>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover virtual experience brought to you by HP. I'm stew minimum. And this is the Cube's coverage of HP Discover virtual experience rather than all getting together in one place. Life box, Vegas. We're getting people around the globe where they are digging into some of the partner discussions here. Happy to welcome to the program. Ricardo de Blasio. He is the chief revenue officer from Con Vault. Ricardo, Thanks so much for joining us. Great to see you. >>We lost you. Great to be here. >>Excellent. So, you know, obviously HP discover Conn Volt and B when you give us the latest on on the partner. >>Absolutely. Well, first of all, I would like to thank you H p e deal team, not only for this invitation, but for the great partnership that we have. Ah, since actually, many, many years. Well, things are going really, really well with HB. Ah, we're very happy with very proud. I mean, if I'm a chief revenue officer also, my idol said it all. You know, if I look at the performance is off our alliances in the last 18 months, um, as being a double digit row and in some quarter even a triple digit growth. So ah, our relationship engagement into the field are growing up on a weekly basis. And the amount of opportunity that we have in our forecasting in our pipeline with HB are growing more and more and more. And, um, I believe we found still a good thing. And young between ah Cos us being the leader off data protection in the market and in conjunction with one of the largest server infrastructure, um, service vendor, service provider like HP. You know, if you think about one of the the the the highest success that we had experience right now is is humble. True green A as a backup as a service, right? So so many angle our chip. It's working and we just feel we are crashing, really, that the people, the iceberg and the best is yet to come so super excited to be here, super excited for what's what's ahead of us. >>Alright, Ricardo, we'll last year and we've had the Cube at Kahn Volt go on for a couple of years. Ah, lot of discussion about the various consumption models, especially out you know, Cloud is fitting into things, whether it be a public cloud and backing up data or are, you know, SAS models. You know, obviously, Alex was the, you know, star of the show at combo go. Last year you mentioned the Green Lake offerings that you're doing with HP to give back up as a service. So bring us inside. You know what you're hearing from your customers? How they're managing these various cloud offering. >>Totally stupid. Well, um I mean, as you know, I mean the the adoption into cloud native APS or moving waters into, ah, cloud models. It is something that has been around for the last 10 years. Obviously, what the current situation is producing is a triggering event to really moving to a light speed, um, transformation and adoption off any type of cloud motors. And we believe that's up backup and data protection provider. Um, we are in the middle of it, experiencing a lot of benefits. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, if you look at our metallic offering, one of our blockbuster is backing up office 3 65 which is a cloud native app after that we got Salesforce or we've got service now and so on. Right before moving to more traditional and point out of management like that or ah, um, like mobile phone. But even if I look at, you know, from from an angle of our partnership with HP, But I see most off the grow and opportunity is being on the Green Lake platform. Um, a lot of the opportunity that we have in our pipe that have been built in the last six months, but I see a lot of potential to do business together. Um, 80% of them is with Green Lake. This always great legs in the middle. >>Excellent. Yeah. What? What do you hearing so much from customers, You know, with your you're the chief revenue officer. So is it Move from cap ex to op X. You know, bring us inside a little bit. The finance side. What you're hearing from customers is how they get ready. Obviously, with the global pandemic even more of a highlight on the cloud models, if I've done things right, I should be able to either, you know, scale up if needed, or if I need to dial things down for a little while. Hopefully, I haven't locked myself in tow some environment. So I love to hear a little bit more color on that piece of it. >>Absolutely. I believe you nail. It's do I mean ah, there's definitely an operational driver behind which he's Can I scale or down my data center without having the possibility to have people on the ground? And so how can I move into a virtual data center? Uh, what? I have computing storage networking that can follow my beach off. Uh, I o according to my business need and this d'etre angle in the current crisis, um, company often are not run, but CFO becomes more important. And, um, there's a huge ah, attention to us and, uh, and everything that can be moved from a perpetual into a credible and therefore cloud has a better fit for that. And, um, and then last but not least, is also, you know, the better integration that a lot of cloud models provide. You were the cloud native. That's right. I mean, um, and you run salesforce on Prem? Not really. Right. So how can you have Ah, a dashboard of different business application and operational applications that are better integrated with the cloud native. That's so the more you can offer your client I eat relates or metallic proponent Delta Cloud Native Services that he's a, um, naturally integrated with the parent cloud native app. So the more you're going to make their life easier. >>Excellent. Ricardo. You know, Con Volt works with many partners. What makes the HP partnership special? >>So I think you know what I said earlier. Definitely. I would say the first thing. These, um a market segmentation, overs and the price. We are