>> Announcer: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's The Cube. Covering Commault Go 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Commvault Go 19! I'm Lisa Martin, with Stu Miniman. And Stew and I are pleased to welcome to The Cube for the first time, we have Chris Powers, VP and General Manager at HPE. Chris, welcome! >> Thank you very much, thank you. I was telling Stu earlier, you know, long time watcher. First time participant. >> All right, well, awesome, we love that. So here we are in your native area of Colorado. We were just talking about the weather which is probably a topic if you live or visit Colorado that is always an interesting conversation because it changes >> Chris: Rapidly. >> So rapidly, exactly. You guys had snow last week, we have beautiful weather. Well, at least so far this week. But I only got in last night. >> Well stick around till this weekend cause we'll have some more snow. >> All right, I brought some boots. So Chris, talk to us, you've been a long time HPE guy, let's have just kind of a status of the HPE, Commvault relationship, the partnership. What's going on there? >> Absolutely, so Commvault is key important partner to HP. We actually have an arrangement via a capability we call HPE Complete by which we actually skew up Commvault products, we go through the background working with Commvault making sure we have application integration so that customers have a lot of confidence in them. And then a customer or a partner can buy a complete solution on a single P.O. from both companies. So it really provides that ease of transaction, ease of evaluation. And then confidence in the delivered solution that they purchased from HPE. >> So confidence and simplification are great from doing a transaction. Talk to us about how Commvault and HP are working together to really have customers in this multi-cloud world that a lot of them are living in have confidence that they're able to access secure data in a way that is as simple as it can be. >> Well there's a couple things we have. We have integration with Commvault products with a number of our, across a number of our platforms. Commvault is the backbone for our HPE GreenLake backup as a service product, right? And what that gives is the confidence and the capabilities of having a cloud-like experience for your backup environment. But it's managed and controlled on premises. So it brings the benefits of both with the Commvault and Telesnap technology we've got that integrated in with our HPE Primera 3Par and Nimble platforms and that makes snapshot management much more seamless and much more of core portion of their data protection strategies. So there's a number of connection points that we have and we will continue over time to just continue to broaden and exploit that, you know, where the opportunities exist. >> Yeah, I just had a conversation with Craig Rutledge, last week about GreenLake. Bring us inside your customers and you know, how is it some of their buying patterns are changed? GreenLake's actually been around for about nine years, I hadn't been aware that it had been around that long. But you know, cloud and as a service, Commvault's talking about there's a new SaaS offering that they have. You know storage used to be just something you thought about with a box. Now, you know, software is one of the key delivery mechanisms for how I manage and deal with my data. >> That's correct. Well, you know, a lot of the consumption models changed. You know quite a bit over time. And there are more and more, we're seeing more and more of our customers really being more interested in not purchasing the box. Really, I mean the box delivers something. Really, this is shifting more towards purchasing what is being delivered, right. And so that's why these SaaS service models are really that significant. They're a market changer in a couple of aspects. First of all it changes the economics. You know from a consumption standpoint about what are you purchasing? Second thing it does, is it pushes back under the vendor more of the responsibility of the day-to-day maintenance and the activities. Right, it offloads. And so you could be using these IT, you know, compute storage services. Really focusing on them to bring your business outcome as opposed to spending a lot of your time and energy managing the infrastructure itself. >> Chris, of course we've heard a lot about data this week. One area I'm surprised I haven't heard about it much, maybe I just haven't been in the right conversations, is AI. And I know, I've talked to your peer Patrick Osborne, quite a few times about how AI is impacting your portfolio. Maybe help us understand how it fits into this whole discussion. >> Certainly, you know, it's really in two forms. One is AI to support your infrastructure management itself. Right? So a key component of our strategy is something we call the global intelligence engine. And that brings with it a combination of really monitoring what's happening within the environment. Creating from that a set of, think of fingerprints. Associated with workloads such that we can begin to trace and understand, based upon those fingerprints, if there's something changing in the environment, applying rules based AI to understand what an immediate type of response is. So that's how we're using it to simplify infrastructure management, because it is amazingly complex to what it used to be years ago. The second way though is actually bringing to market capabilities that support AI type workloads. And that's a step that Patrick's really focused on with our Mapar, blue data, integration. And it's really, so it's bringing both of those sets to marketplace. Wanting to help customers better manage their environment and then more on effectively being able to utilize those tools to then manage their businesses. >> And this is part of your, the intelligent data platform strategy that HPE is talking about. Can you kind of walk us through that IDP pitch? >> Absolutely. So, first and foremost it starts with workloads. Right? And it's workload optimized systems. That being either from your primary, from you file based from your object in secondary all the way to managing your cloud capabilities. And it's providing that workload mobility, data mobility across those platforms. We layer on top