>>President. >>Hello everyone and welcome to wien on 2021. My name is Dave Volonte and you're watching the cubes continuous coverage of the event. You know, VM is a company that made its mark riding the virtualization wave, but quite amazingly has continued to extend its product portfolio and catch the other major waves of the industry. Of course, we're talking about cloud backup. SaS data protection was one of the early players there making moves and containers. And this is the VM on power panel with me or Danny Allen, who is the Ceo and Senior vice president of product strategy at VM. Dave Russell is the vice President of enterprise Strategy, of course, said Vin and Rick Vanover, senior director of product strategy at VM. It's great to see you again. Welcome back to the cube. >>Good to be here. >>Well, it had to be here. >>Yeah, let's do it. >>Let's do this. So Danny, you know, we heard you kind of your keynotes and we saw the general sessions and uh sort of diving into the breakouts. But the thing that jumps out to me is this growth rate that you're on. Uh you know, many companies and we've seen this throughout the industry have really struggled, you know, moving from the traditional on prem model to an an A. R. R. Model. Uh they've had challenges doing so the, I mean, you're not a public company, but you're quite transparent and a lot of your numbers 25% a our our growth year of a year in the last quarter, You know, 400,000 plus customers. You're talking about huge numbers of downloads of backup and replication Danny. So what are your big takeaways from the last, You know, 6-12 months? I know it was a strange year obviously, but you guys just keep cranking. >>Yeah, so we're obviously hugely excited by this and it really is a confluence of various things. It's our, it's our partners, it's the channel. Um, it's our customers frankly that that guide us and give us direction on what to do. But I always focus in on the product because I, you know, we run product strategy here, this group and we're very focused on building good products and I would say there's three product areas that are on maximum thrust right now. One is in the data center. So we built a billion dollar business on being the very best in the data center for V sphere, hyper V, um, for Nutanix, HV and as we announced also with red hat virtualization. So data center obviously a huge thrust for us going forward. The second assess Office 3 65 is exploding. We already announced we're protecting 5.8 million users right now with being back up for Office 3 65 and there's a lot of room to grow there. There's 145 million daily users of Microsoft teams. So a lot of room to grow. And then the third areas cloud, we moved over 100 petabytes of data into the public cloud in Q one and there's a lot of opportunity there as well. So those three things are driving the growth, the data center SaAS and cloud >>Davis. I want to get your kind of former analyst perspective on this. Uh you know, I know, you know, it's kind of become cliche but you still got that D. N. A. And I'm gonna tap it. So when you think about and you were following beam, of course very closely during its ascendancy with virtualization. And back then you wouldn't just take your existing, you know, approaches to back up in your processes and just slap them on to virtualization. That that wouldn't have worked. You had to rethink your backup. And it seems like I want to ask you about cloud because people talk about lift and shift and what I hear from customers is, you know, if I just lift and shift to cloud, it's okay, but if I don't have a plan to change my operating model, you know, I don't get the real benefit out of it. And so I would think back up data protection, data management etcetera is a key part of that. So how are you thinking about cloud and the opportunity there? >>Yeah, that's a good point, David. You know, I think the key area right there is it's important to protect the workload of the environment. The way that that environment is naturally is best suited to be protected and also to interact in a way that the administrator doesn't have to rethink, doesn't have to change their process so early on. Um I think it was very successful because the interface is the work experience looked like what an active directory administrator was used to, seeing if they went to go and protect something with me where to go recover an item. Same is true in the cloud, You don't want to just take what's working well in one area and just force it, you know, around round peg into a square hole. This doesn't work well. So you've got to think about the environment and you've got to think about what's gonna be the real use case for getting access to this data. So you want to really tune things and there's obviously commonality involved, but from a workflow perspective, from an application perspective and then a delivery model perspective, Now, when it comes to hybrid cloud multi cloud, it's important to look like that you belong there, not a fish out of water. >>Well, so of course, Danny you were talking to talking about you guys have product first, Right? And so rick your your key product guy here. What's interesting to me is when you look at the history of the technology industry and disruption, it's it's so often that the the incumbent, which you knew now an incumbent, you know, you're not the startup anymore, but the incumbent has challenges riding these these new waves because you've got to serve the existing customer base, but you gotta ride the new momentum as well. So how rick do you approach that from a product standpoint? Because based on the numbers that we see it doesn't you seem to be winning in both the traditional business and the new business. So how do you adapt from a product standpoint? >>Well, Dave, that's a good question. And Danny set it up? Well, it's really the birth of the Wien platform and its relevance in the market. In my 11th year here at Wien, I've had all kinds of conversations. Right. You know, the perception was that, you know, this smb toy for one hyper Advisor those days are long gone. We can check the boxes across the data center and cloud and even cloud native apps. You know, one of the things that my team has done is invest heavily in both people and staff on kubernetes, which aligns to our casting acquisition, which was featured heavily here at V Mon. So I think that being able to have that complete platform conversation Dave has really given us incredible momentum but also credibility with the customers because more than ever, this fundamental promise of having data backed up and being able to drive a recovery for whatever may happen to data nowadays. You know, that's a real emotional, important thing for people and to be able to bring that kind of outcome across the data center, across the cloud, across changes in what they do kubernetes that's really aligned well to our success and you know, I love talking to customers now. It's a heck of a lot easier when you can say yes to so many things and get the technical win. So that kind of drives a lot of the momentum Dave, but it's really the platform. >>So let's talk about the future of it and I want all you guys to chime in here and Danny, you start up, How do you see it? I mean, I always say the last 10 years, the next 10 years ain't gonna be like the last 10 years whether it's in cloud or hybrid et cetera. But so how Danny do you see I. T. In the future of I. T. Where do you see VM fitting in, how does that inform your roadmap, your product strategy? Maybe you could kick that segment off? >>Yeah. I think of the kind of the two past decades that we've gone through starting back in 2000 we had a lot of digital services built for end users and it was built on physical infrastructure and that was fantastic. Obviously we could buy things online, we could order close we could order food, we we could do things interact with end users. The second era about a decade later was based on virtualization. Now that wasn't a benefit so much to the end user is a benefit to the business. The Y because you could put 10 servers on a single physical server and you could be a lot more flexible in terms of delivery. I really think this next era that we're going into is actually based on containers. That's why the cost of acquisition is so strategic to us. Because the unique thing about containers is they're designed for to be consumption friendly. You spin them up, you spin them down, you provision them, you d provisions and they're completely portable. You can move it >>from on >>premises if you're running open shift to e k s a k s G k E. And so I think the next big era that we're going to go through is this movement towards containerized infrastructure. Now, if you ask me who's running that, I still think there's going to be a data center operations team, platform ups is the way that I think about them who run that because who's going to take the call in the middle of the night. But it is interesting that we're going through this transformation and I think we're in the very early stages of this radical transformation to a more consumption based model. Dave. I don't know what you think about that. >>Yeah, I