(mellow music) >> Announcer: Live, from New Orleans, it's theCUBE, covering Veeam ON, 2017, brought to you by Veeam. >> We're back at the big easy, this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage Dave Valente with Stu Miniman, Jason Buffington, long time CUBE guest and lead analyst at ESG, Jason, great to see you again. >> Thanks for having me >> @JBuff you're welcome, it's always a pleasure. You are an icon in this business. Ratmeyer today on theCUBE brought you up, said my friend, Jason Buffington, made an observation about the industry, and it's great to see you again. >> Thank you. >> So, you got some good play in the keynotes this morning, you guys just recently did a study that you spearheaded, talking about the availability gap, tell us about that research. >> So, 24 countries, a little under 1100 enterprises. So all organizations, over 1000 employees, and what we wanted to look at was how often are you down, how much does it cost when you're down, what are the differences between what the business expects of you, versus what you can actually deliver. Right, and by the way, that's the definition of the gap. Right, so the business expects that we cannot tolerate more than 30 minutes of downtime, and yet your fail over window is two hours. You have the availability gap. If the business says I cannot tolerate more than an hour of data loss, but you only backup once per night, you have a protection gap, right. So, looking at those gaps between the business expectations, and what IT can deliver, via whatever tools they're using, it was an unbiased panel, is what we went off and quantified. There were some really interesting numbers in there. >> Were you able to go to the same firm and ask of business people and IT people at the same firm? >> No, in this case what we did is we looked for IT decision makers who were familiar with the data protection processes they were using, and as well as being able to speak to business issues. So kind of look for the director IT, VP IT, someone who already has the business grade conversation. Probably the person who is being held accountable by the business units when IT fails to deliver. >> Do you think that, we've had a bunch of conversations with the practitioners today about what's the business conversation like, "well we go to the business" "and say how much data are you willing to lose." "Well none!" and then they go back and say >> There's a price for that >> There's a price for that, right. And most are not doing charge backs, some are doing show backs, so it's up to IT to say okay, look, we know they can't afford it. We can't afford it, so this is the level of service that we're going to give them. Do you think that's where the availability gap exists? Or is it because people have the wrong architecture, the wrong processes? >> I think it's more the former than the latter. I did a breakout session on this report earlier today. There was a great question in Q & A, why is it backup is still broken? Why is it no one can fix these gaps? And, what I offered them was that there's a lot of folks that just underestimate backup. They think of it as a cost center. They think it's always broken. Well, backup is not broken, the problem is if we were all still using Windows server 2003 physical boxes and exchange and sequel were still on pram and file was just that, we'd have solved backup ten years ago, right. But every time that you modernize production, it forces a modernization of protection. If you do it reactively, it's because you put in this brand new shiny flex pod or v-block or whatever, and figured out oh that legacy backup doesn't work. If you do it proactively, then you're catching up with things. But the problem is if you underestimate the importance of that, you get these gaps, right? So, what I counseled to the room that I was in was the first thing you have to do is you have to stop talking about data protection, even availability as an IT problem. It is a business impact cause, period. Right, so the first thing you want to do is you want to get all the tech out of the conversation. So, I offer a formula up, I published a book back in 2010, and there's a free chapter. I'll get it to you, so you can put in online, but I basically breakdown the cost of downtime into four values. There's the cost of lost data, there's the cost of lost productivity, right. So there's time down and time you have to repeat. And you can equate those to R2 and RPO. But a parentheses around those and times what's the human cost plus the profitability cost. And that's overly simple, but the point is if you know how long you're down, if you know how much data you will have lost, multiply that times how many butts and seats are sitting idle and how much did the inside sales department not sell that hour, right. That tells you cost of outage. And then all you have to do at that point, and there's no tack in that, right. It's just what is your RPO in real, what's your RTO in real, how much do your humans cost, how much does your department lose? If you have those four things, you know how much the problem is. Then, all you have to do is just go back to your system log and say how many times did that happen this year. If you do that, you've turned an IT problem into a business problem. Anytime I get a hold of