>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, welcome back to the cubes coverage of combo go 19. Stu Miniman is here with me, Lisa Martin and we are wrapping up two days of really exciting wall to wall coverage of the new vault and we're very pleased to welcome a couple of special guests onto the program. To help us wrap up our two days, we have Miranda foster, the vice president of worldwide communications for comm vault and Al Bunty is here, the co founder, former COO and board member. Welcome Miranda and Al. Great to have you on the program. Thanks Lisa. So a lot of energy at this event and I don't think it has anything to do with our rarefied air here in the mile high city. Al, let's start with you. >>Well, there's other things in Colorado. >>There are, yeah, they don't talk about it. They talked about that on stage yesterday. So owl, you have been with convo ball as I mentioned, co-founder. What an evolution over the last 20 years. Can you take us back? >>Surely. So, um, yeah and it's been, it's, it's really kind of cool to see it coming together at this point. But if you go back 20 years when we started this, the whole idea was around data. And remember we walked into a company that was focused on optical storage. Um, we decided it would be a good company to invest in. Um, for two reasons. One, we thought they were really great people here, very creative and innovative and two, it was a great space. So if we believed we believe data would grow and that was a pretty decent thesis to go with. Yeah. And then, then it started moving from there. So I tell people I wasn't burdened with facts so I didn't understand why all these copies were being made of the same set of data. So we developed a platform and an architecture focused on indexing it so you just index at once and then could use it for many different purposes. >>And that just kept moving through the years with this very data centric approach to storage, management, backup protection, etc. It was all about the data. I happened to be lucky and said, you know, I think there's something to this thing called NAS and sand and storage networks and all those things. And I also said we have to plan for fur on scale on our solution of a million X. Now it was only off a magnitude of about a thousand on that, but it was the right idea. You know, you had to build something to scale and, and we came in and we wanted to build a company. We didn't want to just flip a company but we thought there is a longterm vision in it and if you take it all the way to the present here it's, it's really, um, it's, it feels really good to see where the company came from. It's a great foundation and now it will propel off this foundation, um, with a similar vision with great modern execution and management. >>Yeah. Al, when we had the chance to talk with you last year at the show in Nashville, it was setting up for that change. So I want to get your view there. There are some things that the company was working on and are being continued, but there's some things that, you know, Bob hammer would not have happened under his regime. So want to get your viewpoint as to the new Convolt, you know, what, what is, what are some of those new things that are moving forward with the company that might not have in the previous days? >>Yeah, that's a good questions. Do I think Mo, a lot of the innovation that you've seen here, um, would have happened maybe not as quickly. Um, we, the company obviously acquired Hedvig. Uh, we were on a very similar path but to do it ourselves. So you had kind of been a modern, we need to get to market quicker with some real pros. I think, um, the, the evolution of redoing sales management essentially was probably the biggest shift that needed to be under a new regime, if you will. Yeah. >>So Miranda, making these transitions can be really tricky from a marketing standpoint. Talk, talk us through a bit, some of the, how do you make sure trusted yet innovative and new that you've accomplished at this show? >>Well, trust it is obviously the most important because the Bob, the brand that Bob and Al built really embodies reliability for what we provide to our customers. I mean that's what gives them the peace of mind to sleep at night. But I'll tell you, Sanjay has been with us for just eight months now, February of 2019 and it's been busy. We've done a lot of things from a points on J transition with Bob and now to his point we've, we've acquired Hedvig, we've introduced this new SAS portfolio and you're exactly right. What we need to do is make sure that the reliability that customers have come to rely on Convolt for translates into what we're doing with the new Convolt and I think we've done a really good job. We've put a lot of muscle behind making sure, particularly with metallic that it was tried, it was trusted, it was beta tested, we got input from customers, partners, industry influencers. We really built it around the customer. So I think the brand that comm brings will translate well into the things that we've done with these, with these new shifts and movements within the company >>on, on that questions too as well. Um, I think Miranda is a good example of somebody that was with the company before a tremendous talent. She's got new opportunities here and she's run with it. So it's kinda that balance of some, uh, understood the fundamentals and the way we're trying to run the business. And