>>Hey everyone. Welcome back to Chicago. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. We're live with the Cube at Ansible Fest 2022. This is not only Ansible's 10th anniversary, John Wood. It's the first in-person event in three years. About 14 to 1500 people here talking about the evolution of automation, really the democratization opportunities. Ansible >>Is money, and this segment's gonna be great. Cub alumni are back, and we're gonna get an industry perspective on the automation journey. So it should be great. >>It will be great. We've got two alumni back for the price of wine. Scott Canine joins us, Director of Worldwide Automation at Kendra. A Nelson Shoe is back as well. Product marketing director at Red Hat. Guys, great to have you back on the, on the live cube. >>Oh, thank you for having us. And, and you know, it's really great to be back here live and in person and, and, you know, get a chance to see you guys again. >>Well, and also you get, you get such a sense of the actual Ansible community here. Yeah. And, and only a fraction of them that are here, but people are ready to be back. They're ready to collaborate in person. And I always can imagine the amount of innovation that happens at these events, just like off the show floor, people bumping into each other and go, Hey, I had this idea. What do you think, Scott? It's been just about a, a year since Kenel was formed. Talk to us about the last close to a year and what that's been like. Especially as the world has been so, chops >>The world been Yeah, exactly. Topsy turvy. People getting back to working in person and, and everything else. But, you know, you know, throw on that what we've done in the last year, taking Kendra, you know, outside of being a part of ibm Right. In our own company at this point, you know, and you know, you hear a lot of our executives and a lot of our people when we talk about it, like, Oh yeah, it's, you know, it's a $19 billion startup. We got freedom of action. We can do all these different things. But, you know, one of the ways I look at it is we are a $19 billion startup, which means we've got a lot of companies out there that are trusting us to, no matter what change we're doing, continue to deliver their operations, do it flawlessly, do it in a way so they can continue to, to service their clients effectively and, and don't break 'em. And, and so that to me, you know, the way we do that and the way I focusing on that is automation Ansible, obviously corridor strategy, getting there. >>Yeah. And I'd like to get your thoughts too, because we seeing a trend, we've been reporting on this with the cloud growth and the scale of cloud and distributed computing going cloud native, the automation is the front and piece center of all conversations. Automate this, make developers go faster. And with the pandemic, we're coming out of that pandemic. You post pandemic with large scale automation, system architecture, a lot more like architectural conversations and customers leaning on new things. Yeah. What are you seeing in this automation framework that you guys are talking about? What's been the hot playbook or recipe or, or architecture to, you know, play on words there, but I mean, this is kind of the, the key focus. >>Yeah. I mean, if you, one of the things that I com customer comp talks, I've been pulled into a lot recently, have all been around thinking about security, right? A lot in terms of security and compli, I think, I mean, think about the world environment as a whole, right here, everything that's been going on. So, so people are, are conscious of how much energy that's being used in their data centers, right? And people are conscious of how secure they are, right? Are they, you know, the, their end customers are trusting them with data information about them, right? And, and they're trusting us to make sure that those systems are secure to make sure that, you know, all that is taken care of in the right way. And so, you know that what's hot security and compliance, right? What can we do in the energy space, right? Can we do things to, to help clients understand better their energy consumption as, as, you know, especially as we get now in Europe to the winter months, can we do things there that'll help them also be better in that space, Right? Reduce their >>Costs and a lot more cloud rails obviously right there. You got closer and you got now Ansible, they're kind of there to help the customers put it together at scale. This has been the big conversation last year, remember was automate, automate, automate, right? This year it's automation everywhere, in every piece of the, the landscape edge. It's been big discussion tomorrow here about event driven stuff. This is kind of a change of focus and scope. Can you like, share your thoughts on how you see how big this is in terms of the, the, the customer journey >>In terms, I'm sorry, in terms of, >>In terms of their architecture, how they're rolling out automation, >>What's their Yeah, yeah. So, so in terms of their rolling out arch, arch in terms of them consuming architecture, right? And the architecture or consuming automation. Yeah. And rolling out the architecture for how they do that. You know, again, it, to me it's, it's a lot of, it's been focused around how do we do this in the most secure manner possible? How do we deliver the service to them and the most secure managers possible? How do they understand that it, that they can trust the automation and it's doing the right things on their environments, right? So it's not, you know, we're not pushing out or, or you know, it's not making bad policies >>And they're leaning on you guys. >>It's, it's not being putting malware out there, right? At the same time we're doing different things. And so they really rely on, on our customers, rely on us to really help them with that journey. >>I think a, a big part of that with Kendra as such a great partner and so many customers trusting them, is the fact that they really understand that enterprise. And so as, as Scott talks about the security aspect, we're not just talking to the IT operations people, right? We're talking across the enterprise, the security, the infrastructure, and the automation around that. So when we talk about hybrid cloud, we talk about network and security edge is a natural conversation to that, cuz absolutely at the edge network and security automation is critical. Otherwise, how are you gonna manage just the size of your edge as it grows? >>Yeah. And, and we've been, and that's another area that we've been having a a lot more conversations with clients on, is how do you do automation for IOT and edge based devices, right? We, you know, traditionally data center cloud, right? Kind of the core pieces of where we've been focusing on, but I, you know, recently I've been seeing a lot more opportunities and a lot more companies coming forward saying, you know, help us with the network space, help us with the iot space. We really wanna start getting to that level of automation and that part of our