>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite brought to you by Cohesity. >>Good afternoon everyone and welcome back to the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite. We are wrapping up three days of wall to wall coverage. Back to back interviews. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, alongside my cohost Stu Miniman. We have saved the best for last. We have BJ Jenkins, president and CEO of Barracuda networks. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. Feel a lot of pressure on internet. It's going to be great. Why don't you start by Barracuda. I think of that heartsong tell our viewers a little bit about, about your business, what you do. >>Yeah. Um, Barracuda is a company focused in the security industry, primarily on email security and network and application security. Uh, we have over 220,000 customers, uh, since we were founded a little over 15 years ago. And um, you know, we have a passion for making our customers secure and safe and being able to run their business. And we're a great partner in Microsoft, so, uh, they really help us drive our business. >>Yeah. So, so much to catch up, PJ, since it's been many years since you've been on the program, you were new in the role, but let's start with that Microsoft relationship here. We've been spending all week talking through all of the various environments. Talk about a little bit about your joint customers, the relationship and what's happening there. >>Yeah. I joined Barracuda seven years ago. Yesterday was my anniversary. And um, when I came into Barracuda, it was primarily at the time focused on a kind of small and midsize businesses. And most of those businesses ran Microsoft exchange or ran some form of Microsoft applications. And really that was the start of our partnership, realizing how important Microsoft was and it's grown. We were the first, uh, security company to put our firewalls in Azure. And that was over five years ago. And I think being first with a partner like Microsoft who is really at that point trying to catch up with Amazon and you know, Satya was, we're starting to drive the business in that direction. Uh, it gave us a unique vantage point in the partnership and it's grown from there. We were, uh, the Azure partner the year in 2016, uh, across their business. Um, we do joint development with them. We do joint go to market activities. And when you look around and you see 30,000 customers here, it's a, it's a good, good place to focus for a company like ourselves. >>Yeah. Well the, the, the changes in Microsoft business has had a ripple effect in the ecosystem, not only the launch of Azure, but I mean a big push office three 65 you talk about there's gotta be a difference between I'm rolling out exchange servers and well, it's all in the cloud. We know that customers still need to think sick as strong about security when they go to SAS Deere. If your customers figured that out yet. >>Yeah. I think, um, the trends that played out on prom play out in the cloud, um, how am I gonna secure my applications? How am I going to secure my data, my network? Um, and then the individuals that are using that cause at the end of the day, the individuals tend to be the weakest link in the security chain. And, um, you know, Mike, what I like is Microsoft has done a really good job improving their security posture, the base level that they provide to their customers every single day improves. And our job is to innovate on top of that and make them even safer. And, um, Microsoft's position in the industry too has been one where they want to be a ecosystem. They want to partner with third parties to help their customers move from on prem into Azure. And they know they're not gonna be able to do it on their own. >>So they've upped their game. We've got to up our game and we do it jointly, which is the nice thing. I, I joke with people. When I was at EMC and I used to go to Redmond, I'd go with battle armor on because there was not gonna be a fun meeting, uh, who's going to be, how Microsoft was going to hurt our business. And now I go to Redmond and you're embraced as a partner. They want to understand what customers and partners are thinking. They jointly plan with you. It's a completely different tone and tenor, which has been nice for us. >>So it is a scary world out there. And as we know that the threat environment is changing, hackers are becoming more sophisticated. I wonder if you could just set the scene for our viewers and just talk about security challenges in general and then we'll get into the specifics of the new solutions that you've announced here. >>Yeah, it's, threats come from everywhere and I think it's hard to boil it down and make it simple at times. But one of the stories I tell, uh, investors and customers about how fast the world is changing, uh, when I came on board, CEO's are obviously targets for hackers and the types of phishing mails I would get at that point. Um, and they would be very obvious. I've gone by BJ my entire life. On the website it says William Jenkins. And so the phishing emails would come in and say, you know, today fog, no, Hey, can you wire money here, William? Right. And so there was just base level intelligence. Nowadays they use LinkedIn, they use fee, they create social graphs. They study your communication forms, they look, they know how you're organized and they target the people. It will have, I always signed my emails past comma, BJ, the best fishing males have that in there. >>They've discovered that they've incorporated that they, so the, just the level of intelligence, the sophistication of what hackers do today, uh, has exponentially changed. And, you know, we're fortunate you can, we have more computing power. We have more artificial intelligence that we can apply to stop them. But the game just keeps getting escalated. And it's a, it's why the security industry has been strong. It's why there's so many companies out there. We've got to keep getting better. Um, but it's, it's a scary world. It's, it's, you know, you can never, never rest and never think you're ahead. You always gotta keep attacking it. >>So BJ, you had a number of announcements. Barracuda did, not nearly as many as Microsoft did, but give us the highlights if you would. >>Yeah. Um, so a number number of things announced here. Uh, first we're part of, uh, Misa, the Microsoft intelligence security association. So we're proud, proud to be a part of that. At launch. Um, we announced, uh, the cloud application platform security platform and the big announcement for us around that was our launch of as a service, uh, that's run on Azure. And, uh, we've always had a strong application approach. We've got integrated, um, detection, DDoSs uh, the O OS top 20 are all in Kurt corporate into our platform. What we've done is really leveraged Microsoft scale to run a very easy, simple to deploy a web application security platform, uh, that takes advantage of Microsoft scale and resiliency and brings that to our customers. Uh, we did a study, you know, only 10% of the websites in the world today are protected. So 90% of the web sites and web applications in the world today run on protected. >>We think this is a great way to go out and, um, help protect more of those. And then