>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of VM on 2020. Brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome back. I'm Stew Minimum. And and this is the Cube's coverage of VM on 2020 online this year. We've done the event for many years and being able to reach the team executives, some of their partners and the like where they are around the globe really excited to be able to dig in. And we're gonna talk some numbers, the analysis and to help me do that. I've got to VM Cube alumni. We've had them on the Cube before. They were being always excited to get the talk of them and dig into the numbers with them now that they are at VM. Dave Russell is the vice president of enterprise strategy, and Jason Buffington is the vice president of solution strategy. Both with beam. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>All right. First, I guess you know, let me ask how you guys doing? You know, we're having a little bit of ah, discussion before we came on here. As Do you know, everyone is now inundated with data and numbers and the like with this global pandemic. You know, Dave, how things doing in your neck of the woods, and, uh, and then we'll go to Jason. >>Yeah, well, you know, literally cannot complain. Personally, VM itself is doing incredibly well as an organization will double click on that here. But, you know, in terms of data, particularly as it relates to this space that we're in backup and recovery availability Cloud data management. The recent data for first half 2020 is actually fascinating. We're gonna double click on that a little bit more, right, Jason, >>we are now as far as how we're doing. You know, I've been at every team on that. We've had the 1st 3 is an analyst. Last two is a VP. I've never gotten to do one in my pajama bottoms, though, so that's kind of a nice changes to kind of mix it up a little bit. Um, but yeah, the other thing, which has been kind of fun is is that because we haven't been traveling, it really gave Dave and I had a chance to kind of get back to our roots a little bit and really dig into research. And how do you apply research to product direction and go to market? And so it's been a fun project that were culminating with was the motto >>Yeah, Jason, please don't be given out secrets. I'm not saying if you look up Dave Volante, Twitter, handle that. You'll find the suit on the top shorts on the bottom. Look, what I refer to is cube casual for some of these remote events. But, you know, you do have a breakout that you're doing really looking at digital transformation and I t. Modernization, you know, digital transformation. I'm sure you know you, both of you, from the analyst standpoint. For a while, it was a bit of a buzz word. You know, today, when you just with the backdrop of the global pandemic, it's like, Well, if you have had the the chance to go through the digital transformation, hopefully, you know, you get things put to the test, you're relying on data, you should be more agile, and those are all things that I think the remote workforce and what they're doing. But if you hadn't finish that or either started or in the middle of that journey, you know, big question is, you know, what are you doing? Will this accelerate it? Will it slow it down? So excited to dig into your CEO research? Why don't you give us a little bit of the background? How long is this going on? Who you're talking to is as part of this. This research. >>Sure. Well, as far as the research itself goes. So the team went to an outside panel and said, Hey, don't tell anybody who is from when you interview these kinds of personas in these kinds of folks. We did 1550 enterprises and by that definition, meaning 1000 users or not across 18 different countries around the world. And then we even ask some questions around. Not only what country are you in, but in what countries do you influence? Data protection, strategy and architecture? Everyone from I T architects all the way through csos were part of that survey. And we've got some great data back not only from an executive perspective of what are the expectations of i t, but also from the i t implementer anti architect's perspective on what are their real world challenges today and That's some of things that we were at being really keen to understand more, to make sure that we're building the right things and saying the right things for our customers and our prospects. >>Excellent. And maybe give us a little bit of a backdrop. You know, when I think about enterprise is, you know, we always talk about these mega waves. You know, The things that I talked about is you know, when I talk to the CSO suite, it's not that they have Well, you know, I've got a multi cloud strategy, you know, I'm figuring out how cloud changes what I'm doing. Digital transformation is one of those things that brings together, you know, the business and the I t. And hopefully you know something I know we've all been talking about for quite a long time. I t just can't be a separate thing. Or so you know, a cost center but needs to really respond to the business. What's that Backdrop of digital transformation and, you know, bring us inside a little bit what your learnings >>were. Yeah, to me. I think I like the notion of digital transformation because it's very specific to every business, maybe even every business unit, meaning it's not a case of a vendor saying, Here's what your project should be. Rather, it's more of a notion of whatever initiative you have to try to increase customer intimacy, to be able to contain costs, expand your reach. That's really what digital transformations here to support. >>Excellent. And Jason give us a