(upbeat music) >> We are entering a new era of cyber attacks. The SolarWinds hack it underscored a rising and very disturbing trend. Namely that tunneling in through an organization's supply chain. And you're hearing terms like island hopping and living off the land to becoming mainstream in the world of cybersecurity. And we're going to talk a little bit about ransomware and cyber with Manoj Nair, who is the GM of Metallic, a Commvault Company. And Tim Carben, is a Principal Systems Engineer with Mitchell International. Gents welcome. Thanks so much for coming on. Talk to me about this very important topic. So, Tim, I got to start with you, you're the practitioner. You got to fight this battle every day. You heard me upfront it feel like we are entering a new era. The adversary is highly capable, very well-funded. How are you thinking about changes in protecting your data and creating things like air gaps and what are you doing to solve this problem? >> I think the most important part. And this is just to start off with is patching, everything up to date. Most of the time someone's getting in, or most of the time one of these viruses is replicating between the different systems. It's due to unpatched environments. And then number two is training. If your resources don't know, not to click on something or to hover over something to look at it. Then, you are just going to be exposing your environment over and over and over again. But when it all boils down to it, and it comes back to what I'm doing in the data protection world in the backup and recovery, I have to look at not only how am I going to get this data back. Because if a system gets encrypted we are going to look for recovery first. That's it, look for recovery first. But we also need to make sure that our environment is protected. Lock down our media agents. Lock down our storage that we're connected to. And like you had mentioned before use an air gap. And no one... I mean, everyone's been moving away from tape and it's understandable. There's a lot of resource utilization involved. There's a lot of people that you need in there in your data center, moving things around. And it's a robotic machine, you have to rely on. Not only that, but recovery times can be slow. What I found is Commvault is gone out there and they've offered us SaaS storage. This SaaS storage is somewhere else. We could be in AWS. We could be in Azure. We could be in GCP but we can still connect to this SaaS storage. And we never have to worry about someone having access to a data center and getting to our tapes. We don't have to worry about someone having tenant access and deleting our backups off of a particular tenant. Which is something that we are going to see in the future if it's not out there already. So, there's a lot that we have to do and protecting ourselves is very important. And Commvault is making it a lot easier. >> Thank you, Tim. So, Manoj I mean, these things have probably been around for a while but we're seeing really sort of, I talked about mainstream and a couple of things that are really disturbing. We're seeing this malware come in and they're self forming. They're creating different signatures but we're also seeing this idea of living off the land very stealthily using your own tools against you. And then really disturbingly, we're seeing when you discover... When a victim discovers that they're being attacked and they respond... Their incident response is triggering a very aggressive counter attack by the hackers. Where they've already exfiltrated really sensitive data. Then they'll then they... And they've been stealing and making monetizing your data. And then they'll just encrypt it, hold it for ransom, threaten to release that sensitive data if you don't let them keep going. It's really, really disturbing. What's your perspective on this raising the bar that the bad guys have done and how we can keep pace? >> Yeah, Dave. I lived through the nation state attack that happened in 2012. The front door seat was at RSA as part of the leadership team. And at that time it was considered a this is a very unique and it's an advanced persistent threat. It took the resources of one of the biggest nations of the world to mount something like that. And fast forward, eight, nine years later, we're seeing that these kinds of techniques have now been mainstreamed. You've got a lot of people who are figuring out not just... They may not even care about your data but they know you care about your data. So they're not trying to exfiltrate the data maybe to look for sensitive data and monetize it. That's just harder. Why not take it directly from you. In Q1 of 2021, the average ransomware ransom went up 43%. It's like 250K or something. That's just the ransom. And we saw now that it's impacting day-to-day lives. You saw the long lines of the gas things gas pumps on the East coast a weekend before last and as somebody who had a ransomware attack as the news story say they'd paid for the ransom. And that was the recovery after paying 5 million was slow. So they had to go and figure out how to recover from the backups. And that was not fast enough. So defense in depth is something that has really been the mantra and just like protecting a home, you're not just looking at putting an alarm on the front door. You have sensors on your windows. You have a fire alarm. You've got to say if you got different things too in terms of really thinking through different trends. And Tim hit on a couple of those things. You really think about what is my weak link? What is my vulnerability? That vulnerability is now your software supply chain. So you're thinking about who am I buying things from? Are they taking care of stuff because they are now a new vector? And that's kind of the biggest I would say new thing that has not been mainstream. Like a lot of these techniques are getting mainstream but the fact that a software supply chain itself that is being deployed in mass is now vulnerable? And that will be monetized. It might've started with the nation state doing that but then you'll get the... People trying to take it for ransom. They'll start weaponizing those same vulnerabilities. So really that data and making sure that your crown jewels you have a very safe way of protecting them. And it's not just... You need to practice in readiness of that. Like any system. Just having that there it's not good enough, like can I detect issues? What is the ecosystem that's part of? How is my identity tracking who has got access to that? We've seen a lot of interesting things as part of why we started creating services like a air gap service in the cloud. The customer doesn't have to worry about managing credentials because even those were getting compromised. People were stealing the credentials to go delete the backup. So, the steps keep leaping forward. There's a lot of money going in the research and development of malware. And the industry in partnership with customers and partnership with local and federal authorities are going to have to figure out how to tackle this together. >> Yeah. So Tim, you don't mean Commvault, you don't think of being the cybersecurity space specifically, but those worlds are coming together the data protection and security space. And I would imagine for you as a practitioner it's challenging because you don't have a blank chequebook. I mean, yes, you can spend... You have to spend on cyber but you have all these... You talked about digital transformation in an earlier discussion that we had and you've got to figure out, how do I apply AI and automation? You've got a talent gap. I mean, you can't hire people that have the skills because you just can't keep throwing people at the problem. So, you don't have this unlimited budget. I saw a stat there's a company it's Cybersecurity Ventures. They said by 2025 we'll lose $10.5 trillion annually to cyber attacks. And I think if I look at it, who's ever numbers. You look at IDC I think has one of the higher numbers out there. It's like a hundred billion that we spend each year on cyber. So it's infinitesimal compared to the value that the bad guys are extracting. So, how are you dealing with that complexity, fragmented security tooling lack of talent turnover? I mean, all this stuff and the budget challenges. How do you deal with all that? >> It's... And I do not want to use this word, but it's as easy as research and staying on top of everything. Everyone knows, you update your virus definitions. You keep that up-to-date. You close your firewall holes. You have denies at the very end of every firewall. You make sure you keep track of these small things. At the same time, you leverage utilities that make it easier for you to do your job. The Commvault iDA has a feature that keeps track of changes or modifications on a server. So if I have a server, that's actively getting hit with a ransomware. Commvault reports me in a word and tells me, "Hey, we have had this many files modified within this time period. Look at it right now." So, on top of everything else we have because it's not a replacement for our virus protection but it does help us. And it does keep track of things in Commvault, as well as a lot of other companies out there, are doing some great things in