(upbeat music) >> From Tavern on the Green, in Central Park New York, it's theCUBE; covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome to the heart of New York City. We're here in Central Park the Tavern on the Green. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. And we're covering the Veritas Solution Day; hashtag Vtasday. So, Scott Genereux is here as executivee president of world wide field ops for Veritas. Scott, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you good to see you. Thank you. >> So, I love the location. A lot of our crew, they've never been here before; I said wait until you see Tavern on the Green, it's sweet. Customers love it. So, why this location? What are you guys doing with the Solutions Days different than the big tent event? You guys have gone to a more intimate format, explain that. >> Yeah, so last year we did the big event. We also did regional events, and it was interesting. And when we looked at the regional events; the input from our customers was; they loved the idea of doing something local, a little bigger, so they didn't have to travel. You know it's just difficult to get somebody to come out fly across the country to spend a week. And so, we decided to do 20 of these around the world. We also found out last year that the number of people who were coming to the regional events; was very very large. I mean some of our events we had four, 500 people coming. So it just made a lot more sense to us is; how do we get close to our customers, make sure they didn't have to travel; and be able to touch 'em so. >> So, collectively you're probably hitting as many if not more people. >> A lot more. >> Probably a different type of audience too when you go. So, you're doing a bunch in the US and a bunch in overseas right? >> Correct, yeah, so we've got New York, Chicago, San Francisco, we got one in Washington D.C. focus on the Fed, and we have one up in Toronto in North America. And then we've got 'em in Latin America. >> So you've been a kind of customer success executive all your life; you spend a lot of time in New York City. A lot of customers down here. A lot of the more advanced and sophisticated customers here. So, what are you hearing as you see digital transformation, big data, cloud, multi cloud; people are changing the way in which they think about data, and protecting data and getting more value out of data. What are they telling you here; the challenges that they're facing and where do they want to go with Veritas? >> You know the exciting is that look, we're still the market leader, right? Well, people say what's going on with Veritas? We're the market leader, we have been for the last 15 plus years. And, the people we're doing data protection for today, are the largest of the largest. You know, 95% of the Fortune 100 use our technology. 85% of the Fortune 500 use our technology. So, we get a lot of information knowledge experience from what you would argue and I would too. The customers here; which are the toughest of the tough too, right? I mean, they're not always nice, they tell you what they think. And they're thinking you know, two three years out of what we have to go do to support those environments. So it's interesting; you know the big thing going into this year, there was a lot of conversation around compliance. You know, GDPR in Europe was huge. And really, I kind of narrow it down to P.I.I. Regardless if you're banking, healthcare, whoever. The whole question around how do you protect data? Where is my data located? Who's touching my data? Has just become a bigger and bigger issue. And then you throw in the word cloud and as you said multi clouds, no one's using one cloud. All of a sudden your data is spread out all over the place. So, how you focus on that, how do you have visibility on that, becomes more and more important. And obviously that makes data protection, center of what's going on with customers now. >> So there are a couple of vectors now there that I'd like to explore. One is the idea that we're now looking at data protection to get more value out of it. You talked about GDPR, privacy, things of that nature. So, I want to talk about that. But also, the last thing customers want that I talked to; they don't want yet another stove pipe of data protection. And as you go, every cloud has it's own back up approach. So, I'm curious what you guys are doing. Let's start there. Are you putting in some sort of a extraction layer to be able to service all of those different multi clouds. Which cloud companies are you working with? >> Yeah, so first of all we serve all major cloud providers. For us, we're very agnostic in the sense of we don't care where your data is located; it can be behind your Firewall, it can be in Amazon, it can be Microsoft, it can be in Google, it can be in a pseudo what we would call more of a regional, you know, a sass type cloud that you support based on something uniquely in your environment. So we don't really care on where it's located. And that's actually one of our big positives. But you're right, one of the big issues customers have today is okay they start out and they might use Amazon for test development. Amazon has their own way of moving data into the cloud. And what do you do and how do you protect it? And then you go all of a sudden Office 365 because that's the you know, the Microsoft