would say something pretty similar Danny. It sounds cliche day valenti, but I take everything back to digital transformation. And the reason I say that is to me, digital transformation is about improving customer intimacy and so that you can deliver goods and services that better resonate and you can deliver them in better time frame. So exactly what Danny said, you know, I think that the siloed approaches of the past where we built very hard in environments and we were willing to take a long time to stand those up and then we have very tight change control. I feel like 2020 sort of a metaphor for where the data center is going to throw all that out the window we're compiling today. We're shipping today and we're going to get experience today and we're going to refine it and do it again tomorrow. But that's the environment we live in. And to Danny's point why containers are so important. That notion of shift left meaning experience things earlier in the cycle. That is going to be the reality of the data center regardless of whether the data center is on prem hybrid cloud, multi cloud or for some of us potentially completely in the cloud. >>So rick when you think about some of your peeps like the backup admit right and how that role is changing in a big discussion in the economy now about the sort of skills gap we got all these jobs and and yet there's still all this unemployment now, you know the debate about the reasons why, but there's a there's a transition enrolls in terms of how people are using products and obviously containers brings that, what what are you seeing when you talk to like a guy called him your peeps? Yeah, it's >>an evolving conversation. Dave the audience, right. It has to be relevant. Uh you know, we were afforded good luxury in that data center wheelhouse that Danny mentioned. So virtualization platform storage, physical servers, that's a pretty good start. But in the software as a service wheelhouse, it's a different persona now, they used to talk to those types of people, there's a little bit of connection, but as we go farther to the cloud, native apps, kubernetes and some of the other SAAS platforms, it is absolutely an audience journey. So I've actually worked really hard on that in my team, right? Everything from what I would say, parachuting into a community, right? And you have to speak their language. Number one reason is just number one outcomes just be present. And if you're in these communities you can find these individuals, you can talk their language, you can resonate with their needs, right? So that's something uh you know, everything from Levin marketing strategy to the community strategy to even just seating products in the market, That's a recipe that beam does really well. So yeah, it's a moving target for sure. >>Dave you were talking about the cliche of digital transformation and I'll say this may be pre Covid, I really felt like it was a cliche, there was a lot of, you know, complacency, I'll call it, but then the force marks the digital change that uh and now we kind of understand if you're not a digital business, you're in trouble. Uh And so my question is how it relates to some of the trends that we've been talking about in terms of cloud containers, We've seen the SAs ification for the better part of a decade now, but specifically as it relates to migration, it's hard for customers to just migrate their application portfolio to the cloud. Uh It's hard to fund it. It takes a long time. It's complex. Um how do you see that cloud migration evolving? Maybe that's where hybrid comes in And again, I'm interested in how you guys think about it and how it affects your strategy. >>Yeah. Well it's a complex answer as you might imagine because 400,000 customers, we take the exact same code. The exact same ice so that I run on my laptop is the exact same being backup and replication image that a major bank protects almost 20,000 machines and a petabytes of data. And so what that means is that you have to look at things on a case by case basis for some of us continuing to operate proprietary systems on prem might be the best choice for a certain workload. But for many of us the Genie is kind of out of the bottle with 2020 we have to move faster. It's less about safety and a lot more about speed and favorable outcome. We'll fix it if it's broken but let's get going. So for organizations struggling with how to move to the cloud, believe it or not, backup and recovery is an excellent way to start to venture into that because you can start to move data backup ISm data movement engine. So we can start to see data there where it makes sense. But rick would be quick to point out we want to offer a safe return. We have instances of where people want to repatriate data back and having a portable data format is key to that Rick. >>Uh yeah, I had a conversation recently with an organization managing cloud sprawl. They decided to consolidate, we're going to use this cloud, so it was removing a presence from one cloud that starts with an A and migrating it to the other cloud that starts with an A. You know, So yeah, we've seen that need for portability repatriation on prem classic example going from on prem apps to software as a service models for critical apps. So data mobility is at the heart of VM and with all the different platforms, kubernetes comes into play as well. It's definitely aligning to the needs that we're seeing in the market for sure. >>So repatriation, I want to stay on that for a second because you're, you're an arms dealer, you don't care if they're in the cloud or on prem and I don't know, maybe you make more money in one or the other, but you're gonna ride whatever waves the market gives you so repatriation to me implies. Or maybe I'm just inferring that somebody's moved to the cloud and they feel like, wow, we've made a mistake, it was too fast, too expensive. It didn't work for us. So now we're gonna bring it back on prem. Is that what you're saying? Are you saying they actually want their data in both both places. As another layer of data protection Danny. I wonder if you could address that. What are you seeing? >>Well, one of the interesting things that we saw recently, Dave Russell actually did the survey on this is that customers will actually build their work laid loads in the cloud with the intent to bring it back on premises. And so that repatriation is real customers actually don't just accidentally fall into it, but they intend to do it. And the thing about being everyone says, hey, we're disrupting the market, we're helping you go through this transformation, we're helping you go forward. Actually take a slightly different view of this. The team gives them the confidence that they can move forward if they want to, but if they don't like it, then they can move back and so we give them the stability through this incredible pace, change of innovation. We're moving forward so so quickly, but we give them the ability to move forward if they want then to recover to repatriate if that's what they need to do in a very effective way. And Dave maybe you can touch on that study because I know that you talked to a lot of customers who do repatriate workloads after moving them to the cloud. >>Yeah, it's kind of funny Dave not in the analyst business right now, but thanks to Danny and our chief marketing Officer, we've got now half a dozen different research surveys that have either just completed or in flight, including the largest in the data protection industry's history. And so the survey that Danny alluded to, what we're finding is people are learning as they're going and in some cases what they thought would happen when they went to the cloud they did not experience. So the net kind of funny slide that we discovered when we asked people, what did you like most about going to the cloud and then what did you like least about going to the cloud? The two lists look very similar. So in some cases people said, oh, it was more stable. In other cases people said no, it was actually unstable. So rick I would suggest that that really depends on the practice that you bring to it. It's like moving from a smaller house to a larger house and hoping that it won't be messy again. Well if you don't change your habits, it's eventually going to end up in the same situation. >>Well, there's still door number three and that's data reuse and analytics. And I found a lot of organizations love the idea of at least manipulating data, running test f scenarios on yesterday's production, cloud workload completely removed from the cloud or even just analytics. I need this file. You know, those types of scenarios are very easy to do today with them. And you know, sometimes those repatriations, those portable recoveries, Sometimes people do that intentionally, but sometimes they have to do it. You know, whether it's fire, flood and blood and you know, oh, I was looks like today we're moving to the cloud because I've lost my data center. Right. Those are scenarios that, that portable data format really allows organizations to do that pretty easily with being >>it's a good discussion because to me it's not repatriation, it has this negative connotation, the zero