>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2017, bought to you by VMware, and its Ecosystem partner. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live on day one of VMworld 2017, our eighth year here. Really excited to be here, I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host Dave Vellante, and we're very excited to be joined by our guest, Matt Waxman, CUBE alumni. >> Thanks for having me. >> You are the VP of Product Management at DELLEMC, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thanks very much. >> And another CUBE alumni, Jason Buffington, Principal Analyst, but we're calling you the Expert Extraordinaire, the Vintage Expert Extraordinaire in Data Production. >> I love that, that's so cool. >> The B, double E, you'll have to change your business cards. >> I'm on it. >> So, so guys DELLEMC was just named in 2017, a leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for data center backup and recovery. How is the backup and recovery market changing as customers are moving from virtualization to the Cloud? >> That's a great question you know, I think data protection has never been hotter. As a market you know, you really, you talk to customers, whether they're on a Cloud journey, whether they're trying to simplify their infrastructure, whether they're trying to go to converge and hyper-converge, data protection is at the center of all of that, and I think we see that reflected right, in the way that we've evolved our product lines, our use cases are all tilting more and more towards how do we integrate data protection into the stack, into the flow? >> And you just had the big announcement this morning following along the VMware Cloud for AWS, tell us a little bit more about the data production element of that-- >> Yeah, we were extremely happy to be part of that announcement, and partnering really closely with VMware. It's been in the works for a long time, so it's been hard to keep it quiet, but you know, everyone that's moving their workloads to the Cloud, if they're going to move production apps, they need to have protection. And so we worked very closely to integrate the solution in. It's leveraging our data protection software, as well as our data domain and recover point capabilities in there, and it's, it's integrated right into the management stack, so it's super easy for customers to just turn on, pay by the drip, and go. >> So Jason Buffington, may you can set the context for monitoring this market for a long time, as we just established. When you look back at the virtualization trend, it exploded onto the scene, and it dramatically changed the backup requirements, customers said whoa, I have to change what I do, how I backup, my resources, rethinking backup, and you seem to see that again now with Cloud. So maybe take us back, and take us through this journey as to where we came from, where we are today, and what's changing in data protection as a result. >> Sure. The journey's actually pretty similar. Each time we've had a major platform shift, the first things that people typically do with a new platform is not go jump on with their most mission-critical applications. It typically starts with data protection right? Even invert 15 years ago, the first things to go on were not my mission-critical databases, it was you know, I'm not sure I want to run in production VM's yet, but I wouldn't mind failing over to it. Or I wouldn't mind putting test data into it, I wouldn't mind backing up to it right? And then what happened was, people started running in VM's and they said you know what, this stuff runs pretty well, they're in a recovered state, maybe I don't want to go back. Maybe I could run production apps in that virtualized state. And then we're seeing the same thing in Cloud, it's just happening at a much faster rate, where again, data protection using Cloud infrastructure is a great way to kind of test the waters, and dip your toe in, and people are seeing yeah, this stuff runs pretty well in the Cloud, maybe I could run production. And so that's kind of the context of where we are. I like what you said Matt, about every time that people have made those other changes, data protection's always been there. The way we try to describe it is, every time that you modernize production, you must also modernize protection right? So whether it's going to Cloud, whether it's N-Point or ROBO, or SAS, or IS, every time that your production infrastructure takes a leap up, protection has to be right behind that. And so this is just following that same curve. >> So one of the things that I found interesting Jason, in some of the, the stuff I wrote about you over the weekend was your research shows that availability, and data production are not ITs problem, it's a business problem. How do you, as a trusted advisor, work with companies to help align business and IT with respect to that, as Pat Gelsinger said this morning, as companies are moving from data centers to centers of data, what's that IT business alignment conversation like, and do you facilitate that? >> So it starts when everything turns into numbers right, so if you think about head versus heart right? The heart is that IT implementer. A lot of the folks that are here this week, and they're thinking about technologies, and widgets and features. But if you want to have a data protection conversation, and all you're talking about is RTO, and RPO, and those kind of things, that doesn't move upstream. That's not a business-level conversation. So when you can convert that into, what is my cost of down time? What is my cost of lost productivity? Think about the availability issues with lost customer confidence, and lost brand recognition. When you convert downtime, and business impact into actually something that's quantifiable from a head level, from that executive level, okay now this is a problem to be solved. Then we can have an honest