>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020, brought to you by Actifio. >> Hi everybody this is Dave Vellante, full of preview of Actifio Data Driven, and with me is Brian Reagan who is a long time cube alumni, good friend. Brian, awesome to see you thanks for coming on and help us set up Data Driven >> Dave it's always a pleasure to be here, thanks for having me. >> So this is one of our favorite events of the season, not only because it's historically been in Boston, but it's a really good intimate event, lot of customer content. Unfortunately this year, of course everything has gone virtual but tell us about that, what do you guys got planned for Data Driven this year? >> Well again we're delighted to be able to put the show on, in spite of all of the challenges of travel and face to face. As you know from years past, Data Driven has always been sort of by the customers for the customers, very much an event that is driven around understanding how customers are using data strategically, and how Actifio is helping them do that to power their businesses. This year is no different, I think what we've done is we've taken the best of the physical events, which is really facilitating fireside chats and panels of people using our technology to move the business forward with data, but also added a lot of things that frankly are impossible to do when you're strained by a physical event, which is be able to run a series of on demand technical sessions. Our technical tracks are always standing room only, so now we can offer more content, more discreet package content that can be consumed the day of the event and on for a year plus after the event. So we're excited to really sort of mix the best of both worlds virtual and the forums that have worked so well for us in the physical events. >> Well it's like I said I mean, lots of these events are sort of vendor fests, but what you do with Data Driven is you bring in the customer's voice. And I remember last year in theCUBE, we had Holly st. Clair who was with the state of Massachusetts, she was awesome. We had a guest from DraftKings, which was really, really tremendous. Of course, you see what's happening with those guys now just exploding. >> Exactly. >> But we also had a lot of fun, when of course Ash comes on, and all the Actifio folk, but we had Frank Gens on, the first and only time we've ever had him on theCUBE, he's now retired from IDC, I guess semiretired. We had Duplessie on, which was a lot of fun. So it's just a good vibe. >> Yeah, we made a conscious decision to your point not to avoid the traditional vendor fest, and bludgeoning people with PowerPoint throughout the day, and really wanted to make it spin it around, and have the customers tell their stories in their own words, and really talk about the themes that are both common, in terms of challenges, ways that they've addressed those challenges, but also dig into the real implications of when they do solve these challenges, what are the unintended consequences? It's sort of like the... In a lot of ways I think about the journey that customers went through with VMware and with the ability to spin up VMs effortlessly, was a fantastic first step, and then all of a sudden they realized they had all of these spun up Vms that were consuming resources that they didn't necessarily had thought about at the very beginning. I think that our customers as they progress through their journey with Actifio, once they realize the power of being able to access data and deliver data, no matter how big it is, in any form factor in any cloud, there's incredible power there, but there also comes with that a real need to make sure that the governance and controls and management systems are in place to properly deliver that. Particularly today when everything is distributed, everything is essentially at arms length, so that's part of the fun of these events is really being able to hear all of the ways these unique customers are, adding value, delivering value, gaining value, from the platform. >> What's it's interesting you mentioned VMs, it was like life changing when you saw your first VM get spun up and you're like, wow, this is unbelievable, and then it was so easy to spin up. and then you just save VM creep and copy creep. >> Right. >> And you're seeing some similar things now with cloud I mean example is the cloud data warehouses is so easy to spin those things up now. The CFOs are looking at the bill going Whoa, what are we doing here? >> (laughs) >> You're going to see the same thing >> Exactly. >> with containers as you begin to persist containers, you're going to have the same problem. So you guys created the category, it's always a marketing executives dreams to be able to create a category. You guys created the Copy Data Management category, and of course, you've extended that. But that was really good, it was something that you guys set forth and then all the analysts picked up on it, people now use that as a term and it kind of resonates with everybody. >> Right, right. It was bittersweet but also very satisfying to start to see other vendors come out with their own Copy Data Management offerings, and so yes the validating that in fact this is a real problem in the enterprise continues to be a real problem in the enterprise, and by using technologies that Actifio really pioneered and patented quite a bit of foundational technologies around, we're able to help customers address those copy data challenges, those spiraling costs of managing all of these duplicate, physical instances of data. And to your point, to some degree when you're on-prem in a data center and you've already bought your storage array. Okay, I'm consuming 20% more of the Ray or 100% more of the array than I really need to be, but I've already paid for the array. When it comes to cloud, those bills are adding up hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and those are real costs, and so in many ways cloud is actually highlighting the power and frankly the problem of copy data, far more than the on-prem phenomenon ever did. >> Yeah I was on the phone with a former CIO, COO now of a healthcare organization, and he was saying to me there's a dark side of CapEx to OPEX, which is now that he's a COO he's like really concerned about the income statement and the variability of those costs, and so to your point I mean it's a big issue, the convenience seems to be outweighing some of that concern but nonetheless lack of predictability is a real concern there. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And I think we see that... You mentioned data lakes, and whether you call it a data lake or you just call it a massive data instance, one of the speakers of Data Driven this year is a customer of our Century Data Systems down in Florida. And they have 120 terabyte database that actually they're using, and this is an incredible story that we're excited to have them share with the world during Data Driven. They're using it to help the federal government get better data faster on COVID treatments and the efficacy of those treatments, and so to even consider being able to rapidly access and manage 120 terabyte instance. It breaks the laws of physics frankly. But again with Copy Data Management, we have the ability to help them really extend and really enhance their business and ultimately enhance the data flows that are hopefully going to accelerate the access to a vaccine for us in North American and worldwide, quite frankly. >> That's awesome, that's awesome. Now let's talk a little bit more about Data Driven what we can expect. Of course, the last couple of years you've been the host of Data Driven. They pulled a Ricky gervais' on you >> (Laughs loudly) like get the golden gloves, he's no longer being invited to host, but I think probably for different reasons, but what are some the major themes that we can expect this year? >> Yeah, we were disappointed that we couldn't get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. >> (laughs quietly) I think we decided that in a virtual construct, the host duties were pretty amenable. So among the many things I talked about Sentry Data Systems and we have many customers who are going to be joining us and telling their stories. And again from accelerating data analytics to accelerating DevOps initiatives, to accelerating a move to the cloud, we're going to hear all of those different use cases described. One of the things that is different this year and we're really excited. Gene Kim sort of the author and noted DevOps guru, author of The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, he's going to be joining us. We had previously intended to do a road show with Gene this year and obviously those plans got changed a bit. So really excited to have him join us, talk about his point of view around DevOps. Certainly it's a hugely important use case for us, really important for many of our customers, and actually registrant's between now and the event, which is September 15th and 16th, we'll get an eCopy an e-book copy of his Unicorn Project book. So we're eager to have people register and if they haven't already read him then I think they're going to be really pleasantly surprised to see how accessible his materials are, and yet how meaningful and how powerful they can be in terms of articulating the journeys that many of these businesses are going through. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm stucked I have not read that material, but I've heard a lot about it, and when I signed up I saw that, said great I'm going to get the free book. So I'm going to check that out, >> Yeah It's obviously a very, very hot topic. Well Brian, I really appreciate you coming on, and setting up the event. What are the details? So where do I go to sign up? When is the event? What's the format? Give us the lowdown. >> It is September 15th and 16th, actifio.com will guide you through the registration process. You'll be able to create the event based on the content that you're eager to participate in. And again not only on the 15th and 16th, but then into the future, you'll be able to go back and re access or access content that you didn't have the time to do during the event window. So we're really excited to be able to offer that as an important part of the event. >> Fantastic and of course theCUBE will be there doing its normal wall to wall coverage. Of course, this time virtual, and you'll see us on social media with all the clips and all the work on Silicon Angle. So Brian great to see you and we will see you online in September. >> Thanks, Dave. >> All right, and thank you. Go to actifio.com, sign up register for Data Driven, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>from around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of active eo data driven 2020 Brought to you by activity. >>Hi, I'm Brian Reagan from Active Seo. And I'd like to welcome you to join us at Data Driven 2020 this year. Online as in years past, it's all about the customer from the bear voice to you talking about how they're solving their cloud Dev Ops Analytics and data protection challenges using the activity of platform and helping move their business forward this year. We're also excited to welcome Gene Kim Noted Dev Ops author in Guru on his E book. The Unicorn Project is available for free if you register today, so join us September 15th and 16th for data driven 2020. We look forward to seeing you online. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>> Narrator: From the CUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hi everybody, This is Dave Vellante and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. We've been following a company called Actifio for quite some time. Now they've really popularized the concept of copy data management. Really innovative Boston based Waltham based company. And with me Brian Regan who's the chief marketing officer and Paul Forte who's the newly minted chief revenue officer of Actifio. Guys great to see you. I wish we were face to face at your June event but this will have to do. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks Dave. >> You bet Dave. >> Yeah, so Brian you've been on theCUBE a bunch. I'm going to start with Paul if that's okay. Paul, let's talk a little bit about your background. You've done a number of stints at a variety of companies. Big companies like IBM and others as well. What attracted you to Actifio? >> Yes Dave I would say in all honesty, I've been a software guy and candidly a data specific leader for many many years. And so IT infrastructure particularly associated around data has always been sort of my forte for on and onwards there. And so Actifio was just smack dab in the middle of that. And so when I was looking for my next adventure I had an opportunity to meet with Ash our CEO and founder and describe and discuss kind of what Actifio was all about. And candidly, the number of connections that we had that were the same. There are a lot of OEM relationships with people that I actually worked with and for some that work for me historically. So it was almost this perfect world. And I'm a Boston guy so it is in my old backyard. And yeah it was a perfect match for what I was looking for. Which was really a small growth company that was trying to get to the next level that had compelling technology in a space that I was super familiar with and could understand and articulate the value proposition. >> Well as we say in Boston, Paulie we got to get you back here. (laughs) >> I know (mumbles) so I'll pack my car. >> (laughs) Yeah. So Brian... >> For 25 years, I still got it. >> let's talk about the climate right now. I mean nobody expected this of course. And it's funny I saw Ash at an event in Boston last fall. We were talking like "Hey, what are you expecting for next year?" "Yeah a little bit of softening" but nobody expected this sort of black swan. But you guys I just got your press release. You put it out. You had a good quarter. You had a record first quarter. What's going on in the marketplace. How are you guys doing? >> Yeah, well I think that today more than ever businesses are realizing that data is what is actually going to carry them through this crisis. And that data whether it's changing the nature of how companies interact with their customers, how they manage through their supply chain and frankly how they take care of their employees, is all very data centric. And so businesses that are protecting that data that are helping businesses get faster access to that data and ultimately give them choice as to where they manage that data. On premises, in the cloud and hybrid configuration. Those are the businesses that are really going to be top of a CIO's mind. I think RQ1 is a demonstration that customers voted with their wallets and they are confident in Actifio as an important part of their data supply chain. >> Paul I want to come back to you. First of all I want to let people know you're an Ex-Army Ranger. So thank you for your service, that's awesome. >> You're welcome (mumbles). >> I was talking to Frank Slootman, I interviewed in the other day and he was sharing with me sort of how he manages and he says "Yeah I manage by a playbook". He's a situational manager and that's something that he learned in the military. Well it's weird. This is a situation. (Paul laughs) And that really is kind of how you're trained. And of course we've never seen anything like this but you're trained to deal with things that you've never seen before. So how you seeing organizations generally, Actifio specifically kind of manage through this crisis. What are some of the moves that you'are advising, recommending? Give us some insight there. >> Yeah, so it's really interesting. It's funny that you mentioned my military background. So I was just having this discussion with one of my leaders the other day. That one of the things that they trained for in the military, is the eventuality of chaos. So when you do an exercise we will literally tap the leader on the shoulder and say okay you are now dead. And without that person being allowed to speak they take a knee and the (mumbles) unit has to go on. And so what happens is you learn by muscle memory like how to react in times of crisis and you know this is a classic example of leadership in crisis. And so it's just interesting. So to me you have a playbook. I think everybody needs to start with a playbook and then start with the plan. I can't remember if it was Mike Tyson but one of my famous quotes was "Plan is good until somebody punches you in the face". (Dave laughs) >> That's the reality of what just happened to business across the globe. This is just a punch in the face. And so you've got a playbook that you rely on and then you have to remain nimble and creative and candidly opportunistic. And from a leadership perspective, I think you can't lose your confidence. Right, so I've watched some of my friends and I've watched some other businesses cripple in the midst of this pandemic because they're afraid instead of looking at this. In my first commentary in our first staff meeting Brian, if I remember it was this, okay so what makes Actifio great in this environment? Not why is it not great? And so we didn't get scared. We jumped right into it. We adjusted our playbook a little bit and candidly we just had a record quarter. And we took down deals. Honestly Dave we took down deals in every single geography around the globe to include Italy. It was insane, it was really fun. >> Okay, so this wasn't just one monster deal that gave you that record quarter. It was really a broad based demand. >> Yeah, so if you dug underneath the covers you would see that we had the largest number of transactions ever in the first quarter. We had the largest average selling price in the first quarter ever. We had the largest contribution from our nano partners and our OEM partners ever. And we had the highest number ever. And so it was really a nice truly balanced performance across the globe and across the size of deal sets and candidly across industries. >> Interesting, you used the term opportunistic and I get right on. You obviously don't want to be chasing ambulances. At the same time, we've talked to a lot of CEOs and essentially what they're doing and I'd like to get your feedback on this Brian. You're kind of reassessing the ideal profile of a customer. You're reassessing your value proposition in the context of the current pandemic. And I noticed that you guys in your press release talked about cyber resiliency. You talked about digital initiatives, data center, transformations etc. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that, Brian. Did you do those things, how did you do those things? What kind of pace were you guys at? How did you do it remotely with everybody working from home? Give us some color on that. >> Sure, and if Ash, if he were here he would probably remind us that Actifio was born in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. So we have essentially been book ended by two black swans over the last decade. The lessons we learned in 2008 are every bit is as relevant today. Everything starts with cost containment and cost reduction. Hence in protection of the business and so CIOs in the midst of this shock to the system. I think we're very much looking at what are the absolutely vital and critical initiatives and what is a "nice to have" and I'm going to hit pause on nice to have and invest entirely in the critical initiative. And the critical initiatives tended to be around getting people safely working remotely. Getting people safe access to their systems and their applications and their data. And then ultimately it also became about protecting the systems from malicious individuals in the state actors. Unfortunately as we've seen in other times of crisis this is when crime and cyber crime particularly tends to spike, particularly against industries that don't have the strong safeguards in place to really ensure the resiliency in their applications. So we very much went a little bit back to the 2008 playbook around helping people get control of their costs, helping people continue to do the things they need to do at a much more infrastructural light manner. But also really emphasized the fact that if you are under attack or if you are concerned that you're infected but you don't know when, instant access to data and a time machine that can take you back and forth to those points in time is something that is something that is incredibly valuable. >> So let's dig into cyber resiliency. So specifically what is Actifio doing for its customers from a product standpoint, capabilities, maybe it's part of the 10C announcement as well but can you give us some specifics on where you fit in. Let's take that use case, cyber resiliency? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's a stack of capabilities when it comes to cyber resiliency. At the lowest level, you need a time machine because most people don't know when they're infected. And so the ability to go back in time, test the recoverability of data, test the validity of the data is step one. Step two is once you found the clean point, being able to resume operations, being able to resume the applications operation instantly or very rapidly is the next phase. And that's something that Actifio was founded on this notion of instant access to data. And then the third phase and this is really where our partnerships really shine is you probably want to go back and mitigate that risk. You want to go back and clean that system. You want to go back and find the infection and eliminate it. And that's where our partnership with IBM for example, resiliency services and their cyber incident recovery solutions which takes the Actifio platform and then wrappers in a complete manage services around it. So they can help the customer not only get their systems and applications back on their feet but clean the systems and allow them to resume operations normally on a much safer and more stable ground. >> Okay, so that's interesting. So Paul was it kind of new adoptions? Was it increases from existing customers combination? Can you talk to that? >> Yeah, totally. So ironically to really come clean the metrics that we had in the first quarter were very similar to do with the metrics that we see historically. So the mix with mean our existing customer base and then our new customer acquisition were very similar to our historical metrics which candidly we were a little surprised by. We anticipated that the majority of our business would come from that safe harbor of your existing customer base. But candidly we had a really nice split which was great which meant that our value proposition was resonating not only with our existing customer base where you would expect it but also in any of our new customers as well who had been evaluating us that either accelerate it or just continue down the path of adoption during the timeframe of COVID-19. Across industries I would say that again there were some industries I would say that pushed pause. And so the ones that you can imagine that accelerated during this past period were the ones you would think of, right? So financial institutions primarily as well as some of the medical. So some of those transactions, healthcare and medical they accelerated along with financial institutions. And then I would say that we did have some industries that pushed pause. You can probably guess what some of those are. Among the majority of those were the ones that were dealing with the small and midsize businesses or consumer-facing businesses, things like retail and stuff like that. Well we typically do have a pretty nice resonance and a really nice value proposition but there were definitely some transactions that we saw basically just pause. Like we're going to come back. But overall yeah the feedback was just in general. It felt like any other quarter and it felt like just pretty normal. As strange as that sounds. 'Cause I know speaking to a lot of my friends in peer companies, peer software companies, they didn't have that experience but we did pretty well. >> That's interesting, you're right. Certain industries, airlines, I'm interviewing a CIO of a major resort next week. Really interested to hear how they're dealing with this but those are obviously depressed and they've dialed everything down. But we were one of the first to report that work from home pivot, it didn't, it didn't buffer the decline in IT spending that were expected to be down maybe as much as 5% this year but it definitely offset it. What about Cloud? We're seeing elevated levels in Cloud demand. Guys have offerings there. What are you seeing in Cloud guys? >> Do you want to take it Brian? >> Yeah, I'll start and then Paul please weigh in. I think that the move to the cloud that we've been witnessing and the acceleration of the move to cloud that we've been we've been witnessing over the past several years probably ramped up in intensity over the last two months. The projects that might have been on the 18 to 24 month roadmap have of all of a sudden been accelerated into maybe this year of our roadmap. But in terms of the wholesale everything moves to Cloud and I abandoned my on-premises estate. I don't think we've seen that quite yet. I think that the world is still hybrid when it comes to Cloud. Although I do think that the beneficiaries of this are probably the non-number one and number two Cloud providers but the rest of the hyper-scalers who are fighting for market shares because now they have an opportunity to perhaps, Google for example, a strategic partner of ours has a huge offering when it comes to enabling work from home and the remote work. So leveraging that as a platform and then extending into their enterprise offerings, I think it gives them a wedge that the Amazon might not have for example. So it's an acceleration of interest but I think it's just a continuation of the trend that we've been seeing for years. >> Yeah, and I would add a little bit Dave. The IBM held their Think Conferences past week. I don't know if you had an opportunity to participate. They're one of our OEM partners and... >> Dave: Oh Yeah, we covered it. >> When our CEO presented his opening his opening remarks it was really about digital transformation and he really put it down to two things and said any business that's trying to transform is either talking about hybrid Clouds or they're talking about AI and machine learning. And that's kind of it, right? And so every digital business is talking in one of those categories. And when I look to Q1 it's interesting that we really didn't see anything other than as Brian talked about all of the cloud business which is some version of an acceleration. But outside of that the customers that are in those industries that are in position to accelerate and double down during this opportunity did so and those that did not just peeled back a little bit. But overall I would agree with IBM's assessment of the market that those are kind of the two hotspots and hybrid Cloud is hot and the good news is, we've got a nice value prop right in the middle of it. >> Yeah, Alvin Chris has talked about, and he has it, maybe not a thing but he talked earlier in his remarks on the earnings call just in public statements that IBM must win the battle the architectural battle, the hybrid Cloud. And also that he wants to lead with a more technical sell essentially, which is to mean those two things are great news for you guys, obviously Red Hat is the linchpin of that. I want to ask you guys about your conference, Data-Driven. So we were there last year it was a really great intimate event. Of course you can't have the physical events anymore. So you've pushed to September or you're going all digital? Give us the update on that Brian. >> We're eager to have theCube participate in our September event. So I'm sure we'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks, but also >> Dave: Awesome, love it. (Brian laughs) >> Exactly, so you can tell Frank to put that in there. So we've been participating in some of the other conferences most notably last week learning a lot and really trying to cherry pick the best ideas and the best tactics we're putting on the digital event. I think that as we look to September and as we look to put on a really rich digital event one of the things that is first and foremost in our minds is we want to actually produce more on demand digital content particularly from a technology standpoint. Our technology sessions last year were oversubscribed. The digital format allows people to stream whenever they can and frankly as many sessions as they might want. So I think we can be far more efficient in terms of delivering technical content for the users of our technology. And then we're also eager to have as we've done with data driven in years past, our customers tell the story of how they're using data. And this year certainly I think we're going to hear a lot of stories about in particular how they use data during this incredible crisis and hopefully renewal from the crisis. >> Well one of my favorite interviews last year at your show was the guy from DraftKings. So hopefully they'll be back on and we'll have some football to talk about, well let's hope. >> Amen. >> I Want to end with just sort of this notion of we've been so tactical the last eight weeks. Right? You guys too I'm sure. Just making sure you're there for customers, making sure your employees are okay. But as we start to think about coming out of this into a Post-COVID Era and it looks like it's going to be with us for a while but we getting back to Quaseye opening. So I'm hearing hybrid is here to stay. We agree for sure. Cyber resiliency is very interesting. I think one of the things we've said is that companies may sub-optimize near term profitability to make sure that they've got the flexibility and business resiliency in place. That's obviously something that is I think good news for you guys but I'll start with Paul and then maybe Brian you can bring us home. How do you see this sort of emergence from this lockdown and into the Post-COVID Era? >> Yeah, this is a really interesting topic for me. In fact I've had many discussions over the last couple of weeks with some of our investors as well as with our executive staff. And so my personal belief is that the way buying and selling has occured, for IT specifically at the enterprise level, it's about to go through a transformation, no different than we watched the transformation of SAS businesses when you basically replaced a cold calling sales person with an inside and inbound marketing kind of effort followed up with SDR and BDR. Because what we're finding is that our clients now are able to meet more frequently because we don't have the friction of airplane ride or physical building to go through. And so that whole thing has been removed from the sales process. So it's interesting to me that one of the things that I'm starting to see is that the amount of activity that our sales organization is doing and the amount of physical calls that were going on, they happen to be online. However, way higher than what we can (mumbles), you coupled that with the cost savings of not traveling around the globe and not being in offices. And I really think that those companies that embrace this new model, are going to find ways to penetrate more customers in a less expensive way. And I do believe that the professional sales enterprise sales person of tomorrow is going to look different than it looks today. And so I'm super excited to be in a company that is smack dab in the middle of selling to enterprise clients and watching us learn together how we're going to buy, sell and market to each other in this post-COVID way. 