sum game and it's not Danny what you describe and rick as well. It was kind of an experimentation, a purposeful. We're going to do it in the cloud because we can and it's cheap and low risk to spin it up and then we're gonna move it because we've always thought we're going to have it on prem. So, so you know, there is some zero sum game between the cloud and on prem. Clearly no question about it. But there's also this rising tide lifts all ship. I want to, I want to change the subject to something that's super important and and top of mind it's in the press and it ain't going away and that is cyber and specifically ransomware. I mean, since the solar winds hack and it seems to me that was a new milestone in the capabilities and aggressiveness of the adversary who is very well funded and quite capable. And what we're seeing is this idea of tucking into the supply chain of islands, so called island hopping. You're seeing malware that's self forming and takes different signatures very stealthy. And the big trend that we've seen in the last six months or so is that the bad guys will will lurk and they'll steal all kinds of sensitive data. And then when you have an incident response, they will punish you for responding. And they will say, okay, fine, you want to do that. We're going to hold you ransom. We're gonna encrypt your data. And oh, by the way, we stole this list of positive covid test results with names from your website and we're gonna release it if you don't pay their. I mean, it's like, so you have to be stealthy in your incident response. And this is a huge problem. We're talking about trillions of dollars lost each year in, in in cybercrime. And so, uh, you know, it's again, it's this uh the bad news is good news for companies like you. But how do you help customers deal with this problem? What are you seeing Danny? Maybe you can chime in and others who have thoughts? >>Well we're certainly seeing the rise of cyber like crazy right now and we've had a focus on this for a while because if you think about the last line of defense for customers, especially with ransomware, it is having secure backups. So whether it be, you know, hardened Linux repositories, but making sure that you can store the data, have it offline, have it, have it encrypted immutable. Those are things that we've been focused on for a long while. It's more than that. Um it's detection and monitoring of the environment, which is um certainly that we do with our monitoring tools and then also the secure recovery. The last thing that you want to do of course is bring your backups or bring your data back online only to be hit again. And so we've had a number of capabilities across our portfolio to help in all of these. But I think what's interesting is where it's going, if you think about unleashing a world where we're continuously delivering, I look at things like containers where you have continues delivery and I think every time you run that helm commander, every time you run that terra form command, wouldn't that be a great time to do a backup to capture your data so that you don't have an issue once it goes into production. So I think we're going towards a world where security and the protection against these cyber threats is built into the supply chain rather than doing it on just a time based uh, schedule. And I know rick you're pretty involved on the cyber side as well. Would you agree with that? I >>would. And you know, for organizations that are concerned about ransomware, you know, this is something that is taken very seriously and what Danny explained for those who are familiar with security, he kind of jumped around this, this universally acceptable framework in this cybersecurity framework there, our five functions that are a really good recipe on how you can go about this. And and my advice to IT professionals and decision makers across the board is to really align everything you do to that framework. Backup is a part of it. The security monitoring and user training. All those other things are are areas that that need to really follow that wheel of functions. And my little tip here and this is where I think we can introduce some differentiation is around detection and response. A lot of people think of backup product would shine in both protection and recovery, which it does being does, but especially on response and detection, you know, we have a lot of capabilities that become impact opportunities for organizations to be able to really provide successful outcomes through the other functions. So it's something we've worked on a lot. In fact we've covered here at the event. I'm pretty sure it will be on replay the updated white paper. All those other resources for different levels can definitely guide them through. >>So we follow up to the detection is what analytics that help you identify whatever lateral movement or people go in places they shouldn't go. I mean the hard part is is you know, the bad guys are living off the land, meaning they're using your own tooling to to hack you. So they're not it's not like they're introducing something new that shouldn't be there. They're they're just using making judo moves against you. So so specifically talk a little bit more about your your detection because that's critical. >>Sure. So I'll give you one example imagine we capture some data in the form of a backup. Now we have an existing advice that says, you know what Don't put your backup infrastructure with internet connectivity. Use explicit minimal permissions. And those three things right there and keep it up to date. Those four things right there will really hedge off a lot of the different threat vectors to the back of data, couple that with some of the mutability offline or air gapped capabilities that Danny mentioned and you have an additional level of resiliency that can really ensure that you can drive recovery from an analytic standpoint. We have an api that allows organizations to look into the backup data. Do more aggressive scanning without any exclusions with different tools on a flat file system. You know, the threats can't jump around in memory couple that with secure restore. When you reintroduce things into the environment From a recovery standpoint, you don't want to reintroduce threats. So there's protections, there's there's confidence building steps along the way with them and these are all generally available technologies. So again, I got this white paper, I think we're up to 50 pages now, but it's a very thorough that goes through a couple of those scenarios. But you know, it gets the uh, it gets quickly into things that you wouldn't expect from a backup product. >>Please send me a copy if you, if you don't mind. I this is a huge problem and you guys are global company. I admittedly have a bit of a US bias, but I was interviewing robert Gates one time the former defense secretary and we're talking about cyber war and I said, don't we have the best cyber, can't we let go on the offense? He goes, yeah, we can, but we got the most to lose. So this is really a huge problem for organizations. All right, guys, last question I gotta ask you. So what's life like under, under inside capital of the private equity? What's changed? What's, what's the same? Uh, do you hear from our good friend ratner at all? Give us the update there. >>Yes. Oh, absolutely fantastic. You know, it's interesting. So obviously acquired by insight partners in February of 2020, right, when the pandemic was hitting, but they essentially said light the fuse, keep the engine's going. And we've certainly been doing that. They haven't held us back. We've been hiring like crazy. We're up to, I don't know what the count is now, I think 4600 employees, but um, you know, people think of private equity and they think of cost optimizations and, and optimizing the business, That's not the case here. This is a growth opportunity and it's a growth opportunity simply because of the technology opportunity in front of us to keep, keep the engine's going. So we hear from right near, you know, on and off. But the new executive team at VM is very passionate about driving the success in the industry, keeping abreast of all the technology changes. It's been fantastic. Nothing but good things to say. >>Yes, insight inside partners, their players, we watched them watch their moves and so it's, you know, I heard Bill McDermott, the ceo of service now the other day talking about he called himself the rule of 60 where, you know, I always thought it was even plus growth, you know, add that up. And that's what he was talking about free cash flow. He's sort of changing the definition a little bit but but so what are you guys optimizing for you optimizing for growth? Are you optimising for Alberta? You optimizing for free cash flow? I mean you can't do All three. Right. What how do you think about that? >>Well, we're definitely optimizing for growth. No question. And one of the things that we've actually done in the past 12 months, 18 months is beginning to focus on annual recurring revenue. You see this in our statements, I know we're not public but we talk about the growth in A. R. R. So we're certainly focused on that growth in the