experiencing a lot of success with our enterprise clients. You know, if I look at the joint pipeline that we built together, I would say 90% of the lines are global 2000 customers logo. And so that is everyone. Number number two. You know how much work with it collectively in integrating our product line and platform together. So if you look into the humble complete solution and very soon also mentality, but even that big that has been done a lot of effort on that side, they are natively integrated with open a P I so that our clients really will not feel the difference off having two different salad silos solution and and then last but not least, the same strategic goal and view off pushing our cloud based Motorola radical modeler Green Lake for H p e and metallic and a big for mobile. >>Excellent. So you mentioned you know, some of the shifting models to some some of the newer solutions. You know, obviously, you know, integrations partnership a little bit of time, but give us a little bit. What should we be expecting from, you know, calm bolt in the partnership with HP through the rest of 2020. >>Absolutely. Still. Well, um, definitely an acceleration. You know, we put the decision a combo too. Ah, focus on fewer partners are very relevant to us. We're very happy to say that Hve is one of them. And, um, we want to do more from a product integration perspective. So the next one in line with the metallic and how the metallic play and integration will play into green legs and into a lot of HB product. Um, but also, we want to do more with our field engagement. Right? So now we have weekly or monthly orderly. Ah, weekly engagement with our with our two fields organization. Ah, just in order to better serve our clients and often do business with the same channel partners that we have in our ecosystem. >>Excellent. Well, Ricardo, thank you so much for joining us. We really pleasure. >>Thank you. Thank you, Stew. And thank you, HP, for the great partnership opportunity. >>All right, Lots more coverage from the cube. HP discover virtual experience. I'm Stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Commentator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience, brought to you by HPE. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover Virtual Experience. Rather than all getting together in one place like Las Vegas, we're getting to talk to people around the globe where they are, digging into some of the partner discussions here. Happy to welcome to the program Riccardo De Blasio. He is the Chief Revenue Officer from Commvault. Riccardo, thanks so much for joining us, great to see you. >> Hello Stu, great to be here. >> Excellent. So, you know, obviously HPE Discover, Commvault, and HPE, why don't you give us the latest on, on the partner up? >> Absolutely. Well, first of all, I would like to thank you, HPE, the whole team, not only for this invitation, but for the great partnership that we have, since actually many, many years. Well, things are going really, really well with HPE. We're very happy, we're very proud. I mean, I'm a chief revenue officer, so my title says it all. And if I look at the performances of our alliances in the last, 18 months. It's been a double digit grow and in some quarter, even a triple digit grow. Our relationship and engagement into the field are growing on a weekly basis and the amount of opportunity that we have in focusing in our pipeline with HPE are growing more and more and more. I believe we found, Steve, a good ying and yang, between the two companies, us being the leader of data protection in the market, and in conjunction with one of the largest server infrastructure service provider like HPE, you know, think about it one of the highest success that we are experience right now is Commvault through GreenLake as a backup, as a service, right? So many angles, our partnership, it's working and we just feel we are scratching really the tip of the iceberg. And the best is yet to come. So super excited to be here. Super excited for what's ahead of us. >> All right, Riccardo, well, last year, and we've had theCUBE at Commvault GO for a couple of years, a lot of discussion about the various consumption models, especially how cloud is fitting into things, whether it be a public cloud and backing up data, or SaaS models. Obviously Metallic was the, you know, star of the show at Commvault GO last year, You mentioned, the GreenLake offerings that you're doing with HPE to give back up as a service. So, bring us inside what you're hearing from your customers, how they are managing these various cloud offerings. >> Totally Stu. The adoption into cloud native apps, or moving workloads into cloud models, it is something that has been around for the last 10 years. Obviously, what the current situation is producing is a triggering event to really move in to a light speed transformation and adoption of any type of cloud models. And we believe as a backup and data protection provider, we are in the middle of it, experiencing a lot of benefits. I mean, at the end of the day, if you look at our Metallic offering a one of our blockbuster is backing up office 365, which is a cloud native app. After that, we got Salesforce, or we got ServiceNow, and so on, right? Before we move into more traditional endpoint data management like laptop, or MDM like mobile phone, but even if I look, you know, from an angle of our partnership with HPE, what I see most of the grow and opportunity has been on the GreenLakes platform. A lot of the opportunities that we have in our pipe that have been built in the last six months, where I see a lot of potential to do business together, 80% of them is with GreenLakes, there's always GreenLakes in the middle. >> Excellent. What are you hearing so much from customers? You know, you're the chief revenue officer, so is it the move from CapEx to OpEx? You know, bring