conversation that what are the myriad of technologies you should be using to address that. But it starts with, get out of the weeds, get out of the system logs, and let's talk about the user experience, and the mandates around data. Then you can have a business-level conversation. >> Now Matt, your talking about data protection being a fundamental part of the infrastructure solution, as opposed to what I like to say, a bolt on right? For years data protection, and Jason you know this well. It was an afterthought. Oh, hey, we got to protect this app now, let's bolt on some, some backup software, or some other infrastructure. EMC and now DELLEMC as a company, has a vast portfolio, you acquired a lot of companies. So how did you go from... Convince us, how did you go from that bespoke set of products, to kind of the seamless, not a bolt on, but integrated part of the business? Maybe you can discuss that a little bit. >> Yeah, it's a great question, and you know, what I think it all starts with and ends with, is back to Jason's point about the business. It's the application right? And so getting closest to the data source, whether that is an off-the-shelf application, a mission-critical app, or whether it's a homegrown app, whether it's a Cloud native app, and on, and on, and on, and on you go. Getting really tight with that data source I think, is the lynch pin to a integrated data protection strategy. So that's, that's where we spent a lot of our time, is getting a lot of IP, a lot of automation, a lot of integration into the application stack. And that's where we've been able to really build that transformative approach to data protection. >> Another question I had is, you kind of have the incumbent's dilemma. You've got the big install base. And yet as these new waves come in, you have to adapt to them. You walk around the floor and you see, everybody's now talking about Cloud, and Multi-Cloud, and you know, all these new start-ups coming in. How do you keep pace with them from both a technology and a brand standpoint? >> Yeah, yeah I mean I think one of both the opportunities, and the challenges, and the data protection space is the breadth of it right? Because there's new applications that pop up every day. There's new infrastructure components, and from a protection standpoint, we've got to enable our customers to protect all of that. So how do you do that in a simplistic way? Having appliances right? We introduced an appliance back at DELLEMC World in May, which has been fantastic for us. Customers wanting to consume an outcome, as opposed to building it themselves. Delivering a Cloud service like the VMware Cloud on Amazon, where I can go to a service catalog, and just pick that protection level. I think that's the way that we see customers wanting to take all of the technology components, and start to consume them in ways that's a lot more aligned with their business needs. Agile right, scalable, so forth. >> Pow on to that one. I think one of the big challenges we're going to see when we talk about Cloud, and data protection, and this evolution moving forward from your evolution I think, is the right way to think about that is, every time we saw a platform shift in the past, there was always the presumption that you would mostly leave that last platform of IT behind, and you'd move to this new scenario right? So for the last 10 years, the question has been around how virtualized in your data center can you get right? And so there were two major problems to solve. How fast can you get the VM back up and running again? And how efficient can you hold that data? And so certainly from a DELLEMC perspective, day domain was part of that hero scenario. From a data center-centric virtualization story. The challenge with the Cloud story that we're moving towards is, it's not so much that we're going to leave the data center behind and move to the Cloud right? There's not one Cloud, you're not going to leave the data center behind, so there's not a single-hero scenario, like there was last time right? So some data is going to be in IAS, we saw that this morning in the AW (mumbles) announcements. Some data's going to be in SAS and that's totally okay right? Some data will still live one or more data centers, and so that means you have to have a data protection answer, actually you need to have a data protection answer to each and every one of those scenarios. How are you going to protect Office 365? How are you going to protect IAS-Hosted VMs? How are you going to do the best on Data Center, how are you going to do it on ROBO I mean, each one of those requires different arrows in the quiver, and I think that's the interesting challenge. What we've seen in the past is, every time that there's been this major platform shift, it kind of forces a reset of the leader board on the data protection vendors right? Because typically the secret sauce that you used last time, doesn't propel you forward. I think this time what you've got is, you've got, or DELLEMC has momentum right? Because they're the dominator from the last generation, and because we're not leaving the data center behind, that's a position of strength to build from, as opposed to in the past, you always leave the old guys behind, and some new startup's always seem to take over. >> Well, you've always been on the leader board, you know, I mean data domain at 90 or whatever, two-thirds of the purpose build backup appliance with your data protection software, you're always up there in the Gartner Magic Quadrants. What gives you confidence that you can ride this next wave, and stay there? >> Yeah, I mean from an innovation standpoint, these are areas we've been working on for literally years right, so Cloud for us, is not something that's brand new, we've been working, and had solutions out there for a number of years now. Same thing with hyper-converged right, when VxRail came to