annual recovering revenue and that that's really what we tracked too. And it aligns well with the cloud. If you look at the areas where we're investing in cloud native and the cloud and SAAS applications, it's very clear that that recurring revenue model is beneficial. Now We've been lucky, I think we're 13 straight quarters of double-digit growth. And and obviously they don't want to see that dip. They want to see that that growth continue. But we are optimizing on the growth trajectory. >>Okay. And you see you clearly have a 25% growth last quarter in A. R. R. Uh If I recall correctly, the number was evaluation was $5 billion last january. So obviously then, given that strategy, Dave Russell, that says that your tam is a lot bigger than just the traditional backup world. So how do you think about tam? I'll we'll close there >>and uh yeah, I think you look at a couple of different ways. So just in the backup recovery space or backup in replication to paying which one you want to use? You've got a large market there in excess of $8 billion $1 billion dollar ongoing enterprise. Now, if you look at recent i. D. C. Numbers, we grew and I got my handy HP calculator. I like to make sure I got this right. We grew 44.88 times faster than the market average year over year. So let's call that 45 times faster and backup. There's billions more to be made in traditional backup and recovery. However, go back to what we've been talking around digital transformation Danny talking about containers in the environment, deployment models, changing at the heart of backup and recovery where a data capture data management, data movement engine. We envision being able to do that not only for availability but to be able to drive the business board to be able to drive economies of scale faster for our organizations that we serve. I think the trick is continuing to do more of the same Danny mentioned, he knows the view's got lit. We haven't stopped doing anything. In fact, Danny, I think we're doing like 10 times more of everything that we used to be doing prior to the pandemic. >>All right, Danny will give you the last word, bring it home. >>So our goal has always been to be the most trusted provider of backup solutions that deliver modern data protection. And I think folks have seen at demon this year that we're very focused on that modern data protection. Yes, we want to be the best in the data center but we also want to be the best in the next generation, the next generation of I. T. So whether it be sas whether it be cloud VM is very committed to making sure that our customers have the confidence that they need to move forward through this digital transformation era. >>Guys, I miss flying. I mean, I don't miss flying, but I miss hanging with you all. We'll see you. Uh, for sure. Vim on 2022 will be belly to belly, but thanks so much for coming on the the virtual edition and thanks for having us. >>Thank you. >>All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This keeps continuous coverage of the mon 21. The virtual edition. Keep it right there for more great coverage. >>Mm

>>Welcome back to Vienna on 2021 you're watching the Cube and my name is Dave Volonte. You know, the last 10 years of cloud, they were largely about spinning up virtualized compute infrastructure and accessing cheap and simple object storage and some other things like networking. The cloud was largely though a set of remote resources that simplify deployment and supported the whole spate of native applications that have emerged to power the activity of individuals and businesses the next decade, however, promises to build on the troves of data that live in the cloud, make connections to on premises applications and support new application innovations that are agile, iterative, portable and span resources in all in all the clouds, public clouds, private clouds, cross cloud connections all the way out to the near and far edge. In a linchpin of this new application development model is container platforms and container orchestration, which brings immense scale and capability to technology driven organizations, especially as they have evolved from supporting stateless applications to underpinning mission critical workloads as such containers bring complexities and risks that need to be addressed, not the least of which is protecting the massive amounts of data that are flowing through these systems. And with me to discuss these exciting and challenging trends or Danny Allen, who's the ceo of in and Niraj Tolia, the president at Kasten Bivins gentlemen welcome to the cube. >>Thank you delighted to be here with you Dave. >>Likewise, very excited to be a Dave. >>Okay, so Danny big M and a move. Great little acquisition. You're now seeing others try to make similar moves. Why what did you see in cast in? What was the fit? Why'd you make that move? >>Well, I think you nailed it. Dave's. We've seen an evolution in the infrastructure that's being used over the last two decades. So if you go back 20 years, there was a massive digital transformation to enable users to be self service with digital applications. About 2000 or so, 2010, everything started being virtualized. I know virtualization came along before that but virtualization really started to take off because it gave return on investment and gave flexibility all kinds of benefits. But now we're in a third wave which is built on containers. And the amazing thing about containers is that as you said, it allows you to connect multi cloud, hybrid cloud the edge to the core. And they're designed for the consumption world. If you think about the cloud, you can provision things deep provisions things. That's the way that containers are designed the applications and so because they're designed for a consumption based world because they are designed for portability across all of these different infrastructures, it only made sense for us to invest in the industry's leading provider of data protection for kubernetes. And that of course is costume, >>there's some garage, I mean take us back. I mean, you know, container has been around forever. But then, you know, they started to, you know, hit go mainstream and and and and at first, you know, they were obviously ephemeral, stateless apps, kind of lightweight stuff. But but you at the time you and the team said, okay, these are gonna become more complex microservices. Maybe so micro, but you had to have the vision and you made a bet uh maybe take us back to sort of how you saw that and where where's containers have have come from? >>Sure. So let's rewind the clock right. As you said, containers, old technology in the same way virtualization started with IBM mainframes, right, containers in different forms have been around for a while. But I think when the light bulb went off for me was very early days in 2015 when my engineering team, a previous company started complaining. And the reason they were complaining about different other engineering groups and the reason they were complaining was because the right things, things were coming together sooner. We're identifying things sooner. And that's when I said, this is going to be the next wave of infrastructure. The same way watch a light virtualization revolutionized how people built deployed apps. We saw that with containers and in particular in those days we made that bet on commodities. Right? So we said from first Principles and that's where you know, you had other things like Docker, swarm esos, etcetera and we said community, that's going to be the way to go because it is just so powerful and it is, you know, at the end of the day, what we all do is infrastructure. But what we saw was that containers optimizing for the developer, they were optimizing for the people that really build applications, deliver value to all of their and customers. And that is what made us see that even though the initially we only saw stateless applications state will was going to happen because there's just so much momentum behind it And the writing for us at least was on the wall. And that's how we started off on this journey in 2017. >>What are the unique nuances and differences really in terms of protecting containers from a, from a technical standpoint, what what's different? >>So there are a couple of subtle things. Right again, the jokers, you know, I say, is that I'm a recovering infrastructure person have always worked in infrastructure systems in the past and recovering them. But in this case we really had to flip things around right. I've come at it from the cloud disks volumes. VMS perspective, in this case to do the right thing by the customer needed a clean slate approach of coming out from the application down. So what we look at is what does the application look like? And that means protecting, not just the stuff that sits on disk, what your secrets in networking information, all those hundreds of pieces that make up a cloud native application and that involves scale challenges, work, visualisation challenges for admins, KPI So all of that shifts in a very dramatic way. >>So Danny, I mean typically VM you guys haven't done a ton of acquisitions, uh, you've grown organically. So now you, you, you