way of getting into the cloud. And so now you've got two clouds. Oracle's pushing you to do clouds. So you've got an Oracle cloud probably right? And we can go down that whole list. So everyone is driving a cloud strategy. But the problem customers have today is; they don't want to have six or seven different ways of on boarding data applications into the cloud, and they also do not want to have different ways of moving data or protecting data. And I think, so for us what we do that's very different is that, we have software that allows you to move data and applications into any one of those clouds the exact same way. I mean, if you think about it today. When you think about data replication, or protecting data; a lot of customers use hardware replication to move data. Well, the problem you run into today, when you think about it, is that the traditional cloud vendors, we just listed who they were, they don't use traditional hardware. No one's using EMCSRDF in the Amazon cloud. No one's using Hitachi's products. So, you need a software based replication tool and a data mover I'll call it, to be able to do that. And that's an area we've invested a lot of time and money on to be able to do it. And more importantly, even though I don't hear this a lot from customers any more, there was a fear for a while of cloud lock in; I don't want to be too into one cloud. We could move data between clouds also. So, you know, you don't have to bring it back and bring it back forward. So, that also makes customers at ease of how do you manage it. But it just creates a whole different environment of what to do and how to do it. >> So you're not in a technical role at the company but when you're in this business and you talk to a lot of technology people, you have to be conversant in technology. So I'm curious, so you've mentioned the high speed data mover that's something that's always been fundamental to the Veritas architecture. But you've done some other things. I've got briefed and seen some of the videos of what you guys done on 8.1.2. There's components of that are really different. I mean, modern software, micro services based architecture. >> Yep. >> That have allowed you to actually create this multi cloud sort of affinity. Maybe talk about what's the conversation like with customers with regard to modernizing your platform. >> Right. I think two things; you know it's interesting, the two things that customers always have asked us for is a new U.I. interface. You know now it's interesting like anything, customers have used us for 10 years. There's customers who love the old interface right? >> Right. >> But today, when you think about cloud or think about particular work loads, which is probably more important. You know, it's no longer the back up administrator who might have to do everything. When it used to be just the back up person, you know, having the way we used to do it, made a lot of sense. But now, you're basically grabbing someone who could be the virtual machine administrator. It could be the cloud person administrator. It could be security. And those people don't have a background in data protection. So the question is, how do you give them an interface that makes it easy for them to understand and use to be able to administrate that. So now the back up administrator can actually create groups inside of net back up. And allow those organizations to be able to look at their environments and be able to manage it very differently. So, and it's the same thing with work loads. When you think about it today, most of the data growth that we're seeing, it's traditionally not, it's not the Oracle work load, SAP work loads. 60 70 plus percent of our largest customers are creating new data based applications on non sequel stuff. It's Mongo, it's Casandra. So the new 8.1.2, supports all those environments. We didn't do that before. So that's a great interface for us. Because those data bases don't natively do back up well. The Hadoop, data analytics; huge amount of data being created there. It used to be that it used to be a sandbox; a playground. But those applications have gotten to become you know important in these customers. And so it used to be you just used to take a snap shot of this stuff and you would have about 20 copies of peta bites of data. Now you can do point in time back ups using those types of products. So 8.1.2 has that type of support in it too. And we've done a lot of stuff around VM ware specifically, focused around new innovative things that we needed to do to modernize the products. >> So those emerging work loads like not only sequel but you know, Mongo, Hadoop, etc cetera. That's now native to your stack, correct? >> Completely, yup. >> Okay, that's different. Because you've hardened that. A lot of companies in your business; maybe the some of the newer guys have to go to a partner to find those capabilities. >> Right. >> So, that's I think, big. The other thing I heard was, cloud like I think I heard self-service essentially for some of the liza business folks. Or whomever that you don't want to send them necessarily back to the back up admin. Do it on your own. Here's some policies they'll make it kindergarten proof. >> Right. >> Okay, so that's a trend you're seeing as well. >> Yes, yes, completely. >> Okay. I want to come back to something you said before, this other