us inside a little bit, the finance side and what you're hearing from customers as to how ready. Obviously, with the global pandemic, even puts more of a highlight on those cloud models. If I've done things right I should be able to either, scale up, if needed, or if I need to dial things down for a little while, hopefully I haven't locked myself into some environment. So I would love to hear a little bit more color from you on that piece of it. >> Absolutely, I believe you nailed it, Stu. There's definitely an operational driver behind, which is I can I scale up or down my data center without having the possibility to have people on the ground. And so how can I move into a virtual data center where I have computing, storage, networking, that can follow my peak of IO, according to my business need. And there's the other angle in the current crisis. Company often are not run, but CFO becomes more important, and there's a huge attention to cost, and everything that can be moved from perpetual into a ratable cost. And therefore, cloud has a better fit for that. And, and then last but not least, is also, you know, the better integration that a lot of cloud models provide you with the cloud native apps, right? I mean, can you run Salesforce on-prem? Not really, right. So how can you have a dashboard of different business application and operational application that are better integrated with the cloud native apps. So the more you can offer your client, I.e. GreenLakes, or Metallic, or Commvault, are cloud native services that is naturally integrated with the current cloud native apps, the more you're going to make their life easier. >> One of the big items when you talk about cloud are, you know, compliance and security. Bring us inside what that means when you're dealing with HPE and Commvault together? Sure, I mean, our two organization are traditionally extremely well positioned in the enterprise markets. And when I say enterprise market, I'm talking also about the public sector, vertical, so often or financial service, often vertical industry which are heavily regulated, I think, this is one of the better benefits our joint solution offer to our clients. We know how to deal with this type of environment since the last three decades. And very often we've been at the center of that complexity. So we got the playbook that has been written a number of years ago and re-polished every year. So we feel very strong that every time we win together, one of the competitive advantage we have against our competition is precisely that ability to navigate through a heavily regulated, heavily compliance, enterprise environment that often some of our competitor, they don't have the structure, the culture, the skill set and the tools in order to make our customers life easier on that perspective. >> Excellent. Riccardo, Commvault works with many partners, what makes the HPE partnership special? >> So I think you know what I said earlier, definitely, I would say the first thing is a market segmentation over enterprise. We are experiencing a lot of success with our enterprise client. I look at the joint pipeline that we built together, I would say 90% of the clients are Global 2000 customers. And so that is definitely one number. Number two is, you know how much work we did collectively in integrating our product line and platform together. So if you look, you know, the Commvault Complete solution, and very soon also Metallic, but even Advik, that has been done a lot of effort on that side, there are natively integrated with open API so that our client really will not feel the difference of having two different silos solution. And and then last but not least, the same strategic goal and view of pushing cloud based model, a ratable model, GreenLake for HPE, and Metallic and Advik for Commvault. >> Excellent. You mentioned some of the shifting models to some of the newer solutions. Integration partnership take a little bit of time, but, what should we be expecting from, Commvault in the partnership with HPE for the rest of 2020? >> Absolutely, Steve. Definitely an acceleration. We took the decision at Commvault to focus on fewer partners but very relevant to us. We're very happy to say that HPE is one of them. And we want to do more from a product integration perspective. So the next one in line would be Metallic, and how the Metallic play and integration will play into GreenLakes and into a lot of HPE products. But also we want to do more with our field engagement. So now we have weekly or monthly, quarterly, weekly engagement with our, with our two fields organization just in order to better serve our clients and often do business with the same channel partners that we have in our ecosystem. >> Excellent. Riccardo, thank you so much for joining us. We're really pleasured to talk. >> Thank you, thank you Stu, And thank you HPE for the great partnership and opportunity. >> All right, lots more coverage from theCUBE HPE Discover Virtual Experience. I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE (upbeat mellow music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO 19, from Colorado. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. Stu and I are pleased to welcome somebody new to theCUBE and to Commvault. We've got Tom Broderick, VP of Strategy and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Commvault. Tom, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, I like you're on brand, the new Commvault venture, >> Yeah, I got to sport the colors, right? >> Metallic, very nice. >> That's right, I had the big jacket on yesterday, so. >> Oh wow, all right. So lots of change at Commvault. You're new as well, you've worked with Sanjay, now this is your third different company working with Sanjay Mirchandani, the CEO. Talk to us a little bit about your short time here at Commvault. There's been so much change that he's driving, cultural change, Metallic was something that was conceived, designed, built in a very short time period, a lot of acceleration. Your first few months here, what's it's been like? >> It's been, obviously, a ton of activity. And, one of the things that we know, and I think it's obvious, Commvault as a company has been in this state of transition. You bring a new CEO on, and we've got a new leadership team, that is merging well with the core leadership team of people that have a lot experience at the company and it's working really well. From the beginning we knew that we needed to focus on three areas, inside the company and outside. It's really around, as we talk to folks, around simplifying our business. And when we say that, normally in an event like this it goes towards how do we simplify working with our partners, how do we simplify working with our customers, how do we simplify our products, that kind of thing. But, from my perspective, one of the things that I focus on, is also, how we focus on simplifying ourselves on the inside, because this is an area where we can be much more efficient in how we bring our technology to the marketplace. So I'm focused on breaking down silos, I'm focused on driving effective communication in the business, so that we can deliver that technology to our partners and our customers. So, simplifying the business. Innovation is the next big key. So, obviously, our technology, and this is one of the things before coming on, I did a lot of research on Commvault technology, I've been out of this part of the market for quite some time, and the core technology is super solid. But we needed to innovate further, and shoulder out into different areas, and that's where you see things like Metallic come into play, the acquisition of Hedvig, where we're using our balance sheet, in a way that's very different for the company. This is our first acquisition as a company. And then of course all the new features and functions that we put into SP17, which was just released in the core product. And then lastly, it's around execution. So, simplify, innovate, execute. And when we talk about execution, a lot of that falls on the go-to-market side so this feeds right into some of those leadership changes that we announced this week, and that we announced earlier, bringing folks like Riccardo Di Blasio on, and that's how we think about things. So that's been a structure that's allowed us to do so much change in such a little amount of time. >> So Tom, I'd love to dig into that a little bit, so we've talked of Commvault traditionally has done a decent job of trying to move a little faster, so if you talk about the core product, it's on a 90 day release cycle, it's not the nine to 18 months train that many of us that have been in the industry a long time was like, okay, we got to get on the train, jam everything into it, hope we go and when we get to the end that we actually release something that we're happy with and it's supported and it works. Your last stop with Sanjay was at Puppet. Very different mindset, I'm curious what you learned there, and how that is really permeating the whole industry and what changes need to happen in Commvault to live in this new sass role like Metallic's going to offer, you know, if you're not delivering code, what are you doing. >> Yeah, it's a great question Stu, and the thing is, obviously we're living a different world than what we were 20 years ago, agile methodologies have sped everything up, and people are used to faster release cycles, how do we get new features out to customers in a much more expeditious way. The challenge though, and I'll bet if folks are watching this, the challenge internally is how you do that effectively. So one of the things that we did at Puppet was we had to get better at bringing the technology to the market, end to end across the business, so inside the business. It's not enough for the developers to say, "Okay, code's ready", and just throw it out there. Is the field enabled, is the pricing right, is the packaging right, is the documentation right, is marketing activated, all those elements of it. So again, this is a little bit inside baseball, from a Commvault perspective we're institutionalizing this as one of the core processes that helps us operate the business. I talk a lot about inside, I talk about how sometimes you have to go slow to go fast, and what I mean by that is the cross-functional elements of the business need to get together sooner in the process to make sure that everybody's on the same page, aligned, they know the key dependencies and they know when they can make their deliverables, so that when we're ready to go to market with the new technology, or new product, or a new service pack release, that everybody is ready to go with that because it does nobody any good if the code's ready, you throw it over the wall and then it just kind of falls down because people outside weren't ready. >> But operational simplification, as you describe it, that's really challenging to do, number one. Number two, doing it at a company that's been in business for 20 years, where you have different functions, you probably have some incumbent folks in there. Lot of change, how have you been able to accomplish that in such a short time period, it seems like, one of the things that Stu and I've been hearing is that there was a lot of receptiveness, within the incumbency internally at Commvault, but operational simplification it's no simple feat. >> No, it's really easy when you write it down on a piece of paper, it's hard once you get the humans involved. But the thing is, and this is one of the things that I've noticed at Commvault, it's been tremendously refreshing to me, is that, you know we have about 2,500 people in the organization and if I was going to give a massive generalization, we have 2,500 people that want