she's grasped the new world as well. So, >>and Rob as well, right? Robin in his new, >>yeah, that's another good point. So that was all part of the transitioning here and Sanjay and the team had been very careful on trying to keep that balance. >>Change is really difficult anywhere, right? Dissect to any element of life. And you look at a business that's been very successful, has built a very strong, reliable brand for 20 years. Big leadership changes, not just with Sanjay, but all of the leadership changes. You know, analysts said, all right, you've got to upgrade your Salesforce. We're seeing a lot of movement in the area. You got to enhance your marketing. We're seeing metallic has the new routes to market, new partner focus, so PSI focuses. We're also seeing this expansion in the market, so what folks were saying, you know a year ago come on is answering in a big way and to your point in a fast way that's not easy to do. You've been here nine years since the beginning. Can you give us a little bit of a perspective, Miranda, about some of the things that were announced at the show? >>How excited everybody is, customers, partners, combo folks. How do you now extend the message and the communications from go globally after the show ends? That's an awesome question. I'm really passionate about this. So you know, Monday we announced metallic, we announced a new head of channels and alliances and Mercer Rowe, we had crazy technology innovation announcements with activate, with the acceleration of the integration with Hedvig with the momentum release that we put out today. We're also doing cool stuff with our corporate social responsibility in terms of sponsoring the new business Avengers coalition. That's something that Chris Powell is really championing here at, at the show and also within combo. So we're very excited about that. And then when you add people like yourselves, you know the tech field day folks, because not everybody can be here, right? Not everybody can be at go. So being able to extend the opportunity for, for folks to participate in combo, go through things like the cube through things like tech field day and using our social media tools and just getting all of the good vibes that are here. Because as Al says, this really is an intimate show, but we try to extend that to anybody who wants to follow us, to anybody who wants to be a part of it. And that's something that we've really focused on the last couple of years to make sure that folks who aren't here can, can get an embrace the environment here at Commonweal go. >>It's such an important piece that you're here helping with the transition I talked about. It's important that some of the existing >>get new roles and do responsibility going forward. What's your role going to be and what should we expect to see from you personally? Somebody has got to mow the lawn. >>Yeah. >>But yes, do I, I'll stay on the board. Um, we're talking through that. I think I'll be a very active board, not just the legal side of the equation. Um, try and stay involved with customers and, and strategies and, and even, uh, potential acquisitions, those kinds of things. Um, I'm also wandering off into the university environment. Uh, my Alma mater is a university of Iowa. I'm on the board there and uh, I'm involved in setting up innovation centers and entrepreneurial programs and that kind of thing. Um, I'll keep doing my farming thing and uh, actually have some ideas on that. There's a lot of technology as you guys know, attacking Nat space. So, and like I said, I'll try to keep a lot of things linked back into a combo. >>What Al can have confidence in is that I will keep him busy. So there's that. And then I will also put on the table, we agree to disagree with our college athletic loyalties. So I'm a big kid just because we don't compete really. Right. So I mean, but if I won Kansas wherever to play, then we would just politely disagree. Yeah. Well that's good that you have this agreement in place. I would love to get some anecdotal feedback from you of some of the things that you've heard over the last three days with all this news, all these changes. What are you hearing from customers and partners who you've had relationships with for a very long time? >>I think they're, I think they're all really excited, but, and maybe I'm biased, but they liked the idea that we're trying to not throw out all the old focus on customers, focus on technologies, continue the innovation. I'm pleased that we, Miranda and the team started taking this theme of what we do to a personal level, you know, recovery and those kinds of things. It isn't just the money in the business outages. It's a really a effect on a personal lives. And that resonates. I hear that a lot. Um, I asked our bigger customers and they've loved us for our support, how we take care of them. The, the intimacy of the partnership, you know, and I think they feel pleased that that's staying yet there's lot of modern Emity if that's a good word. I think fokai was what you, I think it's the blend of things and I think that really excites people. >>We've heard that a lot. You guys did a great job with having customers on stage and as a marketer who does customer marketing programs, I think there's nothing more validating than the voice of a customer. But suddenly today that I thought was a pivot on that convo, did well as Sonic healthcare was on main