closing up small little gaps and adding little features that could really help us move forward in the future. And keep us more protected, I guess I should say. >> Yeah. Well Manoj, I mean the backup Corpus is a sort of the last line of defense. It's also could be a first point of attack because all the valuable data is in there. So, I'll give you the last word here on the segment. Thanks for doing this with me guys. How do you think the industry needs to approach this? It's not a... You can't go on it alone. You definitely need to collaborate. Your final thoughts. >> Yeah, collaborate, share risk factors, making sure that systems are connected and they're not siloed. And that will really make sure our customers are getting the best out of all of us. And you have to build an intelligence of the product anything static. Just like you said, you need to backup the cyber crown jewels or they're going to go after that. So, your backup systems need to have AIML. They need to be able to detect any kind of suspicious activity. You can't just kind of code it in and just expect that what you thought would work in the lab is how it's going to behave. So, but it's a... And in general unless there's a bigger penalty in terms of the response to these kinds of attacks, as long as they keep getting paid, they're going to keep doing this thing. So you got to follow the money is a simple work. Let's take that a rich ecosystem, that's funding them and replace it with a tight partnership between companies and the customers and partners and governments. >> Guys. Well, I mean, the equation is pretty simple. Value equals benefit over cost. If you can increase the denominator for the bad guys it'll lower their ROI and that's kind of your job. And so keep up the good work, gents. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE and talking to me about this very important topic. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you. Thank you for having us. >> And thank you for watching this CUBE Conversation. This is Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) We are entering a new era of cyber attacks. The SolarWinds hack has underscored a rising and very disturbing trend, namely that tunneling in through an organization's supply chain. And you're hearing terms like island hopping and living off the land it becoming mainstream in the world of cybersecurity. And we're going to talk a little bit about ransomware and cyber with Manoj Nair who is the GM of Metallic, a Commvault company. And Tim Carben, as a Principal Systems Engineer with Mitchell International. Gents, welcome. Thanks so much for coming on and talking to me about this very important topic. So, you know, Tim, I got to start with you, you're the practitioner, you got to fight this battle every day. You heard me upfront, it feels like we're entering a new era, the adversary is highly capable, very well-funded. How are you thinking about changes in protecting your data and creating things like air gaps. What are you doing to solve this problem? >> I think the most important part, and this is just to start off with, is patching everything up to date. Most of the time someone's getting in, or most of the time one of these viruses is replicating between the different systems it's due to unpatched environments. And then number two is training. If your resources don't know not to click on something, or to hover over something, to look at it, then you are just going to be exposing your environment over and over and over again. But when it all boils down to it, and it comes back to what I'm doing in the data protection world, in the backup and recovery, I have to look at not only how am I going to get this data back, because if a system gets encrypted we are going to look for recovery first. That's it. Look for recovery first, but we also need to make sure that our environment is protected, lock down our media agents, lock down our storage that we're connected to, and like you had mentioned before, use an air gap. Everyone's been moving away from tape and it's understandable. There's a lot of resource utilization involved. There's a lot of people that you need in there in your data center, moving things around, and it's a robotic machine you have to rely on. Not only that, but recovery times can be slow. What I found is Commvault has gone out there and they've offered us SaaS storage. This SaaS storage is somewhere else. We could be in AWS, we could be in Azure, we could be in GCP but we can still connect to the SaaS storage. And we never have to worry about someone having access to our data center and getting to our tapes. We don't have to worry about someone having tenant access and deleting our backups off of a particular tenant, which is something that we are going to see in the future, if it's not out there already. So there's a lot that we have to do and protecting ourselves is very important and Commvault is making it a lot easier. >> Thank you, Tim. So, these things have probably been around for a while but we're seeing really, I talk about mainstream, and a couple of things that are really disturbing, and we're seeing these malware come in and they're self forming, they're creating different signatures. But we're also seeing this idea of living off the land very stealthily using your own tools against you. And then, really disturbingly, we're seeing when a victim discovers that they're being attacked and they respond, their incident response is triggering a very aggressive counter attack by the hackers, where they've already exfiltrated really sensitive data, they've been stealing and making monetizing your data. And then they'll just encrypt it, hold it for ransom, threaten to release that sensitive data, if you don't let them keep going. It's really, really disturbing. What's your perspective on this raising the bar that the bad guys have done and how we can keep pace? >> And Dave. I lived through the nation-state attack that happened in 2012. The front door seat I was at RSA as part of the leadership team. And, at that time it was considered this is a very unique and it's an advanced, persistent threat. It took the resources of one of the biggest nations of the world to mount something like that. And fast forward, eight, nine years later we're seeing that these kinds of techniques have now been mainstreamed. You've got a lot of people who are figuring out not just that. They may not even care about your data, but they know you care about your data. So they're not trying to exfiltrate the data maybe to look for sensitive data and monetize it. That's just harder. Why not take it directly from you? In Q1 of 2021 the average ransomware ransom went up 43%. It's like $250k or something. That's just the ransom. And we saw now that it's impacting day-to-day lives. You saw the long lines of the gas tanks, gas pumps on the East Coast. You know, the weekend before last. And here's somebody who had a ransomware attack. As the news story say, they'd paid for the ransom. And that was the recovery after paying 5 million was slow, so they had to go and figure out how to recover from the backups. And that was not fast enough. So, you know, defense in depth is something that has really been the mantra, and just like protecting a home, you're not just looking at putting in an alarm on the front door, you have sensors on your windows, you have a fire alarm. You got to see if you got different things too, in terms of really thinking through different threats. And Tim hit on a couple of those things, right? You really think about what is my weak link, what is my vulnerability? That vulnerability is now your software supply chain. So you're thinking about whom am I buying things from? Aren't they taking care of stuff because they are now a new backdoor. And that's kind of the biggest, I would say new thing, that has now been mainstreamed. Like a lot of these techniques are getting mainstream, but the fact that a software supply chain itself that has being deployed in mass is now vulnerable, and that will be monetized. It might've started with the nation-state doing that, but then you'll get people trying take you for ransom will start weaponizing those same vulnerabilities. So really that data and making sure that your crown jewels you have a fail-safe way of protecting them. And it's not just, you know, you need to practice the readiness of that. Like any system, just having that there is not good enough, like, can I detect issues? What is the ecosystem that's part of? How is my identity tracking who has got access to that? We've seen a lot of interesting things and is part of why we started creating services like a air gap service in the cloud. The customer doesn't have to worry about managing credentials, because even those were getting compromised. People were stealing the credentials to go delete the backup. So that the steps keep moving forward. There's a lot of money going in the research and development of malware. And the industry, in partnership with customers and partnership with local and federal authorities, are going to have to figure out how to tackle this together. >> Yeah. So Tim, Commvault. You don't think of it being in the cybersecurity space specifically, but those worlds are coming together, the