vector, which is other uses for back up or the back up data then just insurance. Because people don't want to pay for insurance. >> Right. >> So, you've mentioned a compliance, GDPR. I would imagine as well; when you get things like ransom ware, there's also analytics. I know you guys are applying a lot of A.I. >> Correct. >> You've got the corpus of data, just so happens that the back up data contains the data of the company. >> Correct. >> So presuming we do other things with it. So what are some of the things the customers are doing? How are they getting additional value out of the investment that they are making at Veritas? >> I think, you know, it's a couple of areas. Before we leave compliance, let me focus on one thing that's been really important is the whole question about where my data is located. This whole visual-ness of data; who's touched it last, all of that has become a really really important thing for customers because even in the natural cloud, sometimes you don't know that maybe one of the cloud providers moved your second copy of data in to a data center that is a problem for you, right? >> Physically it's in a place it shouldn't be. >> Right, yeah. It shouldn't be in a data center. It moved out of a country boundary for compliance reasons right? So, you know, we've spent a lot of time and energy creating a software technology that gives you that visibility. And not just with net back up. We also plug in all the cloud providers; we also plug in Oracle, we also plug in box.net. You know I mean, so a lot of these other companies are also plugged in. So, back to your point, we've created this huge data repository of information that now allows us when you look at our future, and we talked about a little on this session earlier; data analytics, some capabilities that we should be able to go do because we have meta data to be able to give customers that visual capability. The other thing that's interesting is that visualization software, is it also tells, it finally gives customers a proof point of what we've always known. That probably roughly about 50% of their data. And I'm being kind when I say 50. Probably hasn't been touched in three, five, four, 10 plus years, right? And we've always known that. But now we actually show a customer. Hey, using this visualization software, that you're using for compliance has also now told you where the data is located and who's touched it last, and by the way it hasn't been touched forever. It allows the customer to have two conversations; one, do they need to save it? And if they do, do they move it into a glacier type environment? Or three, do they move it to a software defying storage on the customer's floor? We can help the customer migrate it after we showed them who hasn't touched it. But we also have a software defying storage solution. That Gardener just came out and said that we're number one in this space, right? So, it's one of our fastest growing pieces of our business. Because customers all the time say to me, Scott our data protection cost is going up. And the reality is, it isn't. The reality is data is growing dramatically. Storage is going up, and oh by the way I got to back up my data that sits on the storage, right? So it all kind of combines together. >> So data protection is the percentage on the spend is not necessarily increasing but everything is growing. >> Everything is growing, yes. >> So the other thing, just a couple of points that you made me think of, the other cloud that you support is on prime. >> Yes, yeah, it's still big by the way. >> So that's another piece of it. Because you got the three laws of the cloud right? It's the law of physics. You can't necessarily put everything into the public eye. Then you got the law of economics, and you got the law of the land, in which you were talking about before, >> Right. >> If you're not supposed to leave Germany, >> Correct. >> You can't leave Germany, okay. And then, so you're using analytics to help customers to determine this. And the other thing, some of the general counselors out there don't want to keep data forever. >> Correct. >> I hear a lot from vendors, oh you could now keep it forever and GC says no, we don't want to keep it forever. >> Exactly, right. >> Okay, so you're using analytics to sort of sift through that data and surface these clues. >> Yes. >> And actions to customers. >> Yes and the new thing also at 8.1.2 is we've come out with a smart meter type technology which will let customers know how much data they're using, where they're using the data? Any hot spots in the data. And it's very file based, you know, data focused. It obviously helps customers really understand who's using what where, you know. And to be fair, they can use that to help go drive costs, figure out you know maybe someone's using something they shouldn't, maybe people are storing stuff that they don't want to store. It's not just a benefit to figure what they're doing but it's also could help and drive cost out. >> Big customer base obviously, probably the largest in the business. >> Yup, over 50,000. >> 50,000 customers? >> Yup. >> You've modernized the software. Just rap it up, the competitive customer differentiation, a lot of noise in the market place. >> Yup. >> Where do you stand? What's your position relative to the competition? Why Veritas? >> Yeah, well, so for us, when