to do the right thing, and they truly want to do the right thing for our customers. The issue in the past is that they haven't been aligned in all the same direction, or set of directions. So we were a little bit haphazard in certain ways. But people want to do the right thing, and once I started talking about these concepts and once we started implementing them, and now that we're actually seeing results, it's amazing, I have so many people coming up to me saying, "Wow, I didn't really get it at first, but now that we're actually implementing these kind of processes inside the company, it's amazing, the transformation that we're seeing, and we're so glad that we're doing it." >> Can you talk to us about the decisions for the Commvault ventures, that's one of the things that struck me when I saw some of the press releases earlier in the week, Metallic, a Commvault venture. The Hedvig acquisition, a Commvault venture. Some of the conversations that Stu and I have had this week, it's like a startup mentality within Commvault. Talk to us about the strategic decision to go that venture inside Commvault route. >> Yeah sure, absolutely. So obviously, Hedvig is indeed a venture, I mean, via acquiring a company that were a startup. But as we looked at bringing them into the Commvault folds, internally, inside the company, we had some guiding principles that we created straight away. And the number one guiding principle was don't break the business. Meaning, we're not going to come in and overwhelm them with Commvault. Because they created a successful entity amongst themselves, and a great technology that we think fits really well into our portfolio. But we do want to create some degree of separation because, we might be talking to different customers, this I why, I think I saw David Wigglesworth on a little bit earlier, and he's setting up the emerging technologies sales unit because they're going to be taking this to market a little bit different way. The development team is not being merged right into our core development team, they're remaining a unit amongst themselves reporting to Sanjay, right directly to Sanjay. On the Metallic side we did take the startup approach from the beginning, and we said look, it's easy for organizations to say, hey, we want to build this new thing to serve this new part of the market, and we're going to invest resources into it, let's put the plans together and go get it done. But especially for public companies too, it's easy on your 90 day cycles, to all of a sudden say, you know what, we have to rebound, or take those funds that we were going to put there, and move them elsewhere. And we said, no, we can't do this, this is super strategic to us, we have to ring fence it, and we have to let them build this product in a different way. So, I was talking about business readiness before, in terms of the process that we institute, they were actually the first group to implement it within their small team, and it created a great proof point for the rest of the organization to see how it works. >> So Tom, we've had some great conversations with a lot of the new leadership this week, you mentioned we had the conversation with Wiggs, he's starting to hire some of those sales people. We know there's always change going on in an environment, but is Commvault mostly through with the strategic leadership hires and now it's down to the next layer as to things like the overlays in some of the new initiatives, or is there still more work to be done on the structural piece of things? >> Good question Stu. You know, our work is never done. I think it's the same with any organization. I think most of the major parts and pieces are put in place, like where we want them. One of the things that you mentioned earlier, that this is my third tour of duty with Sanjay, and I say one of the really powerful things that he brings to an organization is the ability to build a strong, well-functioning leadership team. And I say well-functioning. And he did it at EMC, he did it at Puppet, and he's doing it here. And now we've got that senior leadership team in place, that is going to be continuing down this path of positive momentum that we've got. >> One of the challenges making through this big move, we said that the team definitely was receptive, we know that they're ready, but clear communication, just without getting into too many proprietary things that you've done, what tips can you have to make sure that an organization of this experience and this size isn't just going to get like, "Oh my God, whiplash, "they're changing management, I don't know where I fit." Or anything like that, how do we make sure that you get everybody pointing towards the true north, and, ready is I think the word we've heard over and over, so making sure that everybody in Commvault is ready to move forward? >> It's hard and it takes a lot of discipline. I do think you need to be as transparent as you can be, with the workforce and with your employees. They need to understand where we're going with this because if it's just a bunch of change for change's sake, that's difficult environment to live in. And we're certainly not that, we have objectives and goals, and we know what we want to get to. Obviously there are strategic elements of it that we can't necessarily discuss all the time, but at least directionally we have to be able to explain the moves that we're making in such a way that makes sense to people. If we believe it, and we've done our diligence, then it should be transferrable and we should be able to make it so that it's clear to everybody on the Commvault team. And we are focused on making that happen. Internally we do a lot of communication. Sanjay writes a lot of blogs internally. Sandy Hamilton writes a lot of blogs, Riccardo is constantly talking to the teams, and that just permeates down. We need to continue to get