but over 200 new features and capabilities that we have brought to market to make it easier for our customers. We have kind of three key pillars around simplicity, flexibility, reliability, uh, and also just super powerful with the features and capabilities that we bring the market. So, uh, so we're seeing great traction there. Uh, and uh, and that's definitely an area that we're focused on. Uh, as again, we're not a security company, but we do protect from that. And some of the capabilities, you know, give you, if you do run into that situation, the capability to recover quickly and not have to pay a ransom And keep your business running, which is a key focus for us across all of our 400,000 plus customers. >>What about cloud? Cloud is a lot of people, you know, traditionally on prem vendors, they're like threatened by cloud. But clouds a gift for wien I mean it's like the internet is a gift is this big platform that's been built out, you can build on top of it. So how are you guys thinking about the cloud opportunity and the SAS data protection? >>Yeah, we want to go and >>Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, Jim. Yeah, it is a tremendous market opportunity for us. We've evolved as, you know, get back to our roots and 06, it was about um protecting those virtual workloads and we've evolved from there with evolved from there maintaining that that on print businesses is not going away. The public cloud businesses skyrocketed the private cloud business the same way. And we want to have products for all um all of those and the ability to move and move data's move, move workloads around, move those datas around, move that data around. So big piece for us, the casting piece, I keep getting back in how that might evolve with the SAs offering or not. Well, we'll tell over time period here as we work on that product roadmap. So, absolutely tremendous opportunity for us. >>Well, when you think about hybrid jim, I mean, the first thing that people say is for developers, containers, first thing you do is containerized the app and then you don't care where run anywhere right at once. Run it anywhere. That's a big opportunity. >>Yeah, so, so we're definitely focused on building a single platform for all environments. Uh So with the storage integration with the top three hyper scale ear's uh moving into kubernetes and containers, uh backup and protection. Uh So that that's a key part of our strategy. It's again to make it easy for customers To be able to manage all of their backup from one single console. Uh So so that's a key strategy and their own, you know, the research that we've done, I think, you know, due to Covid, we're actually seeing an increase in the move to the cloud, uh and we play in in in two key areas, ones with the hyper sailors and providing, you know, the backup and recovery within those environments, but then also with our service providers and as a service we're seeing really strong growth within that market and that ecosystem. So uh you know, working to to partner with them closely and continue to build that ecosystem and support them and their efforts to to uh to drive growth in the market as well. >>All right I'm gonna let you guys go the last question bill is so what's life like with insight? I know these guys are players. We've we've seen the moves they make is what's the future like? Is I. P. O. Still on the table? What can you tell us about life with insight? >>It's a great question. Well keep in mind we worked with insight in our prior entity uh starting in I think in 2002 we brought them in. So and our partner that's on our account has been with us since that time even though after we sold the business they were out of him. So uh No I'm really well they've been a big help their operations operationally efficiency, efficiently focused. I'd say they're helping us bring new ideas back to the M. And A activity back to your I. P. O. Question. I think that's an avenue for us. We clearly are pushing in that direction to get set up that way. What's it do for us? It gives us that bigger currency versus just cash. It gives you that stock currency to use on M. And A activity that you know I think you saw us do that with Kasten. Uh in the sense of acquiring M. And A. That's been different for vein. We build it from within that was a buy from outside. You'll see us do both both of those in the future. Very important I think uh you know without being too predictive I would say hopefully that's something you see in the I. P. O. Side that in the next 12 24 months a run like that. >>Well, Hey, uh, as an upside of observing the street wants growth, they want execution, they want consistency and you guys bring all those guys. Thanks so much for coming back in the Cube. Always a pleasure. And look forward to seeing you face to face. Hopefully before 22. >>It would be nice. >>All right. Thank you. Thanks. >>Dave. All right. >>You're welcome. Alright, keep it right, everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the Cubes, continuous coverage of them on 2021, the virtual edition, We're right back.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of VeeamON 2020. Brought to you by Veeam. >> Hi everybody, welcome back to VeeamON 2020. My name is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of VeeamON. This is the first time we've done Virtual VeeamON. We've got the Veeam power panel, Bill Largent, CEO, Jim Krueger, the CMOs, Danny Allen who's the CTO and Senior Vice President Product Strategy. All have been on earlier, guys great to see you. Thanks for coming back and digging out of the power panel. Appreciate it. >> Good. >> Thank you Dave. >> I'm glad to be here. >> Thank you Okay, I want to start off, Bill, get a business update. We've so I talk a lot about COVID. We can go back to that, but you guys, as a private company, you divulge more information, than most private companies. And we appreciate that as an independent but guys, if you would bring up that one slide. You shared this publicly a little earlier. I mean, you guys are a billion in revenue now, 21% annual recurring revenue growth, 375,000 customers, 97% year on year increase in your universal license bookings. Everything seems to be happening, Bill. What what can you tell us? >> Well we had a great first quarter also that we kicked off where we had our transaction with insight venture partners, which right in the middle of that quarter, at the end of it, we had that activity that went on, that one might think would have disrupted the business, it didn't, we had our plan for Q1, really excited about that. We announced our growth saw that here recently. We're really pumped into our second quarter. We managed to transition everybody out of offices. We probably had 75% of our workforce move. Yeah, they did that. We had a fantastic April. We're having a very good May. So it's just a great start with a great customer base. So I'm really excited about it. >> Yeah, you mentioned insight. We obviously covered that and reported on that. Insight, they like growth, not like the old school private equity, suck money out. They want growth, they want options down the road (mumbles) Maybe it's a rule of 40 rule, the type of company. So that's got to be exciting for you guys and your employees. >> Yeah, I think it's pretty exciting. Few of us have been around the insight team since 2002. So a very well known group of individuals to us. They are focused in the software space and know the infrastructure space really well. My triple that hour our lead on the insight team