data protection and security space. And I would imagine for you as a practitioner it's challenging because you don't have a blank checkbook. I mean, yes, you can spend, you have to spend on cyber, but you have all these, you talked about digital transformation in an earlier discussion that we had, and you've got to figure out, okay how do I apply AI and automation? You've got a talent gap. I mean, you can't hire people that have the skills because you just can't keep throwing people at the problem. So, so you don't have this unlimited budget. I saw a stat, there's a company, it's cyber security ventures, they said, "by 2025 we will lose $10.5 trillion annually to cyber attacks." And I think if I look at whosever numbers, you look at IDC, I think has one of the higher numbers out there, It's like 100 billion that we spend each year on cyber. So it's infinitesimal compared to the to the value that the bad guys are extracting. So how are you dealing with that complexity, fragmented, you know, security tooling, lack of talent, turnover I mean, all this stuff, and the budget challenges. How do you deal with all that? >> I do not want to use this word, but it's as easy as research, and staying on top of everything. Everyone knows you update your virus definitions. You keep that up-to-date. You close your firewall holes. You have denies at the very end of every firewall. You make sure you keep track of these small things. At the same time, you leverage utilities that make it easier for you to do your job. The Commvault iDA has a feature that keeps track of changes or modifications on a server. So if I have a server that's actively getting hit with a ransomware, Commvault reports me an alert and tells me , "Hey, we have had this many files modified within this time period. Look at it right now." So on top of everything else we have, because it's not a replacement for our virus protection, but it does help us. And it does keep track of things. And Commvault, as well as a lot of other companies out there are doing some great things in closing up small little gaps, in adding little features that could really help us move forward in the future, and keep us more protected, I guess I should say. >> Yeah. I mean the backup corpus is sort of the last line of defense. So it also could be a first point of attack because all the valuable data is in there. So I'll give you the last word here on the segment. Thanks for doing this with me, guys. How do you think the industry needs to approach this? It's not, you can't go and lead alone. You definitely need to collaborate. Your final thoughts. >> Collaborate, share risk factors, making sure that systems are connected and they're not siloed. And that will really make sure our customers are getting the best out of all of us. And you have to build an intelligence of the product. Anything static, just like you said, if the backup is the crown jewel how are they're going to go after that? So your backup systems need to have AI/ML. They need to be able to detect any kind of suspicious activity. You can't just kind of code it in and just expect that what you thought would work in the lab is how it's going to behave. And in general, unless there's a bigger penalty in terms of the response to these kinds of attacks, as long as they keep getting paid, they're going to keep doing this thing. So you got to follow the money is a simple work. Let's take that rich ecosystem that's funding them, and replace it with a tight partnership between companies and customers and partners and garments. >> Guys. Well, the equation is pretty simple. Value equals benefit over cost. If you can increase the denominator for the bad guys it'll lower their ROI, and that's kind of your job. So keep up the good work, gents. Thanks so much for coming to the Cube and talking to me about this very important topic. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for watching this Cube Conversation. This is Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time. (quirky music)

>> Commvault was an idea that incubated as a project inside of bell labs, one of the most prestigious research and development organizations in the world, back in the day. It became an official company in 1996, and Commvault just celebrated its 25th anniversary. As such, Commvault has had to reinvent itself many times over the past two and a half decades. From riding the waves of the very early PC networking era, to supporting a rich set of solutions for the evolving enterprise. This includes things like cloud computing, ransomware disaster, recovery, security compliance, and pretty much all things data protection and data management. And with me to talk about the company, its vision for the future, with also a voice of the customer. Three great guests, Isabel Geese is the Chief Marketing Officer of Commvault, Manoj Nair is the GM of Metallic, and Tim Carben is a principal systems engineer with Mitchell International. Folks, welcome to the Commvault power panel. Come inside the cube. It's awesome to have you. >> Great to be here Dave. >> All right. First of all, I got to congratulate you celebrating 25 years. That's a long time, not a lot of tech companies make it that far and are still successful and relevant. So Isabelle, maybe you could start off. What do you think has been the driving factor for your ability to kind of lead through the subsequent technological waves that I alluded to upfront? >> So well, 25 years is commendable but we are not counting success in number of years we're really counting success in how many customer we've helped over those years. And I will say what has been the driving mater for us as who that has been innovating with our customers. You know, we were there every step of the way, when they migrate to hybrid cloud. And now as they go to multi cloud in a post COVID world, where they have to win gold you know, distributed workforce, different types of workloads and devices, we are there too. We have that workload as well. So the innovation keep coming in, thanks to us listening to our customer. And then adding needs that change over the last 25 years and probably for the next 25 as well. You know, we, we want to be here for customer who think that data is an asset, not a liability. And also making sure that we offer them a broad range of use cases to book why things simple because the word is getting too complex for them. So let's take the complexity on us. >> Thank you for that. So Manoj, you riffed on the cube before about, you know putting on the, the binoculars and looking at the future. So let's talk about that. Where do you see the future for this industry? What are some of the key driving factors that matter. >> Dave it's great to be back on the Cube. You know, we see our industry no different than lots of other industries. The SAS model is rapidly being adopted. And the reason is, you know customers are looking for simplicity simplicity not just in leveraging, you know the great technology that Commvault has built but in the business model and the experience. So, you know, that's one of the fastest growing trends that started in consumer apps and other applications, other B to B apps. And now we're seeing it in core infrastructure like data management, data protection. They're also trying to leverage their data better, make sure it's not fragmented. So, how do you deliver more intelligent services? You know, securing the data insights from the beta, transforming the data and that combination, you know our ability to do that in a multi-cloud world like Isabel said, now with increasing edge work loads. Sometimes, you know, our customers say their data centers are the new edge too. So you kind of have this, you know, data everywhere, workloads everywhere, yet the desire to deliver that with a holistic experience, we call it the power of bank. The ability to manage your data and leverage the data with the simple lesson without compromise. And that's really what we're seeing as part of the future. >> Okay. Manoj I to come back to you and double click on that but I want to introduce Tim to the conversation here. You bring in the voice of the customer, as they say. Tim, my understanding is Mitchell has been a Commvault customer since the mid two thousands. So tell us why Commvault? What has kept you with the company for more than 15 years? >> Yeah! It was what, 2006 when we started and really when it all boils down to it, it's just as Isabel said, innovation. At Mitchell we're always looking to stay ahead of the trend. And, you know, just to like was mentioned earlier data is the most important part here. Commvault provides us peace of mind to protect and manage our data. And they do data protection for all of our environments, right now. We've been a partner to help enable our digital transformation including SAS and cloud adoption. When we start talking about the solutions we have, I mean we of course started in 2006. I mean, this was version six, if I remember right, this predates me at the company. Upgraded to seven, eight, nine. We brought in 10, brought in 11, brought in hyper scale and then moved on to bring in the Metallic. And Commvault provides the reason for this. I guess I should say is, Commvault provides a reliable backup but most