better at it, it's hard, organizational communications are hard. But we need to lead from the top as well, make sure that as we demonstrate what it means to communicate that all throughout the organization, we're creating that sort of culture. >> In the last few seconds here Tom, I would love to get your perspectives. What's the biggest thing that you're going to take away of the last three days of your first Commvault GO? >> Tom: Wow. >> Too many to count? >> (laughs) It's exciting, I'll say that, very specifically, walking through the Metallic booth and the Hedvig booth is inspiring to me, the amount of traffic going through those two booths, that's exactly-- >> That's probably what that applause is for right now, in fact it is, I see it. >> That is, they invited me over at 4 o'clock, I said I couldn't make it. It's been truly inspiring, and I think people are excited. And for me it's, obviously you want your customers excited, you want your partners to be excited, but for me too, it's just as important to have our employees excited, and that's a major takeaway that I'm bringing from this conference. >> I think we would echo that we've heard a lot of excited folks. Well Tom, thank you for joining Stu and me on the program, we look forward to Commvault GO 2020 already. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> Excellent. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE from Commvault GO 19. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Denver, CO, it's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO '19 from Colorado this year. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, and we are excited to welcome a couple of new guests to theCUBE. One of them brand new to Commvault. We have Mercer Rowe, VP of Global Channels and Alliances. Mercer, welcome to Commvault and TheCUBE. >> Thanks so much. >> Lisa: And we've got Carmen Sorice III, pinky out, GTM Chief of Staff for Commvault. You're the veteran here. You've been there for a year. >> A whole year, yes. >> Lisa: Exactly. Guys, so much excitement in the last, you know, nine months since Sanjay Mirchandani took over. Analysts saying, hey Commvault, you've got to upgrade your sales. You've got to upgrade your marketing. You've got to shift gears and expand the market share, and we're seeing a lot of movement in all three of those directions. The channel is really critical for Commvault, Mercer. It's responsible for a significant portion of revenue. You guys have made some strategic changes there with respect to channels and alliances. First of all, before we get into that, you're brand new, brand, brand new to Commvault. What attracted you to this company that's 20 years old that, as Sanjay was telling us, it's like the new Commvault. >> So, if I look back at my career in the last 10 years or so, I've been in IT for about 20 years, for the last 10 years or so, I've been a part of launching cloud businesses for a number of some upcoming and some new vendors, such as VMware, IBM, SoftBank and others. And a lot of that, in that process, what I've been working on is helping existing customers to move their workloads into the Cloud. We know that the market is evolving to a hybrid Cloud type of deployment model. I mean we can see that across the board with the way our customers are behaving, with the way that the Cloud vendors are behaving. But that's been a challenge because of the technology matching, right? Figuring out how to essentially put the same technology stack in the Cloud as you do on-prem to be able to move those apps over. I really started to look for companies that could bridge that gap and it could really operate in a hybrid Cloud scenario. Commvault is absolutely positioned perfectly for that in my mind, and so it's such an opportunity as we shift from our kind of act one as a great data protection company to a true hybrid Cloud data platform or data plane. >> Yeah, Carmen, maybe give us a little bit of your insight as to some of those change in roles as Mercer was just saying. Cloud is having a huge impact. You know, we've watched, you know, for years the shifting role of the traditional VAR or SI or the like, so bring us a little bit of insight as to what, today, is important to your go-to-market. >> Yeah, so what's important to our partners, especially the VARS is continuing to be relevant with our customers, right? Change is the only constant, and it's, the rate of change is just accelerating. So partners are looking for vendor partners like us to help them be relevant, to come out with the solutions that are going to be more relevant, even tomorrow. And, from a Commvault perspective, if you think about everything we've done from a data backup and a data management perspective, we've been the best in the industry, as we've just seen with Gartner and Forrester. All right, so we're proud of that. But what our partners were looking for is, where are we taking this next? Where's the innovation going to come from? So when you weave in things like Metallic that now gives our partners a consumption option. So if they have customers that want to buy software as a service, they now have that option. And then when you add software-defined storage, it takes us in to a completely different area, and you had asked Stewart about the Cloud, when you think of Cloud native applications and you think of containerization, that's changing the way backup data and primary storage data is being managed and the lines are blurring. Now with Hedvig software-defined storage, we have an opportunity to come out with integrated offers to help our partners be even more successful. >> So from a go-to-market perspective, in the last year, there's been a lot transformation, right? Not just in terms of leadership changes, but this big focus on ensuring that, as customers' environments change in this hybrid multicloud world that they are living in