(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to the Cube Studios in Palo Alto California, for another Cube conversation. Where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry. I'm your host Peter Burris. Every Enterprise is saddled with the challenge of how to get more value out of their data. While at the same time trying to find new ways of associating value with product or value with service and to work with the different technology suppliers to create an optimal relationship for how they can move their business forward within a data-driven world. It's a tall order but 2020 is going to feature an enormous amount of progress and how enterprises think about how to handle the people, process and technology of improving their overall stance towards getting value out of their data. So to have that conversation today, we're joined by a Guy Churchward, who's the CEO of Datera. Guy welcome back to the cube. >> Thank You Peter, I appreciate it. >> So before we go any further give us a quick update what's going on with Datera? >> We're doing pretty well. I mean this year's we're just going to close it off. So we're in Q4 right at the end of it. You mentioned data-driven, you know I mean that was obviously one of my key excitements, years ago we kind of moved from a hardware resiliency or Hardware-driven to software resiliency, Software defined and I do think that we've hit that data-defined, data-driven infrastructure right now. I've been in the CEO role now just about a year. I've been on the board since August of a year and change ago and part of it is we had a little bit of an impedance mismatch of message, technology and basically I go to market. So the team quite brilliantly produced this data services platform to do data driven architectures. >> Mmmh. >> But customers don't wake up every morning and go, I need to go buy a data-driven, how do I buy one? And so when I came in I realized that you know what they had was an exceptional solution but the market isn't ready yet for that thought process, and what they were really buying still was SDS, software defined storage. >> So it almost in a connect way. so I'm going to buy an SDS and connect it to something and get a little bit of flexibility over here but still worry about the lock in every where else. >> Yeah, exactly and in fact even on the SDS side. What they weren't looking for is bring your own server storage. What they were looking for was automation and they were looking to basically break out and have more data mobility and data freedom. And so that was good and then the second one was our technology really sells directly to enterprises, directly to large scale organizations and it's very difficult as a start-up, small company to basically be able to punch straight into a global account, you know. Because they'll sit back and say, well you know would you trust your family jewels to a company that's got 40 employees in Silicon Valley. >> Right. >> And so what you really have is this and get the message right and then make sure you have to flow through to the customer credibility right and we were fortunate to land a very strategic relationship with HP. And so that was our focus point. Right. So we basically got on board with HP, got into their complete program, started selling very closely to them of which their sales team has been marvelous and then we're just finishing that that year. The good news is and you know I'll give you a spoiler I care about Billings, you know I mean we actually move from an appliance business to a software business exclusively, and so we basically sell term agreement. So if you think about it from a bookings perspective, that's important but basically how much you bill out is more important. From a Billings perspective I think we're going to run roughly 350% up year-over-year. >> Ooh. >> Yeah which is kind of good. Right I mean in other words it was a bit of a pat on the back that seems very happy with that and then even from new account acquisitions if I count the amount of accounts that we bought in this year and to date, entirely since 2013 we've only had one customer churn, so all the customers are coming with us but if I count this year, if I look at 16 17 and 18 we've actually bought more customers on board in 19 than all three pulled together. So we're actually finishing a very very strong year. >> Congratulations. Now if we think about going into 2020 you're closing this quarter, but every startup has to have a notion of what's going to happen next and what role you're going to play. And what happens next. So if I look back I I see the enterprise starting to assert themselves in the cloud businesses. That's having an effect on on everybody. But it really becomes concrete you know, the rubber really meets the road at the level of data. So as you start to grow you're talking more customers, as you talk to more customers and they expressed what they need out of this new cloud oriented world, what kinds of problems are they bringing to the table as far as you're concerned? >> Yeah, I mean they initially come to us so what I would say is every account that we've run we've replaced traditional arrays storage arrays and every account we've run, we've actually competed against SDS vendors and whether that's something like Dells, VxFlex or even vSAN, VMware's vSAN and which are probably the two most well-known ones. A lot of cases I mean we actually have 100% win rate against that in these competitive situations, but interestingly most customers now are putting dual source in place. So in fact the reason that we've ridden pretty quickly and we've run lots of deals, isn't because we're going in and saying VxFlex is failing or vSAN is failing, but they want something extra, they want automation, they want desegregation, they want scale >> They want second source. In many respects of sales is, it's succeeding but you have to push a little bit harder and that is ease most easily done by bringing in another platform with crucial functionality... >> Yeah >> ...and a second source. >> And I think you're on the money there Peter because if I look at second source in the traditional array business, no CIO worth their soul is a single source vendor so they they will have Dell and they'll have HP or they'll have HP and they'll have Pure, doesn't matter and and even on HCI