we walk in to a large customer, as you can appreciate, they don't want three or four different products; back to the cloud conversation, they don't want three or four ways of moving data in to cloud, right? They really want one. And the other issue they all ran into is this compliance conversation. You, know not everybody does everything the same. And they don't all talk together. Having a single platform, to be able to give customers the capability of backing up everything from traditional work loads of Oracle, and SAP to Mongo DB, to Casandra, to Hadoop, to containers, to open source; we're the only company out there that can do all those work loads. There are start ups. And they may do one or two things really really well, or so they say they do, we don't think they do, but they say they do, and that's what they focus in on. That's not what a large enterprise customer wants. They want capabilities to be able to scale high performance, ease of use, and 8.1.2 gives that to them. And we do more work loads than any body else in the industry. >> Excellent, well Scott thanks for coming on. We are here in the heart of New York City, at Tavern on the Green. A lot of customers, I've been talking to some of those customers today, those customers, they're as tough as Yankee fans I could tell ya. (laughing) So Scott thanks agan, good to see you. >> Alright, thank you. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. Thank you for watching theCUBE from Veritas Solutions Days in New York, right back. (upbeat music)

(upbeat symphonic orchestra) >> Hello and welcome to this Cube Conversation here in Palo Alto, California, the Cube Headquarters. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media for a special Cube Conversation with Tami Zhu, who is the General Manager of Kika Tech Headquarters in San Jose. She's a friend of the Cube, I've known Tami since almost about 15 years ago from the Web 2.0 era. Dual degree in Computer Science, undergraduate and a Master's as well as an M.B.A. from M.I.T., Sloan. Great to see you. >> Thank you, John, for having me here. >> Great to see you. So we've kind of been through Web 2.0. I think you were at AOL Ventures then, and riding other careers. You've been in the trenches, certainly in the front lines in tech. You've seen a lot of waves. So where are you now? Give us an update on what you're doing now, lot of great things happening. >> Yes, since we last saw each other 15 years ago. Most recently, I joined the company called Kika Tech and we're headquartered in San Jose. As a matter of fact, the reason the company recruited me to join the company is for two things. One is to develop our A.I. effort and product, and secondly is to move the headquarters from China to San Jose because a large percentage of our consumers are U.S. based. >> We love the China connection. We've been covering China recently for SiliconANGLE and the Cube. We just did Hangzhao for Alibaba but this really speaks to- I don't want to say the Chinese invasion of North America, but that's certainly happening, but also the rest of the world is going to China. Tons of users out there. It's exploded with mobile usage, really setting the trends. So the globalization of the internet is happening. The software on mobile is just getting better and better. You're doing some A.I. work with Kika. What's going on with A.I. and Kika? You guys have spectacular performance. What, 400 million downloads? What is it all about? What is the big trend that you're riding? >> Yeah, so the mission of Kika is to revolutionize communication with A.I. If you were to look at the purposes of human communication, we categorize into three categories. Number one is by sharing information, and number two is about initiating requests and having your requests fulfilled. Number three is about sharing your emotion. A lot of companies out there are addressing one of the three challenges and purposes where at Kika, we're taking on the challenges, addressing all three purposes in communication. >> Well congratulations on all your successes as General Manager and expanding out in North America from the Chinese base company. You've got a big challenge ahead of you, but I've got to ask you on a personal level, I've always seen you in a male-dominated culture in the Web 2.0 era. You've been very successful as a woman in tech, and... what got you into technology? You've kind of a nerd like me and you love to get in there and look at the technology. You're not afraid to get your hands dirty in the tech. How did you get into the technology business? >> I'm probably nerdier than you. (laughs) As a starter. So I grew up in a very academic family. My parents are both engineering professors. They encouraged me to excel in academics at school. I was very competitive and I always wanted to be number one, I was always number one as a matter of fact throughout the entire school and academic career. When I was 12 years old, my dad was a visiting professor here in the United States, and he told me a lot about Stanford and the Silicon Valley. At that time, I decided I was going to come to the Silicon Valley when I grew up and participate in technological innovation. I just thought that was so cool. >> And you did? >> Tami: Yes, absolutely. This is something that I'm passionate about and that I love to do. >> You're certainly an inspiration. I've