stage. And then he came onto the program and I really liked how he talked about some of the failures that they've been through. You know, we had the NASA talking yesterday, NASA, 60 years young, very infamous, probably for failure is not an option, but it is a very real possibility whether you're talking about space flight or you're talking about data protection and cyber attacks and the rise of that. And it was really, I'd say, refreshing to hear the voice of a customer say, these are the areas in which we failed. This is how come they've helped us recover and how much better and stronger are they? Not just as a company as Sonic healthcare, but even as an individual person responsible for that. That was a really great message that you guys were able to extend to the audience today and we wanted to get that out. >>I loved that as well. I think that was good. I have also back on driving innovation, I always felt one of my biggest jobs was to not punish people that failed. Yeah. I, you know, with the whole engineering team, the bright people in marketing, I, I would be very down on them if they didn't try, but I never wanted them to feel bad about trying and never punish them. >>And one of the things Matthew said on main stage, first of all, I love him. He's great. He's been a longtime CommonWell supporter. I love his sense of humor. He said, you know, combo came to me and said, can you identify, you know, your biggest disaster recovery moment? And he was like, no, because there's so many. Yes. Right? Like there's so many when you're responsible for this. It's just the unpredictability of it is crazy. And so he couldn't identify one, but he had a series of anecdotes that I think really helped the audience identify with and understand this is, these are big time challenges that we're up against today. And hearing his use case and how con ball is helping him solve his heart problems, I think was really cool. You're right. I loved that too. He said, I couldn't name one. There are so many. That's reality, right? As data proliferates, which every industry is experiencing, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. There's also great risk as technology advances for good. The bad actors also have access to that sort of technology. So his honesty, I thought was, was refreshing, but spot on. And what a great example for other customers to listen to the RA. To your point, I, if I punish people for failure, we're not going to learn from it. >>Yeah, you'll never move forward. >>Miranda. So much that we learn this week at the shows. Some, a lot of branding, a lot of customers, I know some people might be taking a couple of days off, but what should we expect to be seeing from con vault post go this year, >>continue to innovation. We're not letting our foot off the gas at all. Just continuing innovation as as as we integrate with Hedvig continued acceleration with metallic. I mean those guys are aggressive. They were built as a startup within an enterprise company built on Comvalt enterprise foundation. Those guys are often running, they are motivated, they're highly talented, highly skilled and they're going to market with a solution that is targeted at a specific market and those guys are really, really ready to go. So continued innovation with Hedvig integrate, sorry, integration with Hedvig with metallic. I think you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt in the future on the heels of what we consider humbled, proud leadership with the Gartner magic quadrant. You know the one two punch with the Forrester wave. I think that you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt and in terms of how we're really getting out there and aggressive. And that's not to mention Al, you know what we do with our core solutions. I mean today we just announced a bunch of enhancements to the core technology, which is, which is the bread and butter of, of what we do. So we're not letting the foot off the gas to be sure >>the team stay in really, really aggressive too. And the other thing I'd add as a major investor that I'm expecting is sales. Now I'd love to just your, your final thoughts that the culture of Convolt because while there's some acceleration and there's some change, I think some of the fundamentals stay the same. Yeah, it's, it's right to, and again, that's why I feel we're at a good point on this transition process. You alluded to it earlier, but I feel really good about the leadership that's in, they've treated me terrifically. I'm almost almost part of the team. I love that they're, they're trying to leverage off all the assets that were created in his company. Technology, obviously platform architecture, support base, our support capabilities. I, I told Sandy today I wish she really would have nailed the part about, and by the way, support and our capabilities with customers as a huge differentiator and it was part of our original, Stu knows he's heard me forever. Our original DNA, we wanted to focus on two things. Great technology, keep the great technology lead and customer support and satisfaction. So those elements, now you blend that stew with really terrific Salesforce. As Ricardo says, have you guys talk with Ricardo soon? But anyway, the head of sales is hiring great athletes, particularly for the enterprise space. Then you take it with a real terrific marketing organization that's focused, Oh, had modern techniques and