'Cause the only thing I really do know it's just not going to be the way it used to be. What is it going to look like? I think all of us are placing bets and I don't think anybody has the answer yet. But it's going to look different for sure. >> They're very, very thoughtful comments. And so Brian, you know our thinking is the differentiation in the war. Gets one in digital. How is that affecting your marketing and your things around that? >> We fortunately decided coming into 2020, our fiscal 21, that we were actually going to overweigh digital anyway. We felt that, it was far more effective, we were seeing far better conversion rates. We saw way better ROI in terms of very targeted additive digital campaigns or general purpose ABM type of efforts. So our strategy had essentially been set and what this provided us is the opportunity to essentially redirect all of the other funds into digital. So we have essentially a two pronged marketing attack, right now, which is digital creating inbounds and BDRs that are calling on those inbounds that are created digitally. And so it's going to be a really interesting transition back when physical events if and when they do actually back and spawn, how much we decide to actually go back into that. To some extent we've talked about this in the past Dave. The physical events and the sheer spectacle and the sheer audacity of having to spend a million dollars just to break through that was an unsustainable model. (laughs) And so I think this is hastening perhaps the decline or demise of really silly marketing expense and getting back to telling customers what they need to know to help and assist their buying journey and their investigation journey into new technology. >> There in the IT world is hybrid. And I think the events world is also going to be hybrid. Intimate, they're going to live on but they're also going to have a major digital component to them. I'm very excited that there's a lot of learnings now in digital especially around events and by September, a lot of the bugs are going to be worked out. You know we've been going, feels like 24/7, but really excited to have you guys on. Thanks so much, really looking forward to working with you in September at Data-Driven. So guys thanks a lot for coming on theCUBE. >> Oh my gosh, thank you Dave. So nice to be here, Thank you. >> All right, stay safe. >> Thanks Dave, always a pleasure. You too. >> Thank you everybody, thank you. And thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cube conversation [Music] hi buddy this is Dave Volante and welcome to this cute conversation you know the we've been following a company called Activia for quite some time now they they've really popularized the concept of copy data management really innovative Boston based Waltham based company and with me Brian Regan who's the chief marketing officer and all 40 who's the newly minted chief revenue officer of actifi Oh guys great to see you I wish we were face to face that you're you're you're June event but this will have to do yeah you bet yeah so you know Brian you've been on the cube a bunch I'm gonna start with Paul if that's okay Paul you know just let's talk a little bit about your your background you've you've done a number of stance at a variety of companies you know big companies like IBM and others as well what attracted you to Activia in all honesty I've been a software guy and candidly a data specific leader for many many years and so IT infrastructure particularly associated around data has always been sort of my forte for fun on words there and and so Activia was just smack dab in the middle of that right and so when I was looking for my next adventure you know I had an opportunity to to meet with a shower CEO and Founder and describe and discuss kind of what activity was all about and candidly the the number of connections that we had that were the same a lot of our OEM relationships with people that I actually worked with and for and some that worked for me historically so it was almost this perfect world right and I'm a Boston guy so it was in my in my old backyard and it was just a perfect yeah it was a perfect match for what I was looking for which was really a small growth company that was trying to you know get to the next level that had compelling technology in a space that I was super familiar with and understanding and articulate the value proposition well as we're saying in Boston Paulie we got to get you back here I know I pack my cock let's talk about the let's talk about the climate right now I mean nobody expected this of course I mean it's funny I was I saw ash and an event in in Boston last fall we were talking like hey what do you expected for next year yeah a little bit of softening but you know nobody expected this sort of Black Swan but you guys I just got your press release you put out you had a good you had a good quarter you had a record first quarter um what's going on in the marketplace how you guys doing yeah well I think that today more than than ever businesses are realizing that data is what is actually going to carry them through this crisis and that data whether it's changing the nature of how companies interact with their customers how they manage through their supply chain and in frankly how they take care of their employees is all very data-centric and so businesses that are protecting that data that are helping businesses get faster access to that data and ultimately give them choice as to where they manage that data on-premises in the cloud and hybrid configuration those are the businesses that are really going to be top of a CIOs mind I think our q1 is a demonstration that customers voted with their wallets in their confidence in ectopy Oh has an important part of their data supplied nopal I want to come back to you first of all your your other people know you're next you're next Army Ranger so thank you for your service that's awesome you know I was talking to Frank's lute man we interviewed me other day and he was sharing with me sort of how he manages and and he says the other managed by a playbook he's a situational manager and that's something that he learned in the military well this is weird this is a situation okay and that really is kind of how you're trained and and of course we've never seen anything like this but you're trained to deal with things that you've never seen before so how are you seeing organizations generally actifi Oh specifically going to manage through this process what are some of the moves that you're advising recommending give us some insight there yeah so I'm it's really interesting it's a it's funny that you mentioned my military background I was just having this discussion with one of my leaders the other day that you know one of the things that they trained for in the military is the eventualities of chaos right and so when you when you do an exercise they we will literally tap the leader on the shoulder and say okay you're now dead and without that person being allowed to speak they take a knee and the unit has to go on and so what happens is you you learn by muscle memory like how to react in time suffice it or and you know this is a classic example of leadership and crisis and so um so it's just it's just interesting like so to me you have a playbook I think everybody needs to start with a playbook and then start with a plan I can't remember if it was Mike Tyson but one of them one of my famous quotes was you know let you know plan is good until somebody punches you in the face that's the reality of what just happened the business across the globe is it just got punched in the face and so you got a playbook that you rely on and then you have to remain nimble and creative and candidly opportunistic and from a leadership perspective I think you can't lose your confidence right so I've watched some of my friends and of what some other businesses crippled in the midst of this and I'm because they're afraid instead of instead of looking at this in my first commentary that our first staff meeting Brian if I remember it was this okay so what makes active feel great in disembark like not why is it not great right and so we didn't get scared we jumped right into it we you know we adjusted our playbook a little bit and candidly we just had a record quarter and we just down here the honestly date we took down deals in every single geography around the globe to include Italy I mean so it was insane it was really fun okay so this wasn't just one monster deal that gave you that record Porter is really a broad-based the demand yeah so if you you know if you dug underneath the covers you would see that we had the largest number of transactions ever in the first quarter we had the largest average selling price in the first quarter ever we had the largest contribution from our panel partners and our OEM partners ever and we had the highest number ever and so it was a it was really a nice truly balanced performance across the globe and across the size of deal sets and candidly across industries interesting I mean you use the term opportunistic and and I think you're right on I mean you obviously you don't want to be chasing ambulances at the same time you know we've talked to a lot of CEOs and essentially what they're doing and I'd like to get your feedback on this Brian you you you're kind of reassessing the ideal profile of a customer you're reassessing your value proposition in the context of the current pandemic and and I noticed that you guys in your press release talked about cyber resiliency you talked about digital initiatives you know data center transformations etc so maybe you could talk a little bit about that Brian did you do those things how did you do those things what kind of pace were you guys at how did you do it remotely with everybody working from home give us some color on that sure and you know Ashley if you were here you would probably remind us that Activia was born in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis so we we have essentially been bookended by two black swans over the last decade the and the lessons we learned in 2008 are every bit as as relevant today everything starts with cost containment in hospital and in protection of the business and so cio is in the midst of this shock to the system I think we're very much looking at what are the absolutely vital critical initiatives and what is a nice to have and I'm going to pause on my step and invest entirely in the critical mission and the critical initiatives tended to be around getting people safely working for remotely getting people safe access to their systems and their applications in their data and then ultimately it also became about protecting the systems from malicious individuals and state actors up unfortunately as we've seen in other times of crisis this is when crime and cyber crime particularly tends to spike particularly against industries that don't have the strong safeguards in place to to really ensure the resiliency their applications so we very much went a little bit back to the 2008 playbook around helping people get control of their costs helping people continue to do the things they need to do at a much more infrastructure light manner but also really emphasize the fact that if you are under attack or if you are concerned that you're infected but you don't know when you know instant access to data and a time machine that can take you back and forth to those points in time is something that is incredibly valuable so so let's >> cyber resiliency so specifically what is aekta video doing for its customers from a product standpoint capabilities maybe it's part of the the 10 see announcement as well but but can you can you give us some specifics on where you fit in let's take that use case cyber resiliency yeah absolutely so I think there's there's a staff of capabilities when it comes to cyber resiliency at the lowest level you need a time machine because most people don't know when they're in fact and so the ability to go back in time test the recoverability of data test the validity of the data is step one step two is once you've found the clean point being able to resume operations being able to resume the applications operation instantly or very rapidly is the next phase and that's something that Activia was founded on this notion of instant access to data and then the third phase and this is really where our partnerships really shine is you probably want to go back and mitigate that risk you want to go back and clean that system you want to go back and find the infection and eliminate it and that's where our partnership with IBM freezing resiliency services and their cyber incident recovery solution which takes the activity of platform and then rappers and a complete managed services around it so they can help the customer not only get their their systems and applications back on their feet but clean the systems and allow them to resume operations normally on a much safer and more stable okay so so that's interesting so Paul Paul was it kind of new adoptions was it was it increases from existing customers kind of a combination and you talk to that yeah totally so like ironically to really come clean we are the metrics that we had in the first quarter were very similar through the metrics that we see historically so the mix need our existing customer base and then our new customer acquisition were very similar to our historical metrics which candidly we were a little surprised by we anticipated um that the majority of our business would come from that safe harbor of your existing customer base but candidly we had a really nice split which was great which meant that you know a value proposition was resonating not only with our existing customer base where you would expect it but also in in any of our new customers as well who had been evaluating us that either accelerated or or just continue down the path of adoption during the time frame of Koba 19 across industries I would say that again um there was there were there were some industries I would say that pushed pause and so the ones that you can imagine that accelerated during during this past period were the ones you would think of right so financial institutions primarily as well as some some of the medical so some of those transactions healthcare and medical they accelerated along with financial institutions and then I would say that that we did have some industries that push pause and you can probably guess what some of those are a majority of those were the ones that we're dealing with the small and mid-sized businesses or consumer facing businesses things like retail stuff like that where we typically do have a pretty nice residence in a really nice value proposition but there were there were definitely some transactions that we saw basically just pause like we're going to come back but overall the yeah the feedback was just in general it felt like any other quarter and it felt like just pretty normal as strange as that sounds because I know speaking to a lot of my friends and gear companies your software companies they didn't have that experience but we did pretty well that's interesting I mean you're right I mean certain industries Airlines I'm interviewing a cio of major resort next week you know really interested to hear how they're you know dealing with this but those those are obviously depressed and they've dialed everything down but but we've we were one of the first to report that work from home pivot it didn't it didn't you know buffer the decline in IT spending that were expecting to be down you know maybe as much as 5% this year but it definitely offset it what about cloud we're seeing elevated levels in cloud demand guys you know have offerings there what are you seeing in cloud guys you want that yeah I'll start and then fall please please weigh in I think that'd be the move to the cloud that we've been witnessing and the acceleration of the MOOC table that we've been whipped over the past several years probably ramped up in intensity over the last two months The Improv been on the you know 18 to 24 month road map have all of a sudden been accelerated into maybe this year but in terms of the wholesale you know everything moves to cloud and I abandoned my on-premises estate I I don't think we've seen that quite yet I think the the world is still hybrid when it comes to cloud although I do think that the beneficiaries of this are probably the the non number one or number two cloud providers but the rest of the hyper scalers who are fighting for market share because now they have an opportunity to perhaps google for example a strategic partner of ours has a you know a huge offering when it comes to enabling work home and remote work so leveraging that as a platform and then extending into their enterprise offerings I think gives them a wedge that the you know Amazon might not have so this it's an acceleration of interest but I think it's just a continuation of the trend of seeing four years yeah and I would add a little bit if the you know IBM held their think conference this past week I don't know if you had an opportunity to participate there one of our OEM partners and oh yeah because you know when our the CEO presented his kind of opening his opening remarks it was really about digital transformation and he really he really kind of put it down to two things and said you know any business that's trying to transform is either talking about hybrid cloud but they're talking about AI and machine learning and that's kind of it right and so every digital business is talking in one of those categories and so when I look 2q1 it's interesting that we really didn't see anything other than as brian talked about all the cloud business which is some version of an acceleration but outside of that the customers that are in those industries that are in position to accelerate and double down during this opportunity didn't so and those that did not you know kind of just peeled back a little bit but overall I still I would agree with with ibm's assessment of the market that you know those are kind of the two hot spots and have a cloud is hot and the good news is we've got a nice guy operating Molloy yeah Arvind Krista talked about the the in and it has it maybe not I think but he talked earlier in his remarks on the earnings call just in Publix Davis that IBM must win the battle the architectural battle the hybrid cloud and also that he wants to lead with a more technical sell essentially which is submitted to me those those two things are great news for you guys obviously you know Red Hat is the linchpin of that I want to ask you guys about your your conference data-driven so we were there last year it was a great really great intimate event of course you know you hand up the physical events anymore so you've pushed to September you're going all digital would give us the update on on that program we're um we're eager to have the cube participate in our September event so I'm sure we'll be talking more about that in the coming weeks but awesome we love it we exactly so you can tell Frank to put that so we we've been participating in some of the other conferences I think most notably last week learning a lot and and really trying to cherry pick the best ideas and the best tactics for putting on a digital event I think that as we look to September and as we look to put on a really rich digital event one of the things that is I think first and foremost in our minds is we want to actually produce more on-demand digital content particularly from a technology standpoint our technology sessions last year were oversubscribed the digital format allows people to stream whenever they can and frankly as many sessions as they as they might so I think we can be far more efficient in terms of delivering technical content or the users of our technology and then we're also eager to have as we've done with data driven in the years past our customers tell the story of how they're using data and this year certainly I think we're going to hear a lot of stories about in particular how they use data during this incredible you know crisis and and hopefully renewal from crisis well one of my favorite interviews last year your show is the the guys from draft King so hopefully they'll be back on it will have some football to talk about let's hope I mean I want it I want to end with just sort of this notion of you know we've been so tactical the last eight weeks right I'm you guys too I'm sure just making sure you're there for customers making sure your employees are ok but as we start to think about coming out of this you know into a post probe Adaro it looks like it's gonna be with us for a while but we're getting back the you know quasi opening so I'm hearing you know hybrid is here to stay we agree for sure cyber resiliency is very interesting I think you know one of the things we've said is that that companies may sub optimize near-term profitability to make sure that they've got the flexibility and resilience business resiliency in place you know that's obviously something that is I think good news for you guys but but I'll start with Paul and then maybe Brian you can bring us home how do you see this sort of emergence from this lockdown and into the post ghovat era yeah so this is a really interesting topic for me in fact I've had many discussions over the last couple weeks with some of our investors as well as our executive staff and so my personal belief is that the way buying and selling has occurred for IT specifically at the enterprise level is about to go through a transformation no different than we watched the transformation of SAS businesses when you basically replace the cold-calling salesperson with an inside and you know inbound marketing kind of effort followed up with SDR and vdr because what we're finding is that our clients now are able to meet more frequently because we don't have the friction of airplane ride or or physical building to go through and so like that that whole thing has been removed from the sales process and so it's interesting to me that one of the things that I'm starting to see is that the amount of activity that our sales organization is doing and the amount of physical calls that were going on they happen to be online however you couple that with the cost savings of not traveling around the globe and not being in offices and and I really think that those companies that embrace this new model are gonna find ways to penetrate more customers in a less expensive way and I do believe that the professional sales enterprise salesperson of tomorrow is gonna look at then it looks today and so I'm super excited to be in a company that is smack dab in the middle of selling to enterprise clients and and watching us learn together how we're gonna buy sell and market to each other in this post public way because I I'm the only thing I really do know it's just not gonna be the way it used to be what is it gonna look like I think all of us are placing bets and I don't think anybody has the answer yet but it's gonna look different for sure they're very very thoughtful comments and so Brian you know our thinking is the differentiation and the war yes it gets one in digital how is that affecting you know sort of your marketing and your thing around that we we fortunately decided coming into 2020 our fiscal 21 that we were actually going to overweight digital anyway we felt that it was far more effective we were seeing far better conversion rates we saw you know way better ROI in terms of very targeted tentative digital campaigns or general-purpose ABM type of efforts so our strategy had essentially been set and and what this provided us is the opportunity to essentially redirect all of the other funds individually so you know we have essentially a two-pronged marketing you know attack Frank now which is you know digital creating inbounds and B DRS that are calling on those in bounds that are created digital and so it's a you know it's going to be a really interesting transition back when physical events if and when they do actually come back into form you know how much we decide to actually go back into that that been I think that you know to someone to some extent we've talked about this in the past II you know the physical events and the the sheer spectacle and this year you know audacity of having to spend a million dollars just to break through that was an unsustainable model and so I think this is this is hastening perhaps the decline or demise of really silly marketing expense and getting back to telling telling customers what they need to know to help their an assist their buying journey in their investigation journey into a new technology I mean the IT world is hybrid and I think the events world is also going to be hybrid to me nice intimate events you know they're gonna live on but they're also gonna have a major digital component to them I'm very excited that you know we're a lot of learnings now in digital especially around events and by September the a lot of the the bugs are gonna be worked out you know we've been going to it so it feels like 24/7 but really excited to have you guys on thanks so much really looking forward to working with you in in September it's data-driven so guys thanks a lot for coming on the cube oh my gosh thank you Dave so nice it's so nice to be here thank you alright pleasure you did thank you everybody thank you and thanks for watching this is Dave Volante for the cube and we'll see you next time [Music]

