(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, it's theCUBE! Covering .NEXT conference, 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> We're here in the big easy in New Orleans, and last year, right at this time, it was VeeamON. Happy to have theCUBE there and, right now we're at the Nutanix .NEXT conference, but back with us, the week before his conference, VeeamON, Peter McKay, President and co-CEO of Veeam. Peter, great to see you again. Thanks for joining us. >> Great to be here Stu. It's always great to be in front. >> Alright, a little bit less bright green, than your show, but, your second time at this show. Give us compare and contrast, you know between the Nutanix show and yours. >> It's great to see the ecosystem, that is definitely expanding. It's great for us because a lot of our, the relationships we've had with Nutanix has really evolved over the past year, and so part of that is the Nutanix ecosystem that we get together with and have a lot of great discussions over the two and a half days. So it's been much more impactful, this year than last, but a lot of it comes from a lot tighter in the partnership with Nutanix as well. >> Sure, and that's something Keith and I heard from the user base, it's, their ask is, you know, broaden and grow and mature that ecosystem. It was last year at the show that you made the announcement of AHV coming, and now it's their yeah, bring us inside your customers, what are you hearing from them? Why are they using it? And why Veeam, you got a nice mention on the keynote stage this morning. >> No it was, it's good. I mean, the most important was the customers were asking for tighter integration between Veeam and Nutanix. And then, you know, this started probably two years ago, and (mumbles) came to me and said, "Well we got to make a big bet together", and so, you know I remember, we were in dinner, in New York City, he said, "You got to make a big bet on us, and I'll make big bet on you", and that kind of sparked the partnership that we had and now, AHV was another one, and we got two or three more coming, down the road, that is pretty exciting as well as we expand, but AHV is obviously an important component that the Nutanix and Veeam customers have been asking for. >> Yeah, any feedback from the customers as to why they're sliding that over to AHV, most of them, you know, VM Ware customers, most customers we talked to still have a mix, but what are some of those drivers that are pushing them in that direction? >> You know I think it's a lot of the workloads, are kind of different, that's kind of conducive, I think a lot of people have tried AHV early on, a year ago or so, when it was still you know, not as mature as it is. I've had a number of customers that came up and have used it for another, for a year, year and a half, or so, and now it's starting to expand, so I think they're getting more comfortable leveraging AHV and that's what's driving a lot of those customers to say, "Okay, I want to leverage Veeam to do that, to work together with that". So it's definitely had much more broad adoption than it's had a year ago. >> So Peter, let's see if we can tease out some of these future innovations between you and Nutanix, a little bit. Taking a broader look, back-up, super mature market, but there's a awful lot of excitement, there's rumors from MNA, there's plenty of investment money going around, and not what I would call back-up, not even what I would call data protection, but I'm labeling this metadata infrastructure. Why is this market segment so important and so critical to customers in this day of digital transformation? >> Keith that's a great question, and a lot of it has to do with just the massive expansion of data, right? I mean data is just becoming more critical, it's growing at an exponential rate, it is sprawling to all end points, the edge in IOT, it's becoming a major issue. So just the sheer volume, the growth and criticality of data is changing. And then I think it's this, as companies are moving kind of this digital transformation moving more digital, the need for it to be always on has become like a must have. So, before it was like, you know, hey I just need to back it up, and you know, then it was okay now I got to recover fast, now it's about, I can never go down. Or if I do, I got to come back up fast. And so that's changed the dynamic for most of these companies that, I can't go down, the cost of it, and you had on the keynote today when they said, "Look at it, if I go down it's $750,000 a week when it goes down for one minute". So it's a lot of money, it's real dollars, that now companies are looking and saying, "I got to do something about it, I have to be always on", that's what we call availability, now hyper availability. That market is changing, and that's why you see a lot of investment going in. >> So let's talk about that this critical relationship that you're building with the Nutanix folks, how are you guys offering a differentiated experience and value to this new era of data? >> Yeah I think you know, when you look at the success that Nutanix has had, the work, the use cases, a lot of them are similar in that, you know, data is a big part of kind of their future, and part of that is this data, refreshing of the data centers that companies are kind of migrating to new and upgraded data center, I mean a lot of where our businesses come from is that updated, the data center refreshes that all these companies are doing, and a lot of them are moving off of legacy hardware, legacy back-up and protection solutions, that are moving to more kind of current day solutions, which are Nutanix and Veeam. And so, we found that we're going into the same companies, having the same conversations, and we realized that, why aren't we doing more together to do it? And so, what you'll see going forward is a lot more tighter integration between the technologies, and a lot more alignment on the use cases that were going, VDI is you know, back-up as a service, DR as a service, their cloud scenarios, their cloud offering, is also going to be a big part of our future as well. >> So let's talk about cloud in general. What's the importance to your customers in shared experience, we've heard a lot from Nutanix this past week about cloud, whether (mumbles), calm, but their opinionated view of cloud, what's the Veeam Nutanix cloud story? >> I think you know, as theory said in the keynote today, it was this, the hybrid cloud. The multi-cloud story. In every company that we go in you have to go in and talk a multi-cloud story. Especially when you're backing up or DR, you know, the cloud is a great vehicle, it's a great way to kind of get started in the cloud, and so in every conversation we have, whether you're