>> Narrator: Live from Nashville, Tennessee. It's The Cube, covering Commvault Go 2018. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Welcome back to Nashville. You're watching The Cube, and this is Commvault Go. Third year of the show, 2,000 people here. I'm Stu Miniman with my co-host, Keith Townsend, and we're happy to welcome to the program two first-time guests. To my immediate left is Robert Brower, who is the vice president and chief-of-staff, and sitting next to him is Wenceslao Lada, who is the president of Worldwide Alliances, new to Commvault, recently. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right, so when we talk about alliances, partnerships, it's about the ecosystem, and first of all, you guys have an impressive show floor here. I was talking to your CMO on the open here. We go to quite a lot of shows. We love when we're in the center of the energy here. People were clapping, getting excited. You've got partners showing what they're doing. You've got the technology partners. You've got go-to-market partners. So, Robert, maybe we'll start with you. Tell us a little bit about what you look at the ecosystem, and what brings everybody together for a show like this. >> What brings everybody together is the opportunity for us to be able to create joint success for our customers. We have taken an act in the last 18 months to really pivot towards our alliance partners, with the idea that we should approach with humility. When Hewlitt Packard Enterprise, or when Hitachi or when NetApp or when Cisco is transacting with us, we're a part of a much larger transaction, and it's our responsibility to create joint value, understanding that in that eight-figure deal, we may be six or seven figures of that transaction. We want to create value acceleration through attachment for our partners, create value for our customers, but we want to do so with the understanding that we go into this partnership as an enabler for our success, and the customer's success. And that's really been a strong positive for us, and a big pivot in our corporate emotional stack, if you will: how do we work together more collaboratively to create success for our prospects customers, and ultimately, the alliance partner? >> All right, Wens, since I've talked to some of your partners here, one of the big partners, and I was talking to him offline, and he's like, "Look, one of the reasons we partner "deeply with Commvault is they've got good tech. "And that's why big, traditional companies "want to partner together." You're new to this company. >> Wenceslao: Absolutely. >> What brought you in? What was exciting you? Hopefully something was exciting you about bringing you inside. >> It's a great question. I think that the most important thing is that on my past 25 years in the industry, I've been in several companies. This is the first time I joined a company with a product portfolio. It's so robust, so simple to use, and so appealing to the customers that I think, "That's not a problem." We're here to really accelerate our business through our alliance partners, who are go to market, and really address more and more customers in our day-to-day business. >> So, the business is changing. Digital transformation, digital business. How has that affected the alliances? As you guys are starting to have different conversations with a different part of the business, the focus of your existing customers are changing. How has the conversation changed? >> Great question, if I might start? >> Yeah. >> So, when we look at our traditional partners and traditional partnerships with Hitachi as an OEM, Cisco, Hewlitt Packard Enterprise, those are big infrastructure organizations, and those big infrastructure organizations look at the Cloud with a certain degree of anxiety. Two, three years from now, that concept of raised-floor data center and Rax and Rax and servers, and secondary storage may not exist in the same light that it exists today. We can almost certainly say that. So, the great benefit that we can bring to these partners is helping them with that hybrid IT strategy, where we can provide better software, better movement, less cost and infrastructure into the Cloud, and keep people from learning that Cloud is that expensive place to learn, but rather that we can be part of their Cloud-enabling strategy in a manner that helps them feel like they've got confidence to go into the next three to five years and understand that they can create value on the data layer that says, "Today my secondary storage exists in Rax. "Next year, or two years or three years from now, "It may exist in the Cloud, but I've been part of "the data attach and valuation and control-plane creation." That makes them feel like, "Great, I've got "a long-term play with Commvault, with value, "no matter where the storage resides, "in data center, omnicloud, or back to the data center." >> Yeah, and to add to what Robert was saying, I think that this is also, if you are looking at the customer perspectives, they are demanding more. They are demanding nothing less than that the solution is going to optimize the IT resources, or is going to accelerate their outcomes. But even more important is that they want to have an ecosystem of partners, or alliances, that are going to be able to really help them to navigate and to create that journey that they are moving into the vision that they will have in the future. And I think that is where we are really excited, on creating that ecosystem of partners. >> Yeah, one of the things that's interesting when I look at not only technologies parts but the go-to-market is you're starting to help customers move toward that as a service-consumption model. Certain partners, people obviously would