analytics on all those things. You know, it's, it's in my opinion, as an investor especially, I'm expecting really good things >>bar's been set well. I can't think of a better way for Sue and me to our coverage owl veranda. Thank you. This has been fantastic. You've got to go. You get a lawn to mow, you've got a vacation to get onto and you need some wordsmithing would focus your rights. You have a flight ticket. They do five hours. Hi guys. Thank you. This has been awesome. Hashtag new comm vault for our guests and I, Lisa Martin, you've been watching the cubes coverage of Convault go and 19 we will see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (soft electronic music) >> And welcome back here on The Cube which, of course, is the flagship broadcast of Silicon Angle TV. Proud to be here at Dell Technologies World 2018. We've been live Monday, now today Tuesday, back live again tomorrow. Hope you join us for all three days of coverage. Along with Keith Townsend, I'm John Walls. We're joined by Jim Franklin who's the director of solution management at Dell EMC. Jim, good to see you this afternoon. >> Hey, nice to see you as well. >> How's the show been for you so far? >> Fantastic, and there's always a lot of energy at Dell World. It's always exciting to be around, see our partners, our customers, hear our executives speak, gives us some clarity on what we're doing at my level. [Men Laugh] So it's a fun time, it's energetic, it's Vegas. >> Get's ya. >> Good combination right? >> Yeah, so. (laughs) Get you energized. >> So before we jump in, what are you hearing from customers now? Because we've been talking to a lot of folks in your shoes at Dell and just kind of curious what are people bending your ear about? What are they most curious about? >> Yeah, so a lot of our customers and our partners are interested in, I'll call them hot trends. So what from my perspective are we seeing, where are there problems? So for that, things like how do I continue to try and outpace the data that keeps coming, because like death and taxes, the data keeps growing and growing and growing so they're looking at it going, how do I start to consume all this data? Can you help out? Hey but what about this cloud and how do I make the cloud a reality? Several of them haven't actually even started on a cloud strategy, so they're saying, hey what's the best way to look at that? And then they're looking at it saying, if they're the infrastructure guy or if they're the backup administrator, they're saying, how do I actually flip my economic model from a cost model to a profit model? So these are the sorts of conversations we're seeing, not only with our customers, but our partners are trying to help them out as well. >> So take us back. Let's go to the most simple or at least maybe the most elementary stage and say they're not even thinking of a cloud strategy yet or they're just now embarking on that. >> Jim: Just sniffing out. >> Yeah, walk us through that. What do you do because you would think by now obviously, their awareness is viable. We should be there, but they don't know where to go. >> So most customers know that this is now trusted technology, a trusted operating model. The problem has to be is how do you actually get there? What does that journey look like and what choices do I have? So even those early adopters that jumped out to public cloud for sort of a quick fix, we see them especially for my area, which is business critical applications, SAP Oracle, Splunk, they're coming back to an on-premise cloud for reasons like being able to recover out of that or this now they've discovered is their intellectual property and there's a little bit of reluctance just to go send that out to sort of an unknown place, so we see a lot of customers that are not bringing it back, but they now learn how that economic model can work, so they're trying to go in with sort of a cloud mentality. So still do the operational, the show back, the charge back, but maybe bring that in house, so you're more comfortable with it, so you can innovate on that. >> So as we're talking about these traditional, mission-critical apps, SAP, Splunk, Oracle Suite, these applications that are very rigid. The cash register, SAP, the cash register of the world. We don't want to change, you get the product guy. He's like, hey we want access to the mission-critical data. We want to be able to change it on the fly. You have the SAP guys going back and saying, no, no, no. >> Jim: Wait a minute, yeah. >> Wait a minute, we'll give you N+1 environment to develop in and then you prove to us, but it takes nine months to get an N+1 environment so you can do the development. How is Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, helping solve that agility problem for these legacy applications? >> So the first thing that we have to do, if you're going to keep it on premise is we advise our customers, modernize the infrastructure, because a lot of times you'll come up on a server or a storage refresh, right? This is the plumbing, right? This is underneath the guts of the house. It's not exactly attractive stuff, so if you can actually move to speed based technologies, things like Flash, right, fantastic technology. If you can virtualize it, if you can start to consider scale out and scale up technologies that are ready to go. Software Define has been a boon for these things. SAP is now adopting this like