a large company, or medium or small, the cloud is always a component in that discussion. And Nutanix is the, when you hear the story, the Veeam value proposition and the Nutanix value proposition, relative to the cloud, they're similar messages. And so, we believe that companies who want to back-up in the cloud, back-up from the cloud, or back-up between the cloud, is critical for our customers. And, we said, a year, two years ago, that this is going to be a major part of our success going forward, and we've invested a lot in it. >> Yeah, Peter, it's interesting, 'cause on the one hand, there's some similarities between the Nutanix message and the Veeam, multi-cloud world, going to play across them, the other thing, Nutanix is trying to position themselves as one of the platform players. Veeam's got a long partnership with VM Ware, last year you know, real broad as to what you do to Microsoft, how do you grade Nutanix, how they're a good partner but, you know, how are they doing in trying to be a platform a la a VM Ware, Microsoft, or even an Amazon? >> I mean, VM Ware's a phenomenal partner of ours, as you know, we built our business on the backs of VM Ware and, leveraging that ecosystem and, I think, look, Nutanix is doing a great job of driving what customer needs. Focusing on customer success, and expanding that portfolio to the needs and what the customers are asking for. And you know, that's kind of what we've done as well, and so we've aligned to focus on what the customers need to be successful. And, you know, things of simplicity you know, good ROI flexibility, agility, all the things that I think are what customers need, and what we've been positioned, what we've been talking to our customers about for, you know, seven, eight years now. So, I think the message is aligned, but I think they're doing a really good job of kind of laying out that platform, in a way that it's a journey, it's not all here today, but this is where we're going, and here's how you could follow. So, it makes you the easier to partner because you kind of know what's coming and where our roadmaps align. >> So, sounds aligned, there's always the concern, VM Ware started overlapping with the back-up enders a few years ago, but still a strong partnership, there's always that co-oppotition angle, how do you address that? >> I mean, look it, I mean that's kind of the world we live in, right? I mean there's going to be, at times there's different conversations we're having every day, with companies that we, on one hand we compete with, you know, think Dell EMC, right, and companies that you can partner with, which is also Dell and EMC. I mean, HP, Cisco, Nenapp, very strong partners of ours, and sometimes it makes sense for us to work together, and sometimes it doesn't. Or it makes sense for us to work with Nutanix versus you know, Microsoft or someone else so, you know, we try to be the best partner that we can, we've been able to navigate this world that's very, you know, a lot of overlapping technologies. And so, you know, we became, you know, kind of hardware agnostic, cloud agnostic, and that's served us well over the 11 years, and you know, I think it's getting more challenging, I think we're definitely going deeper with fewer, so that'll change over the next year or two. Where we're going to go deeper with a number of companies because, you know, that's what our customers are asking for, you know, yes I get that, but I need to go deeper in these certain technologies. >> Yeah, I'm a technologist, so I'm going to ask the question, what areas of technology are they asking for specifically? I mean back-up is, again, when you look at back-up, can I store it, can I restore it, can I restore it granually, and then we start to get into kind of where we differentiate between the, okay, we need to go look at a Veeam, or a different back-up solution, beyond what vendors give us, where's those deep integrations or deep capabilities that customers have asked for, as you've been at the show this week? >> Yeah, it's, you know every vendor has their kind of differentiation, you know? For us, we've always focused along you know the recovery time, right? That was always kind of the fastest recovery time of anybody, so we always, that's where we kind of built on our business on this availability, up and running all the time. We also have kept it simple. You know, we haven't, we try to make easy to use, easy to run, easy to manage, easy to operate, and so that has been kind of the cornerstone of Veeam since the beginning, and we try to make sure the ROI was you know fast time to value, right? And so, that continues to be our cornerstone. When we look at partnerships with the Nutanix and others, it is, how do we leverage those value prompts when there's every customer is asking for keep it simple, how do you get to value faster, and the more you can integrate with Nutanix, and the easier it is that I can get one solution, bundled together, in my various locations, and so we've been able to do that with Nutanix and others, and it's exactly what the customers have been asking for. >> Peter, give us some of the highlights of the Veeam presence here at the show. You were telling us, the sessions were overflowing, nice big booth here. >> Yeah no we're a platinum sponsor, and you know, as I said, an important partnership. Yeah, we have our event that's here, that's one of the shows that's I think max capacity is 500, it's overflowed, so that's a good sign, but a lot of interest. You know, it's good, 'cause I actually went to the booth and hung out at the, and answered a lot of questions for a couple hours last night and, just the number of customers that, most know Veeam, but they're asking for, okay AHV, I want it, where's it coming? What's next, what's next? And so, there's a lot of interest here. This has been a very good show for us, in not just getting customer feedback, or prospects and interest, but also in the partner ecosystem, on how they want to leverage the Veeam Nutanix relationship. So, as well as Executive meetings that we have, which is always a good. >> Yeah, I can attest to you, I saw you with the customers in the booth here, good to have a little warm up, next week I don't think you're going to have a lot of time to be sitting in the booth so, Peter McKay, always a pleasure to catch up with you, we look forward to seeing you and the team next week in Chicago for VeeamON. >> Same here. >> Make sure to check out thecube.net for of course, all the shows we're at, all the ones we're going to be at, and the thousands of interviews that we've done over the years. For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman, back with lots more here, thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music)