always enjoyed the work you've done and just the energy you bring to the table. This is something we need more of. You're out there... what do you say to people? "Hey, I've been around the block a few times." There's a lot of people trying to figure out the whole women in tech thing. There's been such negative things going on in the business. You're a positive light. What would you like to share for folks around just your thoughts on this whole... women in tech, should they be special? The pipelining issues, all these issues and conversations. What's your perspective? How would you take it perspectively? >> Right. I say we take advantage of our individual strengths and a number of things I continue to emphasize to my colleagues at work. Number one is every day you check in and ask yourself, "do I love this work? Is this something I'm passionate about?" If you are, it's more likely you're going to be successful in the business with some perseverance, right? The second thing that I emphasize is don't be afraid of experimenting and try to make mistakes, that's okay. Completely okay. Try to make mistakes early and frequent as long as you don't make the same mistakes again and learn from that. The third thing I continue to emphasize, a matter of fact, I lead by example, is never procrastinate. We have dreams and hopes and we talk about that, that's great. But we need to execute on that now. >> I love your competitive spirit. I think you're an inspiration. But also, you said you like to be number one, and you were in school. I think you might be a little bit nerdier than me, but we can talk about it after. When you're number one, you're going fast, you're moving fast and you're learning, you're not going to go without a few interactions that are unfavorable. So how do you talk to other women when you're out in the field? When you're hard-charging like that and you're smart, you've got to deal with a lot of bad actors. It could be men, it could be harassment, it could be sexual, whatever it is, you know you've got to break through it. If you want to be number one, you've got to deal with this. >> Sure. >> I've talked to a lot of women who have said they've had their fair share of interactions that were unpleasant, but I moved past it. How do you deal with it? I'm sure you have stories and can share a perspective on how you deal with unwanted advances to just bad behavior. >> Right. I think I'm luckier, probably, than some of the... average population in that I've not really dealt with much bad behavior. Certain behaviors, I'd say, look way beyond that. Don't play the same game. Don't play the game at all. Don't entertain any of the bad behaviors. Believe in yourself and perseverance will get you far and apart. Never give up. >> Awesome. On the inspiration side, how do you inspire other women? I'm seeing some really good things happening. One thing is, I'm seeing a lot of conversations. A lot of people coming together. A lot of young women are looking up for leaders and looking to folks who have been through, climbing the mountain, close to the top or at the top. You have this new really cool vibe going on where the women are coming together at all ages for sharing. How do you do it? >> As a matter of fact, compared to 15 years ago when we met doing Web 2.0 I think there were a lot fewer women in tech. Nowadays with a new generation of technology and social media, we're actually seeing women in computer science taking the lead. Just taking the time, be patient, and I think one of the things as human being, we often worry about compensation and how much we're being paid now, how much we're worth, and what exactly the title is, right? I say don't even worry about that. Focus on what you're passionate about. It will take some time. Be patient and it will get there. >> We always say, "respect for the individual," but just be a good person. Don't deal with the nonsense, just move past it and don't play the games. Alright got to get back into the tech since we're going to geek out here. So A.I. I think is the hottest thing on the planet right now. Obviously I.O.T. is super important. We cover it heavily on the Cube. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "I can't wait to talk about I.O.T with my friend!" They all love A.I. because it's got a cooler vibe to it, but we're talking about software. We're talking about really cool software and a Renaissance of software development. So A.I. is super hot, you guys are doing a lot of A.I. at Kika. What is the coolness, for male and female, for anyone to get involved - What is the hot A.I. trend? Is it the machine learning, is it the deep learning? Is it the user experience, is it making it easier? What are some of the advances that you're excited about in A.I.? >> So depending on the timing and the year, say 15 years ago, or 20 years ago... Let's say 20 years ago, at the time, A.I. actually, there was a small boom that very quickly went into an ice age. A cold winter. Matter of fact, during that time, I was in undergrad and my undergrad thesis was natural language processing in Chinese languages. With that expert system at that time, the framework never got anywhere. They were really limited because of the knowledge from experts. So now fast-forward to two, three years ago when Amazon Echo first launched. I think there was a lot of doubt. In academia and the