environments. And what >>Are some of the key barriers that customers are coming to you with saying, help us overcome these so that they can, you're smiling so that they can, can obviously attract and retain the right talent and also be able to determine what processes to automate to extract the most value and the most ROI for the organization. >>Yeah. And, and, and you know, that's, that's an interesting, the ROI conversation's always an interesting one, right? Because when you start having that with customers, some of the first things they think about, or the first, the natural place people go is, >>Oh, >>Labor takeout. I can do this with less people. Right? But that's not the end all be all of automation. In fact, you know, my personal view is that's, you know, maybe the, the the bottom 30%, right? That's kind of, then you have to think about the value you get above and beyond that standard operations, standardized processes, right? How are you gonna able to do those faster? How's that enabling your business, right? What's all the risks that's now been taken out by having these changes codified, right? By having them done in a manner that is repeatable, scalable, and, and, and really gets them to the point of, you know, what their business needs from an operational standpoint and >>Extracting that value. Nelson, talk about the automation journey from your perspective, How have you seen that evolve from your lens, especially over the last couple of years? >>It's a great question. You know, it's interesting because obviously all of our customers are at different stages of their automation journey. We have someone that just beginning looking at automation, they've been doing old scripts, if you will, the past. And then we have more that are embracing it, right? As a culture. So we have customers that are building cultures of automation, right? They have standups, they have automation guilds. It's, it's kind of a little bit of a, of a click. It's kind of, you know, building up steam in that momentum. And then we have, you know, the clients that Kindra works with, right? And they're very much focused on automation because they understand that they have a lack of resources, they don't have the expertise, they don't have the time to be able to deliver all this. Yeah. And that's really, Kendra really comes into effect to really help those customers accelerate their automation. Yeah. Right. And to that point, you know, we're doing a lot of innovation work with Kendra and we lean on them heavily because, you know, they're willing to make that commitment as a partner both on the, the, the day to day work that we do together as well as Ford looking at different architectures. >>Yeah. And, and the community aspect from our side internally has been tremendous in terms of us being able to expand what we'll be doing with automation and, and what a's been able to do with that community to get there. Right? Yeah. So to last month we did about 33 million day one, day two operations through automation, right? So that's what we've done. If you look at it, you know, if I break it down, it's really 80% of that standard global process stuff that we bring to the table. 20% of that is what our, our account teams are bringing specifically to their clients based on their needs and what they need to get done. Right. You know, one of my favorite examples of of, of this, right? We have a automation example out there for a, a client we've got in Japan, right? They tie, you know, they're, they're obviously concerned, you know, security a everything else that we've been talking about. >>They're also concerned about resiliency, right? In the face of natural disasters. Yeah. So they took our automation, they said, Okay, we're gonna tie your platform to seismic data that's coming through, and we understand what seismic data's happening. Okay, it's hitting a certain event. Let's automatically start kicking off resiliency operations so we can be prepared and thus keeps serving our clients when that's happening. Right? And that's not something like when you talk about a global team coming in and, and saying, we're gonna do all this. It's that community aspect, getting, getting the account focus, getting to that level, right? That's really brings value to clients. And that's one of the use cases, you know, and aaps enabled us to do with the a the community approach. We've got >>Now talk about this partnership. I think earlier when we were talking to Stephanie and Tom, the bottoms up Ansible community with top down kind of business objectives kind of come into play. You guys have a partnership where it's, there's some game changing things happening because Ansible's growing, continuing to have that scope grow from a skill set standpoint, expand the horizons, doing more automation at scale, and then you got business objectives where people wanna move faster in their, in their digital transformation. So to me, it's interesting that this part kind of hits both. >>It does really hit both. I mean, you know, the community cloud that Kendra has is so critical, right? Because they build that c i CF architecture internally, but they follow that community mantra, if you will. And community is so important to us, right? And that's really where we find innovation. So together with what we were call discussing about validated content earlier today becomes critical to build that content to really help people get started, Right? Validated content, content they can depend on and deliver, right? So that becomes critical on the other side, as you mentioned, is the reality of how do we get this done? Yeah. Right? How do we mature, how do we accelerate? And without the ability to drive those solutions to them to fix, if you are the problems that the line of business has. Well, if you don't answer those questions with the innovation, with the community, and then with the ap, it's, it, it does, it's gotta all come >>Together as, I mean, that community framework is interesting. I think we hear a lot in the cube, you know, Hey, let's do this. Sounds good. Who's gonna do it? Someone who's the operator. So there's a little skills gap going on. It's also a transformation in the roles of the operators in particular, and the dev, So the DevOps equation's completely going to the next level, right? And this is where people wanna move faster. So you're seeing a lot more managed services, a lot more Yes. Services that's, I won't say so much top down, but more like, let's do it and here's a play to get it done, right? Then backfill on the hiring, whether it's taking on a little bit of technical debt or going a little faster to get the proof points, >>Right? And I think one of the critical aspects is, you know, Ansible has it certified collections, right? And oftentimes we, we don't, I don't, I meet with customers two, three times a week, right? There's not a single one that doesn't emphasize the importance of partners and the importance of certified collections, Right? And kindra is included in that, right? Because they bring a lot of those certified