>>from the Silicon Angle Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts. It's the cue. Here's your host Still, Minutemen >>Hi and welcome to the Boston area studio. Happy to welcome back two of our Cube alumni, both from Active e o Brian Regan, the C M O of the company. And it took Rommel. Who's the vice president and general manager of Cloud? Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >>Happy New Year's too great to be here. >>Yeah, 2020 way we're talking about. We don't all have flying cars and some of these things, but there are a lot of exciting things and ever changing in the tech world. We're gonna talk a lot about N. C. Which, of course, is active use announcement. If I heard the sea, it's about clouds, about containers and about copy data management. With course, you know we know act as always quite well, Brian. Let's start with a company update first. Of course, you know, copy data management is where activity really created a category, but all of these new waves of technology that activity is fitting into Well, 2000 >>19 was an incredible year for us, you know, continued accelerating our growth in the market in the enterprise particularly, You know that the secular trends around hybrid and multi cloud really played well to our existing strengths. And 10 c really builds on those strengths will talk more about that. I know in a moment we also saw continued, you know, as digital transformation as as application modernization initiatives to cold. In just about every enterprise, our database capabilities really played again a cz a strength that we could capitalize on to land significant enterprise accounts, get started with them and then really start to expand overall data platform data management platform in those accounts >>s Oh, sure, before we get into the 10 see stuff specifically. But Brian, Brian teed up some of those cloud trends and how I think about data protection. Data management absolutely has changed. You know, I remember a couple years ago we said, Oh, well, you know, people are adopting all these clouds. All of these concerns still exist. You know. It doesn't go away. It's not magically Oh, I did office 3 65 I don't need to think about all the things that I thought about without. Look, when I do public cloud and build new applications. Oh, wait. You know, somebody needs to take care of that data. So bring us inside your customers. The team that's building these products and some of those big trends should >>happen. You're still so happy to be back in the Cube. So 2019 really defined. There were a lot of for enterprises really started moving. Production will look to the cloud multi cloud become a reality for active field way. We're running production workloads on seven o'clock platforms. So the key elements off being infrastructure agnostic wherein active you can do everything in all clark platforms. Basically, infrastructure neutral was a key element. On the other element was a single pane of glass. You could have an Oracle worker running on prime with the logic application running in azure and not know the difference. S o. The seamless mobility of data was the key element. That lot of our enterprises took advantage from elective standpoint on a lot of the 10 see capabilities adds onto those capabilities and you see more of these adoptions happening in 2020. So I think 10 seat eases up absolutely perfectly for that market. >>Yeah, let's talk a little bit about activities, place in the market, that differentiation there, that direct connection with the application and the partner's eyes. Real big piece of it. >>It's a huge piece and something we really not just double triple down on in 2019. Certainly for us our database capabilities, which we believe are really second to none in the industry, we continue to expand and enrich the capabilities, including ASAP Hana obviously already Oracle and sequel server D B two, as well as the linen space databases, the new and no sequel databases. We also understood, and as our customers were talking to us about their application modernization, they were moving Maur of their front and capabilities two containers, and they wanted that the data to come with it a t east temporarily on. So that was a big focus for us as well was making sure that we could bring the data whether it was into a V M, into a container into a physical server into any number of clouds in order to support that application. At that time, it was a critical part of our differentiation. For two dozen 1 19 >>I'd love just a little more on the database piece because you go to Amazon, reinvent and you know, the migrations of databases to the cloud, of course, is a major conversation. You look at Amazon, they have a whole number of their offerings as well, as if you want to use any database out there, they'll let you use it. Course Oracle might charge him or if you're doing it on the Amazon, the Amazon partner. The azure partnership with Oracle was big news in the back and 1/2 of 2019. So when you're working with their customers, you know, databases still central to you know how they run their business and one of the bigger expenses on the books, they're So you know what we look at 2020. You know, what is the landscape specifically from a database? Well, we continue >>to see and in most of our large enterprise accounts that Oracle and sequel servers continue to dominate the majority of the payload of databases. We don't see that changing, although we do see net new applications being built on new database platforms. Thio complement the oracle and sequel server back end. So we are seeing a rise of the bongos and the new and no Sequels out there. We're also seeing Maur consideration of building in the cloud, as opposed to starting on Prem and then potentially leveraging the cloud sort of post facto and in terms of the application architecture's. So our ability to support both the the legacy big iron database platforms as well as the new generation platforms, regardless of application architectural, regardless of the geometry of the application, is a big part of our differentiation >>going forward. >>All right, so let let's Wave hinted about it. But 10 c major announcement. Let's get into how that extends what we've been talking about. >>Absolutely so you know, we've made a lot of the new databases, particularly the no sequel databases, the Mongols and Hannah's first class citizens intensity, which means we understand not just the database. He also he also the ecosystem that the database lives. We all know Hannah's a fairly big database in terms of the number of machines that consumes number off, you know, applications that you use it and toe capture and actually provide value for Hannah. You need to understand where the Honda database lifts and so some of the capabilities we've added in 10 C's to kind of figure out this ecosystem, and when you migrate, you might need the ecosystem, not just the holiday. The peace because you know that is that is a key element. On the second aspect is the containers that that Brian touched on. Now we're seeing legacy data being presented into containers, and there's a bridge too quiet for that. Now. How do you present that bridge containers could be brought up, but they're lifeless unless you give them data. So the actors of bridge ready and you bring up the container using communities of whatever framework you have and be married the data into the container framework. So most organizations, you know, as they evolved from yesterday's architecture to today's architect. And they need this bridge, which helps them navigate that that my creation process and an active field being the data normalization platform is helping them live on both segments, Right? Nobody does us turn the switch off of the old one and move to the new That'll be co exist. That is the key element >>way spent a lot of time over the last couple of years hearing about cloud native architectures and that discussion of data, it is kind of something you need to kind of dig in to understand. I'm glad to hear you talking about, You know, when you talk about storage and container ization, you know where that fits today? Because originally it was only stateless. But now we know we could do state full environment here. But while container ization is, you know, growing at huge leaps and bounds, customers aren't taking their Oracle database and shoving Brian A lot of discussion about the partnerships. I think it was seven. You know, major cloud providers. That activity is there talk a little bit about the common native. The relationships with some >>of those partners? Absolutely. I mean, way made great strides from a go to market standpoint with our cloud partners this past year. Google Cloud is probably our most significant go to market partner. From a cloud standpoint, we've done a lot of joint engineering works in order to support both our existing, uh, software platform as well as our SAS control plane in the Google Cloud. We have landed many significant deals with with Google this past year on dhe. They have been as they continue to really increase their focus on enterprise accounts and both hybrid as well as public cloud sort of architectures. We are hand in glove with them as their backup in D R partner for those club >>workloads. >>Great eso We talked quite a bit about the database peace, but in general, back into the cloud archive in the cloud. What is 10 see specifically an active you, in general, enhance in those environments >>so tense he bring It brings in you know, the key elements of the recovery orchestration. So if I have to bring up, let's say, 500 machines in any club platform, how did I do it? Well, I can go and bring up one machine at a time and take two days to bring it up or with active fuels. Resiliency. Director. You can create a recovery plan and a push pardon Recovery happens, so we've seen a lot of customers adopt that, particularly customers that want to leverage the Google platform for its infrastructure capabilities. Wants an orchestration, that is, that is, that understands the applications that are coming up, so there is a significant benefit from a PR standpoint of the recovery orchestrations will be invested a lot of time and tuning the performance and understanding Google and Amazon and Azure to make sure this was built, right. The other big push we're seeing for the clock platforms ASAP, ASAP, as an enterprise has taken a mission to say, there's no more data centers. Everything is going to the cloud. So an escapee workloads are not the easiest were close to manage. And so they did the the intersection point of S A P and the cloud is very active. Field becomes really valuable because, though, did this data sets by definition or large, their complex and there were distributed. And the D artists of paramount importance because these air crown jewels So so those segments of the R orchestration forward with, you know ASAP and Hannah, which is to get our strength of databases. It's kind of their tense. He really hits, hits, hits a home run >>when we're talking to users in the discussion of multi Cloud in general, one of the challenges is Yoon hee. Different skill sets across. One of those powerful things I've heard from active use really is a normalization across any cloud or even in a cloud. Oh, wait. I was gonna stuck six up again in an archive. That means I'm never going to touch it again. Ingress and egress fees. You know, I have to figure these out or I need toe dedicated engineer to those kind of environments. So it seems that just fundamentally the architecture that you built it active eo is toe help customers really get their arms around those multi cloud >>environments? Absolutely. And I think there are two additional components that really one of which has lived with activity from the very beginning of the company, which is a p a p I. First, the cloud is very much an AP I centric type of operating model on with active fio We don't change the management system were operating model. But in fact we incorporate in eso all of this orchestration that it shook talked about can be actuated via a P I. The second piece, which we really started in 2017 with our eight Dato platform release, is the the consumption and the intelligent consumption of object with 10 see, we've continued to advance our object capabilities. In fact, we published a paper with the SG in late 2019 that talked about mounting 50 terabyte Oracle databases directly out of object with actually increased performance versus the production block >>storage behind it. >>So we have really with 10 C, actually added cashing to even further performance optimized object workloads, which speaks to both the flexibility but also the economic flexibility of being able. Thio contemplate running workloads in the cloud out of object at a lower cost platform without necessarily the compromise of performance that you would normally expect >>absolutely. And like you said, the skill set required. Do I need to put it in object to any reported in block? We can eliminate that right. Be neutralized that to say you want to leverage the cloud, give us your cost point and you can dial the cost up or down, depending on what you see for performance, and we will be the day that back and forth, so that flexibility is enormous for customers. >>That's greater if you talk to anybody that's been in the storage industry for a while, and you want to make them squirm, say the word migration s O. We know how painful it has been if you go talk to any of the triple vendors, they have so many tools and so many service is to help do that in a cloud era. It should be a little bit easier, but it sounds like that's another key piece. Intensity? >>Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, 10 See, you know, hits the home. I think with the A P. I integration. So the other element 2019 Saul, was the scale of deployment effective. You know, when you have to manage hundreds of thousands of machines across different geo's, that is a scale that comes to the data protection that you know, people. Really? You have a seat to actually build for it and and work with it and be sorry in 2019 and 10 See, incorporates a lot of that capabilities as well, making it ask Cloud needed as possible. So basically, around these applications globally. All >>right, uh, I was wondering if you might have a customer example toe really highlight the impact that NBC's having understand if you can't name them specifically, but, uh, yeah, >>well, actually, shook has already talked about 11 customer slash partner. Who is I think still the world's largest software company in the world based out of Germany. And they are powering their enterprise cloud on the data management data protection. Beneath that enterprise cloud across four different hyper scale er's using, active you on. I think they're on record in a weapon. Our earlier in December, talking about their evaluation of pretty much every technology out there on the one that could really deliver on performance at scale across clouds was activity >>on. The key element was they wanted a single platform with a single pane of glass across all platforms, and an active feel was the solution to each other. So >>and certainly I think we credit them and are the rest of our enterprise customers for pushing us to make 10 see more powerful and more a capable across any clout, you know, Ultimately, an inter enterprise is going to make a decision that they've probably already made the decision to incorporate cloud into their enterprise architecture. What we give them is the freedom and the flexibility to choose any cloud. And, by the way, any cloud today that might change tomorrow and having the ability to seamlessly migrate and or convert from cloud eight o'clock be. Is something that active powers as well? >>Yeah, just make sure we're clear as to what's happening there. It's great that you've got flexibility there when we're talking about data and data gravity. Of course, we're not talking about just lifting an entire database land, you know, ignoring the laws of physics there. But it's the flexibility of using a ll These various things, any way Talk about A S, A P, of course, needs to live across all these clouds. But when you talk about an enterprise, you know what is kind of that? That killer use case? Because we said we're not at a point where cloud is not a utility. I don't wake up in the morning and look at the sheet and say, Oh, I'm gonna, you know, use Cloud a versus cloud be s o. You know what is? You know the importance of that flexibility for us >>today. The majority of our business starts with company saying I need to deliver my data faster to my developers or my tester's, or even increasingly, my data scientists and analysts and my data sets have become so large that it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to do that with regularity. So the currency of the data is starting to suffer. That is the first use case for us and that that powering that enterprise transformational initiative around a new application or an updated application based on a historical app using those enterprise databases delivering that seamlessly quickly, regardless of how big the data is still remains our first use case. And then, increasingly, those customers air realizing that they can start to achieve the other benefits of active eo, including I can start to back that up to the cloud. Aiken actually orchestrate recoveries in the cloud. Not just bulk sort of transfer, but actually the entire application stack. And bring that up in the cloud. I can start Thio, take those those data sets and actually amount them into containers for my next generation application. So that starting point of give me my data as quickly as possible, regardless of how big it is, starts to become universal in terms of its applicability for all use cases. >>Yeah, I guess I shook. The last thing I wanna understand from you is in 2019. We saw a lot of large providers putting out their vision for how I manage in this multi cloud environment. You were at the Google Cloud event where Anthros was unveiled. I was at Microsoft ignite when as your ark was unveiled. VM wear has things like tans you out there. So this moldy cloud environment how do I manage across these disperse environments? What? What What are all those move mean to active you on how you look at things. >>And I think you know, the Tennessee release and with the core architecture that if you had in place, which was multiple already and a P I ready. So those are the two elements that are kind of building blocks that you can tie into any one of those construct you talked about. All right, so we've had we have customers, innovated us with Antos. If customers get up service now we have customers doing Vieira with us, right? So there are many, many integration platforms. The latest I saw was an Alexa app, but we were mounting an oracle database on a voice command. So So you know, there's endless possibilities as thes equal systems evolve because active feel stays behind the cowards powering the data delivering the data available if needed on the target. So that is the key element in the neighbor that we see that helps all these other platforms become super successful. >>So, Brian, it sounds very much a hell wind. The big trends that we're seeing here keep partnerships and, you know, meeting your customers where they need to >>pay. Absolutely. We continue Thio play in the enterprise market, where these thes are absolutely top of mind of every CEO and top of their agenda. Onda, we are working hand in glove with them to make sure that our platform not only anticipates their needs but delivers on their current state of needs as well. >>Brian, thank you so much. Congratulations on the 10 sea launch Cloud containers. Copy data management. Look forward to watching your customers and your continued Thanks. As always, Very much. All right, I'm still Minutemen. Lots more coverage here in 2020. Check out the cube dot net for all of it. And thank you for watching the Cube

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host Stu minimun hi this is a cute conversation from our Boston area studio I'm Stu minimun and joining for this deep dive into partnership discussions is Brian Regan the CMO of activity Oh Brian great to see you and happy 2020 great to see you used to thanks all right so we had a conversation with yourself and a shuch talking about 10c some of the activities the general momentum of ectopy oh but really want to spend a little bit of time talking about partnerships so Activia being a software company always has add a number of partnerships so you know when we talk a little bit of just the philosophy of the company and you know how important that is for you know technology partnerships as well as the go-to-market absolutely and I think we you know in 2019 we really increased our focus our investments and really our entire company alignment towards five types of partners specifically one was relatively new partnership for us which is a software partnership with IBM and their data and AI division of IBM under Arvid Krishna and Rob Thomas that we really the OEM our product to go after the test data management market opportunity and really become a data platform for a lot of their initiatives that involve Watson and and analytics as well as test data management that was a huge new partnership for us in 2019 well of course a new area of partnership because IBM I understand is probably the longest and oldest partnership that activity oh is that absolutely so the software group was probably the last group that we have partnered with in inside of the IBM corporation but we saw incredible traction throughout the year great pipeline growth from literally the beginning of the the Inc signing the the paper and have a roster of incredible logos to show for it over the last 12 months yeah it's always interesting to look if you talk about software and how a ifit's to it that was 2019 one of the things we said just you know okay what is AI are along that spectrum but you know how do these things stitch together everything to a Maya feed for the training algorithms or there are other things I can do so that sounds like you found some areas where customers are going to be working at leveraging your solution absolutely and certainly with IBM's acquisition of Red Hat and their embrace of containers and kubernetes that application modernization intersection point where we can bring data into containers is going to be a big theme for us in 2020 as well okay exciting stuff so that's on the software piece so if you have software hardware still matters into C 20 it turns out we still need to run things on servers and storage so and and switches and the like so we're fortunate to have partnered with Dell EMC as one of our focus infrastructure partners we have reference architectures for converged infrastructure using the rail and their rack designs on the VX flex OS underneath and really going after the database cloning market opportunity so bringing a essentially a data center pod architecture with Activia software running inside to power these databases of service opportunities that exist in a large enterprises alright interesting that you know EMC was not one that I would have thought would have been the first one to partnership Dell EMC with a much broader portfolio it seems a natural fit absolutely and and we were excited actually to based on client demand to also introduce the support to write to data domain so we can actually support data domain essentially we treated almost like an object target to increase the useful life and actually increase the power of data domain within these broader infrastructures that the enterprise clients have you know I had a great conversation with the shuch talking about what one of the things about 10 C is we've known for a long time that object storage is so important for the storage industry and where we want to go but customers shouldn't have to think about it it's just how we enable that and that leads up to of course cloud is big piece absolutely NC there so so where the important partnership from a cloud standpoint so certainly all of the clouds for us in our multi cloud effort are important we we support seven of the hyper scalars and and certainly you know Alibaba cloud IBM cloud Oracle cloud VMware cloud in addition to the three that people think about most but from a go-to-market standpoint we were probably the most embedded with Google cloud over the last year to 18 months again we've aligned a lot of both go to market but also engineering efforts to make sure that we're supporting Google cloud in the best way possible bringing the most compelling and differentiated offerings particularly for database workloads for backup dr and ultimately database cloning well congratulations important partnership especially when you talk about that engineering standpoint Google is not one just to make oh you know we made a handshake and it's good it really they dig in from an engineering standpoint and we know that Google makes the smartest stuff out there they'll tell you that so if you you've gone through the wringer on that that that really speaks to the architectural absolutely piece of the environment and and credit to a shook in the entire engineering organization I mean that is to your point very much an engineering first and then go to market second type of relationship and we're delighted to be in the go-to-market side of that okay go to market then is probably another way piece of absolutely so the last two types of partners that were really focused on for 2020 and we certainly got very serious in 2019 one is global systems integrators and TCS has really emerged is a really key partner for us in that landscape when we think about the enterprise accounts that we target you know a billion and up in revenue they're in every single one of them and we have several wins that we can look back on 2019 and credit their influence they are certainly helping the application modernization initiatives within all of these enterprises and partnering with active Pheo to really bring a data management and test data management capability to bear really was an important step for us in nineteen that we hope to accelerate in 2020 and then the the last piece and last but not least from a go-to-market standpoint is the chat and you know important channel partners whether it's Trace 3 particularly on the west coast whether it's data trend you know from the Midwest and East Coast these types of channel partners have really helped us you know become embedded in some of the largest accounts in in North America as well as globally and really are the the trusted adviser inside of those accounts that we want to continue to enable with compelling differentiated offerings like Tennessee yeah there were a lot of transformations going on in the channel they were all trying to figure out how they live in that multi-cloud world seems a natural fit for those that are thriving and surviving absolutely in this era that those would be the ones that you'd be working with absolutely so as a software company you know the part of our power is the ecosystem power and but we believe that by continuing to foster these multifaceted relationships they all have actually really fascinating benefits across the board the IBM relationship for example has ecosystem benefits in their channel and their systems integrators the Dell EMC relationship has you know ripple effects into their channel and their distribution points of distribution so we believe it's a very complimentary ecosystem that we're building we're excited at the possibility of an even stronger 2020 because of it awesome the one that you mentioned actually in our earlier conversation talking about active intensity si P of course a big important partner also a huge it's an important partner from a standpoint of it's maybe the most critical workload in most enterprises that use sa P and being a part of their technology stack inside of the Hana enterprise cloud is a critical capability for us but it's also an important point of distribution as they go out to their enterprise customers and are looking to become more relevant in a broader sense of data management so we're certainly excited about the work that we're doing with them we're delighted about the influence that they've had in terms of our roadmap and pushing our platform to be even more capable particularly for Hana workloads all right a lot of different pieces Brian congratulations on all that happened in 2019 and looking forward to watching the momentum in 2020 Thanks looking forward to being back all right lots more coverage from us at the cube dotnet of course will be lots of shows feel free to reach out on Twitter I'm at Stu and thank you for watching the cube