importantly, recovery, rapid recovery. That's what gives me confidence. That's what helps me sleep better at night. So when I started looking at SAS, as a differentiator to protect our 036 environments or 065 environments. Metallic was a natural choice, and the one thing I wanted to add to that is it came out cheaper than us building it ourselves. When you take into account resources, as well as compute and storage. So again, just a natural choice. >> Yeah. As the saying goes, back up is one thing, recoveries everything. Isabel you know we've seen the SAS suffocation of the enterprise, particularly, you know from the app side. You came from Salesforce. So you, the company that is the poster child for SAS. But my question is what's catalyzing this shift and why do you think data protection is ready to make the move? >> Well, there's so many good things about SAS. You know, you remember when people started moving to the cloud and transforming their CapEx into OPEX, well SAS bring yet another level of benefits. I.T, we know always has to do more with less. And so SAS allows you to, once you set up you've got all the software upgrades automatically without you know, I think it's smart work. You can better manage your cash flow because you pay as you grow. And also you have a faster time to value. So all of this at help, the fast adoption and I will tell you today, I don't think there is a single customer who doesn't have at least one SAS application because they have things of value of this. Now, when it comes to backup and recovery, everybody's at different stages you still have on premise, you have cloud, they have SAS and workloads devices. And so what we think was the most important was to offer a raw choice of delivery model. Being able to support them if they want software subscription, if they want an integrated appliance or easy one as SAS. As a service model, and also some of our partners are actually delivering this in a more custom and managed way as well. So offering choice because everybody is at a different stage on this journey when it comes to data management and protection, I actually, you know I think team is the example of taking full advantage or this broad choice. >> Well, you mentioned Tim that you leaned into Metallic. We have seen the SAS everywhere. We used to have a email server, right? I mean, (laughing) on prem, that just doesn't happen anymore. But how was Mitchell International thinking about SAS? Maybe you could share your, from your customer perch, what you're seeing. >> Well, What's interesting about this is Mitchell is been providing SAS for a long time. We are a technology company and we do provide solutions, SAS solutions to our customers. And this makes it so important to be able to embrace it because we know the value behind it. We're providing that to our customers. And when I look at what Commvault is doing I know that Commvault is doing the same thing. They're providing the SAS model as a value to their customers. And it's so important to go with this because we keep our environments cutting edge. As GDPR says, you need to have a cutting edge environment. And if you don't, if you cannot check that box you do not move forward. Commvault has that. And this is one less thing that I have to worry about when choosing Metallic to do my backup of O365. >> So thank you for that, Tim. So Manoj, thinking about what you just heard from Isabel and Tim, you know kind of fitting into a company's cloud or hybrid cloud, more importantly strategy, you were talking before about this. And in other words, it's not an either or, it's not a zero sum game. It's simpatico, if you will. I wonder if you could elaborate. >> Yeah. The power of band Dave I'm very proud of that. You know, when I think of the power of band I think of actually folks like Tim, our customers and Commonwealth first, right. And, really that need for choice. So for example, you know customers on various different paths to the cloud, we kind of homogenize it and say, they're on a cloud journey or they're on a digital transformation journey but the journey looks different. And so part of that, and as Isabella was saying is really the ability to meet them where they are in that journey. So for example, do you, go in there and say, "Hey, you know what I'm going to be some customers 100% multi-cloud or single cloud even. And that includes SaaS applications and my infrastructure running as a service." So there's a natural fit there saying great all your data protection. You're not going to be running software appliances for that. So you've got to data protection, data management as a service that Metallic is able to offer across the whole estate. And that's, you know, that's probably a small set of customers, but rapidly growing. Then you see a lot more customers were saying I'm going to do away as you're talking about with the email server, I'm going to move to Office 365 leverage the power of Teams. And there's a shared responsibility model there which is different than an on-prem data protection use case. And so they're, they're able to just add on Metallic to the existing Commvault environment whether it's a Commvault software or hyper-scale and connect the two. So it's a single integrated experience. And then you kind of go to the other end of the spectrum and say "great" customers' all in on a SaaS delivered data protection, as you know and you hear a lot from a lot of your guests and we hear from our customers, there's still a lot of data sitting out there. you know 90 plus percent of workloads in data centers, increasing edge data workloads. And if you were to back up one of those data workloads and say that the only copy can be in the cloud, then that would take like a 10 day recovery SLA. You know, we have some competent users who say that then that's what they have. Our flexibility, our ability to kind of bring in the hyper-scale deployment and just, you know dock it into Metallic and have a local copy instant recovery, SLA, remote backup copy in the cloud for ransomware or your worst case scenario. That's the kind of flexibility. So all those are scenarios we're really seeing with our customers. And that's kind of really the power of mandates. Very unique part of our portfolio. Companies can have portfolio products but to have a single integrated offering with that flexibility, that kind of depending on the use case you can start here and grow into a different point. That's really the unique part of the power event. >> Yeah, yeah. 10 day RTO just doesn't cut it, but Tim, maybe maybe you could weigh in here. Why, what was the catalyst for you adopting Metallic and maybe you could share what was the business impact there? >> Well, the catalyst and impact obviously two different things. The catalyst, when we look at it, there was a lot of what are we going to do with this? We have an environment, we need to back it up and how are we going to approach this? So we looked at it from a few different standpoints and of course, when it boils down to it one of the major reasons was the financial. But when we started looking at everything else that we have available to us and the flexibility that Commvault has in rolling out new solutions, this really was a no brainer, at this point. We are able to essentially back up new features and new products, as soon as they're available. within our Metallic environment we are running the activate. We are running the, the self-service for the end users, to where they can actually recover their own files. We are adding the teams into it to be able to recover and perform these backups for teams. And I want to step aside really quick and mention something about this because I'd been with, you know, Metallic for a long time and I'd been waiting for this. We've been waiting for an ability to do these backups and anyone I know, Manoj knows that I've been waiting for it. And you know, Commvault came back to me a while back and they said, we just have to wait for the API. We have to wait for Microsoft to release it. Well, I follow the news. I saw Microsoft released the API and I think it may have been two days later that Commvault reached out to me and said, Hey we got it available. Are you ready to do this? And that sort of turned around, that sort of flexibility, being on top of new applications with that, with Salesforce, that is, you know just not necessarily the reason why I adopted Metallic but one of those things that puts a smile on my face because I adopted Metallic. >> Well, that's an interesting story. I mean, you get the SDKs and if you're a leader you get them, you know, you can put the resources on it and you're ready when, when the product comes to GA. Manoj, I wonder if we could talk about just the notion of backing up a SAS. Part of the announcements today included within Metallica included backup and, and offerings for dynamics 365. But my question is why support dynamics specifically in in SAS apps generally? I mean, customers might say, doesn't my SAS provider protect my data. Why do I need a third party? And, and the second part of that question is why Commvault? >> Dave, a great question as always. I'll start with the second part of the question. It's really three words, the shared responsibility model, and, you know, a lot of