collections. Use them, leverage them, it's helps customers get a jumpstarter, right? It's a few, it's their easy button, right? But they only get that and they value that because of the support that's there. >>Yeah. Right? They get the with >>The cert. Yeah. I was gonna say, just adding on the certified collections, right? We, so, you know, it was, it was great to see the hub come out with those capabilities because, you know, as we've gone through the last 12 months and, and change, one of the things that we focused more in on is network devices, network support, right? And, and so, you know, some of the certified collections out there for Cisco for F five, right? Some of those things we've been able to take back in and now build on top of with the expertise that we, we have in that space as well. And then use that as a starting point to more value for our clients. >>How is Kentrell working together with, with Red Hat and with Ansible to help organizations like you mentioned Nelson, they're on the journey varies considerably. Some are well on their way, others aren't. But for those to really start developing an automation, first culture, we talked a lot about cultural ship, we talked about it this morning. You can feel the power of that community and driving it, but how do you guys work together to help companies and any industry kind of really start understanding what an automation first culture is and then building it internally and getting some grounds? Well, >>Well, it's interesting, right? One of the, one of the things that really is we found really helpful is assessments, right? So you have silos and pockets of automation, and that's that challenge, right? So to be able to bring that, if you are automation community within an enterprise together, we often go out and we'll do an assessment, right? An automation assessment to really understand holistically how the enterprise could leverage automation not just in the pockets, but to bring it together. And when they bring that automation together, they can share, playbooks can share their experiences, right? And with Kindra and the multiple and the practices they have, right? They really bring that home from an industry perspective. They also bring that home, if you will, from a technology perspective. And they bring that together. So, you know, Kindra in that respect is the glue for our customer success. >>What's news? What's the next big thing that you guys see? Because if this continues down the road, this path, people are gonna get, the winds gonna get the successes. The new beachhead, if you will, is established. You got the edge around the corner. What's next for you guys in the partnership? How do you see it developing? >>No, we're looking at >>No, it's all good. So really, you know, I, I mentioned it earlier and, and the jour the automation journey paralleled by innovation, right? Customers today are automating, they're doing a great job. There's multiple tools out there. We understand we're not gonna be the only tool in the shed, but Ansible can come in and integrate that entire environment. And in a hybrid cloud environment, you want that there, right? I think what next is obviously the hybrid cloud is critical. The edge is critical, right? And I think that, you know, the needs and the requirements that Kindra hears that we have is kind of that future. And, you know, we, we often, often in, in Red Hat, we talk about a north star, right? And when I work with partners, ikin, do we talk about the North Star, where we want to get to? And that is the acceleration of automation. And I think both by the practical aspect of working with our customers and the innovation as partners, as business partners, technology partners will help accelerate >>That. Yeah. Scott, your perspective to bridge to the future is obviously hybrid and edge, how you bringing your customers along? >>Yes. So, so we see, you know, when we talk about my, when I talk about my automation strategy, our automated strategy, right? It's about being automated, orchestrated and intelligent, right? Kind of those, those three layers of the stack. We've been building out a lot of work, what we call our integrated AIOps layer for actionable insights, right? We've got a, you know, a goal to integrate that and, and we have integrated into our automation service for how we're delivering the whole package to our clients so they can better see opportunities for automation. What's the best way to go about it? You know, what are the, what are some of the, the issues they have, vulnerabilities they have in their environment and really bringing it to them in, in a real holistic manner. In fact, we internally, we call it our F five steering wheel, right? Based on the, the race thing, right? >>Because you think about the, the racing cars, f fives know they're right there, right? They got everything they need in front of 'em. Yeah. So our goal is been to, to include that into our automation view and service and build that out, right? So that's one way we're doing it. The additional way is, is through some announcements you probably heard, hopefully heard the last couple weeks through something called Kendra Bridge, right? Kendra Bridge is more the digitization of, of the way we deliver services for our clients to make it easier for them to consume and, and to, to make the barrier to entry for things like getting automation, getting it more in their environment, right? Lower as much as possible, right? So really integrated AIOps kind bridge. Those are really the two ways we see it as, as going forward. >>It's interesting, you know, we live through a lot of these different inflection points in the industry. Every time there's a big inflection point, there's more complexity that needs to be tamed, you know? And so you got innovation. If you got innovation coming and you got the clients wanna simplify and tame the complexity, this is a big part of what you guys do. >>Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, how do we, you know, most, when the clients come to us, right? Like I said, one, it's about trust. They trust us to do it because we can make it easy for them to not have to worry about that, right? Yeah. They don't have to worry about what it takes to secure the environment, manage it, run it, design it, build it for the, the cloud. We give 'em the ability, we give them the ability to focus on their core business while we do the stuff that's important to them, which >>Is absolutely critical that you, you can't emphasize trust in this relationship enough. I wish we had more time, guys, you're gonna have to come back. I think that's basically what this is boil down to. But thanks so much guys for talking with John and me about how Kendra and and Ansible are working together, really enabling your customers to, to unlock the value of automation across their organization and really make some big business changes. We appreciate your insights and your time. Fantastic. Thank you. Happy to do it and happy to do it any time. All right. Our pleasure. Thank you so much for our guests and John Furrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube Live from Chicago. This is day one of our coverage of Ansible Fest 22. Don't go anywhere. Our next guest joins us in just a minute.