Software Define. That's fantastic for our folks, I guess. You guys know the advantages of Software Define. It can spin up, spin out, scale up, scale, in a much more pragmatic, quicker way. So these are sort, see now we're entering into things like VX Rack, VX Rail, and they have the resiliency, the stability, the scale in order to support these applications. They're built now solid enough that you can trust them to run, so now you get those operational efficiencies, you get that ability to scale, you get the performance, and you get it at a little bit better price point as well, so I think that's where customers are starting to be less reluctant to move those big humongous SAP, Oracle workloads, because it can be trusted. It's now that technology's aged enough and is resilient enough, then now customers are doing it and they're doing it quite rapidly. >> So step two of this is once I get some agility, what I thought was, traditional rational, you know what, Dell should never move SAP to the cloud, because it's static, it doesn't change, and it's costly. Well I now have these use cases where I'm spinning up N+1s all the time and I'm bringing them down. That's elastic. That sounds like the cloud. How do you help make that transition? >> So SAP actually, as one of the trigger points is this move to HANA, the memory database. And the economic model was, it's a little pricey, that software, right? So SAP has actually gone in with a cloud-first mentality. So they've actually helped us out here. They've promoted them as, so HANA enterprise cloud, for instance, is a way for you to get in on HANA at a price point that's a little better, the subscription based model. And you can start to migrate some, like a BW app, something a little smaller. Remember back in the days when we first virtualized? You wouldn't virtualize your mission-critical app right off the bat. You picked something small that you could eat. We don't eat our meal one big hunk at a time, right, we eat little bites of it, so we're doing the same thing with-- >> Keith: Unless you have four brothers. >> What's that? Unless-- (laughs) >> You have four brothers. >> You eat quickly. >> You use those. >> You do it all, right. >> Or you get real quick with your elbows. So we advise our customers, take a small BW app that you got on Oracle right now, flop it over there, put it in the cloud. You'll be able to cost-justify this much, much better and then with the work on tangible use cases, start to pull in more data-rich, hydrate that really fast, awesome analytics engine, and start to use it for the power of good. It's a super hero. It's a super hero technology, so we want to invoke it. We want to bring it alive. We want to apply it towards new innovations and that's what our customers are doing now. Financial services, health care, the retail market. So now our customers are starting to say, hey how can I apply this super awesome, super hero technology to my retail space. How can I inflate my tires 5 PSI more so I save my company 10 million dollars? So these, all these use cases now are coming. Now I call this, my personal thing, I call it now cool IT. We're no longer in the trenches doing the plumbing for SAP, we're now moving on to cool IT where we can start to do data analytics, we can start to apply use cases, start to ingest more data, maybe that oil rig out there in the gulf, I can start to pull in more of that data, I can start to do analytics on it. I can start to show the business that I'm meaningful, that I am a profit center, I know what's going on. >> Yeah, what's from the big jump there in terms of opening people's eyes, opening a company's eyes to how rich that data is for them and how applicable it is and how actionable it is, because that's been one of the bugaboos, right? People were like, I got all this data, where there's treasure there. >> Jim: There is. >> You got to find it, you got to get there. >> Right, right. So that advancement, some of the technology, like HANA's a hardened database now, not hardened in terms of its access, but hardened in terms of the technology itself, so I can actually put more in it and ingest it. The other thing that's happened is we've moved out to the edge, things like the gateways and things like that. Now I can apply that technology, but I don't have to suck it all in. And we'll go back to the original point, the cloud has enabled a lot of this traffic, the data traffic to go out there and what we see our customers now doing is now they're able to actually quiesce the data and just, we always could do this, but it never came together in such a way that it was cohesive, that I could have universal translators of all this different data coming in and I could actually quiesce it. And now, to me, the part that always matters, the UI work, like I can actually visualize and then SAP, and Oracle, and all the, they can now make it visual. I think that's the key. So if I'm a CFO or I'm a CEO and I'm talking to my CIO and I don't need to talk about numbers. I can literally visualize the data on my screen, on my iPad or whatever device I have. That now, what we see with our eyes, is much more believable than what we hear with our ears. >> John: Absolutely. >> So you can see it. And that's, I think, that's the big differentiator I've seen is we don't do customer presentations anymore. We show them with their own data. So we used to do that design thinking