>> Announcer: Live from Nashville, Tennessee, it's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2018, brought to you by Commvault. >> Welcome back to Nashville. You're watching theCUBE at Commvault GO. Our first year at this show, the third year of the show. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host, Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome to the program Chris Powell, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Commvault. Thanks so much. >> Thanks, Stu. >> For inviting us to the Music City, and your party. >> We're glad to have you guys, thanks for being here. >> All right, so Chris, Commvault... I really like what I've seen at the show, so far. You made a statement that really resonated with me yesterday. You said, look, this is a 20 year old company, but it's very different than it was. We know cloud and AI and all these things are kind of changing. >> Yeah. >> Things like ransomware and GDPR are hot in the data world. When we look at our research, data is at the center of everything. So, you know, what's the brand of Commvault? If we think of a company that has lots of customers, but going through its own transformation, how should we be thinking of the company? >> I think what we're trying to do with Commvault is make sure that we, there's some times in marketing, where you end up in a place where it's either, it's perception is driving reality or reality is driving perception, and Commvault's in that transitional period where it's more about reality that we need to use to drive that perception, because there's some old perceptions. And as you said, in any company, especially in the tech space, that's 20 years old, you end up in a place where there's a lot of different perceptions of you from days gone by. Those can be about pricing. They can be about the usability of the products. The different technology innovations that you've had because you have such a long history, so we, sort of, need to continue to shift that and shape that as we go forward. For us, the Commvault brand has really evolved into Commvault is about being data experts and helping our customers be data experts. As you said, data is the new oil. Data, as we said at the show this morning, the new water, and it's definitely, sort of, this space where everybody's recognizing what's happening, but it's such early days in this world of data that's changing everything around us. >> Well, we have a friend of the program, Alan Cohen, that said, here's the challenge in IT, used to be that IT was the, always the no, and then you go to the procurement people and they're really slow. And, Chris, do you know what we need everybody to do? We need them to go. (laughs) I really like the branding of the show. Probably not where you came up with the term, but you've got 2,000 people here. The show floor, I've been to five or six thousand person shows that have a smaller expo hall here. You've got customers, with booths. You've got partners with booth. You know, Nashville's got a great energy. So, for people who haven't come here in person, give us a little bit about, why Nashville, what you hope to accomplish with the expo, the flow and then the show? >> Well, the why Nashville, and a lot of what we were trying to get with is, we've all been to probably one or two too many conferences in other cities, that we won't name here because I love those other cities too, but what we've done in our partnership with the Gaylord Hotels, which is a great customer of Commvault's as well, is trying to find just venues that are a little bit more interesting, and unexpected and different. That it was all part of the plan, as we were coming up with this, is to really project Commvault in a way that we believe, really, was more about our image. Towns like Nashville, last year we were in Washington, D.C., it's, they're great representations of what we're trying to do in the market. I was with people last night and they said so many people said they'd never been to Nashville, and this is a great town, and it really represents our brand well. >> So Chris, 20 years, 20 years of data. There's companies that are just waking up, realizing that they have this asset locked away in their, whether it's on tape, on media that's sitting aside in some random storage facility, but they have this asset that they can now unlock. What's the central message you want these customers to know about Commvault and your ability to help them to unlock that data. >> Keith, the... it's so true in that when you talk to people who are more on the data scientist side of things, it's this, it's this understanding that the... usually, the very well-paid data scientists struggle with just a couple of very basic things that they don't want to struggle with and it's not even what you pay them for. It's, can I get access to the data? Is the data all brought together in a form that I can really now serve it up, use it, get value from it? And as Commvault's been, sort of, developing and expanding our overall portfolio, it's really trying to address both of the issues of, if you're someone who's responsible for data in your organization, you have a bit of a challenge on an ongoing basis. You need to make sure the data is protected so it's secure. It's available when you need it. But it's also that you can serve it up and you can get value from it. The portfolio that Commvault's really been refining and introduced this past July, and continued to introduce things just this week, is made up of products that both enable the protection of that data but also serving that data up. The Commvault Activate product line and the portfolio that we're starting to introduce now is all meant to try to drive value out of the data. You're so right, in that, I was talking to some of our... we have a great expert in AI that's going to be with us tomorrow, Y.Y. Lee, who's also one of our board of director members, and she was just talking about how so many companies, as you've said, have locked that data away. It's not... it's not available to them and now they're bringing in these data scientists and their job is to try to find value in that data but they can't get access to that data. So this is a, this is a very straight-forward challenge that we're trying to help our customers with. >> Chris, I'd like you to take us inside your customers because when I think about five or ten years ago, backup, there was usually a storage person. It's like, okay, how do I have it? Do I have a backup window? Got to worry about recovery, something we would look at, but when you talk about data, you talk about data scientists. We're going up the stack. How do I use analytics and everything? Is this... >> Yeah. >> Is there a C.D.O. in my organization, worries about that? Governance and compliance are board-level