market, we were there, day one with data protection. So we've had a really strong pipeline I think, of innovation in these spaces. I think honestly, if I look at the next major wave of trend here, if you take the Cloud trend at a macro level, it's really about decentralization. How do you scale IT? Well, you start to push the ownership, and to a self-service model right, to the end-user, and data protection's going to go the same way Dave, you used the integrated word. Well, if I'm an end-user, I want to trigger my own protection copies, I want to recover them on my own. Self-service is the way to really scale IT. Data protection's following the same path. >> Excellent, well guys speaking of momentum, we wish you a very exciting event here. We thank you so much for joining, congratulations on the announcement. >> Thanks very much. >> Thanks for sharing your insights. And we want to thank you for watching for my co-host Dave Vellante. I'm Lisa Martin, stick around, we'll be right back from VMworld 2017. (alternative music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas for Dell EMC World 2017. theCUBE's 8th year of coverage of what was once EMC World, now it's Dell EMC World. The first official show of the combination of two companies. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE. My cohost this week for three days of wall-to-wall coverage, Paul Gillin. And our next guest is Max, Matt Waxman, Vice President of Product Management, Dell EMC Data Protection and A.J. Wineski, who's with UNIX and Microsoft Technologies Managers at Shazam ITS. Welcome to theCUBE, good to see you guys. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> So data protection on stage, it's hot. I mean, it is the hottest category, both on the startup side but also customers, as they go to the cloud, are rethinking the four-wall strategy of data management, data protection. Why is, is it the cloud? What's the, why is it so hot? >> Yeah, I think you nailed it. It is very hot. It's, backup is not boring. I think customers like A.J. are talking about simplifying, automating, getting to the cloud, and so we oughtta modernize data protection. Our announcements this week were all about how we're doing that. We had a great announcement around a new appliance that's a turnkey solution, out of the box, time to value less than three hours. That's the agility that customers are really looking for. And of course our cloud data protection's evolved a lot. Great new use cases, disaster recovery now for the cloud, great use case. >> Matt, A.J., I want to get your thoughts in a second, but Matt, first talk about the dynamics that the customers are facing right now, because really there's two worlds that exist now, pure cloud native, born in the cloud. Completely different paradigm for backup and recovery, data protection, all on this scheme that has to be architected. And then companies that are moving quickly that had a data domain, had a pre-existing apps that have been doing great, but now have to be architected for that cloud, hypercloud. Those are the two hot areas. Can you just break that down real quick? >> Yeah, yeah, you know, I think you have a good framework there. Right, there are customers who will go through a re-platforming, and think about how they can move their application and its existing eco system into the cloud. That's where we've seen a lot of traction. We would call that "lift and shift." You know, move the application as is. And then this cloud native space is really different. It's developer-centric. It's thinking about "How do you cater to "the application developer who wants to build "off of a modern tool-set?" And there it's all about micro services, it's API-driven. You know, it's a-- - [John] Programmable infrastructure. >> Absolutely. >> John: Programmable backup. >> Exactly, right? That's what makes a text-- >> Alright, A.J., the proof is in the pudding, when you sit there and you look at that scenario, programmable, being agile, automations all coming down the pike, what's it look like for you? >> Well, for us, prior to having the ECS, the Elastic Cloud Storage Suite, we were running everything to backup tape. And we were having to do two sets of tapes. It was taking us two weeks sometimes to do our tape retentions. We had a set retention policies at 11 year across the board because our past backup software didn't allow us to set retention periods very well. Once we got to Elastic Cloud Storage Suite, it was couple clicks, you set retention periods, it takes care of itself. Automatically replicates to our DR site and we don't have to worry about it. It's done. I used to have three and a half FTEs who took care of backup suites all the time. I'm down to a half-guy now. So I gained back-- >> So you re-deployed those resources on other things. >> On other products; what I hired them for in the beginning, and now since that's happened, I'm able to use a lot more of those resources for the projects we should be using them for. We don't have to worry about backups like we used to. I don't have to worry at night, "Did it back up? "Did it not? Did my essential databases "get backed up to tape?" I don't have to worry about that anymore, it's done automatically. >> What was that transition like for you? Going from tape to cloud? >> Painful. It was because we were having to move everything that was on tape on to ECS. Takes a while to redo that. Finally we decided at one point that after this period, no longer are we going to be writing to tape, we're going to write everything to ECS. Just became too painful. So once that transition was done, once we made a decision that we were no longer going to tape, it was easy. >> How about the cost? I mean, you now have an operational cost instead of a capital cost in your backup equipment. Over the long-term, is this a better, a lower cost happen for you? >> Oh, much better. We're saving $350,000 a