(royalty free music) >> Woman's voice: From the Cube Studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a cube conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman coming to you from our Boston area studio and this is a special cube conversation. I have a special announcement from our friends at Commvault. So welcome back to the program. We have two of our cube alumni. First, we have Manoj Nair, he's actually the general manager of Metallic, which is a Commvault venture. First time Manoj on the program in your role with, with Commvault, welcome back. And also welcoming back Ranga Rajagopalan who's the vice president of products at Commvault. Ranga, caught up with you recently at the FutureReady event that we had over the summer. Thanks so much for joining us again. >> Sure. >> Alright. So Manoj, let's start. Metallic obviously was, you know, the standout you know, thing that everybody talked about last year at Commvault GO. Really helping to, you know, put Commvault clearly into the SaaS marketplace out there. Talking about how, you know, all the wonderful features for managing my data in a cloud environment. So there is an expansion to the portfolio that we're announcing today. Why don't you share the news? >> Yeah, absolutely Stu, you know, it's great to be back here with all of you and Metallic has come a long way from the launch. Just less than a year ago, we announced the creation of Metallic multiple different offerings whether it's protecting SaaS workloads like O365, remote endpoints and a hybrid cloud workloads. You know, the context that we're getting from our customers, especially in the last six months, increased cloud adoption and, you know, remote working collaboration suites being adopted. All of that has been a great accelerator for adoption of SaaS data protection, which is really what the Metallic is offering. We have gone to global countries and expanded to our Commvault customer base who was, you know, using both Commvault software and Metallic now. One of the key things that we're not, you know, today's announcement is focused on a Metallic cloud storage service that as a new service available for Commvault customers are looking to get a, you know, fully managed secure cloud-based SaaS target for protecting all of the data as an air gap copy and this is, you know, is more relevant than ever. >> So Manoj, using the cloud for data protection, for backup isn't new? Ranga, help us understand. I heard in there air gap, I heard, you know, leveraging the cloud. Absolutely, we've seen a huge tailwind for cloud adoption but there's that gap for making sure customers, you know, protect their data, secure their data. Do they have the skillset to be able to leverage that, so help help us drill in and understand what's different about this new service >> You're right Stu. Cloud is absolutely not new but what is really unique about today's announcement with metallic cloud storage service is that we are bringing cloud even closer to our Commvault customers. So thinking from a data management perspective, our customers want to more easily and securely get the benefits of cloud storage. What we are doing today is integrating Metallic cloud storage service as a cloud storage target into our Commvault software as well as our HyperScale X plans. And that lets our customers to seamlessly use cloud storage for their data protection, backup and archival use cases without needing to understand a lot about the cloud, without needing to get through any of the complexities. Think of it as the easy button that is now introduced into the Commvault software and HyperScale X. >> All right, so, if I heard you right, this is a managed service that Commvault is offering. Did I get that right? >> That's fast. >> Yeah >> So, you know, it's a managed service. It's public cloud storage. It's, as Ranga said, the easy button to be able to create your air gap copies in the cloud. And, you know, with everything that we keep hearing about ransomware, and we believe this is one of the, the, the most important steps in ransomware readiness, a lot of our customers are already doing it by bringing their own cloud storage on all the clouds we protect, but it's still not easy. And this is a skills gap, you know, the procurement process and all of that, you know, the management of the credentials, the setting up of the networking, all of that is encapsulated. So now, it's just, you know, it's like a built-in feature, just, you know plug it in and now you've got an on-ramp to the cloud. Make sure you have your air gap copy. >> Yeah, maybe it would help if you'd, if you'd talk about the easy button, give us a little compare contrast 'cause, right, I could go, I could spin up instance of the cloud, but, you know, who has access? What are the security settings? There's a whole litany of things that I need to make sure I've got the right identity management. It's kind of easy, but not necessarily simple to, to be able to do that. So from what you're describing I don't even need to really think, you know, yes, it's in the cloud, I'm leveraging all the wonderful things of the cloud, but I don't have to have that, that ramp up of skillset if I don't already have that in house as... Ranga, sounds like I'm understanding that. >> Yeah >> You know. >> Yeah, you're perfectly understanding and that's all there is to it. And let me expand on the PC part there, right? For us, simplicity is into end-customer experience. So I'm going to break this down from a customer life cycle perspective. Think of a Commvault customer who's backing up pretty much all the workloads in the data center. The first question they have is, you know, "For security reasons "for easy, or because I'm in a transformation project "I need to make, I need to start using cloud storage." So the first complexity they would face is understanding which cloud provider to use, what kind of cloud profile to use? or who their cloud or chasing model, which is very different from how they normally procure their hardware and software. So that's really the first dimension of simplicity that this Metallic