and his his staff is that's a move into, as we move into it, stepping up and moving into our very revenue focus versus part of a total contract. But nice resource to have for things that we might want to do in the future related acquisitions. So we're really excited about it. >> I mean, if I'm in VC right now, I'm looking at SaaS, I'm looking and it's software, I'm looking for companies that have an annual recurring revenue model I'm looking for adopting of products and those kinds of of KPI's and you guys fit that bill Maybe a larger size and obviously in the early stage startup but that's kind of the profile of the the company that you want to invest in 2020s, isn't it? >> Absolutely, and I'd also say it's the kind of company we want to invest in, in the future as we go forward to bring in new technologies and expand markets. Addressable market back to comments, we had discussions on, what's it look like in 2030? And it's like, okay, those are we're heading. >> So Danny, Pat Gelsinger is famous on theCUBE for saying that, look, if you don't ride the waves, can it become driftwood. So what are the mega trends that you guys are riding today and that you're seeing in the future? We'll keep you ahead of the pack. >> Well, we clearly talk a lot about cloud data management. So act two for us is not just moving from perpetual licensing to subscription and evolving with American at a business level. It's also at a technical level. And so we invested heavily, as we demoed earlier today, Veeam backup for Office 365 version 5. An important point act two for us is not just product. There's also product delivery. That's version 5 of a release of a product to that came out three years ago. So the backup for office 365, we showed you Veeam backup for AWS. And you saw from Anton as well supporting Google cloud storage and supporting all of the major cloud providers. So for us to not just ride the wave, but actually be ahead of everyone else it's to embrace cloud data management and give the customers what they really need. >> Well, I think you guys are in a unique position too. I mean, if you guys obviously sell on-prem, but if you're they're an on-prem infrastructure company, really living on box margins you can talk the cloud talk, but it's not necessarily a tailwind for you guys? So Danny, how is cloud, right how cloud is it tailwind for Veeam versus some of the other legacy players, >> Well, Veeam has always been, we always highlight simple, flexible, reliable, but one of the, the parts of flexible of course, is where it's being software defined. And we've been software defined from the very beginning. And if you're in a world where you have to go take a box, plug it into the data center and rack and stack it and be there physically. You're not going to survive in this type of environment. So being software defined help us, not only when the data center, but to help our customers as they go through that evolution. On-prem too, maybe just storing backups in the cloud, actually running the workloads in the cloud and protecting there. >> Well, so Jim I want to turn it to you sort of thinking about the Veeam brand. we talked earlier about how you guys have always punched above your weight, famous parties and so forth, but now billion dollars now entering a new era. It's ironic that we're now doing virtual events. So no big giant party this year, but I feel like, I mean, you guys are what, 14-year old company now, and kind of grown up you three and your colleagues are bringing you lots of adult supervision. How should we think about the VeeamON or Veeam brand going forward? >> Yeah, no, I think the Veeam brand is critically important because there's just such a strong affinity and connection with customers. And I think one of the challenges as you get larger and go from 1 billion to 2 billion, a lot of companies miss the beat relative to staying connected to their customers. And that's something that we're putting a tremendous amount of focus on that first slide that you flashed up no 91% customer satisfaction, a 75 net promoter score, which is three and a half times industry average. I think our key to success is not only bringing great products, the market, but looking at the holistic picture relative to supporting customers and customer satisfaction, which is a key driver of the company. well, it will help us to continue to build on the brands and have the best brand in the market. >> Well, what I want to come back to is the marketing whiz in the panel. I mean, you think about digital. We feel like the world is going to be one in digital in the next a decade. I take the pick the GNC example. And you think about just even a term like customer relationship management, we all use CRM systems. I'm not sure I want a relationship GNC, but I do know this, I want a good deal, right. If they're going to make me an offer, I'm going to look at that and these other brands, that's digital that is having infrastructure and data That's obviously protected to be able to offer that at the right time, for the right customer, so that they can take advantage of it and have the right candles. I wonder if you could talk about what you see as a marketing pro just in terms of digital and that customer intimacy. >> Yeah so I think it it's a multifaceted, I think one of the key things that again Veeam does that's different than other companies is that we, we have a direct connection with our customers. So in our head of product management sends out an update every Sunday, and it goes into quite a bit of detail around sort of how to deploy this, how to deploy that. And really creating a digital journey for the customer from a marketing perspective, because yeah, like within any situation, you don't want to talk to a salesperson right off the back because you know, they're going to try to sell you. So you want to do something investigation, you need the contents and information to help you move along that journey until you get to the point where, okay, now it's time, I've kind of narrowed it down and I need to talk to someone to give me some more information. So I look at one of the key differentiators of Veeam is that digital experience which I think from the founding of the company that Rattler put into place has carried us forward. And when we continue to put a lot of focus on that digital experience, which I think gives us definitely a leg up on the competition. >> So bill, you got to place bets as the CEO. I'm interested in where you're placing bets. I mean, you've made some pretty substantial investments in your partner network. You've got some big names partners that are okay, you're moving a lot of products through those guys, obviously your heritage as a company is steep. And technical development you are very successful sales organization, but sir, where are you placing your chips on the table these days? And maybe especially in the context of this pandemic, if anything changed in your thinking. >> Yeah, well the bets will always be placed on the product side of it. That's a big, so your products. You go partners and you go our employees and those are the big bets that will make, what are we doing on the partner side we're continuing pretty aggressive activity and making sure these partners have a simpler place as I've discussed before to do business with them. It's more challenging the larger we get. But yeah, we'll keep that focus on. The product offering has been a again, always go back to any of our taglines. It just works, put us in the lab, we're going to win. We're