little bit of color as you know, some of the finding. >>Yeah, so I mean, I think the big ones that we looked at were, you know, what were the major I t challenges you had overall, and maybe not so much of a surprise, but staffing and legacy infrastructure. We're still some of the biggest things that we're holding back i t organizations, which I think is especially interesting in the landscape, the world right now, right, Because your staff can't be in the places where they used to be and from a legacy perspectives to I know you love data as much as we do. Um, the you know, if if organizations are spending between 68 82% of their money and their dollars on the status quo, that doesn't leave a whole lot left for the things that you'd like to do, like improving customer experience like accelerating the employees of your business. So things like digital transformation tend to get hindered by the same stuff that tenders I t. Modernization and just hear the buzz words just trying to do better in I t. For the sake of the business. But really, those have been kind of big gaps. >>Yeah, I think Jason hit a key point. There's two of you know the issue right now is a lot of us are just trying to run the business like, literally keep the lights on. You and Jason mentioned the stats of high sixties low seventies just trying to keep status quo. The digital transformation, in my mind is about obviously trying to run the business while you're seeking to grow the business and aspirational, hoping to transform your business to really improve customer intimacy and success of end customers as well as partners. So if done right, pursuing digital transformation can help you with tactical needs as well. A strategic outcome? >>Yeah, you know, it's it's it's a little sad, I think, from an industry standpoint, you talk about how much money in time is spent on keeping the lights on. I feel like 10. 15 years ago, it was, you know, the 80 85%. If you're saying, you know, we've whittled away a little bit now in the low seventies, some really good companies, it's getting, but we haven't things yet. Um, I'm curious. You know, you have this position, they don't know that it was sponsored by VM. So how do cloud as a general technology and then, you know, data protection and availability specifically, you know, fit into the overall priorities for that that I t modernization. >>So there were There were two questions that we really focused on that they're my two favorite slides in the in the whole deck. The 1st 1 that I thought was really interesting is when we asked organizations, What does modern data protection look like? Or innovative? And I think we use a few different buzzwords along the way, and we asked them, check all of these capabilities that might apply, and then which one is the most definitive? And we actually got two different sets of answers depending on how you pivot that data. If you ask, uh, most common responses, Modern data protection looks cloudy, and what I mean by that is the top choices scored were the ability to do D. R as a service. The ability to integrate on premise and cloud based is part of your data protection architecture. And then the ability to move data from one cloud to another would certainly reinforces the fact that we are not only in a hybrid world but in a multi hybrid world as well. So if you're looking for most common answers, modern data protection looks cloudy. But if you flip it over and you say what is the most definitive feature, you actually get something very different. You find out that the ability to leverage orchestration and workflow, the ability to manage via AP eyes and systems management the ability to be part of a cyber security strategy. So what you see is that modern data protection in general has to be cloudy. But more importantly, backup should not sit on an island of its own. It should be a cohesive part of a broader I T experience that's managed by something broader that's part of provisioning a systems framework. So those two answers kind of Tell us what should we not only making sure that we continue to build on, but also making sure that we're communicating as far as you know, does being meet the bar for what organizations are looking for in a modern or innovative data protection strategy? >>Yeah, that's really interesting. You know, I guess one of the big things I've seen over the last 12 to 18 months is maturation of things like, you know, a really hybrid strategy. So if I look at the team, you know the most critical partnerships, of course, our VM ware from a historical standpoint and things like Microsoft going Ford in both of them have made big strides over the last couple of years as you not just, you know, on premises versus Public Cloud. But how do all these things work together? The discussions that we've been having about cloud is not necessarily a destination, but it's more of an operating model. And as people build out their architectures, the all the things you mentioned there, it's not a place or a destination, But it's more of that architect view and can live across lots of different environment. Does that make sense. Yeah, >>yeah, it's across. It's a horizontal play, really, It's not moving from Point A to point B. It's really embracing expanded choices. So you know what we found when we did? This survey is directionally where organizations are at the day with on Prem physical virtual going towards cloud and then how they responded their intention two years later. There weren't major surprises there, meaning the shift was increasingly more towards cloud. But it also wasn't a case that on Prem physical goes to zero. So any more than it's a case of