way back in the day, but now you can actually apply that with the technology we have and I can visualize it. >> John: Seeing is believing, right? >> Immediately customers, you don't have to do a business justification. They see it. They see it right there in front of their own eyes. It's fantastic. >> So, talking about design theory or design approach, there has to be a point where industry-wide or even within your practice where you're at the 50, 60% of the solution for most customers and there's a customization point. Where are you guys at in that? Is it 50, 60, 70, 80% at that point? What-- >> Well that's what makes it fun for a guy like me, because in solutions we can validate, we can do performance optimization and that's, for the most part you're talking servers, network storage, stuff we've always done and we can optimize that to a large extent, but once you flip the script and you look from the application down, you can start to tune from that perspective, so we can get about 70, 80% of this well constructed. It's that last 20% where the customer's saying, hey I'm a financial services arm and I'm trying to catch the flashboys or the stock traders that are manipulating the market. Well that requires a new set of tools, right, a new set of approach to how to do this, how to analyze your data, how to introduce automation, so for us, the last mile, particularly with our SI partners, who are really good at doing this. SAP is really good at doing this design thinking session. We could sit down with a customer now, we could ask them where do they want to make money. How do you want to invest in IT so that your analytics is fully realized, your data is fully realized, and they have wonderful use cases. So now we're not talking about how does widget X work with application Y, we're talking about how do I apply this data in the direction of the use case you're trying to solve for and that's the last 20% or something like that. >> Is that where art meets science in a way? All of the sudden, like you said, you've got your 80%, this is the way it's going to be. >> Now, now. >> This stuff works. >> Now we're going to fine tune. >> Jim: Yeah. >> So there is some art maybe that comes into play there. >> There is. We found that it tends to be vertical specific and there is an art form to it, which is why our global system integrators are wonderful, because they're artists. We could go in with them and we could have that conversation. We could sit down for, you could even sit down just for a couple hours and pretty soon you're having a great conversation, understanding really what the customer's business is like and then targeting that particular use case and making it tangible. >> So that's pretty interesting. You say you sit down. Who exactly are you sitting down with, because traditionally Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, talked to the infrastructure group. You're talking about a completely different level. This sounds like application level folks, analysts, not the traditional Dell contact. >> Yeah, which makes us a little bit specialized. So you still want to sell to the back of the house, the infrastructure guys, the folks that are-- >> Keith: It's going to need a PowerMax. >> Right, and it's a completely different conversation though and I'll connect the two in just a minute, but we go in and we'll talk to the VP of applications, we'll talk to the DBA. These are the folks that actually, they're not worried about the widget, the disc behind it. We'll sell them a VMAX, or a PowerMax, excuse me, at the end of the day, but they're not so worried about that. They're worried about how do I get fiduciary responsibility out of this? How do I control my regulations? What do I do about data locality? How do I look at the pressure on that oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico and make sure it's not going to burst? How do I proactively send out my maintenance man, not on every month, but when I know on the 5,000th open of that train door, that I need to proactively go do that, because at 5,000 open and closes, it's going to fail. We've done that with analytics. We know that. So for us, most of those conversations tend to be at the, you look for the DBA or the VP of applications or the CIO and in this way, this is the beauty of how this all, we're actually going in with the Rainmaker ISV. So we're going in with SAP, we're going in with Oracle, and now we combine what traditionally has been Dell, the infrastructure guys with SAP and we never used to call, we used to call six months detached from each other. Not anymore. Design thinking, IOT, use case, data analytics has brought us right together and we're in the glide path together now. It's a much different partnership now with those guys. >> Yeah, good recipe, right? >> It's fabulous. >> It really is. >> It's great, it's a fun time. >> Yeah I can tell, I can tell. And thank you for being with us. We appreciate the birds-eye view but as you said, this is kind of an exciting time, right? Because you're able to, you're transforming your business and other businesses at the same time. >> Jim: Yeah, best thing to do, yeah, love it. >> Very cool. Jim, thanks for being with us, appreciate your time. >> Yeah, appreciate it, thanks for having me. >> Joining us for Dell EMC. Back with more from Dell Technologies World 2018. We're live here in Las Vegas. (soft upbeat electronic music)