going to win that technical decision a process. And then we're putting it up pretty big bets on our employee base, we're all over the world 4,300. The I think the decisions we have, like a lot of companies have moving forward are going to be, where are you going to work from? You're going to work from that home office. So you're going to combine it back into the office or are you going to not, you're just going to yeah. Do you're going to go back the way things are. I don't think that's going to happen at all. So take bets will always be on bringing good product to market like technical decisions. >> So let's, let's talk to Andy about the product. I mean, you've I saying you've grown up, you've gone from yeah relatively narrow portfolio to now expanding a lot of different use cases, many several different clouds on-prem hybrid, et cetera. How do you ensure it, Danny, from product standpoint That you don't just get a, a collection of point product, but you actually have a platform that even, for instance, your licensing model very easily. support that notion, how do you ensure that more of a platform, if you will, then just the, a bunch of selection of product, >> The answer to that would be focused maniacal focus. So it's interesting that you brought up licensing. So one of the things that we're very focused on is making that licensing can move across all these different types of infrastructure. So the universal license allows you to do that. You can move a workload from physical to virtual, to cloud, to back the application services call with a single license. But we also do that product level too. One of the interesting things that we've been focused on is it's something internally, we call it the Veeam integration platform that enables you to have a central common control playing across the entire organization. But yet you can deploy in the need of environments that make the most sense. So if you think about what we showed you earlier today with beam backup rate AWS, you're running on an interface that you deploy out of the AWS marketplace, but that product actually integrate back into Veeam availability suite. So that's true of being backup for AWS, Roger being backup from Nutanix. Every time we add a new one capability platform, whether it's fast or virtual or cloud, we make sure that it's still cause that central connection to the main control plane. And that's why we call this five data management, because it gives you that data management cross all of these different infrastructures. It's clearly not easy to do, but the focus that we have good on this result, then our customers, ultimately, >> So I want to ask you guys about culture, Jim, I start with you, I mean, a lot of people, obviously story averted, or asking this theme, still going to have parties you got your two founders and sort of set good. Ratt would always be right there in the mix lap. Last one to leave very hard charging and that's kind of steep in the Veeam culture, but I'm interested in, and if there's been any sort of discernible change, as you get bigger and bigger, how you were able to maintain that culture, what are some of the things that you want to keep, and maybe some of the things that you want to evolve. >> Yeah, no great question. And I think culture is I'm a big believer. Yeah. That culture can really differentiate a company in the marketplace and I think themes culture in the past has really done that effectively. And I think that's it shows in the success of the company. So I definitely see it as as my job, along with the rest of the executive team to continue to, to carry that torch forward. one of the things that I learned coming to Veeam was, was really winning the hearts and minds of the customers that you're serving. And so that can be anything from a party being totally open to your customers, listening to your customers, I've given them different channels to give you a feedback and just being a company that's easy to do business with. I think it's critically important. And those are some of the key things from a cultural perspective that's how we want to carry forward. You mentioned car charging, absolutely being aggressive in the marketplace. but bringing solutions to market really hit the sweet spot Relative to customer need, I think is again, one of the cultural pieces and that maniacal focus on customer satisfaction, which is absolutely key. >> So well, I wonder Bill, if you could comment, maybe in this context part of your job of course, is an expansion traditionally been a European based company moving So the US I'm curious as to what effect that will have both culturally and on Tam as well. You're extremely successful in, in overseas. Oh, of course, so there's maybe even more penetration within the US and obviously throughout the call, we've certainly talked a lot about cloud, but maybe your thoughts on it. >> Okay, Well, thanks very much. Hopefully you see no impact on culture, in the sense of our move from a European headquarters to a US headquarters. We definitely felt it important to bring it a us headquarters in place. We now have moved all us shareholders. our culture is really the built on core values that we develop back in 2012, that really the everything else branches off of innovate and iterate it's about everybody sells. We clearly add that yeah. A goal for everyone in the company and the fact that we also want to win. So we'll fight hard to win bringing it to the US okay. A lot of our competitors are based in the US we think we can even though we've got great numbers against all our competitors, we'll even bring the fight much harder. Now that we're in the United States as a headquarter place, change nothing else internationally, globally. >> So Danny, every I'll five or seven years or so Gartner or IDC or whomever without a service is that we just did a survey that yeah. X percent of the customers are going to rethink their backup strategies in the next 24 months. You see that literally every half a decade. so, well what's, what's the driving that now. I mean, certainly cloud is it which factor edge we're going to be talking about the edge for the how many years, and then, and it's really going to start to drive revenue at some point kind of like the cloud was 10 years ago. but so talk about how you guys sort of, are they relevant conversation and what customers should be thinking about in terms of those transitions? >> Well every customer says I'm going to reevaluate my backup solution every five or seven years, but the reality is what's happened. Yeah. Industry itself goes through transition. So we go from physical to virtual and as they go to virtual, for example, they say, Hey, I can't use my legacy providers. So I'm going to choose a new one. They choose Veeam. And then of course, we go to cloud and we're going to go to containers and we're going to go to edge. And every time he goes through those iterations, there is an opportunity for the next generation of platform to emerge. And so beam's focus here is to make sure that we're ahead of those trends to make sure we're thinking ahead of our customers. So right now, for example I spent an in order to in amount of time thinking about cloud and containers so that when the customer gets there, when they get the edge, when they get do all of these things, but they have a data management platform that protects them. And step one is always going to be the same. I always say the step one for every iteration of infrastructure is just ingest the data because you need to protect it. It's