cloud storage offer. Our customers can procure their cloud storage along with any other Commvault software and hardware just like they would do any other Commvault software. So that's the first level of simplicity. The second one is "How do I bring "that into my data management life cycle." And again, as I mentioned before, MCSS is fully integrated into Commvault software. So through the simplicity of command center, which is the one UI that brings all our products together, customers can just click to the cloud storage target and start backing up, moving copies, archiving, doing all the data management use cases, the second dimension of simplicity. And the third one really is the predictability. You know, cloud is beautiful, It brings a lot of flexibility, but it also brings in a lot of new terms. What are the egress charges? What does ingress mean? What does egress mean? What happens when I have the V store? What happens when I have the Ricola? So all of that complexity is taken away. We handle all of that in the backend. From the customer's perspective, just like they use CAP, just like they use the Desk, now, they can use cloud. We handled all the egress and all those kind of stuff in the backend. From the customer's perspective, they get a simple, predictable price point. So from the time of choosing, procuring it, using it and continuously getting the best benefits out of it, the easy button extends across that entire dimension. And the beauty in all of this is customers getting all the benefits of cloud without having to really understand much about cloud. So that's really the benefit we bring to the table with MCSS. >> Yeah. Manoj, Commvault has a long history of being able to live on, you know, various infrastructures that customers have. Are you able to share who the, I'm assuming there's a cloud partner for part of this, so who is the, the underlying IS? >> Yeah, so still, you know, end of June doing, we announced the next phase of our strategic partnership with Microsoft. So this is a, you know, one of the first big, new things that is coming out of the giant partnership between Commvault and Microsoft around Metallic and Microsoft Azure. There's a lot of things that, you know, we're jointly doing that are unique that make all of the simplicity Ranga, you know, just mentioned, come to life and, you know, that's, you know, power of the end as I call it. It's Commvault and Metallic and Microsoft, you know, coming together to make this really easy for our customers to start getting the value out of leveraging cloud for the data protection. Yeah. >> Well, Manoj, it seems natural extension of what you've already talked about for what Metallic can protect. Of course, you've got the, you know, the business suite from Microsoft, can you help frame it for us, you know, where this new, the MCSS fits in the Metallic portfolio today? >> Yeah absolutely. So if you look at, you know, what... I'll give you a customer journey and what's been happening. If you are not a Commvault customer today and you're looking at "What's my best 0365 data protection option," if you go to microsoft.com, you'll actually find Metallic in there as the recommended offer. And they, they might start the journey there or you're an existing Commvault customer and you start rapidly adopting teams and O365, you know, post COVID. The, the, you know, Metallic is the default option. So it doesn't matter how you enter in, you're now getting a full, you know, SaaS actual backup as a service, no storage costs, no egress costs. And so our Commvault customers have been asking, "We love that part of it, why not make that available "for all of the other data that is being protected "by Commvault, either appliance or software on-prem?" and, you know, in a very simple way, it's, you know, the best things are driven by customers. And in this case, our customers came to us and said, "We love the simple button "not just what's included in the Metallic service, "we would like that that to be available, even for, "you know, the existing software you're protecting on-prem "for the air gap copy use case is kind of the biggest one." And you know, all of the things that Ranga said in terms of simplicity now comes to bear. And it's something that we were including inside the Metallic SaaS offerings. Now, it's available for software and appliance customers. >> Yeah. I definitely, I've heard of the industry now. Microsoft seems a little bit more amenable to, you know, not charging for egress, with some of their partners, when they put together these solutions. Ranga, Manoj has mentioned air gap a couple of times, can you help us frame, you know, what that means today? You know, I even think back, you know, ape that most people are familiar with. Even, I think about, you know, Google, you know, use ape for many years even in the public cloud to give that air gap. Of course, we've talked to your customers lots about how to protect against ransomware. So how does, how does this fit in the new solution? >> You know, unfortunately, Stu today. It's, it's important reality for us to discuss the ransomware readiness. Number of attacks are going up depending on, you know, which your source you are listening to. So security is a very important concern in top of our customers' minds. Now, MCSS is cloud storage, so it is off site storage. So it comes with all the natural layered security that it's built into cloud storage. Additionally, Commvault brings a complete ransomware protection, protection and recovery framework, which becomes inherently available with the MCSS. And let me explain that in a few very simple quotes. Now, the entire journey from on-prem to the cloud storage is completely encrypted. So that's, you know, a very important part of the order on security mechanism, but here is where it really becomes cool Commvault software is managing the cloud credentials, the cloud keys. So the entire access to MCSS as a cloud storage target is managed to Commvault. So there isn't an independent cloud admin accessing that storage, which opens it up for any kind of an intentional or unintentional