>> Announcer: Live from Nashville, Tennessee. (light upbeat music) It's theCUBE. (light upbeat music) Covering Commvault GO 2018. (light upbeat music) Brought to you by Commvault. >> Welcome back to Nashville, Tennessee. This is Commvault GO, and you're watching theCUBE. I'm Stu Miniman. My cohost is Keith Townsend. And I am thrilled to welcome to the program, Al Bunte, who's the Chief Operating Officer at Commvault. Thanks so much for having us and pleasure to see ya. >> Thanks for having me. >> Hold on. In your keynote this morning, your CEO did a little bit of the talking. We made the joke that you might be the Teller to his Penn there. >> (laughing) >> So Keith and I will talk for a little bit, and then we'll let you get in. >> Fine. >> All right. >> I'm used to that. >> All right. So Al, we've really had a good day here. We've talked to some of your customers, talked to partners, talked to a lot of people here. The story that's coming across is Commvault's a company we know but maybe don't know the Commvault of today. So what's some of the messages you want customers to kind of come away with from the show, and then we'll get in from it from there. >> Yes, so we're focusing on trying to get the message across that we've simplified. We're in a complex world, as you guys well know. You have to do it through automation. Lots of it. Orchestration, et cetera. And we're trying to drive outcomes that are better for our IT customers out there. Almost that simple. >> Yeah, you use the word simple. Actually I liked in the keynote there was a little back and forth you had. Cloud was supposed to be simple and cheap. And when people actually got in and did it, they found out that it really was neither. >> Al: Correct. >> The word that was used in the keynote was, well you want to be smart and that might lead to things that are simpler and everything. Bring us inside a little bit to what Commvault is doing that is smarter to lead to easier, simpler down the road. >> And or better outcomes. >> Stu: Sure. >> I agree. So yeah, again as you guys know, as new technologies and or infrastructures come out like cloud, their initial use case is we're just a parking lot for data. So just write it up there and whatever works. Well it turns out that's simple, but now if you really want to use that data and those capabilities up in the cloud for cooler use cases, now you should be doing it smarter. So we talked, guys, about automation again. We talked about how you even write that data initially. Write it natively, so there isn't a conversion back and forth. That's a lot of latency. And then throughout everything we're talking about, we're adding a lot of machine learning, analytic capabilities, maybe overusing the word AI but you know leading down that path, and it makes a big difference. Cause these are big complex operations. >> So let's talk about this simple and smarter lesson. We've obviously seen a lot of change come out of Commvault. I went to Commvault GO last year. Just between this year and last year, you guys have made strides. Licensing model completely changed. As you talk to customers who are dealing with these complexities as a result of cloud and they look at simplified licensing, what have been some of the lessons learned over the past twenty years that have made you guys comfortable making which I have to say is a pretty bold decision in licensing? What has enabled that decision? >> It's a good question, Keith. I think it gets at that's what they want (laughing). >> (laughing) >> It's about that simple. >> Seems simple enough. >> Yeah we went off and talked to not just enterprise customers but midmarket customers. Remember, we're doing a lot of our activity through partners, so you have a third party. You don't want to get too confusing there. So we pushed hard on that idea, both in quoting, selling, and applying, and we just worked it a lot with our customer base and determined simplicity, by the way, is the number one criteria these days. It trumps cost, it trumps risk reduction, it trumps capabilities. People want it's got to be simple. Or I prefer simplified. Not simple dumb, simple smart. >> All right so Al, Commvault has quite a few employees. >> Yes. >> You've got quite a lot of customers. >> Al: Yes. >> You've got some very well-funded startups in this space. How does a Commvault compete? As the COO, how do you put the organizational structure in place, and how do you enable the company to be able to compete against some of these well-funded new players? >> Yeah so that's always a challenge, it really is. So I think personally, I have to have philosophies like, you have to change as a company. No resting on your laurels. You guys know that in tech industry, you can't rest on your laurels. Number one. Number two, we used to have to compete and change just a little faster than our competition. Now you have to change faster than startups. So everything we do, we're trying to drive change, we're trying to drive responsiveness, we've moved to rapid dev models. Again, I know you guys are well versed on it. We want to be able to respond to the market back to pricing, licensing, messaging, extremely fast. Back to the way Bob and I started the business, is we always, always, always believed you have to have the best technology. You can't go to sleep on that. You can't go on autopilot. And in our space you have to have the best support. So don't try to finesse those things. There may be other things to finesse, but just go all out and really drive the technology, the support, and then where you guys are going now get your act together on marketing, packaging, pricing, messaging, positioning, all those things. And that's where we're really bringing our game up. >> Well on that competition front, you guys have a, I don't know if it's an advantage, disadvantage, you can tell me, against your competitors. You have up to 100,000 customers who have used this product or a variation of this product for 20 years. So disruption may not be the word they're looking to hear. Some of these customers may be wanting to hear steady, reliable solution that I've used over the years, served me well, while you're trying to appeal to a customer that we had on