whether it's by design or its by acquisition or different types of growth, right? Talk to us a little bit about how Commvault foundationally is set up to really make some big shifts and big bets in new routes to market. >> Yeah, I can take that from where we were a year ago 'til now and then feel free to expand. So when you look at, we've always been a partner business, a partner friendly business. A significant percentage of our revenue, like north of 90% goes through our partners. What our partners were asking for is, hey, you guys are partner friendly, but we need you to be partner driven. So, when you come up with solutions, make sure they're channel ready, make sure they're partner ready, make sure we have our eyes on the market so that we're not just trying to sell software to our partners. We need to better understand their go-to-market models, how can we help them grow their business by offering a different variety, a variety of different services. So I think the evolution you've seen is a year ago the company made significant investments on becoming partner-first. So we've invested in channel leadership, partner leadership, not only at the corporate level but also in the field, and since Sanjay came on board, as you referenced, in February, that change is just continuing. So we're making our next level of investment in channel executives, in executives period, who have context about what channel is. And when you've lived in the channel, you've dealt with channel conflict, you bring that to the table, you bring that experience to the table. So I think you're seeing an evolution of us in our next phase of investments, helping our partners be successful, and becoming partner-first, and we've done a lot of new things with our programs that I can get in to. Financial incentives, rebates, making it easier on our partner portal to interface with us. And we're going to continue to do that, so that's we're not only just the right product choice, we're the right financial choice for our partners going forward. >> And I think, to add to that, if you look at our Metallic launch, obviously the reason we work with partners is in service of our customers. Right, that's the whole reason we partner, it's 'cause we want to great a better value proposition for our customers. And when we launched that product, a little tid bit, the company did a lot of research. Went out and talked to non, not-current Commvault customers, so potentially new greenfield customers and consistently got the feedback that they wanted to buy softwares and service applications that like that through a partner, because they could have a conversation about their entire IT environment. So it's really exciting to be in a spot where we are not only partner-first, partner-led but we're in a position where we know that this is the way our customers want to interact with us. That's number one. Number two is as we start to make some of these transitions into SaaS as we move into adjacencies like we're doing with Hedvig, it's so important to have our partners be the tip of the spear to help our customers through that journey. You know, innovation is great, but innovation also creates complexity. That's where partners help us move our customers through that journey and be successful. >> You know, we were talking to one of your launch partners earlier today and they were very excited about Metallic. On the same hide they did recognize that there is a significant change as to how they have to engage, you know, what part of the organization. You know, it's a good thing they have a Microsoft practice that this plugs into for the O365. So, bring us a little bit as to how you're helping the channel transform. >> Oh, absolutely. So, as you can see, a lot of the partners, you can see a lot of them that are here today, have moved from being pure, say in the solution of outer space, just to use as an example have moved from pure solution providers to also having MSP offerings, or other kind of services offerings, because they realize that customers want the flexibility of consumption economics while also, you know, being able to work with their trusted partner. So whether it's them, whether it's service providers who we want to drive into more of a, as a service model, and obviously we're planning to release all of this technology to our service providers to allow them to offer Commvault-based or Commvault-powered services in the market, or whether it's our great alliance partners. Companies like Nedap and Hitachi, where we have OEM relationships or other kind of very deep, collaborative relationships in the market. Adding some of these features and functions and capabilities as we move, as we help our customers to move into the Cloud, as we help them to give them more options for these multicloud or hybrid deployment models. This opens up additional apertures, additional opportunities for services, for wholistic end-to-end solutions from these partners that actually increase their ability to be relevant with the customers but also the share wallet. >> I want to get your perspective, Mercer, on differentiation, because partners, your partners work with a lot of your competitors. We know that there's a lot of coopetition, right, in technology but what is it about some of the things that Commvault is putting in place or some ideas that you have to really differentiate how you're enabling partners, whether we're talking about a VAR or a Disty or all the way up to a global services systems integrator that can deliver massive enterprise scale. >> Yeah, I can start with that if you're okay. So, it's all about listening to partners, right? Listening to what they need and what they're asking you for. Because many times a vendor becomes vendor-arrogant, right? And you're not listening to the partners. So our partners have been clear. They said we want a predictable financial