only after you protected and begin to manage it, be integrated into the business. Can you be into unleashed, but we go through this cycle over and over again. And ultimately it's the, the vendor, it's the partner that is most trusted, that wins as, as Jim alluded to our NPS scores for themselves, our customer base, right, sorry self our intimacy with the customers. Great. Awesome. So as long as we keep that close connection, then we think we're well positioned to the lead as we go through the next iteration of infrastructure. Okay. Let's talk about the competition, Danny. >> Let's stay with you. Okay. You've got some, well-funded not even startups anymore. Okay. Companies that are kind of going after the base, you've got a huge install base okay Of legacy companies. I mean, I think it's easier for, for some of those guys to attack sort of a box space, the solution, you guys are more software, but I'm sort of interested in take Danny on why the shiny new toys and that have obviously have momentum in the marketplace. >> Yeah, the shiny new toys, they come out with a solution that is very packaged up and black box. You can't actually customize it very much for the user need. And that's, we don't believe that that's going to work in the longterm. And the reason I say that, okay, the pandemic we're in, if you can't go into the data center to rack and stack a box, if you can't actually working with the infrastructure that's already in place, then you're not positioned to work well in the longterm. And, and so we have this unfair advantage we've been around for over a decade. We integrate with over 45 different storage vendors. That's not including the wild vendors all of our partners. And so we do have an unfair advantage with a history of all of these integrations, but that flexibility is really what our customers need. They don't want to be law into the data center. They don't know two, three years from now, their strategy might change. They might say, take the workload, moving to the cloud. And so if your whole focus is on selling your customers , something that I used them to their data center, that in itself is a challenge. And being software defined we're well positioned to make future for any evolutions that happened in America. Okay. So we're in a good place. I'm well, knock on wood, but I think we're going to keep going. >> Yeah. That's an interesting answer. Not one that I expected, but it's to make sense in the context with a QA we had with Andy Jassy a while ago. I was Kind of pushing them on the zillion APIs. And he basically had a similar answer. Obviously cloud services is different, but essentially saying, we don't know where the market's going. So we want to have very granular role at You're kind of a primitive level so that we have that flexibility and maybe there's a trade off sometimes just in terms of what you called out of the box, but it's a very handy Jessie like answer, it sort of strikes me. >> Well, it's certainly true that the customers don't know a year from now they've been using that hardware, but a year from now two years from now, we run into another market impediment. They might want that money back. They might want, you might want flexibility to expand into it, different geography or take advantage of the elasticity of the cloud and buying a piece of hardware. Just the very fact that you buy hardware that essentially ties you into that hardware, at least three years, probably being software defined, you can continue to reuse and leverage all the assets that you've already had committing to a lock-in period of time. >> So from a, from a marketing standpoint, Jim strategy, brand customer intimacy, what you're in. >> Well, Dan, you already talked a little bit about it in terms of kind of the, the three cornerstones, of how we think our simplicity, flexibility, and reliability. And as bill talked about when we get into now into a customer, and if they're testing us out trial and us out nine times out of 10, we're going to win because they see those three key things and those three key things we hear on a daily basis from our customers and how important that is. So we continue to build out on each of those the challenges, keeping it simple. And that's an area that we have to continue to focus on. but I think those are the key differentiators for us going forward. I think the flexibility piece is the integration with all the storage, our ecosystem of partners. Well, we have I think close to 40 partners that are sponsoring the Amman here. so that's a, that's a key differentiator because we work with basically everybody we're agnostic. and again, just easy to do business with an, a true partner. >> I got it. I got one more question for Danny, and then I want to ask bill to close, but okay. Guys, feel free to chime in on this one as well. But some of the things we haven't talked about about money , Danny containers, protecting containers the edge these are all sort of emerging opportunities. I know you've got some, yes, on the container side, the edge is early days. There's whole new models of computing potentially a lot of data going to be, we created, okay. Unclear how much is going to have to be persistent, but certainly would that much data the IDC forecasts, a lot of it's going to have to be. So your thoughts on some of those other emerging trends that we haven't talked. >> Well, the key to this segment of America are our partners Trust us. We're thinking about this ahead of when they will actually need it. And you're right. I think we're early days in containers. I think we're early days in edge. We don't know we have a partner ducks unlimited where they're storing data for 60 years. Use it from IOT sensors, keep it for 60 years because they don't know in the future, if that data is going to be relevant. And so our focus is to make sure that we're ahead of our customer base in terms of thinking of it, and then making sure that our platform supports what they need as they need it. You want to be careful about going too far in advance. Sometimes in the industry you hear about people who are talking about magic 60, Dustin's solving Crazy problems that our customers don't actually have. We're very pragmatic. We want to make sure that problems that we're addressing that are platform fundamentally addresses where they are today. And then also be in those discussions with them about where they're going to be tomorrow. >> Well, maybe some of that magic pixie dust go into the COVID vaccine. That would be good. They'll bring us home. So the virtual forklifts are breaking down, came 20, 20. What are the big takeaways from Europe? Your first VeeamON as CEO, but what are the big takeaways as the virtual trucks are pulling away? >> Yeah. Thanks very much for asking that question. We you know, we did do our first VM on, in 2014, and I can still remember when Ratner came to, I mean, let's do this. And it's like, Oh, you've got it. Excuse me. This is going to cost a fortune. So why would we ever end? And then he's obviously a right. It continues to be right. So I hate the story about Veeam is gross. And when you're growing, you got funds available. People interested you to innovate. You mentioned containers. Danny did also at Kubernetes and we've got our forensic cast and that are here with us. And yeah, those are all important relationships and will continue to develop relationships and . But why Veeam we've supported, we've got great customers for it. We have a gross engine, we're going to continue that we don't plan on being comfortable