poppin cast in, what does that mean for you from a platform perspective? You know, IBM has this term blue washing when they buy a company did you green wash cast and how did that all work? And again, what does what does it mean from the, from the platform perspective? >>Well, so our platform is designed for this type of integration and the first type of integration we do with any of our technologies because we do have native technologies, if you think about what we do being back up for AWS for Azure, for G C p, we have backup for Acropolis Hyper Visor. These are all native purpose built solutions for those environments and we integrate with what we call being platform services. And one of the first steps that we do of course is we take the data from those native solutions and send it into the repository and the benefit that you get from that is that you have this portable, self describing format that you can move around the vein platform. And so the platform was already designed for this Now. We already showed this at demon. You saw this on the main stage where we have this integration at a data level but it goes beyond that beam platform services allows us to do not just day one operations, but day two operations. Think about um updating the components of those infrastructures or those software components that also allows reporting. So for example you can report on what is protected, what's not protected. So the platform was already designed for this integration model. But the one thing I want to stress is we will always have that stand alone product for kubernetes for uh you know, for the container world. And the reason for that is the administrator for Kubernetes wants their own purpose build solution. They want it running on kubernetes. They want to protect the uniqueness of their infrastructure. If you think about a lot of the container based systems there, They're using structured data. Non structured data. Sure. But they're also using object based storage. They're using message queues. And so they have their nuances. And we want to maintain that in a stand alone product but integrated back into the Corvin platform. >>So we do these we have a data partner called GTR Enterprise Technology Research. They do these quarterly surveys and and they have this metric called net score is a measure of spending momentum and for the last, I don't know, 8, 10, 12 quarters the big four have been robotic process automation. That's hot space. Cloud obviously is hot and then A I of course. And but containers and container orchestration right up there. Those are the Big four that outshine everything else, even things like security and other infrastructure etcetera. So that's good. I mean you guys skating to the puck back in 2015 rush, you've made some announcements and I'm and I'm wondering sort of how they fit into the trends in the industry. Uh, what what's, what's significant about those announcements and you know, what's new that we need to know about. >>Sure. So let me take that one day. So we've made a couple of big interesting announcement. The most recent one of those was four dot release after casting by women platform, right? We call it kitten and right. We've known rate since a couple of weeks colonial pipeline ransom. Where has been in the news in the US gas prices are being driven up because of that. And that's really what we're seeing from customers where we are >>seeing this >>increase in communities adoption today. We have customers from the world's largest banks all the way to weakly connected cruise ships that one could burn. It is on them. People's data is precious. People are running a large fleet of notes for communities, large number of clusters. So what we said is how do you protect against these malicious attacks that want to lock people out? How do you bring in mutability so that even someone with keys to the kingdom can't go compromise your backups and restores, right? So this echoes a lot of what we hear from customers and what we hear about in the news so well protected that. But we still help through to some of the original vision behind cast. And that is, it's not just saying, hey, I give you ransomware protection. We'll do it in such an easy way. The admin barely notices. This new feature has been turned on if they wanted Do it in a way that gives them choice right. If you're running in a public cloud, if you're running at the edge you have choice of infrastructure available to you and do it in a way that you have 100% automation when you have 100 clusters when you deploy on ships, right, you're not going to be able to have we spoke things. So how do you hook into CHED pipelines and make the job of the admin easier? Is what we focused on in that last >>night. And and that's because you're basically doing this at the point of writing code and it's essentially infrastructure as code. We always talk about, you know, you want to you don't want to bolt on data protection as an afterthought, but that's what we've done forever. Uh This you can't >>so in fact I would say step before that day, right are the most leading customers we work with. Right to light up one of the U. S. Government's largest contractors. Um Hey do this before the first line of code is written right there on the scalp cloud as an example. But with the whole shift left that we all hear the cube talks a lot about. We see at this point where as you bring up infrastructure, you bring up a complete development environment, a complete test environment. And within that you want to deploy security, you want to deploy backup your to deploy protection at day zero before the developer in so it's the first line of cordon. So you protected every step of the journey while trying to bolt it on the sound. Seemingly yes, I stitched together a few pieces of technology but it fundamentally impacts how we're going to build the next generation of secure applications >>Danny, I think I heard you say or announced that this is going to be integrated into Wien backup and replication. Um can you explain what that took? Why? That's important. >>Yeah. So the the timeline on this and when we do integrations from these native solutions into the core platform, typically it begins with the data integration, in other words, the data being collected by the backup tool is sent to a repository and that gives us all the benefits of course of things like instant recovery and leveraging, de doop storage appliances and all of that step to typically is around day to operations, things like pushing out updates to that native solutions. So if you look at what we're doing with the backup for AWS and Azure, we can deploy the components, we can deploy the data proxies and data movers. And then lastly there's also a reporting aspect to this because we want to centralize the visibility for the organization across everywhere. So if your policy says hey I need two weeks of backups and after two weeks and I need weekly backups for X amount of time. This gives you the ability to see and manage across the organization. So what we've demonstrated already is this data level integration between the two platforms and we expect this to continue to go deeper and deeper as we move forward. The interesting thing right now is that the containers team often is different than the standard data center I. T. Team but we are quickly seeing the merge and I think the speed of that merging will also impact how quickly we integrate them within our platform. >>Well I mean obviously you see this for cloud developers and now you're bringing this to any developers and you know, if I'm a developer and I'm living in an insurance company, I've been, you know, writing COBOL code for a while, I want to be signed me up. I want to get trained on this, right? Because it's gonna I'm gonna become more valuable. So this is this is where the industry is headed. You guys talk about modern data protection. I wondered if you could you could paint a picture for us of sort of what what this new world of application development and deployment and and data protection looks like and how it's different from the old world. >>Mhm. So I think that if you mentioned the most important word, which is developer, they come first, they are the decision makers in this environment, the other people that have the most bull and rightly so. Oh, so I think that's the biggest thing at the cultural level that is, developers are saying this is what we want and this is what we need to get the job done, we want to move quickly. So some of the things are let's not slow them down. Let's enable them, let's give them any P I to work with. Right? No. Where in bulk of production, use will be api based versus EY base. Let's transparently integrate into the environment. So therefore protection for security, they need zero lines have changed code. Mm So those are some of the ways we approach things. Now when you go look at the requirements of the developers, they said I have a Ci cd pipeline to integrate into that. I have a development pipeline to integrate into that. I deploy across multiple clouds sometimes. Can you integrate into that and work seamlessly across all those environments? And we see those category