discussions. So, bring us through where are you talking to the customers? Is there, kind of, the traditional customer, and the new customer? How'd that impact your whole field? It's a, it's a big, broad question. We don't have a ton of time but, yeah. >> Chris: Well, the way that I usually look at it is you can almost come at this from two different directions but you end up telling a very similar story. It's just almost the order of operation that you tell it. What I mean by that is, in the world of the folks who were really responsible for their virtual environment, their physical environment, and backing it up, you can talk to them about what they need and their desires in terms of the strongest backup and recovery, but then eventually you pretty quickly find yourself talking about a better understanding of what that data is so that you can apply your policies against it, so that you can show your compliance, and then eventually, to be able to serve that data up for more higher-value needs of your organization. And if you end up speaking to someone often, it's a more senior IT person in an organization or even all the way into the CEO's office. It's sort of just almost a different direction you go. It's you want to talk about how you can get value out of your data, and in order to get that value out of your data, you need to be able to understand truly what it is, where it is, who created it, who has access to it, and then eventually, you find yourself to: Is it protected? So it's a very similar story but if you go to a CEO and you start with backup, they don't really want to talk to you. And, if you go to a backup administrator and start talking about the value of data, they don't really want to talk to you. So, but what we've come to realize is that it's the same story, just told in a different direction. >> So talk... talk to us about bridging that gap. We're at Commvault GO, two thousand people, over 150 sessions, guys have been pretty clear this is an educational event. How did you help bridge the gap with such a large... difference of users? You have over five hundred partners attended the, the Partners Session. You have customers from the backup, admin, all the way up to the data scientists, and even executives that have to make these decisions. How does Commvault GO help bridge that gap? >> So, in a lot of ways, we use data so we're... we're as the old saying goes, eating your own dog food, kind of thing. We're using data from the previous conferences and always refining this. It's a... there's 182 Break-Out Sessions that occur over two days. There's, what we call, 30 and 30. It's 30 structured labs and 30 hands-on labs that you can, sort of, experience while you're here at the show. There's a lot of mini sessions, so there's the theaters that hold 120 people and then there's the theaters that hold 15 people. And through a lot of the technology of the shows now, the mobile apps, you can really refine what you want to experience at the show. The Meet the Experts Sessions, we have our developers here. The first year we did this, I wasn't sure how this would work, but we brought about, I think we brought about 10 developers for a Meet the Experts Sessions. The next year, we ended up bringing 20, and this year, we brought 40. 40 developers and engineers are here to have whiteboard sessions and just sit and talk to people. So, it's a... we've really divined, defined, sorry, this show in a way that looks at the audience first and, from a marketing perspective, I can tell you that when we came into this, nobody wants to be marketed to in this, in this industry. They, they want real information and what Commvault GO has been about is real information. It's, you talk about the reality driving the perception. Commvault is strong in reality. You know, it's, that's our reality. We just need to be able to communicate that and we use this show to make sure we're doing it, and not selling to people. We're here to provide real information. >> Chris, one of the things that actually surprised me, the portfolio is actually broader than I expected and part of that, you had quite a bit of hard news. What I mean by that, you announced quite a lot of products, everything from the ASA service through the Commvault Activate. >> Yeah... extended appliances. >> There's a whole lot of things there. We're going to have a lot of your, your team on to go through that, but give us what, when you, people walk away from the show, what you want them to know about Commvault, announcements. >> Yeah, so I think the big... there's so many different pieces, you're right, that have come from the show, very tangible, specific things, new product line around Commvault Activate, what you can utilize that... solution for, in terms of, understanding your data, things like, for sensitive data governance, then you get into the Commvault appliance and the extended appliance offering. We've taken the start of the appliance that was just in its initial forms last year at this time, at the last GO Conference, and then extended that this year with a larger appliance offering, as well as a smaller. And that's just a testament to how these things are being adopted in the market and the amount of customer uptake we're beginning to see on it. And then, when you look within our product portfolio, we've tried to make sure that some of our foundational products, like Commvault Complete Backup Recovery, that's been a big change for us recently. In terms of offering what we consider to be, and in terms of the name, the most complete backup and recovery solution, and what that was, is an answer to the market. Over the last 20 years, and it's not just Commvault, the whole market started to disperse their backup and recovery products. If you wanted backup and recovery, you had to go out and buy 10, 15 different products. You had to piece all these different things together, and what we realized is that what customers were really... longing for was something that really brought this together, so that they stopped spending all their time trying to figure out how to piece together a backup and recovery solution, and started spending more of their time about how to get value out of that data. >> As your CEO and COO said on the stage this morning, there's the difference between simple and smart, >> Chris: Yeah. >> And often, smart will end up being easier than, than doing this in part. >> Yep. >> Chris, I really appreciate you helping us to get a flavor for the show at the beginning. We've got lots more interviews to dig through all the product announcements, talk to the customers, talk to the partners. For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman, back with lots more coverage. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (light electronic music)