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host Stu minimun hi and welcome to a special cube conversation here in our Boston area studio I am Stu minimun and we're digging in with Dell EMC on data protection in the multi cloud where era happy to join welcome to the program first time guest Nelson Nelson Hsu who is the director of solutions marketing with Dell EMC Nelson great to see you great to be here thank you sir all right so you and I were both at Q con plus cloud native con with about 12,000 of our friends in the open-source community down in San Diego California you know when you bring us in first it's probably not the first place that people think of when they think of Delhi MC so explain a little bit what the team was doing the announcements there and what you're seeing at the show sure no I appreciate that it was a first time for for Dell technologies it was kind of our coming-out party if you all went into the cloud native realm we've got a tremendous amount of momentum especially OCR on kubernetes between what we've done in the data protection space with our power protect software for kubernetes we've done in our storage room in the work that we've done around container storage interfaces so a lot of that was coming out in introducing that to the Keuka and cognitive count attendees I think it was a really good timing though yeah Elson we've been watching you know the role the developers the discussion of DevOps of course is central what's happening not only at cube con but many of the cloud shows there I know at VMworld you know you see what's happening on with the VMware code team so explain how a kind of the the Dell technologies cloud partnership with vm or how about all that all pulls together for activities that the your organization's doing with that within the DevOps well you know you you know they were right they're right it's all about DevOps it's about the developers it's about the the new world of bringing cloud native applications and driving them into the production environment I think that you know we heard that at vmworld with pack L singer and we're his his pillars of you know build run protect connect are key aspects so you know if you look at that man component protect falls right into that area right because with the growth of data as we're seeing it today the need to manage that in the cloud native realm becomes even more prevalent and important you know we've seen DevOps mature over the last couple years where you see you know we had 8,000 people in Seattle right now we had 12,500 of your best friends and just gonna go out right I'm sure you saw that yeah absolutely huge growth there and I'm glad you brought up to protect thing because when I think about developers we want to reduce the friction for developers to be able to build their apps you think about DevOps is you know keeping agility going but you know where is the data and how do I make sure that you know we know when we go to a cloud world we still need to things about security we still need to think about data management and data protection there so explain for audience how that protect piece fits into the DevOps world well you know for first we should clarify a little bit right because like over the last two years everything's been about security within containers right and that's great because you're protecting the applications and people are worried about about penetration there and and it's been fantastic and I think that today specifically around the aspect of securing the application and now securing the infrastructure is key you know storage has become a very very relevant topic whether it's like persistent volumes taking center stage right when it comes to claim a vApps movie into production because it's about protecting those mission critical workloads and as you just stated you have your applications but at the end of the day your data right is really at the capital right and that's what you really need to focus on it becomes greater and greater importance when you have that holistic discussion about DevOps right and so now we have the aspect of the kubernetes administrator meets the IT administrator all right and having to be able to protect through this application transformation that's being driven by cloud native complexity and that you know tradition was disaggregated from the infrastructure but now as you mature and you look at those production and mission-critical environments you really have to pay attention to how am I going to protect my data the edge to core to cloud and in that cloud native world yeah definitely is one of those areas we found at the conference for many it's a steep learning curve to try to understand you know kubernetes all these cloud native architectures if you come in there with the traditional infrastructure role I was actually something we were discussed more a couple of years ago was they've some of the basic blocking and tackling of networking and storage inside of a container environment but now a lot of discussion is around that application development and therefore we need to make sure that we're having not only the app dev but the infrastructure team all understanding how everything goes together and you know protection of course a critical piece there oh absolutely and and you know if we look at all the different projects that are underway under C and C F I mean it's fantastic right I mean there's so much momentum everyone's now also looking at that infrastructure right I mean last year was all about the surface mesh right so I think that we're at that inflection point and now it's going to be a lot about the storage and protecting that storage if you look at Project Valero right so project Valero wasn't as an open source project under C and C F right being driven by the work that was done by the the you know the the the active form enormous hefty oh right so I got Joe Bereta right you got Greg Milwaukee and the work that they done in the starter house arc well now WMC in specificity of the data protection team is working and contributing hand in hand with the vmware team on velaro and i think you'll see that resonate through the future of tansu and pacific as we go forward great let's connect the dots now between what we're doing is the CMC F cube con show and now we've got AWS reinvented coming up so Amazon might now let us use the word multi-cloud that that context there but absolutely that was the conversation at many of the other shows this year is you know hybrid cloud multi-cloud how customers get their arms around all these environments so you know help us understand how this story that we were just talking about for cloud native environment fits into the broader kind of public cloud discussion oh absolutely so you I think one of the key aspects to that is around consistency right so being