access. Anything can happen when you allow that access. So Commvault completely manages that access the keys are owned by the customer, but managed by a Commvault. So it's a really air gap security, layered security mechanism that you get in combination with the entire framework of air gap isolation, anomaly protection, the authentication, everything that is built into the Commvault framework. So when you, when you bring in the simplicity that we talked about earlier, you can apply that to the security angle as well here. Instead of making the customer manage yet another piece in the jigsaw, we are managing it for them. So from their perspective, it is a seamless extension to their data management strategy while it also adds an extra layer of security and a readiness to recover from ransomware attacks. >> While it's being launched today, we already have customers that have, you know, we have accelerated into adoption of MCSS and it's coming exactly for the scenarios Ranga just said. You know, they, they have a requirement for a cloud copy. If you have seen that on the Metallic SaaS side that some of the customers might be in pilot mode. And because they were in pilot mode, they were quickly able to recover from attacks that happened. Unfortunately, those, those things are reality. And we have had customers who after the attack go and say "I want to make sure it's much easier to recover from that." And so we already have our first customers who are starting to adopt the service even as we launch it today. >> Well. I'm so glad you brought up the customer examples. Manoj, give us a little bit just the high level view, you talked about the growth and adoption of Metallic overall, and you just talked about kind of the, the single management. You got any SaaS for us, you know, how much data do you have in the cloud now and, you know, what's the growth looking like? And talk a little bit about, you know, what we can expect going forward from this portfolio. >> Yeah, I, you know, I don't know how many people disclose this or not, but we have disclosed it in the past, we have over an exabyte of data today in the cloud that, you know, our customers are, you know, either using a Metallic or bringing their own cloud with Commvault and writing to the cloud. So, you know, that's probably, you know, best in class out there. What we are also seeing is the acceleration of that, you know, so we look at it's, you know, it's exponential growth over a hundred percent, you know, we're, we're seeing that, that rise in leverage yet it's something that when you look at the overall industry percentages, it depends on whose stats you use, it's probably only 5%, maybe 10% that are leveraging the cloud for anything, whether it's, you know, in this case, it's data, cloud data as a secondary target. So there's a lot of untapped potential. And the things that Ranga said I think really are the ones our customers are telling us as we tested this out. And those are the biggest reasons. Right cost, you know, I'm concerned about it. I've heard that it's unpredictable. It goes up, people start spinning up other things that they shouldn't be. And so I want predictable costs, you know, security and the whole model around it, the, the governance of the keys, and finally skills, everyone's busy, no one's trying to not be, you know, upping their cloud skills yet it's not something that is very, you know, very easy for most people to, you know, become an expert. And if you're not an expert while you're protecting your data, that's not, you know, that's not something you want to do, so you kind of hold back. And I think this is really the biggest thing that customers are looking at, like our cloud expertise packaged in an offering solving all those things? >> And Stu, we discussed this at FutureReady of how the Commvault portfolio continues to come closer and closer together in order to deliver that increased value to our customers. In July, when we were having a similar conversation, we saw how Hedvig came in as the scale load storage in our HyperScale X integrated data protection plans. And we can see that we have Metallic Cloud Storage Service coming in as a cloud extension to our software, as well as HyperScale X. So it's kind of bringing the best of both worlds, customers who want to continue to stay on for them, protect their on-prem workloads with on-prem footprint. You have HyperScale X as a very nice scale, which integrated our plans. And as the capacity needs increase, as the security needs increase, you have MCSS now as a managed storage extension, bringing together those pieces of the portfolio. Now, the thing that is now available already as of September 15 is our ability to manage Metallic as part of command center. So while you want that SaaS flexibility and you're using Metallic to protect the SaaS workloads let's also realize that there are a bunch of other workloads that you might be protecting using Commvault software all through HyperScale. We can now bring all of them together into the simplicity of command center. So it, again, takes away another point of complexity for the customer. Just one UI, go ahead, do protect the workloads the way you want. With the form factor you want. SaaS software, or our plans, and we bring it all together into a single management framework for you. So you're going to continue seeing the portfolio coming closer together because our prime concern is to provide flexibility of choice to customers. Flexibility of choice in so many different ways, you know, you can use software, our plans or SaaS. You can bring your own on-prem storage, cloud storage, or if you want to hit the simple button, use Metallic clouds for it. So, so you're going to see that happen as we move forward. >> Well. Manoj, Ranga, thank you so much for the updates. Congratulations on the launch. Love little tagline leading it. We're we're making the cloud just a little bit closer to us. >> It is, >> It is a lot closer. >> Thank you. Thank you Stu for your time. >> Thank you. >> I'm Stu Miniman. Thank you so much for watching theCUBE. (royalty free music)