of us coming up over and over again from people. >>So the developer rights once and it doesn't have to worry about where it's running. Uh it's got the right security, there are a protection and those policies go with it, so that's that's definitely a different world. Um Okay, last question. Uh maybe you guys could each give your opinion on sort of where we're headed, uh what we can expect from the the acquisition, the the integration, what should we look forward to and what should we pay attention to? >>Well, the one obvious thing that you're going to see is tremendous growth on the company's side and that's because Kubernetes is taking off cloud is taking off um SaAS is taking off and so there's obvious growth there. And one of the things that were clearly doing is um we're leveraging the power of of, you know, a few 1000 sales people to bring this out to market. Um, and so there is emerging of of sales and marketing activities and leveraging that scale. But what you shouldn't expect to see anything different on is this obsessive focus on the product, on quality, on making sure that we're highly differentiated that we have a product that the company that our customers and companies actually need no garage. >>Yeah. So I'll agree with everything down, he said. But a couple of things. Excite me a lot. Dave we've been roughly eight months or so since acquisition and I particularly love how last what in this quarter have gone in terms of how we focuses on solving customer problems. All right. So we'll always have that independent support for a cloud date of customers, but I'm excited about not just working with the broadest side of customers and as we scale the team that's going to happen, but providing a bridge to all the folks that grew up in the virtualization world, right? Grew up in the physical wall of physical service, etcetera and saying, how do we make it easy for you to come over to this new container Ization world? What is the on ramps bridging that gap serving as the on ramp? And we're doing a lot of work there from the product integration and independent product features that just make it easy. Right? And we're already seeing feel very good feedback for that from the field right now. >>I really like your position. I just dropped my quarterly cloud update. I focused, I look at the Big Four, the Big Four last year, spent $100 billion on Capex. And I always say that is a gift to companies like yours because you can be that connection point between the virtualization crowd, the on prem cloud, any cloud. Eventually we'll be, we'll be more than just talking about the Edge will actually be out there, you know, doing real work. Uh, and I just see great times ahead for you guys. So thanks so much for coming on the cube explaining this really exciting new area. Really appreciate it. >>Thank you so much. >>Thank you everybody for watching this day. Volonte for the Cube and our continuous coverage of the mon 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. >>Mm mm mm

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everybody to VeeamON 2021 you're watching theCUBE. My name is Dave Villante. You know in 2020 cyber adversaries they seize the opportunity to really up their game and target workers from home and digital supply chains. It's become increasingly clear to observers that we're entering a new era of cyber threats where infiltrating companies via so-called Island Hopping and stealthily living off the land meaning they're using your own tools and infrastructure to steal your data. So they're not signaling with new tools that they're in there. It's becoming the norm for sophisticated hacks. Moreover, these well-funded and really sophisticated criminals and nation States are aggressively retaliating against incident responses. In other words, when you go to fix the problem they're not leaving the premises they're rather they're tightening the vice on victims by holding your data ransom and threatening to release previously ex filtrated and brand damaging information to the public. What a climate in which we live today. And with me to talk about these concerning trends and what you can do about it as Gil Vega, the CISO of Veeam Gil great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Great to see you, Dave. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah. So, you know, you're hearing my intro. It's probably understating the threat. You are a Veeam's first CISO. So how do you see the landscape right now? >> That's right. Yeah. And I've been with the company for just over a year now, but my background is in financial services and spent a lot of time managing cybersecurity programs at the classified level in Washington DC. So I've gleaned a lot of scar tissue from lots of sophisticated attacks and responses. But today I think what we're seeing is really a one-upmanship by a sophisticated potentially nation state sponsored adversaries, this idea of imprisoning your data and charging you to release it is it's quite frightening. And as we've seen in the news recently it can have devastating impacts not only for the economy, but for businesses. Look at the gas lines in the Northeast right now because of the quality of a pipeline, a ransomware attack. I just, the government just released an executive order this morning, that hopes to address some of the some of the nation's unpreparedness for these sophisticated attacks. And I think it's time. And I think everyone's excited about the opportunity to really apply a whole of government approach, to helping critical infrastructure to helping and partnering with private sector and imposing some risks, frankly, on some of the folks that are engaged in attacking our country. >> A number of years ago, I often tell this story. I had the pleasure of interviewing Robert Gates the former Defense Secretary. And it was a while ago we were talking about cyber and he sits on a number of boards. And we were talking about how it's a board level issue. And, and we're talking about cyber crime and the like and nation States. And I said, well, wait, cyber warfare, even. And I said, "But don't we have the best cyber tech. I mean, can't we go on the offense?" And he goes, "Yeah, we do. And we can, but we have more to lose." And to your point about critical infrastructure, it's not just like, okay, we have the most powerful weapons. It's really we have the most valuable infrastructure and a lot to lose. So it's really a tricky game. And this notion of having to be stealthy in your incident response is relatively new. Isn't it? >> It is. It is. And you know, there are, you mentioned that and I was surprised you mentioned because a lot of people really don't talk about it as you're going into your response your adversaries are watching or watching your every move. You have to assume in these days of perpetual state of compromise in your environments, which means that your adversaries have access to your environment to the point that they're watching your incident responders communicate with one another and they're countering your moves. So it's sort of a perverse spin on the old mutually assured destruction paradigm that you mentioned the United States has the world's largest economy. And quite frankly the world's most vulnerable, critical infrastructure. And I would concur with Director Gates or Secretary Gates rather it is assessment that we've got to be awfully careful and measured in our approach to imposing risks. I think the government has worked for many years on defining red lines. And I think this latest attack on the colonial pipeline affecting the economy and people's lives and potentially putting people's lives at risk is towing also the close to that red line. And I'm interested to see where this goes. I'm interested to see if this triggers even a, you know a new phase of cyber warfare, retaliation, you know proactive defense by the National Security Community of the United States government. Be interesting to see how this plays out. >> Yeah, you're absolutely right though. You've got this sort of asymmetric dynamic now which is unique for the United States as soon as strongest defense in the world. And I wanted to get it to ransomware a bit. And specifically this notion of ransomware as a service it's really concerning where criminals can actually outsource the hack as a service and the bad guys will set up, you know, on the dark web they'll have, you know, help desks and phone lines. They'll do the negotiations. I mean, this is a really concerning trend. And obviously Veeam plays a role here. I'm wondering as a, as a SecOps pro what should we be doing about this? >> Yeah, you mentioned ransomware as a service, whereas RWS it's an incredibly pernicious problem perpetrated by sophisticated folks who may or may not have nation state support or alliances. I think at a minimum certain governments are looking the other way as it relates to these criminal activities. But with ransomware as a service, you're essentially having very sophisticated folks create very complex ransomware code and distributed to people who are willing to pay for it. And oftentimes take a part of the ransom as their payment. The, issue with obviously ransomware