able from a data protection perspective be able to protect all that valuable data that you have whether it's in premises where it's in cloud with its multi cloud or hybrid and you want to be able to protect that holistically using the same capability you have from your premises base into or out of or within cloud all right so I want to be able to within AWS be able to protect my data from region to region right so we've got a great offering for VMware cloud on AWS it allows you to protect into and within the cloud itself so you can protect in and extend out to the cloud yeah definitely probably one of the most interesting partnerships I think the industry's been watching the last two years is you know VMware and AWS now you know the dominant virtualization you know in your data center environment and you know the leader in public clouds so looking forward to hearing some proof points at the conference and he gives a little bit of hint as to what we'll be seeing in hearing about at the show well I think you'll hear a lot about that consistency with regards to you know observability orchestration automation automation becomes so key that you take your workflows for data protection from premises to the cloud and having that consistency I think you'll also see some pretty pretty significant numbers coming forth with regards to how much data is being protected in in AWS ok definitely looking forward to that always love looking forward to the customers all right Nelson I want to give you the last word what else should we be looking for your team kind of end of 2019 it going into 2020 well you know I think it all starts with cloud and multi clock all right that's our core focus that's what we're driven to I think you'll see innovation especially in the cloud native space that we have I think you will see further innovation in in the in the cybersecurity in the cyber recovery space around data protection so I think those are really key elements that that you'll see more from yeah absolutely super important discussions around data around security and everything there Nelson thank you so much for joining us here in the cube sue thank you all right be sure to check out silicon angle for exclusive content leading up to and after AWS reinvent of course and check out the cube net if you're not at the table if you are at the show come to the center of the show floor at the Venetian inside the Sands Convention Center you can find myself Dave Volante John Ferrier and our whole team there for three days water wall coverage for our last big show of the year and I'm Stu minimun thank you for watching the Q

>> From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE. (upbeat music) Now, here's your host Dave Vellante. >> Hi everybody, welcome to this Cube Conversation on data protection. You know, I've been reporting for the last several months that spending on storage is reverting back to pre-2018 levels, but at the same time, it's not falling off a cliff. Now, one area of storage that is still very, very strong is the data protection segment. In the past 18 months, we've seen about a half a billion dollars in venture funding come into the market. We've just seen a big multi-billion dollar exit. And backup specifically in data protection, data management generally is where all the action is right now. And one of the leaders in data protection is Dell EMC. The company has the largest share of the market and the new entrants, believe me, want a piece of their pie. But anyone who follows this company knows that the firm is not likely to give up it's turf very easily. So much is changing in the market today. And I want to understand how Dell EMC's data protection division is responding to both the competitive threats and the changing market dynamics. With me are two experts from Dell EMC to address these issues. Nelson Hsu is Director of Solutions, Product Marketing for the data protection division at Dell EMC, and Colm Keegan is Senior Consultant, Product Marketing at Dell EMC. Gents, welcome to theCUBE. Great to see you again. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thanks, Dave. >> So you heard my intro. You guys are the leader. You got the biggest market share. You got all the upstarts coming at ya. What's your response? >> Want me to take that? >> Sure. >> Yeah. It's interesting, so we were talking about this before we came on set, you know and often times they want to poke holes at us 'cause you know we're perceived as being the old timers, or the stodgy ones of the group out there. And play a little jiu jitsu, you move in say you know well time in market counts for something. You know we've been solving data protection challenges for customers for literally decades now. You know and so, water under the boat and knowing the experience that we've derived from that allows us to bring solutions that are mature, that are proven. What we're doing is we're taking those proven solutions and pairing them with modern capabilities. So that, you know we look at it and say, hey, look, Mr. Customer. You have significant data protection challenges today because, as you said, the world's changing. It's changing rapidly. We can help you address those while also sowing the seeds for the foundation for the future. So we think that's a compelling message and we think that while some of our competitors, in particular the upstarts, have had some interesting things to say, big picture-wise, they don't know what they don't know. 'Cause they just don't have the time in the market. Their solutions are also largely absent upmarket, you know, when you look at the enterprise. So we're comfortable. We think we're in a very good spot right now. >> So cloud obviously was the huge mega trend of the past decade. You guys said from the beginning, it's going to be a hybrid world. Some of that was we hope it's going to be a hybrid world. Well you were right, it's a hybrid world. So how is cloud, hybrid cloud affecting your customer decisions around data protection, and how are you responding? >> Well, you know, there's no doubt that the growth in cloud and the growth in hybrid cloud is real. And it's there today. As we look, and as Colm mentioned, we've been protecting data across the enterprise, across the edge and in the cloud, and that growth continues. So today, we have over 1,000 customers that we're protecting their data in the cloud. To the tone of over 2.7 exabytes of data protected in the cloud by Dell EMC data protection. So there is absolutely no doubt that that growth is there. We have a lot of innovation that we're driving on, both in various ares of cloud native, cyber security and deep integration. >> Okay, so that's good, 1,000 customers. That's a pretty good observation space. But when you think about hybrid, what I think when I talk to customers is they want that same exact cloud experience. They don't want to have to context switch. They don't want to have to buy different platforms. So how are you specifically addressing that customer requirement? >> So there's a couple ways we look at