C-level executives, the first thing I talk to them about availability is downtime is not in your budget, right. The idea of doing nothing costs you money. That's not in your budget and I guarantee of you did a data protection and availability solution, that will cost you less to your bottom line than the downtime that's unplanned that you have not budgeted for. >> Jason, Ratmere in the keynote this morning talked about the last ten years and they launched a new logo, talked a lot about cloud and physical and the next 10 years. What's your take on the message? Veeam just changed the leadership up a little bit. Are they in a transitional phase? Where are they positioned for kind of that next wave? >> So, the whole market's kind of in a transitional phase. So, I've been in data protection for 28 years. The only thing I've done since before getting out of school. Every time that we've had a major IT platform shift, the leaders in data protection have not made that jump, right. I started when we were doing mid-range, going to netware and over to Windows. >> That was what Ratmeyer was saying today. I didn't want to steal your thunder, so I'm glad you've brought this up. He noted that you had observed this, so carry on. >> Yeah so in times passed, we went went from physical to virtual servers, those leaders didn't make the jump and Veeam did, right. Veeam kind of took the crown on that for this whole last run. Our platform is shifting again, right. Now the difference this time around is and by the way the reason that most people don't make the jump is because whatever made you great from a technology perspective the last time around, doesn't apply to the new platform, right. So, NLMs didn't apply to Windows, agents didn't apply to hosts. We're now moving into cloud, but it's not a cloud, right. Some folks want IS, some want SAS. Neither of those use the same approaches that Veeam's secret sauce for host-based protection will carry for. So, the industry is in kind of a flux, and the other thing which is different this time around is when I was helping people move on to Windows NT, the presumption was we we're going to shutdown all the netware when we were done, right. For most of us, as we move into virtual machines, the presumption was we'd get rid of the metal on the way out. In this case though, cloud is not necessarily the end state, the end state is hybrid. Some data will be on pram, most of that data will be virtualized, some of it will still be physical. Right, the data that's in the cloud. Some of it will just be cloud stores, some of it will be the IS hosted VM, some of it will be SAS. But that's not because it's a prolonged transition, it's because we shouldn't be talking about migration, we should be talking about agility, where some data starts in the cloud and comes home. Other data starts on pram and moves, or from cloud to cloud. Because of that multi-cloud hybrid architecture, if that's the new end state for what IT is going to be delivering on, then the rules change. There is no secret sauce that carries from the last generation over. Certainly, Veeam's going to continue to be thought of as the virtualization data protection solution. But, if you think about they've added agents for physical, they've added cloud-based support on the back end. They announced more support for Office 365 and SAS. They're not a virtualization only play anymore. So, the market is going to have to take a reset, where everybody is unified, the difference is you've got the legacy folks that are unified and trying to catch up on virtualization features. And you've got Veeam, who is unified, where their virtualization is their strong suit, and cloud hosted and physical are the catch ups. So they're flying in opposite directions. >> So, you're saying that Veeam's secret sauce doesn't and virtualization doesn't necessarily carry over, however, they're making moves that will allow them to bridge, is that right? >> Absolutely, so unlike everyone else, who is in that virtualization wave, who solved the end protection and then happily got sold for their IP and you don't know those brands anymore. In this case, Veeam has continually looked at what else do people need, let's go do that. So, 4 or 5 years ago they added snapshot support, which wasn't necessary, but added more scenarios. Then, they added tape, who adds tape in 2015? Right, but they did because they recognized that people needed tape out, and since then they've added cloud, a couple different versions of cloud. This week they announced continuous data protection. Now, I'm glad no one from SNIA is around, cause they have a very prescriptive definition of what CDP is supposed to look like, and this isn't exactly that, so it's really more like KCDP, Kind of CDP, kind of thing. But, they continue to arrow the edges. They added physical support, those agents walls will allow them for IS hosted. They're not unified anymore, and that forward motion, but the moment they've got coming off of the first strategy, that's what's going to keep them moving forward for the next ten years. >> What makes is not KCDP, and makes it pure CDP? Just an infinite granularity or? >> Well, if you ask SNIA folks, they would tell you it's not just about infinite granularity on the protection, it's also infinite recoverability on the way