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2018 brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hello, everyone, welcome back to the live CUBE coverage. This is day three of VMworld 2018. We're live in Las Vegas this is theCUBE's special coverage. Our ninth year covering VMworld. Kicking off day three, we've got two sets. Our next guest, Brian Reagan, who's the CMO of Actifio, theCUBE alumni. Great to see you. Great company doing some great things on the marketing side. You guys taking a different approach than others. Let the product do the talking. Let the solution speak for itself. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, John. It's great to be back and, Dave, it's always a pleasure. It's great to be at VMworld. >> You guys, I don't want to say, a different approach, but you're here at VMworld. There's a lot of pomp and circumstance. There's a lot of big booths, a lot of glam, a lot of attention getting. You got to do that but you don't want to overspend on that. You really want to just be in the community. What's your strategy? How are you as a CMO going into a world that wants more content? They want more data. They want to get solutions built. They love the glam, but the meat and potatoes is what they want. >> Monday night we had an event at TopGolf and I was talking to a couple customers and they basically were all saying the same thing to me which was, I come to VMworld to basically collect squeezy balls for my kids. They're going back to school. I'm going to collect a lot of toys. I'm going to do the solution expo. Great, great opportunity to really breakthrough from a swag standpoint, but no one's coming here to necessarily research the company that they want to disrupt or transform their business around. What we believe for VMware and, quite frankly, just in general is this is a great place to engage with customers. They're all here. This is the IT, this is COMDEX 2018. We need to be here, but we don't necessarily need to be in a solutions exchange where it's just an arms race about swag. >> What's your relationship with VMware? How do you guys fit in the ecosystem? What's the value proposition? What is the Actifio relationship to the community? How do you guys walk that line and how do you deliver those solutions? >> Pretty much throw a rock and you'll hit a vendor out here who has a great VMware solution, right? We are no exception. Everyone does VMware. Quite frankly, it's actually really easy nowadays. There's zero differentiation. I hate to say it, but everyone does VMware the same way. There is really no disruption in this marketplace because everyone does VADP. Everyone does Snapshot. Quite frankly, what we major on and what we focus on is actually the workloads that are franchise critical to businesses, which really are databases. Yeah, they might run out of VM, but often times they run on physical machines. Let's focus on databases. If they happen to be VMware, great. You know what, we like everybody else has a great VMware solution, but it's easy. Let's focus on the hard stuff which is databases which run the business and dX is all around databases and applications that run the business. That's where we major on. That's where our value comes in. That's where our customers see the most value from Actifio. >> My take away is, five/ten years ago it was all about integration and that was a differentiation, who could get the SDK faster, >> Exactly right, yeah. >> And you say, we were, we own them and that app would be right there. Okay, fine. That's done, okay. Fast forward to 2018, what's your perspective on VMware, what they're doing, the market momentum. You mentioned databases. You see them with Amazon bringing database now on prem. A lot has changed. What's your perspective? >> I think VMware is really... You talk to any CIO, any IT leadership, VMware is a critical part of the conversation so I don't mean to, in any way, diminish the value that VMware brings to the enterprise. And actually they are enabling cloud in every enterprise today whether it's private, whether it's hybrid, whether it's I'm going to do public, but I'm going to do public in VMware in the Amazon Cloud. VMware is table stakes in terms of running mission critical applications. What we believe is the next level of integration is what's the app running in VMware, right? What is it Oracle? I'm running Oracle rack inside of VMware. I'm running SAP inside of VMware. That's the next level of integration that becomes the differentiation and, quite frankly, the value creation in a lot of these enterprises. >> How do you guys differentiate, John was talking about all the glam and all the noise, a lot of noise, tons of noise around data protection. You guys pioneered the whole copy data management space. Where are you seeing growth? Where's the momentum, maybe you can give some examples. >> 2/3 of our business is now actually leading with DevOps and cloud. The real lever there is time. People want more time back in their day and they want more time back because whether it's-- there was a great article that SearchITOperations published about Aetna where they have tens of multi-terabyte databases and, quite frankly, it breaks every piece of infrastructure that they had, but they want to be able to serve those multi-terabyte databases out to their developers within minutes, as opposed to weeks or months or however long it takes traditional operations. Let's serve that need. Let's solve the time problem and all of a sudden digital transformation becomes a reality. dX and continuous integration, continuous development is really easy when you're talking about megabyte-sized JSON files. When you talk about 100 terabyte databases, it becomes really hard. With Actifio, we solve that problem. Now, we're enabling dX at scale in these large enterprises. It's really a time problem. >> Aetna's a customer obviously. We heard a similar story from Live Nation, which is another customer, but go ahead, John, sorry. >> What's the drivers in this because this is a unique thing? Because databases, as we said on theCUBE here on our analysis, the battleground in cloud, on premise in cloud database is the crucial thing. Look at Amazon, they're going after Oracle. RDS, their relational database service, on VMware on premise. Amazon's never done that before so clearly the database is a hard nut to crack, one. Two, it's super important. It's the pacing item on all migrations, all activity. What's driving your business because you're targeting that, trying to improve ease of use, but what's the market force? Migration, developer scale? What are some of the things that are driving your business? >> Yes and yes, right? It's help me collapse my cycle time. Typically, the time to actually get a copy of data for a developer is measured in weeks or months. >> In the old way. >> In the old way. CICD is talking about a daily check-in. And daily check-in, weeks and months, it just doesn't jive. If I can actually collapse that down into, yes, no matter how big that database is, I can give it to you in a 15 minute, 30 minute SLA. >> The mismatch between data pipelining to developer need is a gap, huge problem that you solve. What about some of the consequences if that's not solved? >> What do people do to compromise the time problem? They subset. They give their developers, it's a 100 terabyte production database, they give them a terabyte or 1/2 a terabyte of actual subsetted data so they run their queries in development and they work great. Then they roll them into production, all of a sudden they break because 100 terabytes is a different animal. >> And that could be a terrible experience for the application where data has to drive all the value. So speed of data insertion into the application is the critical cloud negative and/or developer need. >> It drives quality. It drives customer satisfaction. It drives, quite frankly, in regulated industries, it drives compliance. >> I feel like the Geico commercial. Everybody knows that this is a problem. Why aren't people doing this? Is it just too hard? I mean, this is a card. What specifically do you guys have for IP? What makes it happen? What do you guys do? >> 57 patents later, we have cracked the code on how to do really application native virtualization of data and the ability to serve it up through workflows, through automation in some of the largest enterprises in the world. We are enterprise tested, battle tested. Quite frankly, the applications and data that serves the largest enterprises, that's where we shine. >> What are some of the value points you can point to anecdotally or publicly around the value your customers have gotten from having thae ability to have data addressable and almost in real-time for developers because there's got to be some new experiences or new capabilities that they're realizing. Can you share just some of things that come out of this? >> An IT leader in a major bank that you've heard of said to us after we went through the initial phase of deployment, you've just given me an extra quarter of development in every year. >> Extra quarter of time. >> Extra quarter of time. We've collapsed down and we now have five quarters of development cycles as opposed to four. That, quite frankly, if you put a dollar value on it is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. >> Developer productivity, any new cool things that have happened, top line revenue growth, any impact to applications? >> Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you think about what is the battle front now, whether it's online banking, whether it's retail, whether it's healthcare even. What is the battle front? It is your app, your phone, your mobile device. It is the ability to self-serve content, information and transactions. All of that is happening because people are transforming the way they're doing business around applications today. >> Customers are going to eat this up. You solve the holy grail problem. It's so obvious to us, but getting data in real-time, having speed and scale and relevance is super critical. How do you guys compare with the competition? Are you guys ahead? How do you guys compare versus other solutions? Are there anything like you guys? What's out in the marketplace? Share your perspective on the landscape on how you guys compare. >> You're asking a marketing guy how we compare to the competition. >> Of course you're going to say you blow them away? >> Of course, I have this very convenient chart that shows us being the leader compared to everybody. The reality is 3,000 customers, 37 countries, nine years in the marketplace. We have been there and done that at scale in the enterprise. Five of the top global 20 financial institutions. Four of the 10 energy companies in the world. Four of the 10 top retail organizations in the world. We have done it for the largest companies in the world and we continue to deliver value at scale in the enterprise. >> You said before hundreds of millions of value. That sounds like a lot and people might go, oh, but how do you do that? Your cloud and your devops which is all about agility and speed, if you take a net present value, a discounted cash flow, a break even or whatever curve you draw, and I think I heard three months, right? You compress that by a quarter and then look at the numbers, that's the value. >> Huge. >> So if it's $200 million in revenue, do the math. If it's $10 in revenue, okay, it's not going to be as much, but the companies that you're talking about, the industries, talking about big, big projects and a lot of revenue associated with them. You talked about cloud and devops, how is your business model cloud and devops? Can you talk about that in terms of the way we do business, customer to Actifio? >> Increasingly, cloud has been for us a place where all of these use cases are executed. As a result, the business model has been BYO. I'm going to buy a license from Actifio. I'm going to bring it to Amazon, Azure, Google, what have you. More and more we're seeing a mixture of marketplace transactions plus the traditional cloud marketplace. You mentioned Live Nation. They are in many ways way ahead of the curve in terms of just going wholesale. I'm out of the data center business. I'm all in on cloud and I'm just going to buy everything through the marketplace. Increasingly, we're seeing marketplace transactions becoming a relevant part of our business. The fact that we've integrated with the top six public cloud providers and increasingly we're going to expand out to Huawei and Alicloud and more, it's not just a destination to connect a use case. It is becoming a platform to conduct transactions as well. >> And a really important channel. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Brian, great to hear from you. Congratulations on your success. Love the business model. We've been saying on theCUBE, so many years, data's at the center and the time to get the data from any database or a database into the application speed is critical. That makes great value so thanks for doing that. Appreciate it. >> Thank you guys. Always a pleasure to be here. >> Check out Actifio. Of course, we're bringing the data to you in real-time here on theCUBE at VMworld. We're live in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Stay with us for more after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE, covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM. (upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome back to the CUBE here at IBM Think 2018. We're at the Mandalay Bay at the CUBE Studios where IBM Think 2018. I'm John Furrier, your host. Our next guest, Brian Reagan, Chief Marketing Officer, Actifio, and Mike Errity, VP North America, IBM Resiliency Services, guys welcome to the CUBE, Brian, good to see you. (mumbles) >> Good to see you John, yes. >> Great stuff here at IBM Think, big show, six in one. Six shows brought down to one. A lot of customers here, but the message, you're starting to see a clear line of sight, for customers seeing the innovation formula. Cloud Multi-Cloud Services, On-Prem through private Cloud as Oogie Mound reported, but really A.I. and Blockchain are infrastructure powering data. Data's at the center of the value proposition. You guys are partnering with IBM. What's the story here, what's the relationship? >> Well, yeah, I mean you nailed it John. I mean, data is really at the center of everything, right? I mean we're in, we're in the midst of a massive digital transformation on like anything we've seen in I.T. for 30 years. And, you know, every business is a data business. Whether they know it or not. And with that comes great rewards, but it also brings a lot of risks as well, and you know, we've been a strong partner of IBM's for as long as Actifio's been in business. We're a data company, or about managing data. And now, I think with this rising tide of data threats, you know, partnering with the world's leader in resiliency just makes all the sense in the world. >> (mumbles) Betting your business on data was a good call, don't you think? (loud laughter) >> I think so, yes, absolutely. >> Hey, with Watson and AM Mike, you guys are pioneering, obviously, and we've seen this evolve from the R&D and the, and the modern infrastructure of the systems level, infrastructure is code. But the real applications out there have to drive a lot of money opportunities, success for your clients, security's the biggest risk. It's a lot of industries out there for profit around security, the threats are endless. >> Mike: Yeah. >> There's new threats everyday. >> Mike: Yeah. >> This is hard business, data's the key. What's your reaction and vision around the current state of security? >> What I done in our, our decades of experience working with clients has proven that, at, at the start of a resiliency initiative, it starts with the data element. We've had the opportunity to work with thousands of clients. Everyday, we're helping them test their ability to be able to recover from some unplanned event. Something that could cause them damage. And, and that experience has been evolving over the past, I would say 18 months. We're on warp speed to help clients achieve literally an always on environment, and it starts with data. >> John: Yeah. >> The, the, the point about data that I think is important is that clients recognize that if there's any damage at all to their data repository, it will cause them severe damage, so protecting it and making sure that it's recoverable to a point in time, is what we're working with everyday. >> I'd like you to talk about for a minute, resiliency services, because security's broad, but everyone thinks, command center, killing the bad guys, offense, defense, blue teams, red teams. There's a, the trend of I.T.s, securities kind of moving into the direct line to the sea sweet. >> Mike: Yeah. >> 'Cause it's so important, the risk management alone, on securities, so you're seeing that trend. What do you guys do? What is resilience service? Take a minute to explain specifically what that is, in context of security. >> That is what's so exciting about being here at Think, because we're, we have a total interconnection between our security assets and our security domain, and our resiliency team, and so resiliency's about resuming business operations to the point before you had the event. Being back to that normal state of affairs. Resiliency for us has been about helping clients create a plan after assessing the risk, and designing and implementing that plan to, to return to a point in time where there know that they're safe, that their applications are back up and running. And what we're finding in the security domain, which is the reason why cyber resiliency includes security, networking, and the resiliency methodologies of getting back to normal. >> John: Yeah. >> Is that you have to combine all three of those categories. >> John: Yeah. >> To create a solution to return to that normal state at a safe point in time. >> Talk about the importance of the proactive front-end work that's involved, I mean, back up in recovery in the old tradition, oh yeah, it's at the end of the, probably just throws it back up at it, and then people have been bitten in the butt on that. They've gotten really impacted. How much work is involved? What is the playbook on the front-end to prepare? And give me an example where what's the consequences? >> Mike: Oh well the, >> Of not doing it? >> You used the right term, it is a playbook, and it's one that needs to be well scripted and well tested. The work on the upfront is to design the right solution. Technologically, to ensure that you have a, a solution that moves data from a place that could be harmed to a safe point, and create the environment, create the solution, and then figure out the right team and the right skill and the right investment to constantly test it, test it so that you have the ability, and that's the work that we're doing with Actifio. Actifio has the expertise to help us create the right copy-data management solution to enable a snap-snap-snap-snap copy to be able to then travel back in time to be able to find that right, clean point in the event of a cyber incident that has pervasively impacted a data center environment. >> What's the role of Actifio as an ingredient in that plan? Are they in the insurance policy? Are they in the front end? When are they invoked, and with, where, where are they in the process? >> Well they're the, I mean to be, to use a, an analogy that I'm comfortable with, we, we trust Actifio to provide us the brains of the solution, to be able to move the data constantly. Move it to a point where we can then create a service to be able to, as I said, go back in time, and Brian, you might want to comment on that a little more. >> Brian, talk about the relation to IBM in that context, because you know, covering IBM for so many years, you know, they're the big, the big ship, right? They move at, at a pace, with a huge customer base, you know, how do you guys integrate in? What are you guys providing? >> Brian: Sure. >> And what's the value proposition that you guys are fighting IBM? >> Well I mean the, the you know, because we've been partnering with IBM for so long, I mean literally since the inception of the company, we have a very common user-base, right? We, we serve the mid and large enterprise in global enterprises worldwide. We have, you know, 3000 customers from Actifio and, and almost all of them are IBM accounts as well. One of the things that, you know, just to kind of piggyback on, on, on Mike's discussion, you know one of the, and, and to speak specifically to a customer base, you know, global financials right now are not only worried about cyber threats to production, but increasingly they're worried about cyber-threats to their backup sets. And in fact, there is regulations, you know FISMA regulations in North America that talk about, you need air-gap protection between, you know, one backup set and another, because they're under attack now. So literally these threats have started to creep beyond just the normal production data sets. Actifio, plus, you know, resiliency services equals, you know, a technology that can provide that air-gap, provide the immutability, provide all the, you know, the insurance protection of the data, and provide the, the wear with all the knowledge to really get that playbook to resume business operations as fast as possible. >> You guys need to stay on top of the big trends too, because Blockchain's right around the corner. >> Brian: Yeah. >> That's immutable, that could be an opportunity. >> Brian: Absolutely. >> Thoughts on Blockchain? >> Blockchain is, you know, it is a fascinating technology. Apart from Discripto, right? (laughs) And, and what a better, we talk about, you know, every business is digital, literally Blockchain is turning every business into a digital business. And it is the next generation in terms of securing closed contracts, and securing really immutability and, and reference ability of data. I think it has a huge play with IBM obviously. Around GDPR and privacy. So, we, you know, we see that as absolutely the next frontier. >> Well there's a lot of these supply, IBM's been in the supply chain business for years, running technology for companies. And that's always been kind of the big monolithic systems, mainframe minis, lands, you know, CRM systems, ARPs, whatever you want to call it. Now you have agile cloud coming in. You got the plan, a resiliency plan. While there's a lot of business reconstruction going on at the business model level. >> Mike: That's right. >> So, are clients like banging their head against the wall? What's some of the conversations, like with the clients? So, I mean they got to be proactive. At the same time, they got a lot of stuff on their plate. >> Well they, we're sort of humbled by the role that we're in right now, because for years, we've been working with so many clients, to help them build programs, we, we've got ourselves into a very, you know, into a comfort zone of helping them recover from the environment you're talking about, just standard, legacy, data center recovery. We can accomplish the recovery time in, in minutes, nearly instantly, with no, no data loss. But suddenly, the humbling point is, our phone's ringing off the hook, asking, apply those same methodologies to the, to the risks that I'm seeing as my business is being digitized. And help me evolve, and to us it's all about orchestrating a recovery, creating a softer, defined solution to enable data that's recovered and systems that are automated. >> From quality partners, and you're happy with Actifio? >> Oh absolutely, yeah. >> It's like changing an airplane engine out 30,000 feet. You just, what you just talked about. I'm like, that sounds so hard. I got my business moving so fast, I'm modernizing, and I got to do all this work. >> And the devil's in the details, and whenever we're engaging with Actifio, they have the architects to assist us with those details. >> What about regulatory concerns? Obviously, that's come up a lot. We know GDPR's out there, that be we don't want to beat that dead horse, but you know, when you get into things like Cripto, Blockchain, regions of, of data centers where its cloud is deployed, you got regulatories, it's going to be a constant issue. >> Brian: Absolutely. >> Your thoughts on that? >> It is a constant issue, and part of the challenge with regulations, is they're very ambiguously worded. So, the interpretation of regulations is as challenging as actually delivering solutions to, to meet them. I think that it really does come down to, and in most regulations, good hygiene is protect the data, make sure that there is, you know, increasingly air-gaps around the sensitive data, both production as well as non-production, and make sure that you can resume business operations, you know, where and when you need to, and having the flexibility to do that on Prem, in the IBM cloud, you know, that's, that's what IBM does. >> And, and if I can just add a point to that Brian, the, the driver of the conversations that we're seeing are, is, is predominantly in a compliance area, so businesses are concerned, enterprises are concerned about, am I compliant, am I audit-worthy? And can I prove that not so much at time of recovery, but really a time of test. Can I go prove to the market place that I'm ready? >> No more lip service. >> Mike: None at all. >> You've got an actual plan. >> And, and, and, >> Not just for your own reasons, there's actually filings. >> And have documented proof of it. >> Yeah, IBM Actifio, all about the resiliency in global economy, you got Blockchain, you got A.I. At the heart of it is data. You don't have a plan, you better get one. (mumbles) Congratulations on your relationship. >> Oh thank you. >> John Furrier here inside the CUBE. IBM Think 2018, CUBE studios will be back with more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host Stu Miniman. >> Hi, and welcome to a special presentation of CUBE Conversations here in our Boston area studio. Happy to welcome back to the program, it's been a little while, Brian Reagan who's the chief marketing officer at a local company, Actifio, we've been watching since the early days. Brian, so good to see you. >> Great to see you, Stu, thanks for having me in. >> All right, so Brian, you know, it comes as no surprise to you because you've worked on it in this industry for many years, but we've looked at our predictions at a Wikibon community. No matter which one of these big mega trends we're talking about, whether you're talking about machine learning, IOT, cloud, you know, data sits at the center of it and really is super critical. There's the old tried and true, "Data is the new oil," but bring us up to speed. You know, Actifio is a company that people probably started out as, you know, it's in this weird storage ecosystem today, but I think data's also at the center of your business. >> Absolutely, I mean, if you think just really simply about any business in the world, they have customers, they have partners, they have products, they have employees, all that's data and the problem with data these days is it just keeps getting big and when it's big it's slow. It's slow to use for application development, it's slow to use for insights and analytics. It's just slow to use if you want to move to the cloud. You know, Actifio has really been in business for nearly nine years now to help virtualize that data, make it more portable, make it easier to use for all those reasons to help drive those business, and that is our value proposition. You're right, we sort of started in that, "Are you a storage company?" We're storage agnostic and today we're cloud agnostic, it's about the data. >> Stu: Yeah, I mean, it's really... You're a software company, correct? >> We're a software