that, right? For our customers, simplicity is very key in ease of use. So that's one of our core tenants as we go across both the edge, the core and the cloud. And the other aspect of that is consistency. So giving them and allowing them to use the tools that they know today to be able to protect their data, wherever that data resides. So with the cloud, with cloud native, your data becomes very, very distributed. And you have to be able to see all that data, and control and manage that data. So the whole aspect around cloud data management has now risen to the top as a major concern. We do that in a great way in a sense that we both have a hybrid strategy and a lot of that is working with Dell Technologies cloud. And it's based upon VMware. And so we have a very good deep relationship with VMware to utilize their tools that our customers use today. Whether it be vSphere or vcontrol that they can manage their data protection from one console, from one environment itself. >> Yeah, Dave, I think when you look at the split today, the latest cut of research is that roughly 52% of VM's are in the cloud, and 48 percent are on-prems so it's already hybrid, and as Nelson said, it's largely predicated on VMware. So as organizations start consuming cloud they're going to go with the platform that they've been operating under for years now. So it'll be VMware. We've always had very tight integration with VMware. We have a very strong partnership with them. And that's both on the existing portfolio as well as the agile portfolio that we're building out today under PowerProtect. So as that hybrid world evolves for the customers obviously we want to make sure they're protected from a virtual machine standpoint. And make that, as Nelson said, very simple for them because the last thing customers need is complexity particularly as their environments are becoming inherently more complex. Because now you look at most enterprises today, they're going to have a mix of workloads. It's physical, it's virtual, containers are unaccounted for. It's cloud native apps, it's SaaS. You know we were talking earlier about multi-clouds. Oftentimes it just kind of came up organically and now you've got this huge distribution of workloads and oftentimes, customers have been just sort of reactive to that. In other words, let me find a way to protect that and I'll worry about the details later. We're looking at that and saying, we have the portfolio to help you protect all your workloads, and as importantly, we'll help consolidate the management in that environment. It's going to start with VMware, but then longer term we're planning for things like a SaaS control plane so that we can give you a complete view of that environment and allow you to assign the policies you need in terms of SLA's, in terms of compliance. You're basically hitting all the security, hitting all the key things that you need and so directionally we think starting with VMware and building from there is probably the most realistic way we can get customers protected from a hyper cloud. >> So the vision is a single point of control that is SaaS based that lives in the cloud or lives wherever you want it to live? >> Right, it can be either. >> So one of our core tendencies here, right, is that we want and deliver the ability to protect our customer's data wherever it resides. Whether it's edge, core or cloud. >> So sticking on cloud for a second, and then sort of segue into the VMware conversation that I want to have is VMware is the sort of linchpin of your multi-cloud strategy. That makes a lot of sense. VMware is going to be a leader, if not the leader in multi-cloud. We'll see how that all shakes out. It's kind of jump ball right now but VMware is in pretty good position with 500,000 customers. But your perspective on cloud is different than say, take an AWS cloud provider, it's a place. Put your data in my cloud. You guys are talking about the experience. And that's really what you're trying to drive with VMware, whether is Ron-prem, whether it's in Google, Azure, AWS, wherever. The cloud, you name it. Is that the right way to think about your strategy? Specifically as it relates to multi-cloud. >> Yeah, so I think on the area of multi-cloud, it is a multi-cloud world. Years ago I was in a SaaS startup and we had customers that were looking to deploy to the cloud. And then that was the question. Okay, do we hedge on multi-cloud or not? As a SaaS provider, we actually implemented on both AWS and Azure at the time. Which became relevant, because now our customers are asking us, yes, my primary is with this particular hyper scaler. But do you also support this second hyper scaler? So the reality started to evolve. And so for us, yes, VMware is a very strategic aspect and partner with us, especially with Dell Technologies cloud. But we also have a multi-cloud relationship with AWS, with Azure and with Google. >> Yes, so the compatibility matrix, if you will, applies now to the cloud. >> Absolutely, absolutely. So now it's having that feature and functionality across multiple clouds. >> One of the things we obviously paid attention to is Project Tanzu with inside of VMware. All around bringing kind of Kubernetes and VMware together. How does that affect data protection? >> Well, I think it affects data protection in the sense that addressing the entire aspect of still your data is distributed now. And it's going to grow that way. I think that we've seen numbers upwards of 70% of applications will be container based. Some of that will be going forward to 2022 where there'll be multiple production applications that will be container based. I think what Tanzu will bring to the table is a cohesive way to manage and control that environment itself. >> Okay, and so maybe we could sort of drill into that a little bit. Containers, it's becoming more obvious that people want to persist some of that data. It's largely stateless, but you've got to figure out how to recover. So do you have solutions in that space, is that sort of more road mapping? You can talk about that a little bit. >> No, absolutely. So definitely we have concrete solutions with our Dell EMC PowerProtect data manager for Kubernetes. It's actually one of the first that was in the market to support cloud native environments. >> It is the first. >> Yeah, the first offering out there to support Kubernetes. And so the aspect there is that as cloud native has moved from DevOps, and now into production in the mission critical applications, now becomes the aspect of originally the DNA of DevOps was my data doesn't have to be persistent. Now when you move into a mission critical environment, you're entire environment needs to be protected. And to be able to bring those workloads back up should anything happen and to be able to protect that data that is critical to those workloads. >> Okay, and so you're saying you're first, and you see this as a differentiator in the marketplace, or is everybody going to have this, or it's one of these confusing ice cream cone of solutions. So why you guys? What's