amount of people in the industry were thinking pretty cynically. Saying, "well that's just another boom. I doubt that." Echo really paved the way and brought artificial intelligence into the homes of consumers. Two, three years ago it was very cutting edge in terms of voice recognition. You hear a lot about far field, noise cancellation, but nowadays, the voice recognition is becoming far more mature, right? For someone who wants to work on the most cutting edge thing, from my point of view, voice may be a little bit to the point where it's mature and people understand the problems. So this year, only recently, Apple announced an emoji. So this is the starting point of computer vision in consumers' lives. Say if I were an engineer, I would want to get into computer vision, because there's so many more things you could potentially create with that. >> John: It's the next level U.I. in the interaction, I mean, I think NLP, National Language Processing, has always been kind of fun. I remember back when I was getting my C.S. degree, entologies were big. That kind of stalled, the nuclear winter, or the cold winter. But now with cloud computing, and mobile being so powerful, you now have so much at your disposal. With all these libraries and open source developing, it's a dream for a developer because now you can create new experiences. Not the old way, browser, or just typing on a phone. You guys have got a really cool app that you can download Kika Technologies. You got huge opportunities that reimagine the interface and the interactions. I think A.I. has put a picture in the mind of the user, the consumer, and the developer. Self-driving cars, Teslas. This is a new coolness. What are some other examples of this new coolness that you can share that are happening whether it's computer vision, Teslas, or voice interaction? What are some examples of the coolness? >> So I've been very limited in that. I've been so focused on work. We have something really cool coming up in 2018. Matter of fact, we're kicking off 2018 with launching a brand new product that's taking our existing input method keyboard to the whole next level. The whole I.O.T., you were just mentioning, "who cares about I.O.T.?" (laughs) >> Well it's one of the fastest growing areas, but I.O.T. is A.I will become an edge of the network. Now on this launch, is this going to happen at C.E.S? >> Yes, we're going to launch at C.E.S. >> So we'll look for the news at C.E.S. >> Yes. It'll be very exciting, matter of fact. >> I'll have to dig some information out of Tami after this interview is over. Find out more. We'll be at C.E.S. Okay, final question. In general, just your thoughts on the tech cycle right now. You've ridden many waves, you've seen a lot, you know the tech under the covers. What's the big movement that young people should be jumping on? The new Renaissance in software development is happening. We see the cloud there. It's clear from Amazon success of the new models here, you're seeing some successes. How would you describe this new era, this new guard of technology providers and software? >> From a talent point of view, 10 or 15 years ago, if you got a P.H.D. in computer science, you could hardly find a job other than finding a professorship somewhere. Nowadays, if you're to look at Facebook or Google as a P.H.D. in computer science, then you are worth a lot more- >> Some say Google is turning into academia, but that's a whole other conversation. But okay, if you can get a P.H.D., neural nets are hot still. Neural networks, things of that nature. P.H.D., there's a lot of work there. Anything else? >> Yes. A.I. will continue to develop, and now A.I. is the real thing compared to 15 or 20 years ago, right? It was very limited to academia. That's going to continue to develop, and you'll look at other areas. For example, digital advertising. In the past four or five years, it was programmatic advertising. How do you accurately target the audience and then maximize the CPA or CPM per audience. Then the next level is about how to build an advertising network that's effective and targeting the audience, not only maximizing the revenue, but also how do you keep the audience and continue to grow the audience. So these are- >> In the role of data, just one final thought on the data, the role of data in all of this is the center of all this. Your thoughts on the role of data and how that's going to shape- because those experiences of targeting might shift around with the users who are now driving the data. >> Matter of fact, the data is key. At Kika, our number one differentiation is a large volume of training data, so with that data, we can train our deep learning algorithm. Make our algorithm, find patterns and predict contacts and text. That's the number one thing. The number two thing is because you have the data, there are a lot of privacy policies that you need to watch out and make sure there's no data leaking or security leak that could potentially create that press. Also it's not safe for the consumers. So we're talking about data. Data really is the competitive advantage. >> If you're a data geek out there, you have no problem getting a job. We're here with Tami Zhu who is the general manager of Kika Tech headquarters in San Jose here inside the Palo Alto Cube studios for Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat electro)