you'll see the HCI vendors, Nutanix is doing very well, so is Dell. So therefore they'll have that from second source if its critical. So if an environment is critical they always have a second source and so even now when you look into software-defined, this market in 2019 was very much like the, let's get the second source in place. And that shows you where we are on the maturity curve because people is basically moving on this en mass. Now that's 2019 you're asking about 20, 21, 22 moving forward. The reason that the traditional arrays weren't working for them is whether it's flexibility or it's basically management costs or maintenance, but it's data freedom. It's what they're really looking for. You know, what is a data center? Is it on-premise, is it cloud? It's definitely cloud but the question is is it on-premise cloud? Is it hybrid cloud, is it public cloud? And then you mention edge. You know we actually find customers who are looking and are saying look, the most important thing for us is being data-driven and what data-driven basically articulates is we get data in, we analyze it, we make decisions on it and we win and lose against our competition as fast as we can be accurate on that data set. And a lot of the decisions are getting made at the edge. So a lot of people are looking at saying my data center is actually at the edge, it's not in the center in the cloud, right. >> Well in many respects, it's for the first time a data center actually is what it says it is, right. Because the data center used to be where the hardware was and now increasingly enterprises are realizing that the services and the capabilities have to be where the data is. >> Yeah. >> Where the data is being produced, where the data is being utilized and certainly where the data, where decisions are being made about what to keep what not to keep, how much of it etc, and that that does start to drive forward an increased recognition that at some point in time we are going to talk more about the services that these platforms, or these devices or these software-defined environments provide. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, yeah you have and even if you look at that, you know ... what the AI/ML, you know I mean if I if I kind of step back and I look at what a customer's trying to do which is to utilize as much data as possible, in a way that they have data freedom that allows them to make decisions and that's really where AI and machine learning comes in. Right you know everybody employs that. I recently bought a camera, shockingly inside the camera it's got ML functionality into it, it's got AI built into it, my new photo editing software on my iPad is actually an ML-based system. They don't do it because it's a buzz word, they do it because basically they can get a much higher level of accuracy and then use data for enrichment, right. And then in the ML track, the classic route was I'm going to create a data lake, right. So I got my data lake and I've got everything in it then I'm going to analyze off the back of it. But everybody was analyzing once it's in the data lake. And what they've realized is to compete, they actually have to analyze much quicker. >> Right. >> And that's at the edge, and that's in real-time and that string based. And so that's really where people are sort of saying I can't ... I'm not going to have any long pole in my technology tent. I'm not going to have anything slow me down, I have to beat my competition and as part of that they need complete fluidity on their data. So I don't care whether it's at the edge or it's in the center or in the cloud, I need instant access to it for enrichment purposes and to make fast and accurate decisions. So they don't want data silos. You know, so any product out there that basically says me me me me give me my data and therefore I'm going to encrypt in such a ways you can't read it and it's not available to anybody else. They are just trying to eradicate that. And and we've sort of moved. It's a weird way of putting it but we've moved from hardware-defined to software-defined and I think we've moved into this data-defined era. But at the same time, it's the most stupid thing for me to say, because we've never not been in a data-defined era. But it's the way in which people think with their architecture as they sign up a data center now or a cloud and they're not saying, hey so about the hardware, it's based on that or it's the software. It's always going to be about the data. The access to the data, however before you get excited. (laughs) The thing that I kind of look at I say so what has fundamentally changed? And it's the fact that we always used to have to make a decision. You know, I ran a security analytics business and when you do things like log management, it's about collecting as much as data so in other words accuracy beats speed. And then security event management is speed beats accuracy. Because you can't ask questions of the same data. But technology is caught up now. So we've actually moved from the do you want accuracy? Or do you want speed? It's like "or arena". So people were building architectures in this "or" world, you know. Do you want software-defined? If you want software-defined you can't have Enterprisilities. Why not? Well, if you want an enterprise application, I mean remember the age-old adage. You should never buy a version 1.0 of an app. >> Right. But what happens is they want they want this ... people are turning around saying I need an enterprise application, I want full data access to the back of it, I actually need it to be fluid, I need it Software-defined, I don't know where it's going to be based and I don't want to do forklift upgrades. I want and and and and and. Not or, so what we've actually moved to is a software-defined era you know, and a data-defined architecture in an "and arena". And where customers are truly winning and where they're going to beat their competition, is where they don't settle and say oh I remember back two years ago, this happened and therefore we should learn from that, and we shouldn't do that. They're actually just breaking through and saying I'm going to fire the application up I want it up and running within 30 days, I want it to be an enterprise application, I need it to be flexible, I needed to have a hype of scale and then