your big differentiation? Let's stick to containers. I have the same questions sort of overall come back to that. >> So great question, and the matter of fact is that with our experience across the edge, core and cloud, Kubernetes and containers will be prevalent throughout. And it'll be the way that applications will be developed. It's meeting the demands of the business and being agile. And I think that with our ability internally that would move to that agile emotion. We have that ability to address the customer's needs especially in the cloud native Kubernetes space. >> I think going back to what you said too about VMware, certainly our partnership there is differentiated. We even heard some echos of that during Vmworld. Pat Gelsinger usually doesn't give call outs on the main stage very frequently. And he said that they were working with us as a best-in-class partner for data protection with Tanzu. And so there is a very tight partnership there, so if I'm a customer and I'm looking at containers, I'm probably going to want to do it within the framework of VMware to start with. But it's important to point out that we're also not dependent on VMware. So we can still deliver protection for Kubernetes containers outside of say the VMware management domain. But I would say from a differentiation standpoint there are some real tight partnering going on to make these capabilities mature. >> Well it helps that your CEO owns 80% of the company. (laughing) But it's an interesting point you're making because again, dial back 10 years ago, VMware had much more of a Switzerland strategy under Maritz, almost to, at the time, EMC's detriment. I think Michael Dell is very clearly, as is Jeff Clarke, said look, we're going to do more integration. And Pat Gelsinger has been, look, I love all my partners. It's true but we're entering sort of a new era. And that integration is key, you know, again, because of the ownership structure, and your long history there. It's got to confer some advantages in the marketplace. >> Yeah, and he's also got to remove some of the headwinds to adoption of VMware cloud. And data protection, as we discussed often times can be a headwind if customers are concerned that they're not going to be able to protect their data, chances are they're going to stand pat for a while. So I mean you need to find ways to take some of those objections off the table. >> Yeah, and not to take anything away from your competitors. Look, it's an open API world, and again, people are going to compete. But at the end of the day this stuff is still really complex and if you can do some core engineering together it's definitely an advantage. Let's talk a little bit about cyber. I often say it's become a board level topic. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. SecOps teams are overtaxed. I think I put out a stat lately, I got it from Robert Herjavec actually. He said think about this. The worldwide economy is 86 trillion and we spend .014% on cyber, that's it. We're barely scratching the surface. And that's part of the problem. Okay, but with that limited resource we have to be as smart as possible. You've got this ransomware coming in. So what are your customers asking you for and how are you responding? >> So it's interesting, right, because it is top of mind, cyber and cyber attacks, and it takes many forms. The attacks can be malware, they could be encryption, they could be deletion. Which is ultimately the worst case scenario. And I think as you go forward and you look at it cyber is the number one concern for any CIO, CISO or anyone that's worried about their security infrastructure. >> Which is everybody >> Which is everybody, right, exactly. I think that we have delivered for the cloud data protection area a first and best offering with an air gap data protection solution. So inherently, we can insulate and protect our customer's data from cyber threats. So when a ransom event occurs you can recover your data without having to pay that ransom. Or not be concerned that in most severe cases your data gets deleted. I think most recently there was a healthcare provider who was threatened about their data being deleted. And that was the worst case. We were able to protect their data in the sense that with our cyber recovery offering they protected their data in an air gap vaulted solution. And they didn't have to pay for that ransom. >> So what I'm hearing from you guys is okay, cloud, very important. Hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, fundamental to our strategy. VMware, they say bet on sure things. VMware is pretty much a sure thing. Large customer base, leader in the space. And then cyber as a key concern of customers, you want to expand the notion of backup and data protection to really point it at cyber as well. >> Absolutely, in fact with this recent research, it's called the Global Data Protection Index Survey and we just refreshed it. And what customers identified as the most compelling reasons to adopt cloud is for better performance, better data protection, and better security. Not necessarily in that order but those were the top three. So we look at that and say, you know we've got plays there. Certainly we have capabilities protecting workloads in the cloud whether they be virtual machines, cloud native, containers. But the security aspect of it is huge. Because oftentimes customers, and Dave, you and I were talking about this, they make some broader assumptions about once data is in the clouds they can kind of wash their hands and walk away. Not so fast, because certainly there is a shared responsibility model that extends not only to data protection, but also to security. Look, don't get me wrong, the cloud service providers have fantastic security capabilities, have a great perimeter. But as you said, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. And when something happens, are you ready for it? So these solutions extend not only to on-prem but into the cloud. So it's that ability wherever the workload lives that you can get the right protection and what we're really now referring to as safeguarding data. Because it's a combination of data protection and security that's embedded and doing it wherever the workload resides. >> I'm glad you brought that up Colm. I have a follow up on that, but Nelson, did you want to add something? >> Well, I just want to mention that one of the biggest concerns is making sure that that data you vaulted is actually clean and safe. So we have a cyber sense capability within our cyber recovery product, that when you vault that data it does about 100 analytics on that data to make sure that there's no malware. That it's not infected. And it does it automatically and even on incremental using machine learning. >> That's really important because mistakes happen really fast. (laughing) So if you're vaulting corrupted data, >> What do you do? >> Oops. >> Yeah, exactly. >> I want to come back, I think the shared responsibility model is not well understand and there's a lot of confusion in the