an organization goes 100% all in on one hyper scaler, all the cloud provider. So it's really about supporting a mixed, and it's about offering choice because every business or maybe more specifically, every workload within a business might have their own natural migration associated with what they need to do what's appropriate, given their business realities and their desires. So if we double click on what's really important from backup, the number one thing that came back from our global survey which a little incriminating on the state of the industry was the number one thing that would make us want to change our backup provider so that application would back up. That is an amazing, the shocking statement. That's like saying so. If you change cars, automobiles, what would you look for? First and foremost, and your response is an automobile that started. >>It was really scary right in 2020. So Dave and I have each been in backup almost exclusively for 30 years each, right and still you using label spell backup for almost the same length of time. And we've been doing this for a really long time. And in 2020 when I T pros were asked what would get them to change, it's they'd like it to work the way they thought it would when they bought it. I mean, that's just a really damning statement. And then beyond that, when the next drivers certainly economics came into play. So the number two answers were reducing hardware and software costs and improving. TCO nor I were two and three and then capabilities around, improving our P o rto SL A's and then ease of use. That kind of rounds out the top five with cloud coming in right behind that. So not a whole lot of surprise there, but what a terrible statement for the industry that we just like it to work. >>All right, how about some good news? What? What recommendations or guidance? Is there anything that you got out of it that you know, best practices or leaders in the space or what peers would recommend team to each other. >>So I think the two things that I took away that I thought was really interesting from a best practices and moving forward data reuse scored really, really high. So the interest in leveraging and the survey actually asked several different scenarios for what folks were either doing or aspiring to do around data use. And you can call it copy data management. You can call it secondary storage use cases. You whatever marketing buzz where you want. But the bottom line is, don't just put your data in the backup repository and wait for bad things happen. Do something with that data. Dev Ops Acceleration patch testing risk mitigation, quarantine for forensics for cyber. But there was a lot of of yes, we're starting to do. And also yes, we're aspiring. Over the next 12 months, I think data reuse was a really big thing that I was so glad that folks were getting along the way and then also the recognition that with the intolerance of downtime and the intolerance of data loss that was measured in the survey, it was really obvious that a lot more organizations understand they have to be combining not only backups but also snapshots and replication in a consistent way. Because you can't meet the SL is that most organizations have today. If the only thing you're doing is just nightly backup now the team, we would say, Great, you got to do snapshots you out of the replication. You ought to do backup. Please don't use three different tools times each one of those times, each workload. It's not economically or operationally viable. So certainly in that's good news for us, because we manage all three. But those were kind of two big drivers I was most excited about. >>And if I take what we got from the data protection report and then couple that with recent industry analysis reports from like I, D. C. And Gartner, I merge that together, I think one of the reasons why IBM has been very successful you know, literally knock on wood, but VM is up as a company 10% year over year, October 2 October arm Sorry, April. April and that's been true for all 12 years. That being has been shipping back of product, so in a tough time, actually doing extremely well. Still, hiring still expanding Gartner has beam for calendar year 2019 moving from number four in market globally. Toe number three i. D. C. Maintains beam is number one and market in Europe, one of the top five vendors. Three of the five, where negative year over year VM was the highest sequentially positive year over year positive. And I think the reasons why not going back to the survey in my mind was due to the software defined nature of the solution and what I mean by that in particular, why that has customer value, especially now in a current pandemic. Situation is you can leverage the existing infrastructure that you've got. We we've been around and remember the macroeconomic issue of 2000 and eight organizations held on to their assets much, much longer. Refresh cycles slowed down, so the ability to leverage the infrastructure that you have to scale out horizontally to be able to ingest more data to have a horizontal management playing. To be able to have a service repository that could include cloud and object storage just allows you to better leverage the investments you've made but deflects appropriately for workloads and to be able to expand into things like public cloud and object storage as you see fit. >>Well, David Jason, thank you so much for the update. Real pleasure to catch up with you Always. Always great big data with both. >>Thank you. So you could just be >>alright. Stay tuned for more coverage from VM on 2020 Online on stew minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah.