>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2017 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE live from VMworld day one, really exciting day that we're having so far. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Dave Vellante and we're joined by a CUBE alumni and a new CUBE guest. Welcome back to theCUBE Ruya Barrett, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dell EMC. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Good to have you here and we also want to welcome Mark Wiseley, the CIO of Palmer Chiropractic College, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> It's great to have you guys. So one of the things we were talking about before we went live is backup. Is backup back? Is backup sexy again? It's hot, why is backup so hot, Ruya? >> Oh my god, yeah, it is. I started years ago and I was in data protection and got forward 20 years, it's back in data protection. It's hotter than ever. In the last six years, I think there's been over 5 billion dollars invested in this space whether from venture capital or big companies and it's hot because of what's happening in the customer's environment. We see a huge restructuring of data centers. So before data used to be in a couple of locations that we called data center and now it's really much more about centers of data, data is moving out of the four walls, moving closer to where decision making is which is with the business, out in the geos so it's moving to the edge and also just cloud. Cloud is really - and cloud deployments are really reshaping where customer's data is so now that data's no longer in a building. How do you secure it? How do you protect it? Where is it? Who owns it? Those are becoming more and more prevalent questions. So that's why backup is sexier than ever. >> So is that what's - What are the drivers for you in terms of your backup? I mean, what keeps you up at night? You wake up in the morning, what are you thinking about in the backup context? >> Well, for us, you know, it's really about not having to think about it, you know, making sure you've got a solid solution that's there to backup that data and make sure it's available when you need it and where you need it and the Dell EMC product we put in place gave us that opportunity where we can backup our servers, our desktops, our laptops, it doesn't matter whether they're offsite or onsite. They can be anywhere, it gets backed up quickly and it doesn't interfere with what they're doing. Users don't want to be interrupted with a backup and have to sit there and wait for it so it's been a great solution for us. >> So Mark, you've been - You've got over 20 years experience in the industry. You've been a CIO at Palmer for nearly two years now. One of the things that I read about you is that you're attracted to neglected IT systems. I imagine you saw a tremendous amount of opportunity but we talked about kind of bringing sexy back with state of protection but you were instrumental in kind of changing the IT direction at Palmer back to Dell EMC, tell us a little about that and why that was so important to you as the leader of IT there. >> Well, when I came into Palmer, we had a number of different issues. Everything from performance to backup windows that we couldn't hit. We were still using tape backup. There was a number of different issues and so we really needed a platform that would be able to come in and solve all those issues and also do it as quickly as possible so we put in a Dell EMC VxBlock which allowed us to, I kind of look at it as a data center in a box type of thing, I mean it solved our networking issues and our backup issues and then because we have multiple sites, we were able to actually back up our data and replicate it to some of our other data centers across the US so it was just a perfect solution for us and then one of the real nice things is when we actually put that product in Dell EMC came in and helped us to implement it and within three days of them arriving we were actually running production workloads on that system so it worked out great for us. >> You know, that reminds me, so Ruya, I've asked this of some of your colleagues, backup forever has been a bolt on and the VxBlock triggered something in my mind, I remember the original Vblock. I remember it said, oh no, Serves up 5,000 vms and my first thought was how do you back that up? And there wasn't and integrated answer. This is a long, long time ago. There is today. >> Ruya: Yeah, absolutely. >> Maybe talk about the philosophy of backup as a core component of a deployment and what you guys specifically have done there. >> Absolutely, we actually today had a really exciting announcement that would really be under what I would call more of a transformational approach to data protection and really the move that we see is it used to be that backup used to be kind of an afterthought, something that you roll out your applications and you're like oh yeah, we have to protect them and figure out what you're going to do and implement what you need from an infrastructure standpoint. We're really seeing a much more of a move to a source-based data protection so we're building data protection capabilities in directly to the applications so today we announced data protection suite for applications and a whole new version of it which really enables the native UIs that the database administrators are using to protect their own workloads and this source-based data protection is going to be more and more critical especially as data is moving closer and closer to where it's getting created so you need to protect it at the source not in the background, not as an afterthought. We also are seeing