year just in backups. And over the five-year TCO of that product, it's $2.7 million that we are saving over five years for that product alone. We're a small non-profit organization that we can then, in turn, turn around and give our customers some of that money back because we're not having to charge them so much for some of the backups that we have to do. >> Matt, talk about the dynamic, you mentioned developers. This comes back down to the developer angle because, just a scenario, data is becoming the life-blood for developers, and providing that data available in that kind of infrastructure's code way, or data as code, as we say, the DataOps world, if there is one yet. But I'm a developer, okay, I want the data from the application, from an hour ago, not two weeks ago, or those backup windows used to be a hindrance to that agility. >> Yeah, yeah. >> How is that progressing, and where is that going in terms of making that totally developer-centric infrastructure? >> Yeah, I mean, I'd answer that on two fronts. I think there's the cloud-native view of that where, you know, what those developers are looking for is inherent protection. They don't want to have to worry about it. Regardless of their app framework, regardless of the size of their app. But at the same time you also have database sizes that are growing so dramatically. I mean, when I was here even two years ago, I remember talking to customers who had databases that were over a hundred terabytes was like, 1 out of 10. Now I talk to 6 out of 10, hundred, two hundred terabyte infrastructures. At a certain point you can't back up anymore. And you have to go to the more transformative-- >> And the time alone, the time is killer too. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And so customers are replicating, and how do you put the same sort of controls around replication to get the levels of data protection that you expect? >> Well we're in a world where people are, customers are collecting everything now, they're saving everything. And they don't have to save everything necessarily. They don't find out until they start to use it. Is data protection becoming more of a service, a filtering service also, of how you, of what data you really need to back up? >> Yeah, I think that gets into the whole notion of data management. And that whole space is, "How can you "leverage the information out of the data, "as opposed to just managing the infrastructure?" And through automation, we're going to enable our customers to get there. Automate the infrastructure to the point where it's completely turnkey. Set a policy, set an SLA, and go. And at that point, you're managing the metadata. Analytics become really important. We've got a really cool new offering called Enterprise Copy Data Analytics. It's a SAS-based solution. Literally log on to our website and you enter your serial number, you're off and running. Analytics, predictive recommendations, based off of machine learning. That, to me, is the transition-- >> Is that managing your copies, you mean? >> That will give you visibility into your copies, that will give you visibility into your protection levels, and it'll actually score you so you have a very simple way to understand where you're weak, where you're not. >> So this is A.J.'s point about staff efficiency. You have that machine learning, like an automated way, what used to be crawling through log data, looking at stuff, pushing buttons, and provisioning (laughs). I mean, do you see that impact on your end? >> Oh, it's huge on our end. Because in the past, our database administrators would have to write something, and if a developer needed a backup copy of that database, it took potentially days, if not weeks, depending upon the size of that, to get it from tape. Or to go back to the old tape set to do that. Now, with ECS and DD Boost, it's instantaneous. They can restore that instantaneously to where the developers need it. It's a tremendous, tremendous savings for us. >> Some recent research I've seen says that there's still a sizable minority of customers who are concerned about the private security and the integrity of their data in the cloud. Does that, is that an issue for you? >> It is. We're heavily regulated through different regulations 'cause we're in the financial services industry, so we have PCI compliance, we have FFIEC compliance, SOC compliance. That's huge. And making sure that that data is protected at all times, is encrypted from end to end, is encrypted in transmission. Those are all things that the Dell EMC Suites give us. >> Talk about your data environment, because the data industry's growing, and I remember calling up Dave Velante years ago in 2010, 2011. The companies that were selling data stuff weren't really data companies, they were selling software. And a lot of the innovation came from, we call "data full" companies. They actually had a ton of data to deal with. They had the data lakes piling up. And they had to figure it out along the way. You guys have a lot of data. >> A.J.: We do. >> Can you insight into how big the data size coming in, because Tier 2 data is very valuable. You have data lakes going to be more intelligent, and that comes another factor into the architectural question. >> Yeah, we, the amount of data we collect is enormous, and we're just starting to get into the analytics of that and how can we use that data to better serve our customers, and how can we better advertise and pull our customers in to us to provide those services for us. The data, I mean, we're doing over 90 million transactions a month is what we're coming through our system. And-- >> John: So you're data full. You're full of data. >> Oh yeah, we're full of data. (laughs) And so there's just a tremendous amount of stuff that comes through us, and that data used for analytics is very powerful for us to be able to turn around and provide services to our