with where we are. We'll continue to enter in, go after it. Additional Tam, but we'll also take care of that core base we came from. So I'm really excited about, we had a lot of yep. A lot of great breakout sessions. I keep right. Okay. K was on, there was a lot of great ones. I did like the one though. And it was like, fall in love with tape all over again. So when I first saw that they brought it, I went running from my age, correct tapes and my John Fogarty NCCR I've found one. so had to get readjusted to not. So in any event, I do think, Nope. We like to have a lot of fun. You'll see that we get back See where we go as far as the virtual versus an onsite in the future, we landing on site when, and if so, you'll, and you're there you'll, you will be at the party. >> Yeah, indeed. And I, but I do think there's going to be some learnings that we carry forward and I think for awhile and maybe even perfect quite a long time, there'll be some kind of hybrid going on with the seem to live in a hybrid world. Guys thanks so much for coming to theCUBE and making this a successful power panel. It was really a pleasure having you. >> Great. >> Thanks for having me. >> Thanks. >> Thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. Keep it right here. There are tenuous coverage, the VeeamON 2020, right back. (slow instrumental music)

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host David on tape hi everybody welcome to this cube conversation I'm Dave Volante and you're cloud and cloud migrations are a major challenge for customers they move things into the cloud and variably they've got things that they want to maintain on Prem they've got to figure out what to move how to move it how to maintain performance and how to maintain the experience from on Prem into the cloud rate Krueger's here is a solution architect at net scout rate thanks for coming on nice to be here thank you so tell us a little bit about nesco yeah I mean net sky I mean primarily it helps you provide the visibility required to protect your digital digital business transformation we give you availability information performance information and security insights into what's going on in your environment we do this for 90% of the fortune 500 we do this for 95% of service provider so we're kind of Carrio class service provider and enterprise sophistication and we basically give you that visibility without borders and the visibility without borders is all about saying wherever you deploy your application whether it's being on Prem in your private data center software-defined data center or West en or whatever it might be or whether you migrate some or all of that into the public cloud AWS or as your we give you that same visibility same metrics wherever you host your application even in this hybrid world or this multi cloud world of today okay so top level one of those discussions like you heard my sort of intro and some of the challenges but what a customer is telling you about their cloud migrations well ok that's interesting so so that's kind of been around for eight years we're in like as I said thousands of customers and and these guys have been tasked they've been tasked with going to the cloud for business agility reasons and the idea of business agility is can you sort of create new services quicker new business initiatives new projects new application new ways that customers can we communicate with the business and they it's all about wrapping this and delivering these applications very quickly so the guys that we're talking to us said are being our task to move it to the cloud for various reasons it's not necessarily cost reasons as well it's LT and the the view is of the businesses the cloud will give them that agility maybe easier to manage maybe it's quicker to deploy applications quickly and all that sort of thing so they mean tasks to do that and that's a challenge because you know providing that visibility on premon in the cloud has been historically true well the other thing about the cloud is it's it's easy to test you know you test things you experiment you fail fast try the next one and it's relatively inexpensive to do that versus you know buying infrastructure but now so you see that but so talk a little bit more about some of the the real challenges that customers are facing you know when they start that migration as I said before they've got on-prem they've got workloads in the cloud they want a consistent experience but what are some of the problems yeah I mean yeah yeah yeah that's that shadow IT if you thought it has been a big problem but that's business utility isn't it okay because it's taken so long to deploy stuff on Prem ok to take four days before I have a new host ready for you to do that application so no wonder they've done that shadow whitey right but but anyway okay so on task to migrate this application so okay so I got to understand what that application looks like what are the components what it's what is it talking to because if I miss something right if I don't migrate all the components and don't forget these application it's not just one server or one component of the application it's maybe ten components might be whatever it is I need to know what that is and I can't just go to the documentation team to actually see all the protocols it's talking to all the dependencies whether it's one app tier talking to a database tier or whatever it might be the documentation just doesn't exist and the developers who developed that application no longer are part of the company they've long gone if ever they wrote any documentation so to understand right what you need to migrate is one of the biggest challenges and as it happens it's one of the challenges that we can help in netscape well this is a huge problem because you mentioned dependencies so if as you say an application talking to a database and maybe an ancillary application downstream those are going to affect business processes and unless you understand those dependencies if you effect one it's going to have a ripple effect on others and it could affect the business process so so that is a critical problem okay well so how do you nets go solve that problem I mean I have a question how does the industry generally solve it and I want to understand how you're different yeah okay so there's a couple of problems there is what one is understanding the components the dependencies and then one is understanding the performance so you can migrate successfully and all that sort of thing yeah so the industry typically will actually try and use some rudimentary network data to try and take a look at one application communicating to another and trying to get that from some devices various devices around the network because what they'll try to do to do that looking for connections is ok looking for connections and how they're doing that and in terms of performance they're they're resorting to looking at the different logs or the different infrastructure information like CPU utilization or those sort of things or developers are looking at instrumenting code into the applications which give them that performance information trouble with those they only see what the developers put into them rather than the whole picture of all those dependencies so while a bespoke data a lot of bespoke data trying to bring that together and come up with a conclusion that they this is all the components and this is how it's performing it is it's tricky ok so how do you guys do so yeah ok so as you know we use the network