company. >> So, you hit on a key thing that I've looked at for a while, is everybody is talking about how do I as a company, how do I become more agile, how to move faster. You know, CI-CD is kind of table stakes these days for so many companies. How does Actifio help companies prevent that storage from being an anchor weighing them down and slowing them down? >> Sure, sure, I mean, CI-CD is great and you can move at speed, as long as you're talking about very lightweight elements of an application, JSON files, the XML, all those lightweight application elements, you know, LOGIC. But when it comes to that big database sitting behind the scenes that's actually powering that application, that's the gravitational pull that slows CI-CD down. Typically that, we've seen it take 80% plus of the software development lifecycle just to stand up to those environments, so people make compromises, they subset it, they do all the crazy things to try and avoid the storage or infrastructure tax when it comes to setting up those environments. We can help bypass that, again, it's virtual data, so now we can start to port it, we can move it, we can parallelize it and we can get it ready for these developers through our automation and orchestration in minutes, as opposed to hours or days in many cases for the service levels. >> All right, so Brian, you mentioned developers there. Definitely kind of the infrastructure world has been like, "Oh, gosh, how do we do it "through the developers, how do we fit "in this whole world," you know, DevOps and like, infrastructure. A lot of times it's been oil and water. What are you hearing from your customers, how does that play into what they're doing? >> Yeah, I mean, developers for us are the consumers, right, they are the end users of that data and the infrastructure team or the operations or DBA teams are really the providers of that data and they have to stand it up. They have to stand up the infrastructure, they have to stand up the data, they have to do all the rolls, log rolls and the like, data prep, and so if we can help them really collapse that time to access the data, because it's always in its native format, prep the data so it's ready for use, and then parallelize it so that way we can actually do multiple test streams or multiple development streams or we can, you know, do those more agile scrum projects and get more done in a given calendar quarter. Now all of a sudden those consumers are happier because they're getting the data in its full state, more of it, more rapidly than they ever have, and the operations teams are happy because they don't have to buy more storage to do it, they can actually go on and do other projects instead of have to sit there and manually get data set for developers. >> One of the challenges we hear from customers these days is where they develop it and how they do that versus production, very different. A lot of times some things that we've been doing in my data center, some are in the public cloud, how does the whole where it lives fit into your environment. I know Actifio, you just had a big announcement around some of your cloud pieces. >> Sure, we just released our eighth major release of our software since our founding, and it was really probably, from an engineering time standpoint, the largest release since our first one and it was very cloud centric. Our starting point as a company was really to try and be infrastructure agnostic. Wherever you wanted to put your data from a storage or compute standpoint, we wanted to give you that freedom to do so. Now it's just as relevant in the cloud. You should be able to choose the cloud for the given workload or the given data payload. You know, don't have to get frozen into one or locked into one. Let you choose and then also, once you've chosen, giving you the freedom to actually port from cloud to cloud if need be because you might choose, whether it's economic arbitrage or whether it's just different paths, capabilities in different clouds suitable for different workloads. We want to give you that freedom. >> All right, but you know, public cloud, come on, it's supposed to be easy. They've got, you know, so many features. What's the gap, if I'm deploying, you know, choose your favorite public cloud whether AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle IBM, et cetera... >> Sure. >> What's the piece that Actifio delivers that's still needed by customers that's not kind of native? >> It just comes back to that data. Boy, it's always the data, it's always the can that gets kicked down the road because again, those lightweight elements of applications are so easy to move, and then we just get stuck with this big gravitational pull of data. And you know, the fallacy or the popular myth about public cloud is it's going to be easier and it's going to be cheaper, and it can be both and it can be both particularly when you can get the data in there and it's in a suitable state to actually use for these development analytics, all these different workload characteristics that, while it's stuck in non native format in its very large state, it's unusable in those clouds. >> Yeah, Brian, you meet with a lot of customers, you've been doing a lot of traveling recently. >> Brian: Yes. >> Any specific stories you can tell or kind of aggregate, what are they struggling with with cloud, what's working well with them. >> Yeah. >> Of course, how you're fitting into that. >> Yeah, you know, there's sort of three camps that I've seen over the last several weeks particularly. There's the camp that, whether it's regulatory pressures or just internal policy, they're not going to move but they still want to change their operating model to a cloud model, and so they're implementing and instrumenting their internal environments, their prior cloud to operate just like an Amazon or Azure or Google, but all behind the firewall. And they still need all of that capability for the data automation, they want their data on demand for those applications, they want self service, they want infrastructure as code, and they want to take advantage of Actifio to help power that internal cloud. That's camp one, and that's still a pretty hefty camp. Camp two is, you know, I would call more traditional companies who are not born in the cloud but have embraced the cloud and really want a fast on ramp to get their data into one or more public clouds so they can get out of the data center business, and they're using Actifio really as an on ramp first, but then once it gets into the cloud they're using the native data management capabilities that they can take advantage of in the public cloud so they can keep their agility moving at the speed of their VMs, at the speed of their lightweight components. And then the third camp, which has really been interesting to watch, is the born in the cloud guys, and really starting to realize that the native capabilities of these public clouds are very powerful, but they don't really take the place of traditional backup for example. There is no backup software native inside of AWS, an EBS snapshot is a great snapshot, it's not a backup though. You can't really use it as a time machine, and when you go region to region you do fulls, and so it becomes very heavy and very costly. So, Actifio can really play a role for even those native, born in the cloud applications to provide the enterprise class data management but in a public cloud. >> Brian, you know, bring us up to speed, kind of how do you characterize your customers, how many customers to do you have, how much of them are kind of the new class versus, "I've got my data center," kind of sitting on these things. >> Yep, well, since our founding we've really focused on that upper mid market and enterprise customer. We just crossed over the 3,000 customer mark at the end of the last quarter. We operate in 37 countries today, and I would say they run the gamut from the Fortune 50s to that sort of Fortune 10,000s, but they all have very common characteristics, you know. As you would expect, we thrive in environments where data is growing and growing fast, we thrive where data is regulated or under some sort of internal or external pressure around management, and we really thrive in environments and industries that are truly embracing this digital transformation. They know that, like you said, that data is the new oil, data is their best currency today, and in fact, CryptoData is currency, and so they're truly embracing that and they want to move faster and they want to move faster with the data that they have today. Whether they choose to do that on premise or in the cloud or in the cloud at some point in the time, they want the freedom to make that choice when it's right for their business. >> All right, Brian, personal question for you. You brought up digital transformations and today you're wearing a CMO hat. You've had a number of different roles, C-suite roles in the past, what is the changing role of of the CMO today, especially with that landscape of digital transformation? >> Right, yeah, it's fascinating to watch just the change of what my budget line items are aligned around. You know, I probably spend as much on software and other licensed models, SAS models, to support my business, to support my digital and inbound marketing efforts, to support my analytics efforts around what's working, what's not. How do I tune the best marketing mix to really cater to the changing role of a consumer of content, and then all of the contents indication and content marketing. So, you know, I... To some degree, I think part of the changing nature of a CMO is they have to be very technology... Or I should say technology aware, focused on the business outcomes but understanding how technology can play a role to really affect those business outcomes. In my case, whether that's increasing the exposure of the company, whether that's increasing the lead flow to our sales organization, whether that's making our different routes to market more optimized and enabled for higher velocity of sales. All of those things can be technology enabled today, so you have to be much more conscious about... It's almost like a CIO junior role inside of an enterprise. >> Yeah, really interesting, right. We've debated for years where will the IT budget be driven from, sounds like you've got an impact on that. I love the discussion you talked about, you know, kind of how technology's helping to transform businesses. Do you have any customer examples, customers that are just doing some cool stuff with technology that could kind of be useful? >> So, I'm going to use a company that would probably be the last industry you would expect me to bring up, but I think they're a fascinating use case. So, Waste Industries, they're in the trash disposal business, and the CIO has corrected me on numerous occasions, "It's okay to "say the word 'trash,'" and so we were talking. They used Actifio first to help them solve, you know, very classic, modernize my DR strategy, part of the business, but then they started to realize that the power of using that data for other purposes, to accelerate analytics, because it turns out in the trash disposal business they actually instrument a lot of things. They instrument their trucks, they instrument with sensors their canisters, they do route optimizations based on data that they're getting from all of these devices, so as this CIO is fond of saying, they're not in the internet things, they're in the internet of trash, and so they're using data to help them be a much more innovative and frankly optimized organization today, and then as they start to think about where the future of their business goes... Now that they're starting to become a data company they can start to really comprehend what does it look like with autonomous vehicles in trash disposal, what does it look like in terms of using different types of vehicles to do routes. Maybe even an Airbnb type of model or an Uber model where maybe it's not even just our people doing the routes, but it's other organizations so we can start to sell data, too, to help them become a greater part of our organization. Fascinating, you know, probably the company on the surface that you'd think would probably not be a data company at all, but I think it personifies where we are as an industry today. Every company is a data company and the companies that win in the market are the companies that truly embrace being a data company and taking advantage of that. >> Yeah, definitely not one I first would be thinking of. (laughs) All right, but last question I have for you, we're heading into 2018. >> Brian: Yes. >> What should we be looking for, you know, the brain of Actifio, people that are watching, what do we expect next year? >> So, I think, you know, very exciting year for us. As I mentioned, we just released this major software update. The customer adoption already has been tremendous. We see really the embracing the cloud, whether it's behind the firewall or embracing the public cloud, multi-cloud being a big theme for us. You know, I think that we have... A Gartner analyst said to me a few weeks back, he said, "You know, you've been around, "you're disruptive still, though, but you're proven, "and being disruptive and proven "is a really powerful thing," and so we feel like we've got a great punching weight in terms of market presence. We have amazing customers in every industry. We see this, you know, 2018 as a really great year to continue our scaling, continue to be a very profitable and growing organization, and really helping to meet the needs of some of these incredibly interesting use cases around data in the business. >> Wait, profitable and growing, you must be an east coast company. (laughs) >> Brian: That's right. >> All right, well, Waltham, Massachusetts. Appreciate having you on. >> Brian: Thank you, Stu. >> Especially a startup right down the road here from our east coast studios. Always good talking up and look forward to talking to you more next year. >> Next time. >> And thank you so much for watching us. Be sure to check out thecube.net for all of our interviews, all of our upcoming events, and hit us up if you have any questions. Thanks so much for watching theCUBE. (techy music playing)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, It's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is theCUBE's ongoing coverage where we go out to the events, in this case virtually to extract the signal from the noise. Now we're going to talk about one of the deepest customer relationships in the tech business with Piet Bill who is the IBM managing director for American Express. Piet, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me, Dave. >> So as I said, this is one of the deepest vendor-client relationships. I mean, it's more than that. It's just, you're not a vendor. You're a partner, a very deep relationship many many decades, plus executives know each other. There's been some senior executives from American Express, as I recall came over to IBM of course, famously Lou Gerstner. But, talk about the, just give us the overview of the evolution of that partnership. >> Yeah well, as you rightly mentioned, the relationship is long and deep. It's over a hundred years. I mean the original deal was probably around the combine clocks and scales and all that kind of stuff, and it evolved over time. But what it does indeed create is a long, deep, lasting relationship as a fundament for doing business. And yeah, that business has gone through a lot of cycles over the last decade. So as you say, from buying stuff but I would say over time evolving really into a partnership around services, mutual business back and forth, exchanging executives on board level. American Express executives on the board of IBM and vice versa. So yeah, it's a very, very deep long relationship of two iconic companies in Manhattan. >> Yeah, well so it's got to be more than just buying stuff. Obviously, there's a lot of business being transacted, but you've got an intimate, I mean your title has American Express in it. So you've got to intimately understand your client's business. I mean, I guess that's always the case but we're taking it to another level here, aren't we? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, so what you really are often what we do as IBM is really get into the shoes basically of American Express trying to support their business to their clients. So American Express is very focused on small and medium businesses. So, we tap into how can we help the small and medium business as part of the American Express customer set. And how can we help evolve their business models, their technology, their services, to serve their clients better because in the old days, indeed, to your point, it was like, oh we wanted to buy the right stuff. And then we use that to do our thing but that the technology today, the area in which we operate is completely different. If you don't understand the client of American Express, we cannot serve American Express as a company. So it is indeed very important and it is therefore deeper and it requires way more focus on the clients of American Express than in the old days, I would say. >> Well, the pandemic must've been a challenging environment. Of course, I mean, you know people aren't out shopping as much, although people are waiting, they can't wait to get back out. They say, it's going to be like Woodstock here with their American Express cards. But so, maybe talk a little bit about how you worked together during the pandemic. >> Yeah, so well, first of all, like anybody we all work from home, but American Express really, I would say almost re-engaged on what is core in their strategy, is the support to small and medium business. So, American Express started this Stand For Small Initiative led by Steve Squeri himself, about how can we enable the small enterprises in doing business in the COVID period? What do they need? I mean, yeah, they need money, but they also need help. Like how to deal with your financials with your people. Can we use the spare time to do more education? And so IBM was one of the partners that jumped on board immediately to say, okay let us help in that platform, support you when necessary with the platform, but definitely help you in that platform to reach out to the small and medium enterprises, specifically in the New York area And like many other partners, we all got on board. And I think it got another focus again, I mean small and medium business has always been a focus but it's different when so many companies are struggling right now. And so we got on board and I think that is really a very clear partnership expression, I would say. >> How do you measure success with American Express? What are some of the key things that you guys look at? How have you evolved that over time? >> Well, ultimately I would say it's client satisfaction in the end. It sounds like an open door, but it really is. I mean, the real measurement, I mean there's always money measurements back and forth. And you can argue that of course you need to do solid business. There's no discussion there but I would say it's where do we align on the strategic intent from both companies? And let me elaborate a second on that one. If American Express is really transforming its business to become way more, I would say cloud enabled, hybrid technologies enabled. We provide a lot of that material. So we are really working together on trying to leverage each other in building that hybrid platform that will enable that future. And why do you need that? Well, because American Express needs to be dynamic and getting fintechs on board, getting exchanges with new companies are going way faster. It's not the traditional old style anymore where you could go for transformations for years. No, it needs to be on the spot. So we felt our strategies are really well aligned. And I would say the real measurement of success is how can we now make that to the benefit of American Express and on the back of that, we will do good business. So client satisfaction should be the primary one, strategic alignment important, and then of course doing the sound business on the back of that for both sides >> Financial services firms have always been pretty savvy when it comes to applying technology to business. Some of the most demanding customers and more advanced. And so, American Express was likely already on a digital transformation prior to the COVID hitting. At the same time, if he talks about it being accelerated. But, I think what people miss is that it wasn't, well they don't miss it, but to think about it and this way it wasn't planned, it was like forced. And, so you just, you had no choice. You couldn't think about it. You just had to do an act. And so on the one hand, okay, that's good. It was a forcing function. It also served as a Petri dish, but on the other hand, I'm sure a lot of mistakes were made. Now, as we exit the pandemic, we step back and say, okay, wow, we learned a lot. Now we can make a more planful approach and really go deeper and lean in over the next several years. What are your thoughts on that? And how does it relate to what you guys are doing with American Express? >> I think that's a very good point, I agree. It's what you see is that this indeed has forced us in a lot of things. I think the good news is American Express was already enabled for a lot of that new technology. They have invested. They have a lot of very skilled, good people and a very clear strategy and what they were after. This indeed put more pressure on it. I think what you will see happening in the foreseeable future after we get out of all of this, let's say the the urgency to complete the transformation on the cloud and data will become even more crucial. And so the priority will become higher and it will not be just higher because of the techies wanting it to do it, but because the business needs it. So they need it from a risk perspective, they need it from an agility perspective, go to market of new products. They need to really move fast. It's a fast moving market. You get a lot of it. I mean, the competition is there. So to enable that the move to get new technologies in faster is becoming pivotal and crucial. And I think for now, it's more of an almost like a survival statement. We need to get through this bubble of COVID. As soon as that's done, we need to think way more on the structural elements of data and how we enable a hybrid strategy going forward. >> So in the spirit of, you know you need to understand your customer. In this case, American Express and understand their business. And American Express is, I'll make you laugh. Anytime I call American Express, if I have to work out a problem or whatever, and I got to talk to customer service, they always thank me for my loyalty. Because I've been a customer for a long time. Back when probably when Ronald Reagan was president it was my first Amex card. And so they're like, "Oh, thank you, Mr. Vellante. We really appreciate your loyalty." So loyalty is a big thing for American Express with its customers. So what about IBM and American Express? How are you breeding? You know, what's that loyalty factor look like for you guys? >> Yeah, I think it's a very important element. I mean, to your point, I have the same experience. It's a crucial element. The whole, I mean, American express is famous for its loyalty schemes for loyalty as a company. I think loyalty, like the business has evolved. I think the loyalty evolves in the same style. And I would say in the old days, I would say the argument was you need to have the best product. You know, you need to be, and then we'll buy the product. In the current environment, I would argue it's way more about skills. Do we have the right people? Do we have the right technology, strategy kind of stuff? I would say for the future, it's way more about do we have the right trust, commitment, and loyalty of the people that work with us going forward to serve the client needs? And I think that evolution, it's almost like you have an Industrial Revolution. There was an Information Revolution. I think there's more of a Loyalty Revolution coming up where the real differentiating factors is because we can study this and argue this for ages but a lot of parties will deliver a lot of good technology to the market. They will deliver a lot of good people. They will have good price points. So what's the real differentiating factor? It's like, do we really trust these people? And then I think relationship loyalty will really come in play and it will not become in play just between an IBM and an American Express. But I would argue it will come in play in the whole business cycle of American Express to their clients. I mean, if the credit card swipe of your American Express card in a shop fails, it needs to be my problem. If I deliver the service to American Express, it cannot be that, oh, American Express has a problem. And you know what, it's eight o'clock in the evening. Yeah, we have reduced services. No, we never had that. We will never have that. But we need to get even deeper in understanding what the effects are of these business issues. >> Yeah. you're right. The nature of loyalty, I mean, certainly the products have changed. I remember, you used to travel overseas with American Express Travelers Checks. That was a staple of every overseas trip that I ever took. No matter where I was going, whether it was the Asia Pacific or Europe, I had to have that packet. And there were times when one time in particular I had a problem, boom, they were right there. It solved that problem. Now of course, many young people in the audience don't even know what America's Express Travelers Check is. They probably don't know what cash is. Carrying around crypto in their wallet. But, that's an example and that's about trust. I trust that product. I trust that company behind the product. And again, that has to extend to your relationship, doesn't it? >> Absolutely, so the technology that American Express uses, whether they do it themselves, or whether it's provided by partners like IBM. It needs to be seamless because, let's face it. Dave, you will not be interested to know who provides you the security on your credit card. If you have an American Express card, you expect it expect American Express to deliver you the security that you need. And whether American Express delivers that or IBM, you couldn't care less and you shouldn't care less. But what it does require is that, in the old school I would say it was more like, okay, we'll give some services and some products to American Express and guys, good luck! Now, we need to think ahead. And I think that's where the power of IBM comes in whether we really are tuned by industry to the industry issues like compliance, security, stability, services to the end clients, to you. So you need to feel if I cannot explain what I do to American Express in your terms as an end-user of an Amex credit card, you can argue what's the real value at? And definitely if there's like three, four, or five parties playing exactly the same game, it needs to be differentiating. And I think a company like IBM we have differentiating value, but we need to make it very clear. And that's, I think where you see companies like American Express really work together and that's where loyalty and trust really comes into play. >> Last question and we've got to go is, you have American Express in your title. Are other companies jealous? (laughs) We want that too. >> They should. They should be. I must say, we deal with a ton of financial institutions as you know around the globe, including the other credit cards. But yeah, I think when these deep relationships come in place and two, they're so old. So deep, so entrenched, and it really started. There's different dimensions to it. And it's not always that hard-coded anymore. It's the subtlety of really relying on each other. I mean, when something happens in the middle of the night with American Express, all of IBM is on board as of the second. And it's not driven by contracts or by anything. It's by people that have an American Express logo on the forehead and worked for an IBM. >> Yeah, right. That's awesome. Piet, Piet Bill's great story. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. It was great to have you. >> Thanks for having me. >> All right. And keep it right there. This is Dave Vellante, ongoing coverage of Think 2021. You're watching theCUBE.