of that this notion of the global intelligence engine. Right? That I've already spoken to. And then what we have is effectively then able to make sure that we have SaaS type plugins for infrastructure management, right? Plugins and (mumbles), chef puppet and so forth. And then also optimizing from an application standpoint what is necessary from a workload standpoint from a data protection standpoint. In all of this then focused at consumers. Be it the data administrators. Be it the line of business owners being the IT infrastructure ops people. It's really this layered sort of capabilities but it starts and ends with workloads. Right? We don't talk about platforms, it's really how do you optimize the capabilities for a specific set of workloads, recognizing that the data associated with those workloads needs to transition over time. >> Chris, wondering if you have any customer examples that might be able to illustrate the power of HPE plus Commvault. >> Certainly, just reflecting back to the backups as a service, via HPE GreenLake. We have number of large customers that utilize GreenLake for the core of their operational activities. Just recently we took down a number of large deals in Europe utilizing HPE with Commvault to provide that in a backup environment managed by HPE GreenLake. >> And from the value of doing that is that you know obviously there's simplicity. You know, does that have an organizational change to how they think about their data protection once their, they leverage GreenLake. >> Well definitely, upon you know leveraging GreenLake, because no longer do you have this arm of backup administrators, you know sitting with you, within your company, right? You are procuring a service, right? You're no longer having to take care of it and manage that infrastructure, be responsible for it. And we take it upon ourselves then to also make sure that that infrastructure is being continuously updated, refreshed. Basically taking that headache of IT management away and focusing on the business outcome. >> Yeah, I'm wondering too, you could probably give a good kind of longterm view of this. How do you see that as different from the previous trend of outsourcing that we've gone through? >> So, I think that trend of outsourcing a lot of times that turned into, once you played it out over a couple of years, turned into more of a game of asset sweating. Right? And so you know, this notion of continually keeping up from a serviceability standpoint, optimizing the capabilities, I think it was more of a focus from an asset utilization play as opposed to delivering a service. I think the real change now, is delivering a service and what does that involve as opposed to like I said, arbitrating and taking advantage of an asset play. >> So when you were talking, you mention the term business outcomes a second ago and my ears perked up, so whether you're talking about whether it's a large retailer or it's a bank for example, talk to us about some of the business outcomes that you guys together with Commvault are helping customers achieve. You talked about kind of a consumer focus, but in terms of kind of like distilling that down to how an organization is maybe delivering new products and services because not only is the data protected and it's available, it's recoverable they've got the AI to be able to gain insights from it. Favorite story maybe that shows like business transformation by leveraging HPE and Commvault together. >> So I think, you know, that the best stories there are really in regards to given that we've freed up resources from that day to day operational type of activities and coupled together with last year, as you mention, that AI type understanding the insights. What it's really doing is it's allowing companies to really accelerate from a flexibility standpoint it's that notion of flexibility and speed to be able to react quickly. And we're seeing that across a large number of customers and that's really what's differentiating customers in this new, what we call the intelligence era, it's that speed and agility to adopt those new quick, adopt new business models, adopt new opportunities quickly change on a dime to recognize when things are changing and then chase after it and take the opportunity. >> So as we're here at day one of Commvault Go 19 this is their fourth event but a lot has changed for them since Sanjay Mirchandani came onboard just about what nine months or so ago, I'm just curious, you've been a partner a long time. Your perspectives on maybe this new Commvault or this Commvault 2.0 that you're seeing that HPE is partnering with? >> So I think it's refreshing, right? It builds into it a new energy, right? A new sense of focus and it's really I think as all of this within the IT industry are recognizing it's this whole notion about service and customer, really it's customer experience and the service enablement that we provide from infrastructure capabilities. I mean we are providing the tools to allow these companies to accelerate and so I think it's really great. It's really great, you know? Companies need to go through transformation, new leaders come in, breathe some different viewpoints and so forth and I think it's very healthy. >> Cultural change is always challenging to do but in some cases it's like you said, it's refreshing, they've also done a lot even with the launch of metallic yesterday just in terms of how quickly we are seeing them go from ideas to you know, to conceiving technologies and delivering them quite quickly to not just their kind of sweet spot of the enterprise, the large global enterprises, but you know down into the mid-market. So in terms of that speed and agility I think there articulating that and showing that pretty well. As to your point, customers have to have the ability whatever size they are, whatever type of industry they're in to be able to react quickly to take advantage of the next wave or be on the front of that next wave and having an infrastructure that is smart, that is optimized, cost-efficient, is as table-stakes to that. >> Absolutely, absolutely. Right, and I think what they've been able to demonstrate this week, you know, as part of their announcement said, is that flexibility, that awareness that there's continuous opportunities to be chased. >> Excellent. Well Chris, we thank you for joining Stu and Me on the The Cube today, telling us what's new with HPE and Commvault. We appreciate your time. >> Appreciate it, thank you very much! >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube, from Commvault Go 19! (upbeat music)