the wire data in order to understand what's going on so think about it if an application if I'm talking to my CRM application I might have a web browser it's talking to a web server talking to an app server to talking to a micro survey database or whatever it might be but all of those are interactions in a network different protocols HTTP HWS database Active Directory DNS so because we look at the network we can see it all so we can see all the traffic on the network we can see how things are communicating in reality so you don't necessarily need the documentation because we're documenting what's going on right now and that's kind of where we really score big in terms of understanding those dependencies and it's the it's the secret sauce that we've always known about the that that net Scout has your ability to to probe the network your your layer that analyzes that data the architecture that you've created right that's your IT yeah that's our secret sauce so we translate why data trauma is why data there's a lot of it and it's hard to interpret so that's one thing so we we've cured that problem by creating a patented technology called ASI adaptive service intelligent which translates that wire data into meaningful key performance metrics so you name the application it's all the applications going on your network translate them into performance metrics let's say application performance metrics and then differentiating that's a application latency from Network latency so we can see whether it was a network problem slowing things down or the application server slowing things down but also errors we can see all of that in that that wire data so that's that next layer up and then we have the analytics platform which we call ingenious one which actually takes that metadata and then allows us to display okay it's service dependency map so this is how your application is communicating all the nooks and cranny's the things that you didn't expect and not only does it do the dependency it does the performance as well the metadata oh it always comes back to the metadata one of the challenges that customers tell us they have is just creating the experience between on Prem and cloud you know the so called hybrid a lot of times it's it's different and they want to take that cloud experience and bring it to wherever they are cloud a cloud be on Prem are you able to maintain that experience in in this hybrid model yeah so to multi cloud or or not to multi class yeah no that's the beauty of number one why data and what we do why data is everywhere ok so if your applications communicate communicating in the cloud it's still communicating over IP and so we can actually instrument into the cloud collecting that wire data and then doing the same analytics asi in the same taking the same meta data and actually bring together a view of now the dependencies across the multi-cloud so whatever the cloud were able to get at that wire data and translate it into a si all uniform it's the same metrics okay so let's say we're out in a bar and you meet me and I'm an IT guy and I start chatting and I say hey I got this I'm doing this big project I'm really you know get this important it's got visibility at the board level and we're moving to the cloud and it gets your attention say whoo that's interesting and you start asking me to what advice would you would you give me I'm open to that okay obviously it's a talk to Nets character but the important thing is is this is that the question is that I've got a migrate this to the cloud and all that something and it's like sort of quite scary because I don't necessarily understand the cloud I don't realize that it's either the same or it's it's it's it's different or how its performing and it's I'm losing that visibility so you want to give that guy confidence you also want to give that guy the ability to say okay I understand the cloud and when things aren't the cloud I can continue to monitor it because that's after all the important thing so we've given them that confidence by saying hey we can instrument that application when it goes to the cloud and we can instrument beforehand so it goes it goes in the view understand what you're going to migrate all the components because you don't want to miss something migrate it and still have that visibility when it goes into the cloud we can give you that we give you this is interesting we give you access to that wire data when there are no wires that's to say the magic of nets carrots because we can instrument inside the workloads and get access to the traffic that's going in and out of those virtual machines those ec2 instances those virtual machines in in different clouds get access to that wire data and translate it into those key performance metrics and that's unique to Nets code like how do you do that well okay so the ASI is unique and the our agent technology is also unique to us to actually translate in the virtual machine in the cloud that wire data into metrics and then doing that all on the workload itself is very powerful if we can't instrument in the workload then there's another solution as well to get access to that wire data and that's what recently people like Amazon web services and as you I have announced the ability to tap in to that traffic so as you offer V tap which allows you to copy packets from VM to a destination which would be one of our probe technologies in the cloud Amazon have V PC traffic mirroring to actually get access to that data as well and we do the same thing the point is whether their workloads in the cloud workloads in the private cloud or the data center it's the same metrics and we get that visibility end-to-end visibility is the key ray thanks so much for coming on the cube and explaining so that your approach to a cloud and multi clouds great have you thank you very much you're welcome Eric thanks for watching everybody this is Dave Volante thanks for watching this cubed conversation [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from San Juan, Puerto Rico. It's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Unbound. Brought to you by Blockchain Industries. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to our exclusive coverage of, in Puerto, Rico for Blockchain Unbound. This is the industry conference room. People around the world from Silicon Valley, New York, and around the glove, coming to Puerto, Rico to talk about Blockchain decentralized internet cryptocurrency and really the future of society and global economic value creation of course our continuing coverage is focusing La Sierra for 2018. Our next guest is Mark Jeffery, CEO and Co-Founder of a company called Guardian Circle. Welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So you guys are doing something really interesting, so we, first of all, we like to geek out, as Fred say, "We're alpha-geeks." But we love IoT, cloud computing. You're doing something really interesting right now with Blockchain and this new decentralized internet around something of a critical infrastructure nature. Take a minute to talk about Guardian Circle's product, the coin, token that you're doing, and what it all means. >> So, Guardium is the token, the company's called Guardian Circle. Together they comprise global decentralized emergency response. So, six billion people on earth have no 911, There's just no magic number you can call, right? So hold that in your mind for a second. The other one billion of us, we do have 911, but it's not very good, it hasn't been really updated since the 60's. If you call 911 and if you're lucky enough to not get a busy signal, they have no idea where you are. Your location information is not transmitted. Which Uber can find you more easily than 911. Which is just insane, but that is the way it is. So, nevermind, so throw all that out >> So 911 is broken? 