>>from >>around >>The globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you >>by IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events in this case virtually to extract the signal from the noise. Now we're gonna talk about one of the deepest customer relationships in the tech business with Pete Bill, who is the IBM managing director for American Express. Pete, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having me Dave. >>So as I said, this is one of the deepest vendor client relationships. I mean, it's more than that because you're not a vendor, your partner, very deep relationship, many, many, you know, decades plus uh, executives know each other. There's been a some senior executives from American Express as I recall, came over to IBM of course, famously Lou Gerstner um, but but talk about the, just give us the overview of the evolution of that partnership. >>Yeah, well, as you rightfully mentioned, uh the relationship is long and deep, its over 100 years. I mean the original deal was probably around the club buying clocks and uh scales and all that kind of stuff and it evolved over time. But what it does indeed create is a long deep lasting relationship as a fundament for doing business and uh yeah that business has gone through a lot of cycles over the last decades, as you say, uh from from buying stuff. But I would say over time evolving really into a partnership around services, mutual business back and forth, exchanging executives on board level american Express executives on the board of IBM and vice versa. So yeah, it's a very very deep long relationship of two iconic companies in in Manhattan. >>Yeah, so it's got to be more than just buying stuff. Obviously there's a lot of business being transacted but you've got to intimate your title has american Express in it. So you've got to intimately understand your client's business. I mean that's I guess that's always the case, but we're taking it to another level here, >>aren't we? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so what you really are after and what we do is IBM is really get into the shoes basically of american Express trying to support their business to their clients. So american Express is very focused on small and medium business. So we tip into how can we help the small and medium businesses part of the american Express custom set and how can we help evolve their business models, that technology their services to serve their clients better because in the old days indeed. To your point it was like, oh we wanted to buy the right stuff and then we use that to do our thing. But that the technology today, the area in which we operate is completely different. If you don't understand the the client of american Express, we cannot serve american express as a company. So it is indeed very important and it is therefore deeper and it requires way more focused on the clients of american express than in the old days I would say. >>Well the pandemic must have been a challenging uh environment. Of course. I mean you know people aren't out shopping as much although you know people are waiting, they can't wait to get back out. They say it's gonna be like Woodstock with the american express cards. But so so maybe talk a little bit about how how you work together during the pandemic. >>Yeah. So well first of all like anybody, we're all work from home. But american express really uh I would say almost reengaged on what is core and the threat that used to support to small and medium business. So american Express started this stand for small initiative led by steve Square himself about how can we enable the small enterprises uh in doing business in the covid period? What do they need? I mean, yeah, they need money, but they also need help like how to deal with your financials with your people. Can we use the spare time to do more education? And so IBM was one of the partners that jumped on board immediately to say, okay, let us help in that platform support you were necessary with the platform but definitely help you in that platform to reach out to the small and medium enterprises uh specifically in the new york area. And like many other partners, we all got on board and I think it got another focus. Again, I mean small and medium business has always been a focus, but it's different when so many companies are struggling right now. And so we get a got on board. And I think that that is really a very clear partnership expression. I would say, >>how do you measure success with with american Express? What are some of the key things that you guys look at? How, how have you evolved that over time? >>Well, ultimately, I would say it's client satisfaction in the end, it sounds like an open door, but it really is. I mean the real the real measurement, I mean there's always money measurements back and forth. You can argue that that is of course you need to do solid business. There's no discussion there, but I would say it's where do we align on the strategic intent from both companies and let me elaborate a second on that one. If american Express is really transforming its business to become way more, I would say uh cloud enabled hybrid technologies enabled. Uh we provide a lot of that material. Uh so we are really working together on trying to leverage each other in building that hybrid platform that will enable that future. And why do you need that? Well, because american Express needs to be dynamic and getting fit, excellent board, getting exchanges with with with with new companies going way faster. It's not a traditional old style anymore where you could go for transformations for years now it needs to be on the spot. Um so we show our strategies are really well aligned and I would say the real measurement of success is how can we now make that to the benefit of american Express? And on the back of that we will do good business. So uh client satisfaction should be the primary one. Strategic alignment important. And then of course doing the sound business on the back of that for both sides, >>financial services firms have always been pretty savvy when it comes to applying technology to business some of the most demanding customers and more advanced. Uh So you know the american express is likely already on a digital transformation prior to the covid hitting at the same time. It talks about it being accelerated. But I think what people miss is that it wasn't well they don't miss it but you know to think about it in this way, it wasn't planned, it was like forced. And so you just you have no choice, you couldn't think about it, you just have to do an act. And so on the one hand, okay, that's good. It was a forcing function. It also served as a Petri just but on the other hand, I'm sure a lot of mistakes were made now as we exit the pandemic step back and say okay wow, we learned a lot now. We can make a more planned full approach and really go deeper and lean in over the next several years. What are your thoughts on that and how does it relate to what you guys are doing with american Express? >>I think that's a very good point. I agree. It's what you see is that uh this indeed has forced us in a lot of things. I mean I think the good news is american Express was already enabled for a lot of that new technology. They have invested, they have a lot of very skilled good people uh a very clear strategy and what they were after this and they put more pressure on it. I think what you will see happening in the foreseeable future after we get out of all of this is that the, let's say the urgency to complete the transformation on cloud and data will become even more crucial. And so the priority will become higher and it will not be just higher because of the Turkish wanting it to do it, but because the business needs it. So uh needed from a risk perspective, they needed, from an agility perspective, go to market of new products. Uh they need to really move fast. It's a fast moving market, you get a lot of the media competition is there? Uh so to enable that the move to get new technologies and faster is becoming pivotal and crucial. And I think for now it's more of almost like a survival statement. We need to get through this bubble of Covid as soon as that's done, we need to think way more on the structural elements of debt and how we enable a hybrid strategy going forward. >>So in the spirit of you need to understand your customer in this case american Express and understand their business. An american express is uh make you laugh anytime I call american Express, you know, if I have to work out a problem or whatever. Uh and I gotta talk to some customer service. They always thank me for my loyalty because I have been a customer for a long time. You know, back when probably when Ronald Reagan was president, it was my first Amex card. And so they're like, oh thank you, Mr Volonte. We we really appreciate your loyalty. So loyalty is a big thing for american Express with its customers. So what about IBM and American Express? How are you breeding, you know, what's that loyalty factor look like for you guys? >>Yeah, I think it's a very important element. I mean to your point, I have the same experience, It's it's a it's a crucial element. Uh the whole, I mean american Express is famous for its loyalty schemes for loyalty as a company. I think loyalty like the business has evolved, I think the loyalty evolves in the same style in I would say in the in the in the old days, I would say the argument was you need to have the best product, you know, you you need to be and then we'll buy the product in the current environment. I would argue that it's way more about skills, Do we have the right people? Do we have the right technology strategy kind of stuff? I would say for the future, it's way more about do we have the right trust, commitment and loyalty of the people that work with us going forward to serve the client needs? And I think that evolution, it's almost like you have an industrial revolution, there was an information resolution. I think there's more of a loyalty revolution coming up where the real differentiating factors is because we can study this and argue this for ages. But a lot of parties will deliver a lot of good technology to the market, they will deliver a lot of good people, they will have good price points. So what's the real differentiating factor? It's like, do we really trust these people? And then I think relationship loyalty will really come and play and it will not become and play just between an IBM and an american express, but I would argue it will come and play in the whole business cycle of american express to their clients. I mean if the credit card swipe of your american express card in a shop fails, It needs to be my problem. If I deliver the service to American express it cannot be that Oh American express has a problem and you know what, it's 8:00 in the evening uh yeah we have reduced services. No we never had that, we will never have that but we need to get even deeper in understanding what the effects are of these business issues. >>Yeah I mean you're right the nature of loyalty, the preservative products have changed. I mean I remember you know I used to travel overseas with american Express traveler's checks that was a staple of every overseas trip that I ever took you no matter where I was going, whether it's asia pacific or or europe, I had to have that packet and I and I had you know, there were times when, when you know one time particularly had a problem film, they were right there to solve the problem. Of course, many young people in the audience don't even know what american express traveler's check is. They probably don't know what cash is carrying around crypto in their wallet. But but but that's an example and that's about trust, trust that product, I trust that company behind the product. Again, that has to extend to your relationship doesn't. >>Absolutely. So the technology that an american Express users, whether they do it themselves or whether it's provided by partners like IBM it needs to be seamless because let's face it, you would not be interested to know who provides you the security on your credit card. If you have an american Express card, you expect expect american Express to deliver your the security that you need and whether american Express delivers that or IBM you couldn't care less and you shouldn't care less. But what it does require is that in the old school I would say it was more like okay we'll give some services and some products to american Express and guys could look now, we need to think ahead and I think that's where the power of IBM comes in where that we really attuned by industry to the industry issues like compliance, security, stability services, um to the inclined to you. So you need to feel if I cannot explain what I do to american express in your terms as an infusion of an express credit card, you can argue what's the real value add. And definitely if there's like 345 parties playing exactly the same game, it needs to be differentiating and I think a company like IBM we have differentiating value but we need to make it very clear and that's I think where you see companies like american Express really work together and that's what loyalty and trust really comes in play. >>Last question when we got to go is you have american expression, your title are other companies jealous >>we >>want that >>to, they should, they should >>be. Uh >>but I I must say, I mean we deal with a ton of financial institutions as you know around the globe including the other credit cards. But yeah, I think where these deep relationship ships commonplace indeed too. I mean they're so old, so deep, so and entrenched and it really start there's different dimensions to it and it's not always that hard coded anymore, it's the subtlety of really relying on each other. I mean when something happens in the middle of the night with american express, all of IBM is on board as of the second and it's not driven by contracts or by anything. It's by people that have an American Express logo on the forehead and work for an IBM. >>Yeah. Right. It's awesome. Pete Pete bills. Great story. Thanks so much for coming to the cube. It's great to have you. >>Thanks for having me. >>All right and keep it right. There is day volonte ongoing coverage of think 2021. You're watching the Cube? Yeah.

(funky upbeat music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Barcelona everybody we're wrapping up day one of Cisco Live! Barcelona CUBE coverage. I'm Dave Vellante, he's Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Donnie Williams is the IT Director at Scott Equipment out of Louisiana and Eric Herzog is back. He's the CMO of IBM Storage. Gentlemen, good to see you, welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. So tell us about Scott Equipment. What do you guys do? What's the company all about? >> We're a heavy equipment dealer, so we've been in the business for 80 years, privately owned company. And so we started out in farm implement 80 years ago by the founder Tom Scott which is where the name Scott Equipment comes from. And so we transitioned over the years to construction equipment and we're now, so back in 2014 we sold all of our, the farm stores that handle all of that equipment, and now we're strictly servicing the construction industry and petrochemical industry. >> So you're a dealer of large equipment. And you service it as well, or? >> Yes we service it. We're primarily a rental company first. Then we also sell what we rent. We service it and it also parts as well. >> So we're talking massive? >> Yes big. If you think, one of our main clients is Volvo which if you've seen the show Gold Rush, that Volvo equipment that you see there, that's what we sell. >> It's incredible machines. >> Yeah, yeah they are I had a chance to play with one. I went to a Shippensburg Pennsylvania where their North America office is and had a chance to play with their largest excavator. That was fun. >> So is a lot of you IT centered on sort of the maintenance business and the service business or? >> Yes. Mostly Mirror is like a car dealership. So like I said, we do sale service, parts, all of that. >> So the business flow starts after the sale is made, obviously. >> Exactly, yes, we sell, yeah, exactly. We get the equipment out there in the territory and then the revenue continues to come in. >> So what are some of the challenges, the external challenges that are driving your business? >> So really, our, the whole heavy equipment industry is, is kind of behind the times in my, from a dealership perspective. From a manufacturer perspective. They're somewhat up with technology, especially Volvo, but from a dealership, they're mainly privately owned, so they're not, there's not a whole lot of resources in technology. That's not a focus for them. They're focused on the business side of it, so. When I first started at the company 10, 11 years ago now, there was one guy servicing 600 employees. And it was-- >> One IT person? >> One IT person. So, as you can imagine, it was a nightmare. I mean it's not the guy's fault. I don't blame him at all. It's just the way that they had done business and not changed. >> He was a bummed out IT person. >> Yeah, right exactly, yeah. >> Now how'd you guys find them? >> So they're a customer of ours for the verses stack. We have a partner that they've been buying their IBM and their Cisco gear from, and then when they were doing a modernization effort, the reseller talked to Scott and said, Donnie, what d'ya think? How about doing this converge infrastructure. Easier to employ at sep-tor. So it all came through their existing channel partner that they were using for both IBM gear and Cisco gear. >> So you wanted a solution that one guy could run, right? >> We've now at least grown that, our company to, now we have six total in our department. So we've changed a lot since I started 11 years ago. >> And what are they spending their time doing? >> Primarily, we do a lot of help desk, assistant administration, we do mostly, my focus is to make sure that our employees are satisfied so they can take care of the customer. And that's the primary goal and along with that comes systems administration, as well, so. >> But you know, a full stack like this. I mean the joke. You need more than one person. >> Right. But it's going to be simplified, you know what you're buying, >> Right, exactly. >> It's predictable, and therefore, you shouldn't need to be seen on a day to day basis. >> Yes, I like keeping things simple, simple as possible. So, that makes my job easier, it makes my team's job easier, as well. >> So what kind of things are you driving? Is it, ya know, data protection? Is it, what sort of, you know, use cases do you have on your stack? >> We're from our, we're servicing on our, with Cisco, I'm sorry, verses stack. It's mostly it's all private cloud. We're servicing applications that supplement our core ERP system. So, we have reporting solutions. When we first bought the verses stack, we were considering moving to another ERP system, and we would have that infrastructure in place to migrate to that. So we still have that, actually, element table as an option for us. >> The migration to a new ERP system? >> Yes. >> We should talk afterwords. >> We're avoiding that all costs. >> Right, well, of course. You don't want to convert if you don't have to. Yeah but sometimes it's a business case. Sometimes it's hard to make. We'll talk. >> Exactly. >> Cloud in your future or present? >> We're doing some-- >> SAS stuff, or? >> Yeah a little of that. I mean anything. I mean things that make sense for us to do cloud. Security services. We're doing, of course, probably the most common is hosting email. We're doing a lot of that. Share point. That type of solution in the cloud. >> How long you've been with the company? >> 11 years. >> 11 years, okay, so, thinking about the last decade, I mean a lot has changed. >> Yes. >> What are you most proud of? What's like your biggest success that you can share with us? >> Really building the IT department and bringing our company into the 21st century from a technology perspective. I mean, like I said, we had one person that was handling it. It was really impossible. I mean, you couldn't depend on one person and expect the company to survive long term. >> Yeah, that one person had to say no a lot. >> Exactly, right. He just couldn't get everything done. >> So, really that modernization and that's kind of where you guys came in, right? >> IT modernization play. The verses stack is heavily used for that and, you know, as we've said on the earlier interview, we had a CSPN. We've also used it to go to the next level from an IT transformation to the future. 'Cause in that case, as you know, that was a CSP who uses it to service, you know, hundreds of customers all across the UK in a service model. And in this case, this is more of a IT modernization, take the old stuff, upgrade it to what it was. They even had an old IBM blade servers. That's old this stuff was. Old XE6 Blade servers that must've been 10 years old before they went to the verses stack. >> How many people in the company? Roughly? >> Right now, we've actually sold off side since I've been with the company, we've sold off some of our nonperforming business units. We're probably roughly around 550 now. >> Okay. >> So I mean, we're actually more profitable now than we were 11 years ago. We have less employees, but our profitability is actually exceeded. >> Theme of simplification. >> Exactly, right. >> So what's the biggest challenge you face as the head of IT, today? >> The biggest, probably the biggest challenge would be me wanting to implement technologies that are not ready. I want to have the competitive edge of the industry. I want to be able to be ahead of the curve. And that's probably the biggest challenge. >> And you're saying you can't because the tech isn't ready? Or it's a skills issue? >> It's just the industry. Just trying to work with vendors and getting them to be ready for, I say vendors, manufacturers. They're our vendors. To get them to, and know their dealers as well. To all be acceptable to the technology's that's been there 20 years. >> What would you say is the top, number one, or the top things IBM has done to make your life easier? And what's the one thing they could to do that they're not doing that could make your life easier? What's the, start with what they've done. You know what the success is that have helped. >> Really, we've been a longtime IBM customer. We have not just the verses stack, but we also have the power system, which actually runs our core ERP. >> Ah, okay, so. >> So I mean, we've had long standing relationship with IBM. Reliability is there. The trust is there, as well. >> Yeah, long term partnership. Alright, what's the one thing they could do? If you could wave a wand and you said, IBM will to X, what would x be to make your life better? >> Cut the price. >> Ah, here we go! (all laughing) I should've prefaced that soon! Besides cut the price. Alright we'll leave it there on that topic. But you know, the power system thing brings up, you know, our friend Bob Piccano's running the cognitive systems group now. You guys doing some stuff with AI. Maybe talk about that a little bit. >> So what we've done is two things. First of all, we've imbued inside of our systems AI all over the place. So for example, we tier data which can do not only to own array, but literally to 440 arrays that have someone else's logo on them. It's all AI done. So when the data's hot, it's on the fastest tier. So if you have 15,000 RPM drives and 7,200 RPM drives, it goes to 15,000 when it cools off. AI automatically moves it. The storage admin does nothing. You don't set palsies AI takes care of it. We have Flash, and you have hard drives. Same thing. It'll move around. And you could have an IBM array talking to an EMC array. So all sorts of technology that we've implemented that's AI in the box. Then on top of that, what we've done is come up with a series of AI reference architectures for storage as one of the critical elements of the platform. So what we've done is create what we call a data pipeline. It involves not only our storage arrays, but four pieces or our software, spectrum scale, which is giant scale off file system, in fact, the two fastest supercomputers in the world have almost half an exabyte of that software, storage with that software. Our spectrum discover, which we announced in CUBE 4, which is all about better management of metadata. So, for AI workloads, big data analytic workloads, the data scientist doesn't prep the data. They can actually talk to what we do, and you can create all these metadata templates, and then boom, they run an AI workload on Thursday, and then run an analytic workload on Friday, but all automated. Our archive, and then our cloud object storage. So, all that is really, think about it more as an oval, because when you're doing an AI system, you're constantly learning. So the thing you got to do is, one, you've got to have high performance and be able to handle the analytics which you we do on Flash. 