times our customers, as they go into the cloud model they really start understanding that there is something, that you're getting a lot of advantages that certain things you don't have to do. But the shared responsibility model is what every cloud and SAS provider will indoctrinate in it's in desolate. And certainly the application data is owned by the customer. And the meaning of that is not something that, you know some SAS provider can understand. And so that requires specialized skills. And that's a partnership where we've done this now very successfully with Microsoft and LG 65. We've added support for Salesforce, And we see a rapid customer adoption because of that shared responsibility model, If you have a, some kind of an admin issue as we have seen in the news somebody changed their team setting and then lost all their chat. Then that data is discoverable. And you, the customer, responsible for making sure that data is discoverable or ransomware attacks. Again, covering that SAS data is your responsibility because the attack could be coming in from your instance, not from the SAS provider. So those are the reasons dynamics is, you know one of the fastest growing SAS applications from a business applications perspective out there. And as we looked at our roadmap and you look at at the right compliment. What is arriving by the agency, we're seeing this part of a Microsoft's business application suite growing, you know, millions of users out there and it's rapidly growing. And it's also integrated with the rest of the Microsoft family. So we're now, you know, proud to say that we support all three Microsoft clouds by Microsoft 365 dynamics. Those applications are increasingly degraded so we're seeing commonality in customer base and that's a business critical data. And so customers are looking to manage the data, have solutions that they can be sure they can leverage, it's not just protecting data from worst-case scenarios. In the case of some of the apps like dynamics we offer a support, like setting up the staging environment. So it's improving productivity off the application admins and that's really kind of that the value we're bringing able to bring to the table. >> Yeah. You know, that shared responsibility model. I'm glad you brought that up because I think it's oftentimes misunderstood but when you talk to CSOs, they understand it well. They'll tell you the shared responsibility is my responsibility. You know, maybe the cloud provider who will secure the the object storage bucket for the physical space, but it's, it's on me. So that's really important. So thank you for that. Isabelle, last question. The roadmap, you know how do you see Commvaults, Metallic, SAS portfolio evolving? what can you tell us? >> Oh, well, it has a big strategic impact on Commvault for sure, first because all of our existing customer as you mentioned earlier, 25 years, it's a lot of customer will have somehow some workload as SaaS. And so the ability without adding more complexity without adding another vendor just to be able to protect them in one take, and as teams, they bring a smile to his face is really important for us. The second is also a lot of customer come toCommvault from Metallic. This is the first time they enter the Commvault community and Commvault family and as they start protecting their SaaS application they realize that they could leverage the same application to protect their on-premise, data as well. So back to the power of hand and without writing off their past investments, you know going to the cloud at the pace they want. So from that perspective, there is a big impact on our customer community that quickened that Metallic brings. I don't know Manojs' way too humble, but, you know he doubled his customers every quarter. And, you know, we have added 24 countries to the portfolio, to the product. So we see a rapid adoption. And so obviously back to your question, we see the impacts of Metallic growing and growing fast because of the market demand because of the rapid innovation. We can take the Commvault technology and put it in the SaaS model and our customers really like it. So I'm very excited. I think it's going to be, you know, a great innovation, a great positive impact for customers and our new customer will welcome it, which by the way I think half, Manoj correct me but I think half of the Metallic customer at Commvault and the other half are new to our family. So, so they're very bullish about this. And it's just the beginning, as you know we all 25 year old or sorry, 25 year young and looking forward to the next 25. >> Well, I can confirm, you know we have a data partner, survey partner ETR enterprise technology research, and I was looking at the Commvault data and it shows within the cloud segment, when you cut the data by cloud, you're actually accelerating the spending momentum is accelerating. And I think it's a function of, you know some of the acquisitions you've made some of the moves. You made an integration. So congratulations on 25 years and you know you're riding the correct wave. Isabel, Manoj, Tim thanks so much for coming in the cube. It was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you Dave. >> I really appreciate it. >> And thank you everybody for watching. This is Dave Volante for the Cube. We'll see you next time.

(Upbeat Music) >> Commvault was an idea that incubated as a project inside of Bell Labs, one of the most prestigious research and development organizations in the world, back in the day. It became an official company in 1996, and Commvault just celebrated its 25th anniversary As such, Commvault has had to reinvent itself many times over the past two and a half decades from riding the waves of the very early PC networking era to supporting a rich set of solutions for the evolving enterprise. This includes things like cloud computing, ransomware, disaster recovery, security compliance, and pretty much all things data protection and data management. And with me to talk about the company, its vision for the future with also a voice of the customer are three great guests. Isabelle Guis is the Chief Marketing Officer of Commvault, Manoj Nair is the GM of Metallic, and Tim Carben is a Principal Systems Engineer with Mitchell International. Folks, welcome to the Commvault power panel. Come inside theCUBE. It's awesome to have you. [Isabelle] Great to be here today. >> All right. First of all, I got to congratulate you celebrating 25 years. That's a long time, not a lot of tech companies make it that far and are still successful and relevant. So Isabelle, maybe you could start off. What do you think has been the driving factor for your ability to kind of lead through the subsequent technological waves that I alluded to upfront? >> So well, 25 years is commendable but we are not counting success in number of years. We're really counting success in how many customers we've helped over those years. And I will say what has been the driving matter for us as who that, has been innovating with our customers. You know, we were there every step of the way when they migrate to hybrid cloud. And now as they go to multi-cloud in a post COVID world where they have to win gold you know, distributed workforce, different types of workloads and devices, we all there too. We assess workload as well. So the innovation keep coming in, thanks to us listening to our customer and then, adding needs that change over the last 25 years and probably for the next 25 as well. You know, we want to be here for customer was thinking that data is an asset, not a liability. And also making sure that we offer them a broad range of use cases to quote why things simple because the world is getting too complex for them. So let's take the complexity on us. >> Thank you for that. So Manoj, you've riffed on the cube before about, you know putting on the binoculars and looking at the future. So, let's talk about that. Where do you see the future for this industry? What are some of the key driving factors that matter? >> It's great to be back on theCUBE. You know, we see our industry no different than lots of other industries. The SaaS Model is rapidly being adopted. And the reason is, you know customers are looking for simplicity, simplicity not just in leveraging, you know the great technology that Commvault has built, but in the business model and the experience. So, you know, that's one of the fastest growing trends that started in consumer apps and other applications, other B to B apps. And now we're seeing it in core infrastructure like data management, data protection. They're also trying to leverage their data better. Make sure it's not fragmented. So how do you deliver more intelligent services? You know, securing the data, insights from the data, transforming the data, and that combination, you know, our ability to do that in a multi-cloud world like Isabelle said, now with increasing edge work loads. Sometimes, you know, our customers say their data centers has a new edge too. So you kind of have this, you know, data everywhere workloads everywhere, yet the desire to deliver that with a holistic experience, we call it the 'power of bank'; the ability to manage your data and leverage the data with the simple lesson without compromise. And