earlier that said, "Man, the idea that Commvault is going to sass and having these rapid deployment cycles is what I love about the company." Brand new customer to Commvault, how do you balance those two, and is it an advantage or disadvantage? >> It's a great question, and it's tricky >> Keith: (laughing) >> is the right answer. But I think I've heard a lot of people, Keith, say as well, "Wow, in your space, "we don't necessarily want simple and limited. "It's got to be reliable, it's got to be consistent, "it's got to be," tada tada tada, all those same kind of things. Experienced people really like that level of experience. So, the real simple answer is, sorry for overusing simple, is that you got to do both. You got to try and simplify, and again that's why I distinguish between simple and simplified. So, put automation against them, make it simple, save some minutes and steps in those IT guys' day. And try to do both. We've actually used the tag line, I don't think I did today, on powerful simplicity. So you got to do both kind of idea, if that makes sense. >> Yeah taking automation and using these automation techniques to make what was a complex job simple, bottle that up, abstract it and allow customers to use services. So how are your >> Al: Yeah. >> traditional customers reacting to the new combo? >> I think very well. Gotten really a lot of great feedback, new products through the summertime, through even back to the springtime. I happen to believe enterprises are coming around more to the idea that you have to consolidate your platform. The platform idea, you guys, to automate. I'm running into customers 50% of their activity is tied to compliance. Well and that takes a ton of automation, and you don't want to be doing scripts and all that stuff everyday, cause it's repeatable. So again take those kind of ideas, simplify the environment, sorry the operations, and yet still keep a ton of capabilities and features. >> Yeah it's funny, if we dial the clock back two decades, things like intelligently managing our data and building in automation probably wouldn't have sounded that foreign. But >> I agree. >> today, it's a little bit different. We've talked about a decade ago, metadata was something I think most of us in the storage industry were like, this is critically important, but today it's actually happening. Why is today so important and is it? We would love to hear your6 viewpoint on that. >> Another great question. I don't know is the honest answer for sure, but I think it's all got to be driven with just the mountain of data, as you guys know, just tremendous data growth, I think point one. Point two is, I think a lot of organizations are seeing that it's required to run their business. I mean if you saw Steve Connell this morning, he talked about data is the new water. It's like that. So more and more people are coming to that conclusion. You know, I can't go into a business meeting and say, "Guys, I think we out to do this," and they go, "What do you base that on?" It's just an instinct. That doesn't play anymore. So, it's about the data. It's using the data. And that's been tricky in this space. I always said in the back up arena, people just backed it up because they were supposed to. It didn't even occur to them that they might need to use it. So it's like a big dumping ground, but, yep, check the box we backed it up. So all those sorts, velocity, its volume, those kind of things too, and Keith, I think is probably where it's going. >> Yeah, it's interesting. We've been hearing for a number of years now, data's going to drive everything. You must have data, you can't have opinions. But we're still early to see data-driven businesses. >> Al: Yeah, I agree. >> Do you have some kind of early exemplars, or what do you expect to see over the next couple of years that will drive things even more? >> Well we're focused right now on the operations side of it. So we're using tons of these techniques. I don't know if you saw my example today, but take a typical run, you have 48,000 events and logs. How the heck you going to do that without advanced analytics and machinery? And you saw my example, and this is all true stuff. It got it down to six issues that you needed to deal with. So, again we're focused on that side of the equation, but we have a ton of customers wanting to do, and you're hearing all the BI type-of-use cases out there, be it retail, be it security, be it the media industry. How do I capture and save and understand what bits of media clips I have. Today it's just in a big pile, right? So, want to be nicer with your user. >> So Al, you're entrepreneur, you're farm boy background. >> Good word. >> You're a COO of a company going through tremendous transformation. As you talk to your peers, whether it's peers within other technology companies, the farming community, et cetera, all these industries that are being disruptive, what advice have you given to them? Commvault GO, is a great example of Five years ago you guys didn't have a show. You're transforming the company. What advice have you given to your peers or even received that you'd like to share? >> I think it's you can't kick the can down the road, really. You got to deal with it. It's a tough question, Keith, but I think just deal with it and start investing. We go into so many places, and I'd have to be careful on how I say this but in a lot of companies the capabilities that they have within their companies of dealing with major architectural issues and data issues is: A, some of that talent has left, and B, they got other, more short term activities that are pressing 'em. So, guys, just back up, take a broad view, take a long view. Go get your foundations in place, and do this data thing right. I guarantee it's going to pay off for ya. Or you're going to be really disappointed if you don't. So just embrace it. >> All right, well Al, really appreciate catching up with you. I think, summarize what you were saying there, you can't just think about it, you need to go. >> (laughing) >> Stu: All right. >> Oh, you're tricky. >> For Keith Townsend, I'm Stu Miniman. Couple more left here at Commvault GO in Nashville, Tennesse. Thanks so much for watching theCube.