is you know the age old question, are you going to pay a ransom or are you not going to pay a ransom? The FBI says, don't do it. It only encourages additional attacks. The Treasury Department put out some guidance earlier earlier in the year, advising companies that they could be subject to civil or criminal penalties. If they pay a ransom and the ransom goes to a sanction density. So there's danger on all sides. >> Wow okay. But so, and then the other thing is this infiltrating via digital supply chains I call it Island Hopping and the like, we saw that with the solar winds hack and the scary part is, you know different malware is coming in and self forming and creating different signatures. Not only is it very difficult to detect, but remediating, you know, one, you know combined self formed malware it doesn't necessarily take care of the others. And so, you know, you've got this sort of organic virus, like thing, you know, create mutating and that's something that's certainly relatively new to me in terms of its prevalence your thoughts on that and how to do it. >> Yeah, exactly right. You know, the advent of the polymorphic code that changes the implementation of advanced artificial intelligence and some of this malware is making our job increasingly difficult which is why I believe firmly. You've got to focus on the fundamentals and I think the best answers for protecting against sophisticated polymorphic code is,are found in the NIST cybersecurity framework. And I encourage everyone to really take a close look at implementing that cybersecurity framework across their environments, much like we've done here, here at Veeam implementing technologies around Zero Trust again assuming a perpetual state of compromise and not trusting any transaction in your environment is the key to combating this kind of attack. >> Well, and you know, as you mentioned, Zero Trust Zero Trust used to be a buzzword. Now it's like become a mandate. And you know, it's funny. I mean, in a way I feel like the crypto guys I know there's a lot of fraud in crypto, but but anybody who's ever traded crypto it's like getting into Fort Knox. I mean, you got to know your customer and you've got to do a little transaction. I mean, it's really quite sophisticated in terms of the how they are applying cybersecurity and you know, most even your bank isn't that intense. And so those kinds of practices, even though they're a bit of a pain in the neck, I mean it's worth the extra effort. I wonder if you could talk about some of the best practices that you're seeing how you're advising your clients in your ecosystem and the role that Veeam can play in helping here. >> Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned so many recommendations and I think the thing to remember here so we don't overwhelm our small and medium sized businesses that have limited resources in this area is to remind them that it's a journey, right? It's not a destination that they can continually improve and focus on the fundamentals. As I mentioned, things like multi-factor authentication you know, a higher level topic might be micro-segmentation breaking up your environment into manageable components that you can monitor a real time. Real time monitoring is one of the key components to implementing Zero Trust architecture and knowing exactly what good looks like in your environment in a situation where you've got real-time monitoring you can detect the anomalies, the things that shouldn't be happening in your environment and to spin up your response teams, to focus and better understand what that is. I've always been a proponent of identity and access management controls and a key focus. We've heard it in this industry for 25 years is enforcing the concept of least privilege, making sure that your privileged users have access to the things they need and only the things that they need. And then of course, data immutability making sure that your data is stored in backups that verifiably has not been changed. And I think this is where Veeam comes into the equation where our products provide a lot of these very easily configured ransomware protections around data and your ability to the ability to instantly back up things like Office 365 emails, you know support for AWS and Azure. Your data can be quickly restored in the event that an attacker is able to in prison that with encryption and ransom demands. >> Well, and so you've certainly seen in the CISOs that I've talked to that they've had to obviously shift their priorities, thanks to the force march to digital, thanks to COVID, but Identity access management, end point security cloud security kind of overnight, you know, Zero Trust. We talked about that and you could see that in some of these, you know, high flying security stocks, Okta Zscaler, CrowdStrike, they exploded. And so what's in these many of these changes seem to be permanent sort of you're I guess, deeper down in the stack if you will, but you, you compliment these toolings with obviously the data protection approach the ransomware, the cloud data protection, air gaps, immutability. Maybe you could talk about how you fit in with the broader, you know, spate of tools. I mean, your, my eyes bleed when you look at all the security companies that are out there. >> Yeah for sure. You know, I'm just going to take it right back to the NIST cybersecurity framework and the five domains that you really need to focus on. Identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover, you know and until recently security practitioners and companies have really focused on on the protect, identify and protect, right and defend rather where they're focused on building, you know, moats and castles and making sure that they've got this, you know hard exterior to defend against attacks. I think there's been a shift over the past couple of years where companies have recognized that the focus needs to be on and respond and recover activities, right? Assuming that people are going to breach or near breach, your entities is a safe way to think about this and building up capabilities to detect those breaches and respond effectively to those breaches are what's key in implementing a successful cybersecurity program where Veeam fits into this since with our suite of products that that can help you through the recovery process, right? That last domain of the NIST cybersecurity framework it'll allow you to instantaneously. As I mentioned before, restore data in the event of a catastrophic breach. And I think it provides companies with the assurances that while they're protecting and building those Zero Trust components into their environments to protect against these pernicious and well-resourced adversaries there's the opportunity for them to recover very quickly using the VM suite of tools? >> Well, I see, I think there's an interesting dynamic here. You're pointing out Gil. There's not no longer is it that, you know, build a moat the Queen's leaving her castle. I always say, you know there is no hardened perimeter anymore. And so you've seen, you know, the shift obviously from hardware based firewalls and you I mentioned those other companies that are doing great but to me, it's all about these layers and response is a big in recovery is a huge part of that. So I'm seeing increasingly companies like Veeam is a critical part of that, that security cyber data protection, you know, ecosystem. I mean, to me it's just as important as the frontline pieces of even identity. And so you see those markets exploding. I think it's, there's a latent value that's building in companies like Veeam that are a key part of those that data protection layer you think about you know, defense strategies. It's not just you, the frontline it's maybe it's airstrikes, maybe it's, you know, C etcetera. And I see that this market is actually a huge opportunity for for organizations like yours. >> I think you're right. And I think the proof is in, you know in the pudding, in terms of how this company has grown and what we've delivered in version 11 of our suite, including, you know features like continuous data protection, we talked about that reliable ransomware protection support for AWS S3 Glacier and Azure archive the expanded incident recovery, and then support for disaster recovery and backup as a service. You know, what I found most interesting in my year here at Veeam is just how much our administrators the administrators in our company and our customers companies that are managing backups absolutely love our products that ease of use the instant backup capabilities and the support they receive from Veeam. It's almost cultish in terms of how our customers are using these products to defend themselves in today's pretty intense cyber threat environment. >> Well, and you talked about the NIST framework, and again big part of that is recovery, because we talked about earlier about, do you pay the ransom or not? Well, to the extent that I can actually recover from having all my data encrypted then I've got obviously a lot more leverage and in many ways, I mean, let's face it. We all know that it's not a matter of if it's, when you get infiltrated. And so to the extent