that's really what we're seeing as part of the future. >> Okay. I don't know if all want to come back to you and double click on that, but I want to introduce Tim to the conversation here. You bring in the voice of the customer, as they say. Tim, my understanding is Mitchell has been a Commvault customer since the mid-2000s. So, tell us why Commvault, what has kept you with the company for more than 15 years? >> Yeah, we are, it was what, 2006 when we started. And really what it all boils down to it, it's just as Isabel said, innovation. At Mitchell, we're always looking to stay ahead of the trend. And, you know, just to like was mentioned earlier, data is the most important part here. Commvault provides us peace of mind to protect and manage our data. And they do data protection for all of our environments right now. We've been a partner to help in navel our digital transformation including SaaS and cloud adoption. When we start talking about the solutions we have, I mean we of course started in 2006. I mean, this was version version 6 if I remember right. This predates me at the company. Upgraded to seven, eight, nine, we brought in ten, brought in eleven, brought in HyperScale, and then moved on to bring in the Metallic. And Commvault provides the reason for this. I guess I should say is, Commvault provides a reliable backup but most importantly, recovery. Rapid recovery. That's what gives me confidence. That's what helps me sleep better at night. So when I started looking at SaaS as a differentiator to protect our 036 environments or 065 environments, Metallic was a natural choice. And the one thing I wanted to add to that is, it came out cheaper than us building it ourselves. When you take into account resources as well as compute and storage. So again, just a natural choice. >> Yeah. As the saying goes back up as one thing, recovery's everything. Isabelle. Yeah, we've seen the SaaSification of the enterprise. Particularly, you know from the app side. You came from Salesforce. So you, the company that is the poster child for SaaS. But my question is what's catalyzing this shift and why do you think data protection is ready to make the move? >> Well, there's so many good things and that's that. As you know, you remember when people started moving to the cloud and transforming their CAPEX into OPEX. Well SaaS bring yet another level of benefits. IT, we know always has to do more with less. And so SaaS allows you to, once you set up, you've got all the software upgrades automatically without you know, I think it's, why it works. You can better manage your cash flow, because you pay as you grow. And also you have a faster time to value. So all of this at help, the fast adoption and I will tell you today I don't think there is a single customer who doesn't have at least one SaaS application because they have things of value of this. Now, when it comes to backup and recovery everybody's at different stages. You still have On-Premises, you have cloud, there's SaaS, there's Workloads devices. And so what we think was the most important was to offer a broad choice of delivery model being able to support them if they want a software subscription, if they want an integrated appliance, or if they want SaaS as a service model, and also some of our partners actually delivering this in a more custom and managed way as well. So offering choice, because everybody is at a different stage on this journey. When it comes to data management and protection, I actually, you know, I think team is the example of taking full advantage of this bold choice. >> Well, you mentioned Tim that you leaned into Metallic. We have seen the SaaS everywhere. We used to have a email server, right? I mean, you know, On-Prem, that just doesn't happen anymore. But how was Mitchell International thinking about SaaS? Maybe you could share your, from your customer perch, what you're seeing. >> Well, what's interesting about this is, Mitchell is been providing SaaS for a long time. We are a technology company and we do provide solutions, SaaS solutions, to our customers. And this makes it so important to be able to embrace it because we know the value behind it. We're providing that to our customers. And when I look at what Commvault is doing I know that Commvault is doing the same thing. They're providing the SaaS Model as a value to their customers. And it's so important to go with this because we keep our environments cutting edge. As GDPR says, You need to have a cutting edge environment. And if you don't, if you cannot check that box you do not move forward. Commvault has that. And this is one less thing that I have to worry about when choosing Metallic to do my backup of O365. >> So thank you for that, Tim. So Manoj, thinking about what you just heard from Isabelle and Tim, you know, kind of fitting into a company's cloud or hybrid cloud, more importantly, strategy, you were talking before about this. "And", in other words, it's not an either or it's not a zero sum game. It's simpatico, if you will. I wonder if you could elaborate. >> Yeah, no The Power of And, Dave, I'm very proud of that. You know, when I think of The Power of And I think of actually folks like Tim, our customers and Commonwealth first, right. And, and really that, that need for choice. So for example, you know, customers on various different paths to the cloud we kind of homogenize it and say, they're on a cloud journey or they're on a digital transformation journey, but each journey looks different. And so part of that, "And", as Isabella was saying, is really the ability to meet them where they are in that journey. So for example, you know, do you, go in there and say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to be some customers 100% multi-cloud or single cloud even. And that includes SaaS applications and my infrastructure running as a service. So there's a natural fit there saying great all your data protection. You're not going to be running software appliances for that. So you've got to data protection, data management as a service that Metallic is the able to offer across the whole S state. And that's, you know, that's probably a small set of customers, but rapidly growing. Then you see a lot more customers were saying I'm going to do away as you're talking about but the emails are where I'm going to move to office 365, leverage the power of teams. And there's a Shared Responsibility Model there which is different than an On-Prem data protection use case. And so they're, they're able to just add on Metallic to the existing Commonwealth environment, whether it's a Commonwealth software or HyperScale, and connect the two. So it's a single integrated experience. And then you kind of go to the other end of the spectrum and say, great customers all in on a SaaS delivered data protection, as you know, and you hear a lot from a lot of your guests and we hear from our customers, there's still a lot of data sitting out there, you know, 90 plus percent of workloads and data centers increasing edge data workloads. And if you were to back up one of those data workloads and say that the only copy can be in the cloud, then that would take like a 10 day recovery isolation. You know, we have some competitors who say that then that's what they have. Our flexibility, our ability to kind of bring in the Hyper-Scale deployment and just, you know, dock it into Metallic, and have a local copy, instant recovery, SLA, remote, you know, backup copy in the cloud for ransomware, or your worst case scenario. That's the kind of flexibility. So all those are scenarios we're really seeing with our customers. And that's kind of really the power advantage. A very unique part of our portfolio, but, you know, companies can have portfolio products, but to have a single integrated offering with that flexibility, that kind of, depending on the use case, you can start here and grow into a different point. That's really the unique part of the power event. Yeah, 10 day RTO just doesn't cut it, but Timmy, maybe you could weigh in here. Why, What was the catalyst for you adopting Metallic and maybe you could share what was the business impact there? >> Well, the catalyst and impact, obviously two different things. The catalyst, when we look at it, there was a lot of what are we going to do with this? We have an environment, we need to back it up, and how are we going to approach this? So we looked at it from a few different standpoints, and of course, when it boils down to it, one of the major reasons was the financial. But when we started looking at everything else that we have available to us and the flexibility that Commvault has in rolling out new solutions, this really was a no brainer at this point. We are able to essentially back up new features and new products, as soon as they're available. Within our Metallic environment, we are running the activate. We are running the the self-service for the end users to where they can actually recover their own files. We are adding the teams into it to be able to recover and perform these backups for teams. And I want to step aside really quick and mentioned something about this because I'd been with, you know, Metallic for a long time and I'd been waiting for this. We've been waiting for