911 is broken. >> Yep If you have it, it's broken, and most people don't have it, so throw the whole thing out the window, let's start over. What would we build today? The way the world should work is whenever you're in trouble, no matter where you are on the globe, all you should have to do is press a button, that button sends an alert up to the Cloud, the Cloud looks down and sees what people and resources are already nearby, and then activates, coordinates, pushes all that help to you as quickly as possible. So, ten people in three minutes. That's what were, that's our-- >> So a couple things going on. So to me when you say, what should we start from scratch, put in my little operating system design network solutions add on, all kind of rolled into one as a stable, fault-tolerant, resilient, robust, always on network. >> Yes. >> Database that is fully interoperable and updated in real time of every number, every location, every persons capability to understand the discovery and resolution of a number. >> Yeah, so >> So that sounds like the internet. That sounds like the internet. >> (laughs) Well that's a little bit, probably further than we're going right now, but yes. Ultimately, you're correct. That would be the ultimate-- >> So no legacy baggage, 1960's Telco. >> No >> We're talking about immobile, in Africa for instance, there's more mobile penetration than anything else. That's what they got. >> Yes. >> So every country is their own sovereign kind of architecture? >> Yes >> Are you guys looking at it from a global perspective or regional? >> Global, so we think that, I mean, this is, this thing should be mobile native, location aware, and the alert should go out to multiple parties. And the phone number is your identifier in this system, but it's effectively an IP based system, really, so you're right. We have to balance that against privacies, so you get to decide who is on your alert grid, right? So you have to emphatically say, yes my friends, family and neighbors, and the subscription services, and if available, these official services. >> So Blockchain can solve the immutability privacy issue? >> Yes. >> The decentralized nature of network effect is a dynamic that people look for in good deals or good architecture. That's in place. >> Yes. >> People have a social graph, interest graphs connections. So the analog world is going digital. I mean, the old days was, is there a doctor in the house? But you were limited by how far you could yell. >> Right. >> So here you're saying literally, if you connect properly, the users in charge are their, their data. >> Yeah. >> They can dictate what they want to connect to, where, is that kind of how it works, is it peer to peer? >> Yeah, it's sort of peer to peer. I mean, a lot of people think, a lot of people mishear me a little bit and think that when you press that button, the alert goes out to everybody that's nearby, right? So total strangers that may or may not be trustworthy are suddenly coming, that's not what I'm saying. That is not what we're doing because we don't want to accidentally summon Jack the Ripper, like that's, you don't want to make a bad situation worse, right? So, you explicitly invite people into your protection grid, we call them guardians, hence, Guardian Circle, that would be your guardian circle. And you can have an unlimited number of them, so six, 6000, however many friends you have. Then we will also feature paid subscription services where you will be able to subscribe to, like, your local EMT collective, or your local license and bonded arms security, or if you're in a remote corner of the world, you could subscribe to the guy with a truck, who could run you down the mountain, right? When you're having medical problems. So it's going to vary depending on where you are in the world. We're also working with the Women's Safety Xprize, we're a partner, we're the backend of that prize. Which is an IoT device contest to make a panic button device, right? So when you push the panic button, what happens? It goes into Guardian Circle. >> So how does token economics fit into this? So I'm getting why it's tokenizable, How does it work mechanically? Do I buy tokens for safety? Is it like, I mean, take us through some of the use cases. >> Yeah sure, so there's five different ways in which we use the token. The first one is, obviously, to create the, to buy emergency response subscriptions. Now we're going to allow you, or provide a way for you to, as a consumer, just swipe your credit card in the app, and in the background you'll be purchase Guardium tokens, right? And it'll re-up every month if you don't have enough in, it'll be that sort of thing. So you might not even really be conscious of the fact that you're using cryptocurrency. If you are, there's a wallet that'll allow you to just use the cryptocurrency manually, the way you do any, any right now, right? >> And. >> So there's that. >> Okay so continue. >> Yep, the second thing we're going to do, we think that giving will be a big behavior in our universe, so you're going to be able to send Guardium directly to a beneficiary in the developing world. And what's cool about that is it doesn't go through a governments, a bank, or an organization. So remember Red Cross in Haiti? Can't happen here, and we're going to go even further than that, down the road, you're going to be able to track every dollar that you donated as easily as a FedEx, right? >> So you are creating a direct relationship between people who might want to help people and then a direct access for resources for the user. >> Correct. >> And so that's the primary, kind of a two >> That's one major flywheel. >> major flywheels going on. >> Just like people sponsor a child, safety is one of the biggest problems in the world. In fact, some people say, this guy named, Greg Hahn, who says it's the number one problem in the world that all other problems flow from the fact that people in the developing world aren't safe. Why don't they have water? Cause they're not safe. Why don't they have education? Cause they're not safe. Lawlessness has to be solved first. >> Trust is a huge part of this too. >> Yeah. >> So how do I set this up, where are you guys in the system, is there a product up and running, how do people get involved with your project? Take a minute to share that. >> Sure, so we have apps released today and they're distributed world-wide on IOS, Android, and Alexa. We also have an open API that lets anyone plug any alert device into our grid, obviously we have to, we want to know who you are first, but basically everyone is welcome. And so, and then our token sales site is at Guardium, Guardium.co. >> G, Guard, ium, Guardium. >> Yes, Guardium. >> And then Guardian Circle? >> Correct. >> Guardium with the m and the end of the token. What's the plan, what are you guys, how much have you raised, what's the story? Yeah, so we're selling ten million dollars worth of tokens, which represents 30% overall, 33% overall. We have a 100 million tokens in the sys, that, that's it, that will ever be distributed. It's on the NEO Blockchain, so we are, we are, we're sort of different from a lot of other folks. We're one of the very first western, we're not the