'Kay, so the Flash is connected. You've got to be able to move the data around and part of the thing with the Spectrum Discover is that we can talk through an API, to a piece of AI software, to piece of analytic software, to a piece of big data software. And they can literally go through that API, create templates for the metadata, and then automatically suck what they need into their app and then munge it and then spew it back out. And then obviously on the archive side, want to be able quickly recall the data because if you think about an AI system, it's like a human. So let's give you my Russian example. So I'm old enough, when I was a kid, there were bomb shelters in my neighborhood that people dug in the backyard. Then we have, you know, Nixon lighting up the Chinese. Then we have Reagan and Gorbachev. Next thing you know, the wall comes down, right? Then the next thing you know, there's no longer a Soviet Union. All of a sudden, ah, the Russians might be getting a little aggressive even though they're no longer communist, and now you see, depending on which political party, that they're totally against us, or they're totally helping us, but, you know, if they really were hacking systems, whatever political party you're in, they really were hacking our systems trying to manipulate the election. Pro or con, the point is that's kind of like a cyber attack. And that's not a good thing. So we learn and it changes. So an AI system needs to understand and change, constantly learn, if all of a sudden you have flying cars, that's going to be different than a car with tires. Now a lot of it may be the same. The interior, all the amenities, but the engines going to be different, and there are companies, including the big three, four, five, auto, who are actually working on flying cars. Who knows if it'll happen, but the AI system needs to understand and learn that and constantly learn. And so, the foundation has to heavily resilient, heavily performant, heavily available, last thing you want is an AI system going down on you. Especially if you're in healthcare, or big giant manufacturing, like Volvo, his customer. When they're building those cranes and things, they must cost 50, 60 million dollars. If that assembly line goes down, it's probably a big deal for them. So you need AI systems that always keep your other systems up and running. So you have to have that solid foundation of storage underneath. >> Awesome, alright, we got to leave it there. Give the customer the last word. Donnie, first time in Barcelona, right? >> Yes it is. >> How are you finding the show and the city? >> Oh it's awesome. This is my fifth Cisco Live. First time in Europe, so yeah. Enjoying it. >> Good, good. Well thank you guys for coming to theCUBE. >> Great thank you for coming. >> Thank you! >> Really appreciate it. >> You're welcome. Alright keep it right there everybody. We'll be back to wrap day one Cisco Live! Barcelona. You're watching theCUBE. (techno music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo Live Europe, brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back >> to Barcelona. Everybody would adapt. Wrapping up day one of Sisqo live Barcelona Cube coverage. I'm David. Long day. He's stupid men. You're watching the Cube. The leader in live tech coverage. Donnie Williams is it director at Scott Equipment out of Louisiana. And Eric hurts August back. He's the CMO of IBM storage. Gentlemen, good to see you. Welcome. >> Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. So tell us about Scott equipment. What do you guys do? Look, what's the company all about were >> a heavy equipment dealer, So we've been we've been in the business for eighty years, privately owned company. And so we're we're We started out and farm implement eighty years ago by the founder, Thomas Scott, which is where the name Scott equipment comes from. And so we transition over the years, Teo construction equipment, Andi were now back in two thousand fourteen, we sold all of our the farm stores that handled all of that equipment. And now we're We're strictly servicing the construction industry and petrochemical in >> history. So your dealer of exactly what equipment and your services as well? >> Yes. We service that we were primarily a rental company. First then then we We also sell what we rent. We service service it and and also parts as well. So we're talking massive? Yes, they got. If you if you think our one of our main lines is Volvo, which you have you have you seen the show? Gold rush that that Volvo equipment you see there, that's that's what we sell. So is incredible machine. Yeah, Yeah, they are. Hada chance tio to play with one. I went Teo Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. Where were their North America offices and had a chance to play with their largest excavator? That was That was >> fun. So is a lot of your Senate on sort of the maintenance business in the service business? >> Yes. So we were just mostly. Mirror is like a car dealership. If if you so we were like I said, we do sale service parts, all of that. >> So the business flow starts after the sale is made on >> exactly. Yes. We still like, Yeah, exactly. We get. We get equipment out there in the in the in the territory, and then the revenue continues tio to come in. >> So what are some of the challenges? The external challenges that are driving your business? You really >> are. The whole heavy equipment industry is It's kind of behind the times in my from a dealership perspective from from a manufacturer perspective there. They're somewhat up with technology, especially especially Volvo. But from a dealership there, there might mainly privately owned. So they're not there's not a whole lot of resource is in, and ah, in technology they don't. That's not a focus for them that they're they're focused on the business side of it. So what? We we're not When I first started the company ten, eleven years ago, now there was one guy servicing six hundred employees and and it was one eyed person, one i t person. So, as you can imagine, it was, it was a nightmare. Go. I mean, it's not the guy's fault. I don't blame him at all. Is this Is this the way that they had done business and not change bombed out, >> right? Exactly. Yeah. Guys >> find them. >> So their customer of ours for the versus stack, we have, ah, partner that they've been buying their IBM in their Cisco gear from. And then when they were doing a modernization effort, the reseller talk to Scott and said, Dani, what do you think? How about doing this? Converge infrastructure. Easier to play. It's after. So it all came through their existing channel. Part of that they were using for both IBM gear and Cisco Gear. >> So you wanted a solution. That one guy could run, right? We've now at least growing that company to house. We have six total in our in our department. So we've changed a lot since I started the eleven years ago. >> And why are they spending their time doing what? Premier >> Li? We do a lot of help desk on systems administration way do mostly, uh, are My focus is to make sure that our employees are satisfied that so they could take care of the customer, and that's that's the primary goal. And along with that comes comes systems administration. A cz. Well, so, But, >> you know, a full stack like this. I mean, the joke. You need more than one person, but it's going to be simplified. You know what you're buying, right? Predictable. And therefore, you shouldn't need to be seen on a basis. >> Yes, I like keeping things simple. Simple as possible. So that makes that makes my job easier. It makes my team's job easier. What >> kind of >> things you driving? Is it? You know, data protection, is it? You know what? What? What? What sort of, you know, use cases do you have on your stack >> on that Were from our were servicing on our with Francisco verse. Sorry versus stack. We are mostly it is all profit cloud were servicing applications. That's the supplement. Our court system. So we have reporting solutions. We were when we first bought it. The vs stack way were considering moving to another Air P system. Oh, and we would have that that infrastructure in place tio migrate to that. So we see what we still have that that actually on the table as a as an option >> for us, but the migration to a new Europe E system. Yes, we should talk afterwards. No, you >> were warning that it >> all about you. Of course, you don't want to convert if you don't have to write. But sometimes there's a business case. Sometimes it's hard to make you talk. Cloud in your in your future president were doing some that's ass stuff. >> Yeah, a little of that. I mean, anything. I mean things that that makes sense for us to to cloud I security services we're doing. Of course, probably most common is hosting email. Were doing a lot of that share point that that type of solution in the cloud >> How long you been with the company? Eleven years. Eleven years. Okay, So, thinking about the last decade, I mean, it's a lot of lot has changed. Yes. What's your What do you most proud of? What you like your biggest success that you can share with us. Oh, >> really? Building my the that dude the I T department and bringing our company into the twenty first system century from a from a technology perspective. I mean, like I said, we had one person that was that was handing. It was really impossible. I mean, you couldn't depend. Depends on one person. And and and, yeah, expect the company's or saw survive long term. Yeah, That one person had to say no a lot. Exactly. Right. Why would he? Just couldn't get everything >> done right? So that really that modernization? Yes, I know where you guys >> can. Ninety Mater, My team modernization play. The versus stack is heavily used for that. And, you know, as we said, on the earlier and every we had to see ESPN, we've also used it to do you know, to the next level from a night transformation to the future. Because in that case, as you know that was a CSP who uses it to service. You know, hundreds of customers all across the UK in a service model. And in this case, this is more of a mighty modernization. Take the old stuff, upgraded to what it was. They even have old IBM blade servers. That's how old the stuff wass old, actually, six played servers that must have been ten years old before they went to the Versus Stack. >> How many people in the company >> right now? We've actually sold off side since I've been with the company we sold off. Some of our non performing business units were probably roughly around five hundred fifty now. Okay, so I mean, we're Ah, we're actually more profitable now than we were eleven years ago from Ah, I mean, we have less employees, but our profitability is actually exceeded >> the name of simplification. Exactly. Right. So what's the biggest challenge you face Is the head of it today? The biggest, Probably >> the biggest challenge would be me wanting to implement technologies. They're not really not ready. I want it. I want tohave the competitive edge, that of the industry. I want to be able to be ahead of of the ahead of the curve. Uh, and that's probably the probably biggest challenge. And you're >> saying you can't Because the tech is ready or skills >> is just is just the industry just trying Teo. I work with vendors and getting getting them to be ready for I say, vendors, manufacturers, they're our vendors. Toe Get them Tio and other dealers as well. Teo Teo Albee. Acceptable to technology that's been there twenty years. >> What would you say is the but the top number one or the top things that IBM has done to make your life easier? And what's the one thing they could do that they're they're not doing that could make your life easier. What's the start with what they've done? You know whether successes, you know that >> really? Really. I mean, we've been a long time IBM customer. We have not, not just the versus Stack, but we also have the power system, which were actually runs are our core AARP. Um, okay. And so that we had long standing relationship with IBM, and the reliability is there. The trust is, >> there's well, a long term partnership. But what's the one thing they could do? One thing that you could If you could wave a wand and IBM will do x what would x B to make your life better? Uh, cut the price way. Go >> way. I should have prefaced that something that size >> on that topic. But you know, the power system thing brings up. You know, our friend Bob. Pity on who's running the cognitive systems group now You guys do with some stuff in a I talked about that a little bit. >> So what we've done is two things. First of all, we've been beauty inside of our system's ai ai all over the place. So, for example, we tear data which can weaken due not only to our own array, but literally two four hundred forty rays that have someone else's logo on them. It's all a eye dunce. When the data is hot, it's on the fastest here. So if you have fifteen thousand rpm drives in seventeen hundred rpm drives, it goes to fifteen thousand. When it cools off A. I automatically moves that the storage admin does nothing. You don't set policies, A takes care. We have flash and you have hard drive's same thing. It'll move around and you could have on IBM array talking to any AMC array. So all sorts of technology that we implement, that's a I in the box. Then, on top of that, what we've done is come up with a Siri's of a reference architectures for storage, as one of the critical elements in the platform. So we've done is create what we call a data pipeline. It involves not only our storage raise, but four pieces of our software spectrum scale, which is giant scale out file system, in fact, to fastest super computers in the world have almost half an exabyte of that software storage. With that software, our spectrum discover which we announced in queue for which is all about better management of metadata. So for a I workloads, big get anally work loves the data scientist doesn't prep the data. They can actually talk to what we do, and you could create all these meditate a template, then boom. They run a a ay workload on Thursday and then run a analytic workload on Friday. But all automated our archive and then our cloud objects towards. So all that is really think about it. Maura's an oval because when you're doing an A I system, you're constantly learning. So the thing you got to do is one you've got to have high performance and be ableto handle the analytics, which we do on flash. Okay, so the flashes connected, you've got to be able to move the date around. And part of thing with the spectrum Discover is that we can talk through an A P I to a piece of a AI software two piece of analytic software to piece of big data software, and they can literally go through that. AP I create templates for the metadata and then automatically suck what they need into their app and then munge it and then spirit back out and then obviously on the archives side, you want to be able to quickly recall the data, because if you think about a I system, it's like a human. So it's giving my Russian example. So I'm old enough. When I was a kid, there were bomb shelters in my neighborhood that people dug in the backyard. Then we have, you know, Nixon lightening up with the Chinese and we have Reagan and Gorbachev next, You know, the wall comes down right then. Next thing you know, there's no longer Soviet Union. All of a sudden, no, the Russians might get a little aggressive, even though they're no longer communist. And now, you see, depending on which political party. Either they're totally against us where they're totally helping us. But, you know, if they really were hacking systems whose whatever political party urine, they really were hacking our system, tried to manipulate the election pro or con. The point is, that's kind of like a cyber attack, and that's not a good thing. So we learn and it changes. So when a I system needs to understand and change constantly, learn. If all of a sudden you have flying cars, that's going to be different than a car with tires. Now, a lot of it, maybe the same, the interior, all the amenities. But the engine is going to be different. And there are companies, including the big Big three, four five who are actually working on flying cars, knows it will happen. But the A I system needs to understand and learn that and constantly learning. So the foundation has to be heavily resilient, heavily performance, heavily available, lasting one is an A I system going down on you, especially if you're in health care or big giant manufacturing. Like Volvo, his customer. When they're building those cranes and things, they must cost fifty sixty million dollars at that assembly line goes down its prey a big deal for them. So you need a I systems that always keep your other systems up and running. So you have to have that solid foundation storage underneath. >> Awesome. All right, we got to leave it there. Give the customer the last word. Donnie. First time in Barcelona, right? Yes. It ISS how you find in the show and the >> syphilis is awesome. This's my, actually my fifth, uh, Cisco lifers our first time in Europe, so yeah, enjoying it. >> Good. Good. Well, thank you, guys. For German of the >> correct. Thank you. Have you appreciate it? >> You're welcome. Alright. Keep right there, everybody. We'll be back to rap Day one. Sisqo live Barcelona watching you.

>> From the SiliconANGLE Media Office, in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> Welcome to theCUBE, the worldwide leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the shows to help extract the signal from the noise, and we are really excited. Oracle OpenWorld's coming up and we have an exclusive here on theCUBE, first time, welcoming Larry to the program. Wait. This is not the Larry I was expecting. Who do we have here? I know, sitting over there, Brian Reagan, CMO of Actifio. Brian, great to see you, >> Stu. >> I feel like I have a differently Larry than I was expecting. >> Stu, it's always a pleasure to be here, and I mean this is a big day. Obviously we take, you know, databases very seriously. We take Oracle OpenWorld very seriously. It's an important show for us, and we're excited to bring Larry the Bear back for the second year in a row at Oracle OpenWorld. Many might know him as the Database Beast, and so, he's excited to be here. What other Larry were you expecting, just out of curiosity? >> Well, we're talking about Oracle and database at the center. There's a certain Larry that most people expect. I was in Oracle OpenWorld once and Larry didn't show up because he was at the boat show. The boat race. But- - >> Larry the Bear is a big boat fan, too, but that's actually one of the reasons why we're excited to be out there. The other Larry I think that you might be referring to, the other Larry is how they refer to him out there too, is really Larry the Bear's hero, and if you think about a database beast, someone who's really dedicated their lives to databases, they really wanna meet the one and only King of Databases. And so, you know, he wants to live his dream next week, and meet the one and only Larry, his namesake, and really bond. >> Well, he, you know, having been to that show a few times, they are ecstatic to talk about databases. You've just got, you know, non-stop DBAs geeking out, digging into the weeds, and, you know, database, we've said many times on theCUBE, is the stickiest of applications in the environment, but, you know, there's a lot of money spent on this and a lot of manpower, so, you know, taming that environment is definitely a huge challenge for enterprises. >> Absolutely. We think the same, and in fact, Larry believes that databases- - The only thing stickier is probably like a big vat of honey. So, this is a bear who was- - Have you seen The Revenant, Stu? >> I'm familiar with it, and it has me a little bit worried. >> Yeah, that really was Larry a couple years ago. I mean, it was just, you know, he was untamed. He was going out of control like many databases in a lot of enterprises, until he discovered Actifio, and really discovered what could become of giving him back time in the day to hunt for salmon or pick berries, or whatever it is that bears do in their free time when they're not dealing with large databases. I mean, that's what Actifio brought to him, and he really wants to share that next week out at Oracle OpenWorld. >> Okay, and tell me, you said Larry got to know Actifio, where did Larry come from? >> So, Larry's originally from Chicago. >> Big Bears fan. >> And Cubs, go Cubs. >> He's relocated to Boston now that he's joined Actifio, and he's really taken with the Bruins. I think he's excited for this season, but Larry has been really in the enterprise for his entire life, and has probably grappled with some of the biggest databases you've seen. Again, this is the database beast. Yeah, it used to be bad. >> Alright, Larry, anything else we should know about your background and what has you so excited about the show? >> Yeah, no, that's a good point. So, among the many things that Larry is eager to do next week, is to find out from others, you know, just what type of database beast they have in their data center. And in fact, he invites people to our booth number 3105, to come and share their experiences. In fact, for those who mention theCUBE and his appearance on the cube, we've got a special giveaway for them. But we're eager to- - We and Larry are eager to hear what people are dealing with out there in the database community and understand how Actifio can really help them solve their biggest Oracle challenges. >> Great. Any final things we should know about, Larry, before we send it? >> Obviously, I mean this is a- - You know, Larry is smarter than the average bear, Stu, and that's one of the reasons why he joined Actifio. He comes from a long line of IT centric bears. I mean, obviously, his cousin Smokey in the D.R. Arena. Yoga- - Yogi, rather. So it's, you know, very long bear history. He's excited about Oracle OpenWorld. He couldn't be more excited about being on theCUBE. He's been talking about it for weeks, and we're just excited that you were able to fit him in. >> Alright, well Larry, I hope your dream comes true and that you get to meet the other Larry at the show. Brian, always a pleasure to catch up with you. >> You too, Stu. >> Once again, thank you for joining us here on theCUBE. Be sure to check out theCUBE.net for all of our coverage and see us, and some of the interesting guests we get on throughout the industry. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

>> Live, from Washington, D.C. It's theCUBE, covering the AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. (futuristic music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live in Washington, D.C. for Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. This is their big show for the public sector. It's like a mini reinvent for specifically the public sector. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Stu Miniman, my co-host this segment, and Stewart Mclaurin, president of the White House Historic Association, is our guest. I heard him speak last night at a private dinner with Teresa Carlson and their top customers. Great story here, Amazon success story, but I think something more we can all relate to. Stewart, thank you for joining us and taking the time, appreciate it. >> Thanks John, it's just great to be with you. >> Okay, so let's jump into it; what's your story? You work for the White House Historical Association, which means you preserve stuff? Or, you provide access? Tell the story. >> Well, we have a great and largely untold story, and a part of our partnership with Amazon Web Services is to blow that open so more people know who we are and what we do, and have access to the White House, because it's the people's house. It doesn't belong to any one particular president; it's your house. We were founded in 1961 by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who realized that the White House needed a nonprofit, nonpartisan partner. We have no government funding whatsoever, completely private. So we fund the acquisition of art, furnishings, decorative arts for the White House, if a new rug is needed, or new draperies are needed on the State Floor, or a frame needs to be regilded. We also acquire the china, the presidential and first lady portraits that are done; we fund those. But more importantly, in my view, is our education mission that Mrs. Kennedy also started, to teach and tell the stories of White House history going back to 1792, when George Washington selected that plot of land and the architect to build that house that we know today. So we unpack those stories through publications, programs, lectures, symposia, and now this new multifaceted partnership with AWS. >> Let's talk about, first of all, a great mission. This is the people's house; I love that. But it's always the secret cloak and dagger, kind of what's going on in there? The tours are not always, they're probably packed when people go through there, but the average person on the street doesn't have access. >> Sure, well, your cable news channels handle the politics and the policy of the place. We handle the building and the history, and all that's taken place there, including innovation and technology. If you think of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and others that evolved their early technologies through the White House, about 500,000 people get a chance to go through the White House every year. And when you think about in that small space, the president and his family lives, the president and his staff work, it's the ceremonial stage upon which our most important visitors are received, and then about 500,000 people schlep through, so you imagine 500,000 people that are going through your house, and all of that takes place. But it's very important to us for people to be able to see up close and personal, and walk through these spaces where Lincoln walked, and Roosevelt worked. >> Is that what the book you have, and share the book 'cause it's really historic, and the app that you have with Amazon, I think this is a great-- >> Sure, this is a real prize from our office. Mrs. Kennedy wanted us to teach and tell the stories of White House history, and so the first thing she wanted was a guide book, because the White House never had one. So in 1962, she published this guide book with us, and this is her actual copy. Her hands held this book. This was her copy of the book. Now, we continue to update this. It's now in its 24th edition, and each new edition has the latest renovations and updates that the latest president has added. But it's now 2018. So books are great, but we want to be able to impart this information and experience to people not only around Washington, who are going through the White House, but across the country and around the world. So this app that we've developed, you get through WHExperience at the App Store, you have three different tours. If you're walking through the White House, tours are self-guided, so unless you know what you're looking at, you don't know what you're looking at. So you can hold up an image, you can see, it brings to life for you everything that you're looking at in every room. Two other types of tours; if you're outside the White House in President's Park, it will unpack and open the doors of these rooms for you virtually, so you can see the Oval Office, and the Cabinet Room, and the Blue Room, and the Green Room. If you're around the world, there's a third tour experience, but the best part of it is, empowered by Amazon recognition technology, and it allows people to take a selfie, and it analyzes that selfie against all presidential portraits and first lady portraits, and the spatial features of your face, and it will tell you you're 47% Ronald Reagan, or 27% Jackie Kennedy, and people have a lot of fun with that part of the app. >> (laughs) That's awesome. >> Stewart, fascinating stuff. You know, when I go to a museum a lot of times, it's like, oh, the book was something you get on the way home, because maybe you couldn't take photos, or the book has beautiful photos. Can you speak a little bit about how the technology's making the tours a little bit more interactive? >> Sure, well we love books, and we'll publish six hardbound books this year on the history of the White House, and those are all available at our website, whitehousehistory.org. But the three facets of technology that we're adapting with Amazon, it's the app that I've spoken about, and that has the fun gamification element of portrait analysis, but it also takes you in a deeper depth in each room, even more so than the book does. And we can update it for seasons, like we'll update it for the Fall Garden Tour, we'll update it for the Christmas decorations, we'll update it for the Easter Egg Roll. But another part of the partnership is our digital library. We have tens of thousands of images of the White House that have literally been in a domestic freezer, frozen for decades, and with AWS, we're unpacking those and digitizing them, and it's like bringing history to life for the first time. We're seeing photographs of Kennedy, Johnson, other presidents, that haven't been seen by anybody in decades, and those are becoming available through our digital library. And then third, we're launching here a chatbot, so that through a Lex and Polly technology, AWS technology, you'll be able to go to Alexa and ask questions about White House history and the spaces in the White House, or keyboard to our website and ask those questions as well. >> It's going to open up a lot of windows to the young folks in education too. >> It is. >> It's like you're one command away; Hey, Alexa! >> It takes a one-dimensional picture off of a page, or off of a website, and it gives the user an experience of touring the White House. >> Talk about your vision around modernization. We just had a conversation with the CEO of Tellus, when we're talking about government has a modernization approach, and I think Obama really put the stake in the ground on that; former President Obama. And that means something to a lot of people, for you guys it's extending it forward. But your digital strategy is about bringing the experience digitally online from historical documents, and then going forward. So is there plans in the future, for virtual reality and augmented reality, where I can pop in and-- >> That's right. We're looking to evolve the app, and to do other things that are AR and VR focused, and keep it cool and fun, but we're here in a space that's all about the future. I was talking at this wonderful talk last night, about hundreds of thousands of people living and working on Mars, and that's really great. But we all need to remember our history and our roots. History applies to no matter what field you're in, medicine, law, technology; knowing your history, knowing the history of this house, and what it means to our country. There are billions of people around the world that know what this symbol means, this White House. And those are billions of people who will never come to our country, and certainly never visit the White House. Most of them won't even meet an American, but through this app, they'll be able to go into the doors of the White House and understand it more fully. >> Build a community around it too; is there any online social component? You guys looking around that at all? >> All of this is just launched, and so we do want to build some interactive, because it's important for us to know who these people are. One simple thing we're doing with that now, is we're asking people to socially post and tag us on these comparative pictures they take with presidents and first ladies. So there's been some fun from that. >> So Stewart, one of the things I've found interesting is your association, about 50 people, and what you were telling me off-camera, there's not a single really IT person inside there, so walk us through a little bit about how this partnership began, who helps you through all of these technical decisions, and how you do some pretty fun tech on your space. >> Unfortunately, a lot of historical organizations are a little dusty, or at least perceived to be that way. And so we want to be a first mover in this space, and an influencer of our peer institutions. Later this summer, we're convening 200 presidential sites from around the country, libraries, birthplaces, childhood homes, and we're going to share with them the experience that we've had with AWS. We'll partner or collaborate with them like we're already doing with some, like the Lincoln Library in Illinois, where we have a digitization partnership with them. So with us, it's about collaboration and partnership. We are content rich, but we are reach-challenged, and a way to extend our reach and influence is through wonderful partnerships like AWS, and so that's what we're doing. Now another thing we get with AWS is we're not just hiring an IT vendor of some type. They know our mission, they appreciate our mission, and they support our mission. Teresa Carlson was at the White House with us last Friday, and she had the app, and she was going through and looking at things, and it came to life for her in a new real and fresh way, and she'd been to the White House many times on business. >> That's great; great story. And the thing is, it's very inspirational on getting these other historic sites online. It's interesting. It's a digital library, it's a digital version. So, super good. Content rich, reach-challenged; I love that line. What else is going on? Who funds you guys? How do you make it all work? Who pays the bills? Do you guys do donations, is it philanthropy, is it-- >> We do traditional philanthropy, and we'd love for anybody to engage us in that. During the Reagan Administration in 1981, someone had the brilliant idea, now if I'd been in the room when this happened, I probably would have said, "Okay, fine, do that." But thank goodness we did, because it has funded our organization all these years. And that's the creation of the annual, official White House Christmas ornament, and we feature a different president each year sequentially so we don't have to make a political decision. This year, it's Harry Truman, and that ornament comes with a booklet, and it has elements of that ornament that talk about those years in the White House. So with Truman, it depicts the south balcony, the Truman Balcony on the south portico. The Truman seal that eventually evolved into being the Presidential Seal. On the reverse is the Truman Blue Room of the White House. So these are teaching tools, and we sell a lot of those ornaments. People collect them; once you start, you can't stop. A very traditional thing, but it's an important thing, and that's been a lifeblood. Actually, Teresa Carlson chairs our National Council on White House History. John Wood, that you just had on before me, is on our National Council on White House History. These are some of our strong financial supporters who believe in our mission, and who are collaborating it with us on innovative ways, and it's great to have them involved with us because it brings life in new ways, rather than just paper books. >> Stewart, I had a non-technical question for you. According to your mission, you also obtained pieces. I'm curious; what's the mission these days? What sort of things are you pulling in? >> Well, there's a curator in the White House. It's a government employee that actually manages the White House collection. Before President and Mrs. Kennedy came into the White House, a new president could come in and get rid of anything they wanted to, and they did. That's how they funded the new, by selling the old. That's not the case anymore. With the Kennedys, there's a White House collection, like a museum, and so we'll work with the White House and take their requests. For example, a recent acquisition was an Alma Thomas painting. Alma Thomas is the first African American female artist to have a work in the White House collection; a very important addition. And to have a work in the White House collection, the artist should be deceased and the work over 25 years old, so we're getting more of the 21st century. The great artists of the American 20th century are becoming eligible to have their works in the collection. >> Stewart, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your story. It's good to see you speak, and thanks for the ornament we got last night. >> Sure. Well, you've teased this ornament. Everybody's going to want and need one now, so go to whitehousehistory.org. >> John, come on, you have to tell the audience who you got face matched recognition with on the app. >> So who did you get face matched with? >> I think I'm 20% James Buchanan, but you got the Gipper. >> I'm Ronald Reagan. Supply-side economics, trickle-down, what do they call it? Voodoo economics, was his famous thing? >> That's right. >> He had good hair, John. >> Well, you know, our job is to be story tellers, and thank you for letting us share a little bit of our story here today. We love to make good friends through our social channels, and I hope everyone will download this app and enjoy visiting the White House. >> We will help with the reach side and promote your mission. Love the mission, love history, love the digital convergence while preserving and maintaining the great history of the United States. And a great, good tool. It's going to open up-- >> Amazon gave us these stickers for everybody who had downloaded the app, so I'm officially giving you your downloaded app sticker to wear. Stu, this is yours. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks guys, really appreciate it. >> Thank so much, great mission. Check out the White House-- >> Historical Association. >> Historicalassociation.org, and get the White House app, which is WHExperience on the App Store. >> That's right. >> Okay, thanks so much. Be back with more, stay with us. Live coverage here at AWS, Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. We'll be right back. (futuristic music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Midtown Manhattan, it's theCUBE. Covering Big Data, New York City, 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem sponsors. >> Okay welcome back, everyone. Live in Manhattan, New York City, in Hell's Kitchen, this is theCUBE's special event, our annual CUBE-Wikibon Research Big Data event in Manhattan. Alongside Strata, Hadoop; formerly Hadoop World, now called Strata Data, as the world continues. This is our annual event; it's our fifth year here, sixth overall, wanted to kind of move from uptown. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, with Peter Burris, Head of Research at SiliconANGLE and GM of Wikibon Research. Our next guest is Tim Smith, who's the SVP of technical operations at AppNexus; technical operations for large scale is an understatement. But before we get going; Tim, just talk about what AppNexus as a company, what you guys do, what's the core business? >> Sure, AppNexus is the second largest digital advertising marketplace after google. We're an internet technology company that harnessed, we harness data and machine learning to power the companies that comprise the open internet. We began by building a powerful technology platform, in which we embedded core capabilities, tools and features. With me so far? >> Yeah, we got it. >> Okay, on top of that platform, we built a core suite of cloud-based enterprise products that enable the buying and selling of digital advertising, and a scale-transparent and low-cost marketplace where other companies can transact; either using our enterprise products, or those offered by other companies. If you want to hear a little about the daily peaks, peak feeds and speeds, it is Strata, we should probably talk about that. We do about 11.8 billion impressions transacted on a daily basis. Each of those is a real-time auction conducted in a fraction of a second, well under half a second. We see about 225 billion impressions per day, and we handle about 5 million queries per second at peak load. We produce about 150 terabytes of data each day, and we move about 400 gigabits into and out of the internet at peak, all those numbers are daily peaks. Makes sense? >> Yep. >> Okay, so by way of comparison, which might be useful for people, I believe the NYSE currently does roughly 2 million trades per day. So if we round that up to 3 million trades a day and assume the NYSE were to conduct that volume every single day of the year; 7 days a week, 365 days a year, that'd be about a billion trades a year. Similarly, I believe Visa did about 28-and-a-half billion transactions in their fiscal third quarter. I'll round that up to 30 billion, and average it out to about 333 million transactions per day and annualize it to about 4 billion transactions per year. Little bit of math, but as I mentioned, AppNexus does an excess of 10 billion transactions per day. And so it seems reasonable to say that AppNexus does roughly 10 times the transaction volume in one day, than the NYSE does in a year. And similarly, it seems reasonable to say that AppNexus daily does more than two times the transaction volume that Visa does in a year. Obviously, these are all just very rough numbers based on publicly available information about the NYSE and Visa, and both the NYSE and Visa do far, far more volume than AppNexus when measured in terms of dollars. So given our volumes, it's imperative that AppNexus does each transaction with the maximum efficiency and lowest reasonable possible cost, and that is one of the most challenging aspects of my job. >> So thanks for spending the time to give the overview. There's a lot of data; I mean 10 billion a day is massive volume. I mean the internet, and you see the scale, is insane. We're in a new era right now of web-scale. We've seen it in Facebook, and it's enormous. It's only going to get bigger, right? So on the online ad tech, you guys are essentially doing like a Google model, that's not everything but Google, which is still huge numbers. Then you include Microsoft and everybody else. Really heavy lifting, IT-like situation. What's the environment like? And just talk about, you know, what's it like for you guys. Because you got a lot of opp's, I mean terms of dev opp's. You can't break anything, because that 10 billion transaction or near, it's a significant impact. So you have to have everything buttoned-up super tight, yet you got to innovate and grow with the future growth. What's the IT environment like? >> It's interesting. We have about 8,000 servers spread across about seven data centers on three continents, and we run, as you mentioned, around the clock. There's no closing bell; downtime is not acceptable. So when you look at our environment, you're talking about four major categories of server complexes. We have real-time processing, which is the actual ad serving. We have a data pipeline, which is what we call our big data environment. We also have client-facing environment and an infrastructure environment. So we use a lot of different tools and applications, but I think the most relevant ones to this discussion are Hadoop and its friends HDFS, and Hive and Spark. And then we use the Vertica Analytics Platform. And together Hadoop and its friends, and Vertica comprise our entire data pipeline. They're both very disk-intensive. They're cluster based applications, and it's a lot of challenge to keep them up and running. >> So what are some of those challenges? Just explain a little bit, because you also have a lot of opportunity. I mean, it's money flowing through the air, basically; digital air, if you will. I mean, they got a lot of stuff happening. Take us through the challenges. >> You know, our biggest apps are all clustered. And all of our clusters are built with commodity servers, just like a lot of other environments. The big data app clusters traditionally have had internal disks, while almost all of our other servers are very light on disk. One of the biggest challenges is, since the server is the fundamental building block of a cluster, then regardless of whether you need more compute or more storage, you always have to add more servers to get it. That really limits flexibility and creates a lot of inefficiencies, and I really, really am obsessive about reducing and eliminating inefficiencies. So, with me so far? >> Yep. >> Great. The inefficiencies result from two major factors. First, not all workloads require the same ratio of compute to storage. Some workloads are more compute-intensive, and others are really less dependent on storage, while other workloads require a lot more storage. So we have to use standard server configurations and as a result, we wind up with underutilized compute and storage. This is undesirable, it's inefficient, yet given our scale, we have to use standardized configurations. So that's the first big challenge. The second is the compute to disk ratio. It's generally fixed when you buy the servers. Yes, we can certainly add more disks in the field, but that's a labor intensive, and it's complicated from a logistics and an asset management standpoint, and you're fundamentally limited by the number of disk slots in the server. So now you're right back into the trap of more storage requires more servers, regardless of whether you need more compute or not. And then you compound the inefficiencies. >> Couldn't you just move the resources from, unused resources, from one cluster to the other? >> I've been asked that a lot; and no, it's just not that simple. Each application cluster becomes a silo due to its configuration of storage and compute. This means you just can't move servers from clusters because the clusters are optimized for the workloads, and the fact that you can't move resources from one cluster to another, it's more inefficiencies. And then they're compounded over time since workloads change, and the ideal ratio of compute-to-storage changes. And the end result is unused resources trapped in silos and configurations that are no longer optimized for your workload. And there's only really one solution that we've been able to find. And to paraphrase an orator far, far more talented than I am, namely Ronald Reagan, we need to open this gate, tear down these silos. The silos just have to go away. They fundamentally limit flexibility and efficiency. >> What were some of the other issues caused by using servers with internal drives? >> You have more maintenance, you've got to deal with the logistics. But the biggest problem is service and storage have significantly different life cycles. Servers typically have a three year life cycle before they're obsolete. Storage typically is four to six years. You can sometimes stretch that a little further with the storage. Inside the servers that are replaced every 3 years, we end up replacing storage before the end of its effective lifetime; that's inefficient. Further, since the storage is inside the servers, we have to do massive data migrations when we replace servers. Migrations, they're time consuming, they're logistically difficult, and they're high risk. >> So how did DriveScale help you guys? Because you guys certainly have a challenging environment, you laid out the the story, and we appreciate that. How did DriveScale help you with the challenges? >> Well, what we really wanted to do was disaggregate storage from servers, and DriveScale enables us to do that. Disaggregating resources is a new term in the industry, but I think lot of people are focusing on it. I can explain it if you think that would make sense. >> What do you mean by disaggregating resources? Can you explain that, and how it works? >> Sure, so instead of buying servers with internal drives, we now buy diskless servers with JBODs. And DriveScale lets us easily compose servers with whatever amount of disk storage we need, from the server resource pool and the disk resource pool; and they're separate pools. This means we have the right balance of compute and storage for each workload, and we can easily adjust it over time. And all of this is done via software, so it's easy to do with a GUI or in our case, at our scale, scripting. And it's done on demand, and it's much more efficient. >> How does it help you with the underutilized resource challenge you mentioned earlier? >> Well, since we can add and remove resources from each cluster, we can manage exactly how much compute power and storage is deployed for each workload. Since this is all done via software, it can be done quickly and easily. We don't have to send a technician into a data center to physically swap drives, add drives, move drives. It's all done via software and it's very, very efficient. >> Can you move resources between silos? >> Well, yes and no. First off, our goal is no more silos. That said, we still have clusters, and once we completely migrate to DriveScale, all of our compute and storage resources will be consolidated into just a few common pools. And disk storage will no longer differentiate pools; thus, we have fewer pools. For more, we have fewer pools and can use the resources in each pool for more workloads. And when our needs change and they always do, we can reallocate resources as needed. >> What of the life cycle management challenge? How you guys address that? >> Well that's addressed with DriveScale. The compute and the storage are now disaggregated or separated into diskless servers and JBODs, so we can upgrade one without touching the other. We want to upgrade servers to take advantage of new processors or new memory architectures, we just replace the servers, re-combine the disks with the new servers, and we're back up and operating. It saves the cost of buying new disks when we don't need to, and it also simplifies logistics and reduces risk, as we no longer have to run the old plant and the new plant concurrently, and do a complicated data migration. >> What about this qualifying server and storage vendors? Do you still do that? Or how's that impact -- >> We actually don't have to do it. We're still using the same server vendor. We've used Dell for many, many years, we continue to use them. We are using them for storage and there was no real work, we just had to add DriveScale into the mix. >> What's it like working with DriveScale? >> They're really wonderful to work with. They have a really seasoned team. They were at Sun Microsystems and Cisco, they built some of the really foundational products that changed the internet, that the internet was built on. They're really talented, they really bright, and they're really focused on customer success. >> Great story, thanks for sharing that. My final question for you is, you guys have a very big, awesome environment, you've got a lot of scale there. It's great for a startup to get into an environment like this, because one, they could get access to the data, work with a good team like you have. What's it like working with a startup? >> You know it's always challenging at first; too many things to do. >> They got talented guys. Most of the startups, those early day startups, they got all their A players out there. >> They have their A players, and we've been very pleased working with them. We're dealing with the top talent, some of the top talent in the industry, that created the industry. They have a proven track record. We really don't have any concerns, we know they're committed to our success and they have a great team, and great investors. >> A final, final question. For your friends out there are watching, and other practitioners who are trying to run things at scale with a cloud. What's your advice to them? You've been operating at scale, and a lot of, billions of transactions, I mean huge; it's only going to get bigger. Put your IT friendly advice hat on. What's the mindset of operators out there, technical op's, as dev op's comes in seeing a lot of that. What do people need to be thinking about to run at scale? >> There's no magic silver bullet. There's no magic answers. The public cloud is very helpful in a lot of ways, but you really have to think hard about your economics, you have to think about your scale. You just have to be sure that you're going into each decision knowing that you've looked at the costs and the benefits, the performance, the risks, and you don't expect there to be simple answers. >> Yeah, there's no magic beans as they say. You've got to make it work for the business. >> No magic beans, I wish there were. >> Tim, thanks so much for the story. Appreciate the commentaries. Live coverage at Big Data NYC, it's theCUBE. Be back with more after this short break. (upbeat techno music)