an ability to do these backups and anyone I know Manoj knows that I've been waiting for it. And you know, Commvault came back to me a while back and they said, we just have to wait for the API. We have to wait for Microsoft releases. Well, I follow the news. I saw Microsoft released the API, and I think it may have been two days later. Good. Commvault reached out to me and said, Hey we got it available. Are you ready to do this? And that sort of turned around that sort of flexibility being on top of new applications with that, with Salesforce, that is, you know, just not necessarily the reason why I adopted Metallic but one of those things that puts a smile on my face because I adopted Metallic. >> Well, that's an interesting story. I mean, you get the SDKs and if you're a leader you get them, you know, you can put the resources on it and you're ready when, when the product, you know, comes to GA. Manoj, I wonder if we could talk about just the notion of backing up SaaS, part of the announcements today included within Metallic included backup and offerings for Dynamics 365. But my question is why support Dynamics specifically in SaaS apps generally? I mean, customers might say, doesn't my SaaS provider protect my data? Why do I need a third party? And, and the second part of that question is why Commvault? >> Dave a great question as always. I'll start with the second part of the question. It's really three words the Shared Responsibility Model. And, you know, a lot of times our customers as they go into the cloud model they really start understanding that there is something that you're getting a lot of advantages the certain things you don't have to do, but the Shared Responsibility Model is what every cloud and SaaS provider will indoctrinate in its S&As. And certainly the application data is owned by the customer. And the meaning of that is not something that, you know, some SaaS provider can understand. And so that requires specialized skills. And that's a partnership. We've done this now very successfully with Microsoft and LG 65, we've added support for Salesforce, and we see a rapid customer adoption because of that Shared Responsibility Model. If you have, some kind of, an admin issue as we have seen in the news somebody changed their team setting and then lost all their chat. And then that data is discoverable. And you, the customer is responsible for making sure that data is discoverable or ransomware attacks. Again, recovering that SaaS data is your responsibility because the attack could be coming in from your instance not from the SaaS provider. So those are the reasons. Dynamics is, you know, one of the fastest growing SaaS applications from a business applications perspective out there. And as we looked at our roadmap, and you look at at the right compliment, what is the right adjacency, we're seeing this part of Microsoft's Business Application Suite growing, you know, as millions of users out there and it's rapidly growing. And it's also integrated with the rest of the Microsoft family. So we're now, you know, proud to say that we support all three Microsoft clouds, Microsoft Azure, or 365, Dynamics. Those applications are increasingly integrated so we're seeing commonality in customer base and that's a business critical data. And so customers are looking to manage the data, have solutions that they can be sure they can leverage. It's not just protecting data from worst-case scenarios. In the case of some of the apps like Dynamics, we offer a support, like setting up the staging environment. So it's improving productivity of the application admins, and that's really kind of that the value we're bringing able to bring to the table. >> Yeah. You know, that Shared Responsibility Model. I'm glad you brought that up because I think it's oftentimes misunderstood but when you talk to CSOS, they understand it well. They'll tell you the shared responsibility is my responsibility. You know, maybe the cloud provider will secure the object storage bucket for the physical space, but it's on me. So that's really important. So thank you for that. Isabelle, last question, the roadmap, you know, how do you see Commvault's, Metallic SaaS portfolio evolving? What can you tell us? >> Oh, well, it's, it has a big strategic, you know, impact on Commvault for sure on the first portfolio first because of all of our existing customers as you mentioned earlier, 25 years, it's a lot of customers are somehow some workload as SaaS. And so the ability without, you know, adding more complexity without adding another vendor just to be able to protect them in one take, and as teams they bring a smile to his face is really important for us. The second is also a lot of customers come to Commvault for Metallic. This is the first time enter the Commvault community and Commvault family. And as they start protecting their assessed application they realize that they could leverage the same application to protect their own premised data as well. So back to The Power of And, and without writing off their past investments, you know, going to the cloud at the pace they want. So from that perspective, there is a big impact on our customer community the thing is that Metallic it brings I don't know Manoj is way too humble, but, you know, he don't go to this customer every quarter. And, you know, we have added 24 countries to the portfolio, to the product. So we see a rapid adoption. And so obviously back to your question, we see the impacts of Metallic growing and growing fast because of the market demand, because of the rapid innovation we can take the Commvault technology and put it in the SaaS model and our customers really like it. So I'm very excited. I think it's going to be, you know, a great innovation, a great positive impact for customers, and our new customers we're welcoming, which by the way I think half, Manoj correct me, but I think half of the Metallic customer at Commvault and the other half are new to our family. So, they're very bullish about this. And it's just the beginning, as you know, we are 25 years old, or sorry, 25 years young, and looking forward to the next 25. >> Well, I can confirm, you know, we have a data partner survey, partner ETR, Enterprise Technology Research, and I was looking at the Commvault data and it shows within the cloud segment, when you cut the data by cloud, you're actually accelerating, the spending momentum is accelerating. And I think it's a function of, you know, some of the acquisitions you've made, some of the moves you made in integration. So congratulations on 25 years and you know, you're riding the correct wave, Isabelle, Manoj, Tim, thanks so much for coming in theCUBE. It was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you Dave. >> I really appreciate it. >> And thank you everybody for watching. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time. (Upbeat Music)

>> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault Go 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we're wrapping up close-- Wrapping up our coverage of two days at Commvault Go in Colorado and we're excited to welcome a new gust to theCUBE. We have Tim Carben, Principle Systems Engineer for Storage and Data Protection at Mitchell, a Commvault customer. Tim, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: First question. >> Yes. >> Are you ready for the interview? (Tim shows off his shirt) >> I came ready. >> Lisa: You were born ready! >> Yes. (Lisa laughs) >> So for those of you who weren't here, the get ready, be ready is a big theme of the event. So, Tim, first of all, before we get into what Mitchell is doing with Commvault, tell our audience who Mitchell is, what types of products and services do you deliver? >> Well, Mitchell is a little known name, but we are a technology company that provides smart solutions, or smart insurance solutions. (Tim sighs) I'm sorry, we provide smart technology solutions for insurance companies in the area of property and casualty. >> Okay. That's a big, that's a-- >> That's a mouth full. >> It is a mouth full, but you did really well. So based here in the US? >> Tim: Yes in San Diego. >> Oh, that's right, Sunny San Diego. We were just talking about the scooter problem. How could I forget? So, you came onboard there, you said around five or so years ago? >> Tim: Yes, about five and a half years. >> If I think of like, insurance. (Lisa cringes) The data volume growing, right, must be, you're wincing, exponential. Talk to us about the data strategy and the importance of data to Mitchell and what you're doing with Commvault to protect it, get that visibility and use it to deliver stellar services. >> Well that's exactly it. It's, we see growth and, year over year and making sure that we keep that data protected is the most important thing. We have to be able to provide that back to our customers, in an instant and keep it available. That's number one is keeping everything available. So, of course I'm going to choose Commvault. I always look into everything that's in the market and I talk with everyone. I mean, I've had conversations with everyone from Rupert to Veritas and I agree with Forrester in saying that Commvault's the best product for the data protection. >> Lisa: Why? >> Mainly, because