model with Commvault. What translates to a program that's a full year program that gives them financial incentives so they don't have to guess what we're going to do in any given month or any given quarter with some kind of SPIF. So we've delivered on that. They've asked, number two, they said, they've said to me, and you're going to be hearing this, is you've always had great products, please, that has to continue. That's like a ticket for entry. And we've seen that we continue to lead in that space. And then I mentioned earlier about innovation. They want to know that we're going to take them into the future. So those three things are really critical for our partners. And then the last thing they ask for, which is basically a foundation across that, is field engagement. We need to be more tightly engaged with your sellers, so that we go in on joint sales calls. That we're bringing each other opportunities, and I think with the new sales leadership we have, Riccardo Di Blasio, our new CRO, our boss knows full well how to grow businesses with partners and through partners and it's by engaging in the field. And that's why we're going to have more people in the field, so that we can engage with partners and create opportunities together. So those are kind of the four foundational elements that we see. >> Mercer, I was wondering if I could get your viewpoint just in general about the channel. There was a lot of fear for a number of years about, you know, the Cloud, coming in and that readjustment. How do you think it's going? What's the general, you know, feel of the channel today, and how their interaction is with, you know, that ever-changing interaction with the big public clouds. >> You know, it's a great question, and I remember when we were first launching the cloud business as VMware. I used to go to, I built our channel model but I would introduce myself in the partner meetings with, Hey, I'm from VMware Cloud. We're here to kill your business. (laughter) Because there was a fear. And that fear, I think, in a certain way, has kind of dissipated as the market has realized as partners and mostly from the customers have realized that there is not a one size fits all strategy. The Cloud is not the solution to all IT needs. It is certainly an important part of most customer's strategy, in fact, I don't think that there are many customers that don't have Cloud as a part of their overall IT strategy, however, it's not the entire environment, and it certainly doesn't solve all needs. So, from a general perspective, the savvy partners have embraced the Cloud, they've embraced services, and they've look at it as a wholistic part of how they do business with their end customers. 'Cause as we think about, you know, to the last question, as we think about partner profitability, I think about it in two main vectors. There's margin, field engagement, revenue, and so forth, which is very, you know, this is the financial element of working with a partner like Commvault to make money. And that's obviously a very important part and that's something we will continue to invest in. Programs, and so forth, to support our partners to be profitable working with Commvault. But the other is in the practices, in how they build services, in how they build end-to-end solutions. Which, another tidbit on Metallic that some people picked up on was that we've released the telemetry APIs. Meaning that partners who are working with Metallic can see exactly what their customers are using. How are they growing? Oh, they've all of a sudden backed up a new workload. Hey, maybe they have a new project. Maybe I should call them, so I'm not waiting until renewals. I'm not waiting until the sort of forcing events to have an opportunity to place a call into my customer and say, hey, I noticed you're doing something new. How can I help? >> That insight, and sorry Carmen, we were talking about that a little bit earlier, I think with maybe with Rob Kaloustian. That was really interesting, because it really it changes the word partner, right? It can't. Because if they're actually able to follow along and maybe even make some educated predictions or suggestions to the customer, then the customer feels like, okay, you're not only selling me this, you're actively helping me optimize my deployment, learn from it and plan for what's next. So that definition of partner changes for the better. >> And I think the whole SaaS model is like the next step beyond Cloud. So you were asking me about Cloud. Very briefly, the way I've seen it over the last probably seven to nine years is, I had billion dollar VARS tell me nine years ago, don't ever try to come in here and sell me a multi tenant cloud service, 'cause I'm selling hardware. That moved to, hey, you know what? We see the customers changing. I was with a service provider. Why don't you come help us? And then a couple of years later they said, you know what? We're kind of building our own service now, so we don't need your services anymore. So, in a few, you know, three to five years, they went from stay out, I'm never going to sell a multi tenant service to quickly, well maybe not so quickly, some not as quick as others, realize that they have to get there. I think SaaS is like the next step beyond that. >> Well in this business I think if that teaches anybody anything it's never say never. Right? >> That's right. >> Well guys, thank you so much for joining Stu and me, sharing with us how things are really transforming here, but also what you're doing for global alliances and channel to really catalyze Commvault's business. We appreciate it, and we say best of luck as you enter week three? >> Yes. >> Lisa: Or day three? >> Day three, day three. >> Lisa: Gentleman, thank you for your time. >> Great, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watchin' theCUBE from Commvault GO '19. (fast tempo music)