customers. >> Matt, talk about the dynamic of, as you get into more analytics, this brings up where the data world's going, and this where kind of the data protection question is. Okay, all this data's coming in, you got some automation in there, you got some wrangling, you got some automation stuff now, analytics surfaces the citizen analysts now decided to start poking and touching the data. Okay, so now policy's the-- how do you back that up? So you have now multiple touch points on the data. Does that impact the data protection scheme and architecture? >> Yeah, I think it does. You know, fundamentally there's going to be a shift from the traditional backup admin role. And not just managing the policy, but also managing the data itself. To a role that's more centric around managing the policy. And compliance against it. As you go to decentralized environments and centers of data as opposed to data centers, you need to rethink the whole model and-- >> John: Data center. Data. Center. >> Exactly. >> John: Not server center. >> Right. >> It's the data center. (laughs) >> Paul: As you look-- >> And data's gone mass, right, so it doesn't move very easily. >> As you move to a more distributed model in an "Internet of things" type of environment, how will that affect data protection? You have to re-architect your service? >> We have been on a journey to transform data protection. We last year talked about some new offerings in that space with our Copy Data Management and Analytics solution. And that's really oriented towards that decentralized model. It's a different approach. It's not your traditional combine-your-data-path- and-your-control-path, it's truly a decentralized distributed model. >> Paul and I were talking on the intro today with Peter Burris, our head of research at Wikibon, and we know about the business value of data, and not to spare you the abstract conversation we had, we were talking about the valuation of companies were based on the data that they have and data under-management might be a term that we're fleshing out, but the question specifically comes back down to the protection and security of the data. I mean, you look at the marketing capital of Yahoo on that hack that they had, I think you mentioned Yahoo hack, really killed the value of the company. So the data will become instrumental in the valuation, so if that's the case, if you believe that, then you got to believe that the protection is going to be super important, and that there's going to be real emphasis on ground management policies and also the value of that data. You guys talk about that in your world? You guys think that holistically and can you share some insight into that conversation? >> Yeah, I mean, I think that comes back to your very first point about "data protection is hot." It's hot because there are a lot more threats out there, and of course there's that blurry line a little bit between security and data protection sometimes, but absolutely, if you look at regulations, if you look at things like GDPR in the EU, this is going to drive an increased focus on data protection. And that's where we're focusing. - [John] And IoT doesn't make this thing any easier. >> Absolutely not. >> John: (laughs) He shook his head like, "Yeah, I know." ATMs will be devices, wearables will be using analytics to share security data and movement data of people. >> Yeah. And so, us, security is one of the top priorities, it has to be. You look at what's happened with Target and Sony and Yahoo and all the other breaches. That keeps me up at night. And being sure that, >> John: I can imagine. >> being sure that we have a stable backup is integral to our system, especially with some of the recent ransomware threats and things like that. >> Paul: Yeah, going to ask you about that. >> That's scary stuff. And one way to be sure that you are protected from that is being sure that you have, number one, a good security system, but number two, you have a good backup. >> Over half of companies now have been hit by ransomware. Is there a service, a type of service that you have specifically for companies that are worried about that? >> Yeah, we have, I think A.J. said it very well, it's a layered approach. You have to have security, you have to have backups. We have a solution called Isolated Recovery, which is all about helping our customers create a vaulted, air-gap solution as the next level of protection. And some of the largest firms out there are leveraging it today to do exactly that. It's your data. You got to get it off prem, you got to get it into a vaulted area, you got to get it off the network. >> Matt, A.J., thanks so much for sharing the insight on the data protection, great customer reference, great testimonial there in the products. Congratulations. Final question. Your take on the show, it's the first year, big story is Dell EMC World, as a customer are you kind of like, "Mmm, good, it's looking good off the tee, "middle of the fairway, you know?" >> No, I'm impressed. I was really kind of skeptic coming in last year when it was announced and "What is this going to mean?" and things like that, and just seeing this year the integration of all the technologies with Vmware and the Dell desktops, laptops, the server line, the VxRail, VxRack, and all the other suites that EMC Dell products offer, it's refreshing to me as a customer knowing that now I have that one call for just about anything in the IT world. >> As they say in the IT, "one throat to choke, "single pane of glass." We're kind of going back down, congratulations on the solution. >> Matt: Thanks very much. >> Data protection, data center, they call it for a reason, the data center, you got to protect it. It's theCUBE, bringing you all the data here from Dell EMC World 2017, I'm John Furrier with Paul Gillin with SiliconANGLE Media. We'll be right back with more, stay with us. (upbeat tech music)