convergence which is your question around the VxRail. We have integrated data protection now built into VxRail deployments and we've had it for a couple of years now and this year at Dell EMC World, we introduced IDPA, Integrated Data Protection Appliance. Again, bringing all the components that a customer would need, integrated data protection storage, integrated data protection software, into an appliance model so it's all about simplicity, just making it easier for customers to be able to deploy. >> So Mark, you're obviously a VMware customer and as a VMware customer, your backup has sort of been subservient to the VMware momentum. You remember the ascendancy of VMware totally changed your backup requirement. You get less physical servers, backup was very consumptive of resources so you had to think about that. Fast forward, now this whole cloud world, what are you doing in cloud? How is it effecting your backup strategy, specifically? >> So we're looking at, you know, the cloud is one of the areas where obviously we're exploring opportunities. One of the reasons that we put in the VxBlock and the data domain and the data protection suite was really to set us up to be able to make that transition into the cloud simpler. You know, now we have the tools in place so we can decide when we need to move it to the cloud, what data do you need to move in the cloud, where do we need that data to be and it just gives us lots of opportunities and lots of options so >> So let me take that one step further, let's define cloud a little differently, not just as a place you put data but as I want to bring a model to the data wherever the data lives so it's self-service and it's automation and all those things you associated with cloud maybe bringing that on prem or putting it in the cloud. Is that something that as an IT practitioner, you see as viable or is the cloud no, no, it's in Amazon or Google or some other external location? Are you trying to bring that cloud model to the business? >> Yeah, I think as we look at the cloud, I think a lot of it is just options. Figuring out which option or which model or which provider you're going to utilize both from a cost perspective as well as regulatory compliance pieces come into play so you know as we look at cloud, we look at kind of what we've put on site as kind of a private cloud or a cloud in a box type thing and it just opens up lots of different opportunities for utilizing Amazon or Azure or whatever that is. >> So one of the things that I wanted to ask you Mark is really about, you know, Palmer School of Chiropractor was chartered in 1907. >> Mark: 1897. >> Right and then I think I saw that it was chartered, maybe a different name in the early 1900's. >> Mark: Yep. >> It's been around for a very long time so you know, as we see people moving from virtualization to cloud, we're seeing certifications change, you've seen a lot of evolution in data protection Ruya. What's the evolution from an education perspective or maybe even a cultural perspective at Palmer, an organization that's been around for well over 100 years. What's the shift that you have maybe driven within your IT experts to improve their education to remain at Palmer and to help you attract new talent as technologies evolve? >> Well, I think, you know, one of the reasons that Palmer decided to really look at IT, we're kind of the trusted leader in Chiropractic, the founder of Chiropractic and they really wanted to up their game. We're a higher ed institution so most of our students come from large universities and they're used to a lot of technology and instant on and all these different things and so we really wanted to make sure that we could provide an experience for them that gave them that instant on as well as there's a lot of online experiences after you graduate, you know, there's a lot of CEUs and things that they need to come back for and so we're starting to build some of our online programs to give them the opportunities without them having to come on site for everything so it just opens up a whole world of opportunity. >> I had one last question for you Mark, it's the why Dell EMC question, I mean, you've got a lot of options out there, we've talked about all this investment going in, why Dell EMC? What's attractive to them? And a two part question. What's on their to-do list in your view? >> Well I think the thing with the Dell EMC is it really was the one company that gave us everything that we needed. You know, it gave us that full solution, covered all of our issues, everything from performance with the servers and network and data backups and recovery. It just gave us everything that we needed and it was one solution from one vendor so if we do have support issues, we have one vendor to reach out to. We don't have three different vendors or having vendors fighting with each other. It's one solution, one vendor for support, and it just gave us everything that we needed. >> Excellent. Well, Ruya, I heard you say that at Dell EMC World on theCUBE moving from data centers to centers of data. Pat Gelsinger may have gotten that from you, he said that on stage this morning. >> Ruya: I don't know, you heard it first. >> As things are evolving, we thank you for sharing your insights. It sounds like there's a lot of opportunity. Same thing at Palmer, congratulations on the evolution that you have helped >> Thank you. >> To charter there and we want to thank you both taking the time to chat with Dave and myself this afternoon. >> Ruya: Thank you so much. Nice seeing you guys. >> And for our guests and my co-host Dave Vellante, you're watching theCUBE live from VMworld 2017 day one. Stick around, we'll be right back.