>> [Announcer] - Live from Nashville, TN it's the Cube covering Commvault Go 2018. Brought to you by Commvault. >> [Stu Miniman] - Welcome back to the Cube's first time in Nashville, TN here at Commvault Go. I'm Stu Miniman and with my co host Keith Townsend and happy to welcome back to the program, Dave Kloempken, who's the global Sales Director with Cisco. Dave, thanks so much for joining us. >> [Dave Kloempken] - I appreciate the opportunity to be here. This is great. >> [Stu] - Alright, so we've been talking this morning with some of the Commvault executives and ecosystems and partnerships are of course really important. Where they sit, they're a software company. They work with partners to do appliances and they've had a partnership with Cisco for a while now, But been some updates. So, maybe give us your view point about the partnership itself and give us the news that was announced this week at the show. >> [Dave} - Yes, so Commvault is a kind of critical partner for us so it leads to us doing like more of a portfolio sales approach. Which is important when we're out competing in the marketplace. And if you like at from a Cisco perspective, we sell convergent infrastructure solutions. We sell hyper convergent solutions. They run companies, mission critical business applications. And in the past, we hadn't really participated in that data management part of the business. And that's really one of our key core pillars going forward and Commvault is a key partner, especially in the enterprise space, is where we think we can really be successful. >> [Stu] - Yeah, Dave, drill us in a little bit more. I think at Cisco. I mean Cisco really drove that convergent infrastructure marketplace when you talk about the partnerships with IBM, with the VCE, Dell EMC activity and many other storage partnerships. I mean this is billions and billions of dollars of the foundational layer for lots of enterprises around the globe. So, data of course, a critical component of that. What do Commvault and other partners like that what do they mean to that overall solution? What are you hearing from your customers? >> [Dave] - So, in this part of the convergent infrastructure business, we have a lot key partnerships and from a Cisco perspective we own about 60% of the server part of that business. So, we're really the market leader in that area of the business. And what we're seeing, though, is our customers are looking for more than just that. So, they're looking for us to expand into other areas. So, it could be analytics. It could be data management. It could be IOT. And those are all really critical. When you think about probably the past decade or so, I would say we see an infrastructure led kind of part of the business where customers stored vast amounts of data. But they really didn't use it. And today what we're seeing is really the applications and data arcing. We're seeing that customers want to gain valuable business insights. They're looking to gain competitive advantage. They have to protect the privacy of that data. So, you think about things like GDPR and other global regulations. You think about big data. But now artificial intelligence is really taking off. The intelligent edge with IOT and analytics. Again, to use the data competitively. So again, we think it's more of a infrastructure led world where really data is kind of that new oil. >> [Stu] - Alright, so we know Cisco has a lot of partners. Commvault has a lot of partners. The branding that you have together, if I understand, is Scale Protect. >> [Dave] - It is. >> [Stu] - Just give us the thumbnail, why does one plus one Scale Protect equal more than the sum of the parts? >> [Dave] - So, with Scale Protect there's a couple of things. It's Cisco and Commvault going into offer a complete data management solution. It provides that seamless scale ability. Also, what it does is it provides us the ability to kind of scale and simplify the customer experience. If you look at kind of Legacy Data Protection, or Data Management Solutions, you have lots of touch points, lots of activities, lots of configuration, lots of room for error to go on. So, if we can use best practices and really optimize that performance, to scale seamlessly; that really provides a customer with a much better solution than you're going to get in kind of the old Legacy or even if people are selling things differently. >> [Keith] - So, Dave let's talk about some of the drivers behind the deepening of the partnership in Cisco bringing a complete data management solution with both Commvault and Cisco to customers. You mentioned, obviously, compliance data recovery they are important things. But what about this data movement theme that we heard this morning on a show forward. Customers want this flexibility between on-prim and off-prim public file private cloud. >> [Dave] - Sure, so we see lots of customers talking about moving data, moving work loads. Even moving data centers to the public cloud. And what we see at Cisco, and what we even see IDC kind of supporting, is that 90% of our customers are really in a multi cloud world. And when you talk to a customer, you're probably going to hear them talk about two or three private clouds. We have customers that have three public cloud vendors. Hybrid clouds, SAS environments. So when you look at that, we see the kind of new normal or distributed data center. Where you have applications and workloads spread across all these different environments and platforms. And some of the key things, from a Cisco perspective, is what ties all that together. It's the network. It's foundational. Obviously that's a core competency of Cisco, it's where we excel. They talked about performance today, and it's where performance is critical. So being able to get data in and out of those environments, is just really important. >> [Keith] - So, we have data and we have data. We have the transport of data which Cisco is obviously expert in helping you get data from point A to point B. Then we have the data of the storing of the bits. So, talk to us