know, okay, AWS, that's how they do things. Companies like HPE have been helping customers move that way. >> Right. >> The channel ... I'd be interested to hear your feedback because they are right in the middle of going from boxed or shrink-wrapped software to subscription models. So, maybe you can give us a little color on how that's going from both sides. >> You want me to start? >> Yeah, start. >> Outstanding. Good question. Thank you, Steve. So, in that context, you're absolutely right. That traditional reseller that worked in the raised floor, that's really started to pivot over the last few years into a service-provider given construct. And that was almost that traditional SP role of "I can be your app layer, I can be your "host to storage layer, I can move your data around." And now, it's becoming much more consumption-based. As they look at the models that have been really pioneered by Amazon, really pioneered by the folks with Microsoft and Azure, that I want the outcome. I don't necessarily want to design a whole plan that says, "I've basically taken data center operations "and given them to you." I just want the outcome, and so being able to help our partners with the playbooks that we're creating around as a service, and being able to work inclusively with those partners that want to make that pivot, we can go there. And for those partners that don't want to make that pivot, they can resell us. And for those customers that are coming to us for the first time, but saying, "You know what? "My unique needs case might be "I only can connect to a data center that's "close to Frankfurt because I'm a German financial concern." Great, we've got a partner in that market that runs our playbook, that can help you. So, as a service for Commvault, it is really about helping to facilitate a channel, to be able to move to that next level without having to be the pioneer taking all the arrows. >> And I think ... I'm sorry. Just to add what Robert was saying. It's not only social as a service, but also in a traditional business. If you are considering the cycles that our traditional partners has been using to put all these solutions together, they've been using many of the most expensive resources that they have when doing testing, doing configuration, doing installation and things like that. And what we are doing is helping them from a technology standpoint, bringing those solutions faster to market, so that we'll be able to be much quicker when bringing that to the customers. Also that we'll be able to redeploy those very expensive resources when something more productive, like professional services, that will help more the customer in terms of the adoption of the solution. Many of you are thinking about, as a service, and also being able to expand all these different solutions through all these different branches of the customer. >> Good point. >> So, big announcements around partnerships with HPE, doing a show, the Callus and Commvault integration, great work from a technology perspective. Great example of the power of alliance. But let's talk about, you mentioned, professional services. How important is professional services, or what role does professional services play at the partner level, now that you guys have more tightly integrated with HPE and your other partners on delivering the technology? Talk to us about professional services. >> Outstanding, happy to do so. So, you could look at the different partners and their needs around professional services and construct a go-to-market model with them. Again, it's about value creation that is better together, with that partner. So, as a for instance, with HPE and Green Lake. And what they do with Point Next. They're very doubled down in terms of, "Hey, we'd like to create value around our services "on the Commvault product, integrated with our "different solution stacks." Perfect, not a problem. If you look at NetApp, NetApp said, "You know what, we're not in that service's business. "We've pivoted away from that. "We want to make sure that your solutions "can actually stand the trial test of "can a customer buy this and use this "without having to leverage in a lot of advanced services?" We had a great meeting yesterday with Cisco, who said the same thing. We're in different theaters where we don't necessarily have a services stack. Can we have our customers buy and successfully consume our joint solutions without having to rely on services to be able to do that? And so, to that end, as the partners that we work with say, "I need this stack," or, "I need this capability "or this go-to-market," our product is versatile. Our depth is sufficiently solid that we can provide that for them and align with what their GTM is. That's one of the reasons why, with the NetApp announcement that you've seen, they've come back and said, "We'd love to have you take on the entire portfolio." Because they did that hard test. Can your product sustain without a large court array of services along with it? We could; they said, "Great, we're in." >> Yeah, and also, if you think about, so they start to show the customer. The customer already have installed this. They already are using some of the software. And what those professional services can help is in two sense. One is how they are going to do the immigration for when you are thinking about hybrid IT, how much of the workloads are going entail, how much are going into secondary, and so on and so forth. So, helping the customer in that, you need to move him from one place to the other and execute and operate that. >> All right, you bring on customers having to make change. Wonder if we could unpack a little bit the appliances because that's one thing that from what I hear, and you can validate