we're seeing them move forward faster than anyone else. They're able to-- Or I'm able to, I guess I should say, utilizing Commvault, microtune my environment to be able to provide the fastest level of backup and recovery. Rather than buying blocks and putting these blocks together. And even when it comes to the hyperscale product, it's a Red Hat server cluster. So it's not a black box you can't see inside of, you understand what's going on underneath it and it is a tried and true methodology for doing what you're trying to do and it's... I guess for lack of better words, just really resilient, I love it. >> Great, so Tim, you said you've looked at a lot of solutions, you've been on Commvault for quite a while. Talk to us a little bit about that usability of the product, you know? Some of the questions we have is, you know how simple it actually is to use, you know how much your team needs to study up and get on it and just, kind of, the cadence of change that you're seeing coming from Commvault. >> Now, my team's really good. You know we've been-- They've been with Commvault since version six they know how to use the Java console. So, it's not so much as, they are learning something new, but what's happening and what I've noticed with Commvault, from within the Java console to the command center, is they're making everything else a lot easier. So, they're not changing the way I'm doing my mature backups of, say Oracle, or, you know file system, things like that, but they are making it a lot easier for me to start and recover and I guess, change configuration of the VMware backups. They're making it easier of me to manage my storage and with the command center or with the web console, I should say, they're making it so much easier to report. Anyone that's utilized the CommNet from back in the day, the old reporting tool, versus the new centralized metrics reporting tool, knows that there's no comparison whatsoever. And I can point all of my CommCells to one reporting system and provide reports that go over everything from storage utilization to, you know, just resource utilization all the way down to chargeback, based upon any given criteria I want. >> You have full visibility? >> Full visibility. >> You mentioned that you've been a Commvault customer for a while, not just at Mitchell, but your previous company, you also said before we started that you've done a lot of speaking on behalf of Commvault, your use case, other challenges that you had, the business outcomes. I would love to get your perspective on being one of those customer champions, what are some of the things that you're hearing from prospective Commvault customers? Are they asking you for your advice, like hey, we had this kind of compelling event, Tim, what would you recommendation be? >> A lot of it is specifics and I think that's, you know, they'll be asking questions based upon who they're talking to and I'm the guy that you talk to when you want to talk the details. So they'll come to me and say hey, what about this hyperscale configuration and I'll say, well rather than go with the larger environment, go with the smaller nodes and spread it wider, that way you can transfer more data in. But... It's a lot of just how is it working for you? And even into the newer environments where we're looking at the, you know, 0365 being backed up by SaaS is, how easy is it to configure? And that is quite possibly the easiest thing to configure that I've ever run across. >> Wow. Ever? >> Ever. Well, like I said, they keep making things better and in the past I've used, you know, Veritas backup Exec, as everyone has back in the day. I mean, we've done data transfer on tapes, I've used TSM for seven years, so everything's going to be easier than that and even a lot of testing of different backup applications and when you look at what we're doing with cloud configuration and Commvault SaaS model, Commvault really takes a lot of the configuration out that you would need to do and they have their own CommCell administrator that takes care of it. I was talking with Justin not too long back, he's here I was so happy to get to meet him and he manages all that for us. We enter in the specifics as far as configuration and it's done. >> So you guys-- Oh, go ahead, Stu. >> So, Tim, you know, what I'm curious about is the feedback loop that you have with Commvault. Obviously you're quite happy with the product, you've seen the maturation over time. Are there things you're asking for, or things that you're seeing on their roadmap or maybe things that were announced this week, that are exciting you or things that you would love to help be doing things even better than what you're doing today? >> I don't know, this may be the thing that the sales people don't like about me. Is I don't hold back when I see something that I want to see different and I've done this with different storage manufacturers that I've worked with, as well as, of course with Commvault and the one things that I always come back to and this is one thing I joked with my previous sales person on is, if you're going to call it Commvault Complete, why doesn't it include orchestrate and activate? You could just call it Commvault and then give us another Commvault Complete that actually contains everything in it, because, I wish I could run the activate in-house. The problem is, is I've priced it out, I've provided that data to my upper management and they just will not buy off on it. >> And what was Commvault's response to that feedback? 'Cause they're very pro-listening to their customers, we've heard that resoundingly. >> They are and there really wasn't anything. They said they're hand things up the channel and what's interesting about it is in talking to the activate people today, or, yes, either way. During the show, I found out that they added another plan that would allow you to buy activate by the terabyte and not by the user. So that may be something that could help drop the price if we isolate specific environments to what we would use the activate for and that would be (Tim nods) workable, I guess I should say. >> So, speaking of activate, data governance, insights, the California Consumer Privacy Act, CCPA is around the corner. >> Yes. >> You're based in San Diego. Where is Mitchell in terms of its readiness for that and how is Commvault, ar they part of that solution to get ready? >> As far as-- I can speak to the data protection side of it, because that's where I'm at. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And I have everything in place for us to be ready by the time everything comes through. And it is utilizing Commvault. I mean, that's the backbone of being able to keep us protected. At that level and all levels, I should say. >> Tim, as we mentioned before, you've been speaking, you've been quite busy at the show, give us, you know, some of the highlights that you've had and, you know, what brings you to Go and how many of them have you been to? >> Well, I went to the first two Florida and DC. I skipped out on the last one, I wanted to send my coworkers there. So my coworkers that I work with, I made it a point I said I'm staying at the office, I'll take care of everything, go and-- No pun intended. >> Lisa: I was going to say that was good. >> Yes. (Lisa and Tim laughing) And then I came back to this one. The big thing is learning. This is an opportunity for me to talk to industry experts, to talk to customers who have done things that I'm planning on doing in the future, to help out customers who haven't done things that I've already done and let 'em know hey look out for this or look out for that. But, with this one a big part of it is looking at the workflows, looking at the automation. Utilizing or being able to utilize all the other features that I have available to me that I'm not using right now. >> Last question in the last few seconds of the time we have left, lots of announcements from Commvault in the last nine months a lot of change, a lot of leadership change, reps to market change, new ventures. Some of your perspective of what you're seeing with this new Commvault? >> Well, it's exciting when you look at it. At first I wondered about the Hedvig acquisition. I mean, it's a step into the primary storage market and some people say that a lot of the companies that are partners with Commvault could see that as overstepping boundaries, but when I learn what they're doing and what they're planning on doing and utilizing it as more of a data protection multicloud strategy, this really could push them a little bit further along than anyone else than the data protection market is. So, the changes look to be, for lack of better words, really good for the company and in turn really good for us, the consumer. And making sure that we can do everything that we need to do and we're ready to move forward. >> 'Course you are, you have the shirt. >> Tim: That's right, we're ready >> Well Tim, Tim thank you for joining Stu and me on theCUBE this afternoon. Sharing with us what's going on at Mitchell and you perspectives on knowing Commvault as long as you have. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you for having me. >> Our pleasure. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19. (upbeat tune)