I'm going to break it down and by the way I'm not going to pay contractually to an organization to build all that infrastructure. And that's really why soup to nuts, as we move forward not only they sort of building an infrastructure is data-defined infrastructure, they don't want lock-in. They want optionality and that means they want term licenses which is sure, they don't want these proprietary silos and they need data flexibility on the back of it. And those are the progressive customers, and by the way I've not had to convince a single customer to move to software-defined or data-defined. Every client knows they're going there, the question on the journey is, how fast they want to get. >> Right, when? >> Yeah. >> So if so look every single every single enterprise, every single business person takes a look at what are regarded as the most valuable assets and then they hire people to take care of those assets, to get value out of those assets, to maintain those assets, and when we move from a hardware world where the most valuable asset is hardware that leads to one organization, one set of processes, one set of activities. Move into a software world to get the same thing. But we agree with you, we think that we are moving to a world that is data first, where data is increasingly going to be the primary citizen and as a consequence we're seeing firms reinstitutionalize how work is done, redefine the type of people they have, alter their sourcing arrangements, I mean there's an enormous amount of change happening because data is now becoming the primary citizen. So how is Datera going to help accelerate that in 2020? >> Yeah I mean and again that's part of data access. And then also part of data scale. Back probably six seven eight years ago. EMC we were even I remember Steve Manley is a good buddy of mine, we went on stage and we talked about bringing sexy back to back up. We were trying to move away from backup admins just being backup admins to backup admins actually morphing their job into being AI/ML. You know, I remember a big client of mine, and it wasn't in the EMC days, it was before that were basically saying they have to educate their IT staff, they want to bring them up as they move forward. In other words, you can't ... what you don't want is you don't want your team, because it all comes down to people. You don't want them stuck in an area to say we can't innovate forward because we can't get you away from this product, right. So one of our customers at Datera is a SaaS vendor. And their challenge is they had traditional array business even though it was in a SaaS model, it was basically hardware in the background and they would buy instances and they found that their HR cost, their headcount cost was scaling, >> With the hardware. >> Exactly, and and they were looking at and going, what does that do to my business? It does one or two things, either one is it means that cost I mean do I bear that I don't make profitability and I can't drive my business or do I lay that on my customers and then the cost goes up and therefore I'm actually not a cloud scale. And I can't hire all the people I need to hire into it. So they really needed to move to a point of saying how do I get to hyper scale? How do I drive the automation that allows me to basically take staff and do what they need to do. And so our thing isn't removing staff, it's actually taking the work that you have and the people and put them in a way they really matter. So in other words if you think about the old days of I'm going to mess this up but, I talked to somebody recently about what IT stands for. And they said IT should stand for information technology, right. I mean that's really what it is. But, but you know for the last 20 years it stood for infrastructure technology? >> Yeah. >> And that's frustrating, because in essence we got way too many people managing a lot of crap. And what they really should be doing is focusing on what makes the business happen. >> Yeah. >> And for instance I like to run a business by money in and money out, everybody else does and then you look at it and you say well, how do I get more money coming in? By being smarter and quicker than somebody else. How do I do that? By data analytics. Where do I want to put my work? Well I want to put it into the ML/AI and I want more analysts to work on it. I want my IT staff to do that. Let's move them into that. I don't want them you know rooms and reams of people trying to make it you know manage arrays that don't function the way they should or... >> One more percent out of that array of productivity. >> Yeah, abnormally trying to scale HCI solutions to a hyper scale that actually is impossible for them to do it. >> Right. >> You know and and that was the thing that really what Mark, who was the founder of Datera and the team really did is they looked at it from a cloud perspective and said it's got to be easier than this. There must be a way of doing low lights-out automation on storage. And that's why I was saying when I took over, I kind of did the company an injustice by calling it an SDS Tier 1 vendor. But in reality that was what customers could assume. And we're basically a data services platform that allows them to scale and then if you hop forward you go how do you open up the platform? How do you become data movement? How do you handle multi-cloud? How do you make sure that they don't have this issue? And the policies that they put in place and the way in which they've innovated, it allows that open and flexible choice. So for me, one is you get the scale, two you don't have forklift upgrade three is you don't have human capital cost on every decision you make, and it actually fits in in a very fluid way. And so even though customers move to us and buy us as a second source for SDS, once they've got the power of this thing they realize actually now they've got a data service platform and they start then layering in other policies and other systems and what we've seen is then a good uptick of us being seen as a strategic part of their data movement infrastructure. >> You expand. >> Exactly. >> Guy Churchward, CEO of Datera, thanks again for being on the Cube. >> My pleasure. Thank you Peter. >> And thank you for joining us for another CUBEConversation. I'm Peter Burris, see you next time. (upbeat music)