for me, Commvault, you want to buy the software from Commvault, or you want to buy the software and the hardware, Commvault, you guys are pretty agnostic 'cause you have a lot of partners that can help do that. Well, when you get into the field and you say, "Okay, wait, I started down with one partner, "and I was buying this server platform of choice, "and now I want to make a change," how easy is it? I'm sure the software is pretty much the same, but the devil's always in the details there. So, help us understand first of all big announcement to expand and mature, number of partners and the number of different options that you have, so walk through that a little bit. And then, how do you deal with the field engagement and the various hardware and software models. >> Got it. So if I can just ... I'm going to restate the question a different way to make sure I've got it. So, if we're talking about alliances and appliances, it's one of those questions of if we're both approaching a prospect, how do we establish an appropriate swim lane so that we don't find ourselves in co-opetition with that particular partner? The secret in the sauce, if you will, is create better together. Keith, you said earlier, the store wants integration with catalysts, and the ability for us to be able to create a really strong value proposition with HPE around their value creation, with both an existing customer base and then new customers they want to acquire. That better-together mantra was something that we worked out with them, and we said, "We will integrate more deeply into your technology stack "than other partners to create success for you." With NetApp, we're working on something quite similar with a specialization around where they're go-to-market is because they have a fantastic story on primary storage, as you know. SolidFire's been a great acquisition for them, and they're saying, "Boy, we'd sure like to see "the attach rates on secondary that we have on primary." One of the reasons being that potential flight to Cloud. How can we create a value solution structure with Commvault? And we're doing that now. Can't go into all of the details, but there's something really exciting happening there. With Cisco, we've aligned with both UCS and HyperFlex for some really neat solutions that, again, create better together swim laning, so that as we talk to that customer, and the customer says, "I like an X, and I need to have a Y pivot," maybe it doesn't have services attached to it, maybe it does, we can create that channel that allows us to not have to find ourselves in that co-opetition sort of a scenario with that partner. And that works not just when we're talking about two sets of direct sellers, selling to a named account, but it also works really well in the channel, too, because we've got mutual channel parters that are transacting on our price book and/or Cisco, HPE, NetApp, and creating that degree of swim-laning, it works. It helps to keep the structure so that 90 percent of those transactions have velocity, and the other 10 percent, we work through. >> So, we've talked a lot about the technology, professional services on top of the technology. Let's talk about support. Day two. There's these alliances. They can get complex, especially as you play across so many different partners. What is the day-to-day relationship between the customer and Commvault, when it comes to supporting backup and recovery? >> Got it, do you-- >> You can take it. >> Okay, I can. Great question, and I appreciate that. And I ran the customer support organization for a number of years, so it's near and dear to my heart. That's a very passionate team. They're very invested in customer success. We've structured our relationships with these alliance partners so that we are that first point of entry for that customer experience around our software. And we have a huge amount of versatility within those different storage stacks. The integration with catalyst, as a for instance, was precipitated by a long and involved enablement and training cycle for our support members throughout the world to be able to understand that software-hardware integration and the stack, so that when a customer is calling in and saying, "I've got this thing, where do I go?" It doesn't turn into vendor-vendor pointing. It rather turns into we will own the problem, and we work the solution. I can speak on experience that the support organization has any number of different JSA, Joint Support Agreements, with the vast variety of tier-one and tier-two infrastructure providers. So, we can interact very seamlessly. We own the solution. We own the customer challenge until it's resolved. And we work and solve actually a large number of hardware issues, even though the first call came into Commvault because it is the customer experience that we want to own and make sure it's successful. >> And I think that importance as well, is that we are yes reporting any of the way of how the customer is going to consume our software. So it can be directly from us. It can be through one of our alliance partners. It can be through one of our partners, or it can be also as a service. So, the most important thing, and relevant, is that the customer who's reported, we understand how the infrastructure is used, and we obviously can, as Robert says, basically fix all the different problems at the first call. >> And Robert, thank you so much for joining us-- >> Sure, Keith, thank you. >> Congratulations on the announcement and the expanded partnerships that you have here. All right, Keith and I will be back with lots more coverage here from Commvault Go. Thank you for watching The Cube. >> Robert: Thank you, gentlemen. >> Wenceslao: Thank you. (upbeat techno music)