finally, um, you know, we announced Microsoft announced their V land solution and we have done joint development with them. We'll continue to innovate here, but we announced obviously our solution that we'll run, uh, with Microsoft's B when we're the only ones who can provide a customer really with multiple lengths run on Microsoft backbone, they can really run their data center. Now the corporate data center out of Azure, uh, we give them traffic prioritization, fail over resiliency that customers need when they're making those types of decisions. So there was more than that, but that was a lot of good stuff for us. We're excited about it. >>What does the recent announcement that Microsoft has won the Jetta contract, does that have any impact on Barracuda's business? Is that, >>well, I think anytime Microsoft wins business, it's a good thing because we're partnering with them. That contract is so big and, uh, has a lot of different elements and, and certainly security is a part of it. So we think there's aspects where we can play. I did hear, I think, um, Oracle was suing and I think AWS, so this may have a lot of legs before it becomes real. But it, I, you know, I think it continues to show that customers want to utilize, um, the scale breadth and depth of solutions that the cloud companies are bringing. And, you know, we view that as opportunity because security is an important element to making that work for those customers. >>So PJ, one to put aside the Microsoft stuff for a second here, since last we talk barracudas gone private and the security industry feels like it just growing so fast. You know, every week we're getting approached by new startups, heavy investment and the like, give us a little bit about your position has a CIO and CEO in this space. Uh, and you know, the love, a little bit of a note. We know it happened a few years back now, but going private when so many companies have, >>yeah, they're, you know, obviously there's a lot of funded companies in the security market. You know, we were in, uh, we had been public for, for four years. Um, a company that's been around 15 years where we were a profitable security company to, we were unique. We weren't, uh, the high flyer growth, but we were growing, you know, kind of, uh, low double digits with profitability, but there were investments that needed to be made in the business. Uh, we were running our transaction system on code, the founder wrote. Um, so there were investments we really needed to make to go from, you know, the 400, 500 million Mark to 1 billion mark. And so going private with a partner like Thoma Bravo, um, who really understands this industry has allowed us to reset the strategy and focus on, uh, the highest growth areas for us, which are email and network and application security. >>Um, they've helped us, we've invested over 20 million in internal systems, um, modern systems, Salesforce, NetSuite, uh, that we think give us the foundational elements to scale to $1 billion. And, um, you know, they combine that with operational expertise that they bring in to help us get more customers to the 220,000. Uh, one of the other interesting things for us too is, um, well we have 220,000 customers. We have 50 of the fortune 100. We have 250 of the fortune 1000 and as the movement, as, as customers have move to cloud, our solutions have become more relevant for customers of scale. And so they've given us the backing really to make that transition into that. So I liked not having to go on public conference calls every quarter. That's been a really nice thing. Um, but they've been a great partner for us. So we've, I think what you can think of us as we focused on areas that we think are the highest priority to our customers. >>Yeah, PJ, it also, we talked about there's so many startups in this space out there. The profile security keeps getting raised. Pat Gelsinger, VMware, you know, pounding the table saying that security needs to do over the, he just purchased black Boston based company that was public. You know, I talked to my friends that had been deep in the security industry and they scoff a little bit about, you know, we've been doing this for a long time. Barracuda is a company that has been around for quite a number of years. How's the industry doing? What do we need to do better? And how do you look at that landscape? >>Yeah, I, you know, I love pats energy and vigor, but there's no silver bullet that's gonna solve every problem out there. I do think, uh, where the industry is getting better is one on sharing information. You can see alliances, associations that have been formed. Um, you know, even with the cloud providers, we're actively sharing information and sharing of that information. We'll make more robust solutions first. Um, second you're seeing vendors go more towards platform where they're offering a larger, so the, the quality of solutions are getting better. And I do think there's consolidation happening where there, there are going to be certain segments of the market where you don't need 15 solutions. You really need, you know, one not from a particular player. So I think you'll see more, uh, consolidation occur around that. And you know, certainly that's been a trend we've been on in terms of integrating our solutions, making them easier to deploy and use for the customers. And then, you know, I think the last part of this is regulation is really a, it's still behind, but it's finally catching up and there's an interest in it. And I think in partnership with the industry, we can get our customers in a better position, a better security posture. So, you know, I, um, there will be consolidation over over time. Uh, you know, I've seen a map, I think there's 3000 security companies in all different segments that won't last forever. And, uh, it'll get easier for customers over time, is my belief. >>So with regulation, do you want to work in partnership with regulators? I mean, how do you, to help them understand the industry first of all and understand the dangers and the risks? I mean, how do you see the future of regulation for this industry? >>First of all, there's a large education process for legislators in general. You have to look no further than when Mark Zuckerberg got questioned by Congress. And the questions he were getting asked were not the best questions. Um, but you do have people who understand this industry and you can look at regulations like GDPR. You know, California's coming out data privacy law now and they're never perfect, but they're good foundational elements to start. And they're helping customers, um, get more aware of what they have to do to be secure and they're helping us explain to customers the things you can do to be in a better security posture. And so there's a continuum around this. We're in the early days, I, there's still a lot of education that has to go on, but when you see, >>start getting passed, it's a good step in the right direction. And by my estimation, BJ, we did save the best for last. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. That was terrific. Sorry it took so long. I'm Rebecca and I first two minutes and that wraps up three days of coverage at Microsoft ignite at the cube. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you next time.