back. So every single microsecond, so-- >> Stu: That's CRR isn't it? >> Yeah, think more like sequel does with every given transaction, could we go back to a given point. >> You need a data base to be involved, to actually get there. >> Yeah, but again, what I think is interesting is it's not just about backup, so in the availability report we talked about the gap between how little downtime that an organization can tolerate, versus just backup can't meet that goal. You can't recover fast enough if the only thing you're going to do is restore from backup. So, being able to integrate snapshots, being able to have replication, which shrinks down that data loss window considerably, that's how you meet the rest of the story, that backup alone can't do. And kudos to Veeam for doing it. >> Jason, how should we think about some of these emerging players who are actually in Veeam's ecosystem? Like Rubric or Cohesity, or Datos. Datos is not here, These sort of new, emerging, they don't want to call themselves backup players, they want to call themselves data protection or availability. How should we think about those emerging players? >> So, I have a category in a slide. I put them all in the category that I lovingly call the disrupters, right, because it forces you to reconsider the conversation. If you kind of step back and I could put Veeam and some of the other legacy unified enterprise class data protection products in one category, and what all of them are saying is let's take the backups that you know and trust us with. We're going to add indexing, we're going to add orchestration, we're going to help you do more with your data along the way. The end result is what the industry is calling copy data management. What else can you do with that data, which is otherwise dormant, sitting away in a store. What the disrupter category would tell you, is instead of starting with backup, and trying to evolve it forward, start with new storage. Think of the things you could do with a new paradigm for storage. >> So, the storage that would automatically know where the footprints are, that would automatically back you up along the way, that would automatically allow for copy data management type scenarios. So, again, it's two ways to get there. There's the backup first approach, and building on who you trust, then, there's the, if you want to start over again, have I got a deal for you. And that's going to be really interesting. For the rest of 2017 and 2018, the whole space of copy data management, copy data virtualization, copy data fill in the blank, that whole idea of good, better, best. Good, keep all your data as long as you need. Better, and get rid of it a moment longer. Then best, what else can you do with it. Analytics, testing, reporting, et cetera. That'll be an interesting market to watch, and one that now that Veeam is broad enough, will start to play in now as the year moves forward. >> Jason, like us, you go to a lot of these conferences. You've been to the Veeam on trail, which was our first one here. For the audience it's not here. What differentiates this show from some of the other ones you go to. What excites you about the community, the show itself, anything surrounding it? >> Sure, Veeam has a wonderful sense of community that most of the other vendors have just not been able to capitalize on. You know, there's certainly, there are many many thousands of IT professionals that have made their career out of this storage platform, or that backup software platform, et cetera. And, they're all good for support. Veeam has somehow cracked that code like Microsoft MVPs. The difference between a post-sale's we'll help you if you want, to a pre-sale's advocates. They literally have a green army walking around on this floor, who is delighted to tell anybody who will listen how Veeam saved their bacon, gave them back their weekend, et cetera. That energy of community, that's what's different about not only Veeam ON, it's also what's different about like a Veeam party at Vmworld or a Microsoft event. That culture and community, they've tapped something special there, and it shows in their results. >> Alright, we've got to wrap there, but I'll give you the last word, any upcoming research we should be paying attention to, or you want to promote a little bit? >> Sure, my blog within ESG is technicaloptimist.com. I do primary research on a whole bunch of things. Next ones coming out are on data protection modernization. So, why are people staying put or changing. If so, why or why not, and then what features matter most. So that's the next one that'll come out for me, and then over the summer I'm going to look at appliances as form factor, there's a lot of those to look at this week. What the affect of the DVA and the VM are having in the market, and then also more on the availability study. What we did for Veeam was so interesting ESG is going to go and take a few other angles and look at it some more. >> Awesome, great research agenda you've got upcoming. We will be looking for that, so, Jason, thanks very much, it was a pleasure to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome, alright, keep it right there buddy. We'll be back, with our next guest at theCUBE. We're live from Veeam ON, 2017 in New Orleans, We'll be right back. (upbeat music)