industry. At a conference this year, AWS' CISO Stephen Schmidt was saying, look all this talk about security is broken it's not really productive. The state of security in the cloud is actually really good and to your point Colm, yeah, he's right about that. Then you hear Pat Gelsinger saying, he's told me many times in theCUBE security is a do-over. To my point, you know the 86 trillion. And so I kind of lean, when I talk to IT people what Pat is saying. So you say okay, where is the dissidence there? Well, the reality is is the cloud service providers and the shared security model, they'll secure the physical infrastructure. But it's up to the customer to be responsible for everything else. You know, the edicts of the organization are applied. We were talking to the CISO of a large insurance company and she said to us, oh no, shared responsibility means it's our responsibility. So you're not going to go after the cloud service provider, you're going to go after the insurance company, or the financial service institution. Their brand is the one that's going to get hurt. So that's misunderstood. My question, very long winded rant, but what role do you guys play in that shared responsibility model? >> Well, ultimately it comes down to the customer. And the shared responsibility model really is admissible, as you mentioned, right? And so at the end of the day, you as the customer own and are responsible to protect that data. So your data protection strategy, your cyber resilience strategy has to be sound. And it has to be secured by those that can actually do it across multiple distribution models and platforms, whether it's edge, core or cloud. Whether it's VM's, containers. It doesn't change. You're still ultimately responsible for it. >> I think maybe what you might be driving at the question, Dave, is empowering the customers to maintain control of their data. And having the tools in place so that they feel comfortable. And part of it too is moving more towards automation. Because as their applications grow, and as Nelson said, become more distributed, as the data grows exponentially, this just fundamentally isn't a task that humans can manage very much longer. >> I'm glad you brought that up, because you ask a CISO, what's your number one problem? And he or she will tell you the skill sets to keep up with all this complexity. And that's where automation comes in. >> Correct, it does. So that's where we're taking it. Is trying to make things more automated and take tasks away from humans that they just can't keep up with. >> All right guys, I'll give you the last word. We go back a decade or so ago and backup was a whole different situation. And we saw the rise of virtualization and now cloud and all these other things that we have been talking about. Edge, the cyber threats, et cetera. So bring us home, where do you see the future and how does Dell EMC data protection fit in? >> It's an exciting time, it really is. It's kind of like the coming of that second storm as you mentioned. Businesses have that demand of needing more services to load more quickly in an agile fashion. And as they pair that with the growth of their data which is distributed, they really have that challenge overall of how do I manage this environment? So you have to have the observability to understand where your data is and to be able to monitor it. You have to be able to orchestrate your workloads so that they're automated, and the data protection of those workloads are automated as well. And so the imperative that aspects like Tanzu are addressing with cloud native, that Kubernetes brings to the table to deliver containerized applications. That's really quite honestly is the biggest evolution I've seen in my last 20 to 30 years. This is definitely a different paradigm shift. >> Yeah, you know, six months ago I was with a competitor and was taking a look at EMC, sorry, I should say Dell EMC, and I was wondering, should I make a move over here? And really what convinced me was the fact that the company was willing to basically solve internally the innovator's dilemma. You're making so much money on your existing portfolio, now you're going to start investing in what appears to be almost internal competition to your portfolio. It's not, it's complimentary. So that's what drove the decision for me to come here, but I will also say it's great to be a part of an organization that has a long-term vision. You remember, I think the phrase that was being used, being held captive to the 90-day shot clock. You know, the earnings reports and stuff. And that drives behavior. Well, if your organization is looking at decade-long goals, that means that you can actually plan to do things that over time are going to actually bring real value to customers. So I think we're doing the right things. We're obviously innovating, we're on this agile software development cadence gives us the ability to solve the problems incrementally over time so customers can see that value instead of waiting for large batch releases. But is also gives us the ability to say, hey, when we've made mistakes or when we hadn't seen certain things come around the corner, we're agile enough to change with that. So I think the combination of having that vision and putting in the investments, and we've kind of likened ourselves to the biggest startup in the industry with the backing of a Fortune 50. And so from a customer standpoint you got to look at that and think, you know, that's interesting, because I need to solve my current problems today. I need to have a path forward for the future. And who am I betting on to deliver that? And the other thing I'll leave on is customers are trying to work with fewer suppliers, not more suppliers. Because they want to reduce the complexity. Well who has the ability to not only bring data protection to bear, but a whole portfolio of technology is really end to end. That can snap into those environments to again reduce complexity and drive more business value. >> That's a really interesting point you make about consolidations. Ever since I've been in this industry people want to deal with less suppliers and reduce the complexity. But you still see startups and VC's funding things. And what's happened is this consolidation, the big guys, you guys are the biggest consolidator. And I always say the rich get richer. There's always this tension between sort of, do I go out and buy the spoke, best of breed tools, or do I get them from somebody who can help me across the portfolio? That's really where your strength is. Guys, thank you so much. This is really a very important topic. Data protection is one of the most important areas that we've been covering. I've been reporting on it a lot. As I said, a lot of venture money has been flowing in. So I really appreciate you guys coming in, sharing your perspectives. And best of luck in the marketplace. >> Appreciate it, Dave. >> Thanks, this was great. >> You're welcome. All right, and thank you for watching, everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)