about how customers have benefited from that complete Cisco story coming from using Commvault to help at that storage layer, and then Cisco at that both compute in the data center and the network layer that connects you between the data center and the public cloud. What unique value is Cisco bringing to customers? >> [Dave] - So we have the ability to do a number of things. So, customers are going to look at... What are the two key things that customers are looking at? It's data and applications. And when they look at data, they have to kind of decide where and how do I want to store it. They have to understand, how am I going to manage all the growth? How am I going to protect it across all these environments? So we have the ability with Cisco to go ahead with primary storage, to manage that. With secondary storage, we can manage it on-prim. And we obviously have the network that can connect people to their various private and public clouds, as well. And so that's really our key value proposition. >> [Keith] - So you're Director of Sales. Who are you having this conversation with with the customer? Is this the Director of Infrastructure, the networking group, the storage group as we see the consolidation of activities, who's the audience? >> [Dave] - So I think it depends on what the kind of story is, obviously. I'm going to give you the "it depends" insert. When you look at probably data protection, it could be storage or back up type of folks. When you look at servers and hyper conversions and things like that, it could be server or virtualization teams. When you look at a multi cloud environment, you start to go up that stack. So, from a Cisco perspective, our ability to go up to various levels and various groups in a company, is really why we're successful. All the way up to that CxO level. >> [Stu] - Dave, when you talk about customers having a multi cloud environment, what we find is they want to have that really cloud experience wherever they are. It's really more about that operating model than it is about the destination of it. When I think back to hyper conversion infrastructure, that really was some of the ideas. I want to have some of the same flexibility. We heard Commvault this week expand their as a service offerings, which get to the purchasing models. Bring us inside what Cisco's doing with hyper flex, with Commvault and what you would call my own data center that might be if I owned it. >> [Dave] - Absolutely, so when we look at kind of data center modernization or that new normal, hyper convergence is one of the key disruptors in the data center architecture today. And customers are looking for three or four things. They're looking for simplicity. They're looking for consolidation. How to I consolidate, compute, network and store it. And how do I have that more cloud like experience that can reduce the complexity of the data center. So, what we're seeing is that hyper convergence market is pretty hot, it's growing at 80% per year. Our versions of that is called hyper flex. Its focus is on mission critical business applications and agile provision that can reduce the complexity. But the nice thing is in the next mid December, we'll have integration with Commvault and TeleSnap built into hyper flex. So you can do snap shotting from hyper flex. So that is some of the new things that are going to be coming in the next couple of months. >> [Keith] - And then we always like to talk about day two operations. What are the concerns customers are having when we start to expand out these relationships, these alliances? What are some of the concerns and answers to that concerns that customers are having when it comes to this kind of split mold support? >> [Dave] - Yes, so it does introduce some complexity into the discussion. But the things that Cisco does really well is we have a couple different offers that we can provide the customers. One is: we'll take the first call. So we can take the first call on a lot of our third party relationships. Which is important. And we can also sell a much more detailed solution support, kind of a contract. Where we'll take second and even third calls. On the whole stack, basically. So those are some of things that we offer. I mean, we have a global tacker or call center It follows the sun. It's first in class. So when we're able to take those first calls, or even do additional kind of services on top of that, that's pretty significant. The other thing is, we work with partners. Partners are probably 90% of our business. And partners provide a lot of services and bring, they're really the glue that brings a lot of these different solutions and vendors together, as well. So I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about one of the key value propositions of Cisco right now. >> [Stu] - If Cisco just let go to market power that Cisco and the Cisco channel have, are one of the leaders in the industry out there. Give us a little more color as we talk to how you get these solutions, joint solutions, out to the marketplace. >> [Dave] - So I handle actually the whole solutions business for the data center part of the business and we have lots of partnerships. And we do it a number of different ways. From an engineering perspective, we do what we call validated designs. Where we basically insert best practices and we can help partners and customers with step by step on how to install and implement a solution with the best practices that ensure best optimal performance. We do all kinds of reference architectures, white papers. I mean there's a meriot of engineering work that we do. And then from a sales perspective, we obviously work very closely with our partner sales organizations. We're going to go ahead and put together programs and initiatives to go out in the market. It might be a competitive take out. It might be broader than that. And then we also we'll probably choose a certain number of channel partners that we want to work with together jointly to go ahead and put programs together and drive the go to market out into the customer bases. >> [Stu] - Dave, really appreciate all the updates on what you've got here. Congratulations on the updates with Commvault and Keith and I will be back with more coverage here from Commvault GO 2018 in Nashville, TN. Thanks for watching The Cube. (upbeat music)