first but we're one of the firsts. >> NEO has a good reputation of high performance. >> Yes >> Is that one of the considerations you had for them? >> Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, we deal in emergencies, so our tolerance for things like CryptoKitty swamping the network is very low. So yeah, so we liked what NEO had to say in a lot of ways because of that. >> I interviewed the CryptoKitties at Polycon, interesting story. It's a Pokemon moment for the internet stare. Well congratulations Mark, what's next for you guys, get through the sale, how's the team makeup look, what's going on with the company? >> Yeah, get through, I mean, definitely get through the sale is the biggest thing right now. We're a small team of, like about five people, plus some contractors. The next big thing that we have on our agenda is we're going out to India in four weeks to actually test the Xprize IoT panic button devices on the streets of Mumbai, so Guardian Circle plus device. >> Intense environment a lot of people there. >> Yeah. >> So let's talk about you. What is your background that got you here, or was there an itch you were scratching? Why this time, also the way to attract a lot of alph entrepreneurs, this is a disruptive time, but why Mark Jeffrey's, why now, why Guradian Circle, what's the passion behind it? >> So, well I started life as an engineer, but I won't bore you with all my adventures up until this moment. But in 2013, I became very interested in Bitcoin, wrote a book called, Bitcoin Explained Simply. Got the book, got the little crazy thoughts in my head. >> You're an author, speaker >> Right, same thing. >> distinguished influencer. (laughs) >> So that was sort of how that side began. In 2014, I basically, my girlfriend at the time had a stroke, she's fine, but at the time she was all alone. And she was on the floor of her garage, and I took her to the hospital, brought her back, and afterwards, I realized, she was alone for about a half an hour, if this had been a real stroke, this could have been very serious, she could have died, she could have been paralyzed. And she was drowning in help, there were about seven people who were either driving by or nearby while this was going on, within a 1000 yards. And she had no way to get to them. >> Yeah, yeah, a personal example of what you're doing. >> And I also realized, the other component was, all the help, I didn't know six, five of the other six people, they're her friends, they're not mine. But during her emergency, all of us need to be sharing location and in communication with each other immediately. And the importance of that just cannot be overstated in emergencies, seconds count. And so putting instant communications so that we can coordinate a response is the second-half of the problem. I initially did not intend to build an app. I went looking for this app and what I discovered was there are a ton of panic button apps, but all of them neglected solving the second-half of the problem, which is organizing the response. >> Yeah. >> And getting people on, in the same-- >> Mobilizing resources. >> Yeah, getting everyone into a war room without requiring them to know each other ahead of time, that was the big thing, no one had thought of that, so. >> It's like rolling up services when you need it instantly. It's like a compiler. >> It's at hawk services. >> You know, compile everything >> Yes, exactly. >> at real time assembly. >> Real time assembly, yeah >> Operating system. (laughs) >> that's exactly, it's great. That's actually a really good way to put it, yeah. >> No, but this is also pretty important, so it was a great personal example, thanks for sharing that personal story. But you know, there's a avalanches, whether you're a skier, it's people who go rock climbing, there's all kinds of use cases where a mountain biker is missing, all kinds of-- >> Remote locations are really big ones. >> I'm scuba diving, where are people, where were they last? So a lot of this is, are location based, and no one knows what the situation is, so the alerting is only one step to the value chain. >> It is, but I think, sorry you have a question. >> No, no, I was going to ask you, where does it go from there? >> Well I think, I think there are a lot of, I think safety check-ins, I think there's other things that we can do, but the one thing that, the one lesson that I've seen again, and again, and again, and again is that the companies that fail invariably, oh, the companies that don't focus always fail. So you got to pick one thing and be the best in the world at that one thing. And the emergency situation is our one thing, and that's big enough. >> Well, I think you have a great opportunity and we'll splint through the, as the evolution of this market grows, it's kind of a moving train, but the value promises is legit. I was talking to Fred Krueger, your friend and colleague in the business, it's a marketplace of these days, so it's money and marketplaces, in your case it's safety, marketplace. I could envision a day with your services where I publish and subscribe to services, I got in a catalog. >> Yes. >> Hey, I know my risks, everyone knows what they do in vanity, or risk factors whether you're jumping out of an airplane, or double black diamond skier. I would love to go to Lake Tahoe, or a mountain, or a place like this, and saying, I'm going to take some chances, here's what I'm going to subscribe to. >> (laughs) You're going to have to subscribe to some extra tokens while you're there. >> I would use Guardium. It could be more, I'm just brainstorming, thinking out loud, but I mean, that's the kind of web services framework you could bring. >> That's exactly right. >> Is that they way you guys are thinking about it? >> I do, I do, I'm so focused on this sort of food and shelter stage of our life right now. >> Yeah, get an ICO done. So yeah, we've got tons of all those ideas written done but we're not quite there yet, but when we get there, great ideas, absolutely. >> Well the use cases are changing because the peoples expectations are changing and now technology can meet these cases. So I'm seeing a lot of social entrepreneurship being done that are coming in through a funding vehicles that never would have got funded on venture capital funding. >> Totally correct. >> Whether it's battered women applications, human trafficking, safety apps, stuff that can make money, not be a kazillion, billion dollar business, but really change society and makeup. >> You've hit the nail on the head. There are a lot of Blockchain companies or ICO companies, this stuff, the venture guys, would never fund it because their model doesn't allow for it. They have, all these things have to be Facebook potentially, or they just have no tolerance for it. >> And the philanthropy world is not incented on economics, and also when the project loses its grant or funding the stack just gets thrown away. >> So this allows for sustainability for mission-based investing and developing. Slowly, I see societal entrepreneurship categorically going to boom from this wave. >> Yeah, totally agree. >> Across the board. >> The world will become a better place, we'll have better companies. >> Mark Jeffery, Guardian Circle, co-founder and CEO. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage here on the ground in Puerto, Rico for Blockchain Unbound. A lot of great stuff here, a lot of great start-ups, investors, of course theCUBE. 2018 will be covering all the shows. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.