that I can actually have systems that allow me to recover, I'm now in a much much stronger position in many respects, you know and CISOs again, will tell you this that's where we're shifting our investments >> Right. And you've got to do all of them. It's not just there's no silver bullet, but but that seems to me to be just a a misunderstood and undervalued part of the equation. And I think there's tremendous upside there for companies like yours. >> I think you're right. I think what I'll just add to that is the power of immutability, right? Just verifiably ensuring that your data has not changed because oftentimes you'll have attackers in these low and slow live off the land types of attacks change your data and affect its integrity with the Veeam suite of tools. You're able to provide for immutable or unchanged verifiable data and your backup strategy which is really the first step to recovery after a significant event. >> And that's key because a lot of times the hackers would go right after the backup Corpus you know, they'll sometimes start there is that all the data, you know, but if you can make that immutable and again, it, you know there's best practices there too, because, you know if you're not paying the cloud service for that immutability, if you stop paying then you lose that. So you have to be very careful about, you know how you know, who has access to that and you know what the policies are there, but again, you know you can put in, you know so a lot of this, as you know, is people in process. It's not just tech, so I'll give you the last word. I know you got to jump, but really appreciate.. >> Yeah, sure. >> You know, the only, the only thing that we didn't mention is user awareness and education. I think that is sort of the umbrella key focus principle for any successful cybersecurity program making sure your people understand, you know how to deal with phishing emails. You know, ransomware is a huge threat of our time at 90% of ransomware malware is delivered by phishing. So prepare your workforce to deal with phishing emails. And I think you'll save yourself quite a few headaches. >> It's great advice. I'm glad you mentioned that because because bad user behavior or maybe uninformed user behaviors is the more fair way to say it. It will trump good security every time. Gil, thanks so much for coming to the CUBE and and keep fighting the fight. Best of luck going forward. >> Great. Thank you, Dave. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Villante for the CUBEs continuous coverage VeeamON 2021, the virtual edition. We will be right back. (upbeat music)

>>Hi lisa martin here with the cubes coverage of demon 2021. I've got to alumni joining me. Please welcome back to the cube Danny. Alan beam's ceo Danny. It's great to see you. >>I am delighted to be here lisa. >>Excellent brian Schwartz is here as well. Google director outbound product management brian welcome back to the program. Uh >>thanks for having me again. Excited to be >>here. Excited to be here. Yes, definitely. We're gonna be talking all about what Demon google are doing today. But let's go ahead and start Danny with you. Seems vision is to be the number one trusted provider of backup and recovery solutions for the, for for modern data protection. Unpack that for me, trust is absolutely critical. But when you're talking about modern data protection to your customers, what does that mean? >>Yeah. So I always, I always tell our customers there's three things in there that are really important. Trust is obviously number one and google knows this. You've been the most trusted search provider uh, forever. And, and so we have 400,000 customers. We need to make sure that our products work. We need to make sure they do data protection, but we need to do it in a modern way. And so it's not just back up and recovery, that's clearly important. It's also all of the automation and orchestration to move workloads across infrastructures, move it from on premises to the google cloud, for example, it also includes things like governance and compliance because we're faced with ransomware, malware and security threats. And so modern data protection is far more than just back up. It's the automation, it's the monitoring, it's a governance and compliance. It's the ability to move workloads. Um, but everything that we look at within our platform, we focus on all of those different characteristics and to make sure that it works for our customers. >>One of the things that we've seen in the last year, Danny big optic in ransom were obviously the one that everyone is the most familiar with right now. The colonial pipeline. Talk to me about some of the things that the team has seen, what your 400,000 customers have seen in the last 12 months of such a dynamic market, a massive shift to work from home and to supporting SAS for clothes and things like that. What have you seen? >>Well, certainly the employees working from home, there's a massive increase in the attack surface for organizations because now, instead of having three offices, they have, you know, hundreds of locations for their end users. And so it's all about protecting their data at the same time as well. There's been this explosion in malware and ransomware attacks. So we really see customers focusing on three different areas. The first is making sure that when they take a copy of their data, that it is actually secure and we can get into, you know, a mutability and keeping things offline. But really taking the data, making sure it's secure. The second thing that we see customers doing is monitoring their environment. So this is both inspection of the compute environment and of the data itself. Because when ransomware hits, for example, you'll see change rates on data explode. So secure your data monitor the environment. And then lastly make sure that you can recover intelligently is let us say because the last thing that you want to do if you're hit by ransomware is to bring the ransomware back online from a backup. So we call this security cover re secure, restore. We really see customers focusing on those three areas >>And that restoration is critical there because as we know these days, it's not if we get hit with ransomware, it's really a matter of when. Let's go ahead now and go into the google partnership, jenny talked to me about it from your perspective, the history of the strength of the partnership, all that good stuff. >>Yeah. So we have a very deep and long and lengthy relationship with google um, on a number of different areas. So for example, we have 400,000 customers. Where do they send their backups? Most customers don't want to continue to invest in storage solutions on their premises. And so they'll send their data from on premises and tear it into google cloud storage. So that's one integration point. The second is when the running workloads within the clouds. So this is now cloud native. If you're running on top of the google cloud platform, we are inside the google America place and we can protect those workloads. A third area is around the google vm ware engine, there's customers that have a hybrid model where they have some capacity on premises and some in google using the VM ware infrastructure and we support that as well. That's a third area and then 1/4 and perhaps the longest running um, google is synonymous with containers and especially kubernetes, they were very instrumental in the foundations of kubernetes and so r K 10 product which does data protection for kubernetes is also in the google America place. So a very long and deep relationship with them and it's to the benefit of our customers. >>Absolutely. And I think I just saw the other day that google celebrated the search engine. It's 15th birthday. I thought what, what did we do 16 years ago when we couldn't just find anything we wanted brian talked to me about it from Google's perspective of being partnership. >>Yeah, so as Danny mentioned, it's really multifaceted, um it really starts with a hybrid scenario, you know, there's still a lot of customers that are on their journey into the cloud and protecting those on premises workloads and in some senses, even using beams capabilities to move data to help migrate into the cloud is I'd say a great color of the relationship. Um but as Danny mentioned increasingly, more and more primary applications are running in the cloud and you know, the ability to protect those and have, you know, the great features and capabilities, uh you know, that being provides, whether it be for GCB er VM where you know, capability and google cloud or things like G k e R kubernetes offering, which has mentioned, you know, we've been deep and wide in kubernetes, we really birthed it many, many years ago um and have a huge successful business in, in the managing and hosting containers, that having the capabilities to add to those. It really adds to our ecosystem. So we're super excited about the partnership, we're happy to have this great foundation to build together with them into the future. >>And Danny Wien launched, just been in february a couple of months ago, being backup for google cloud platform. Talk to us about that technology and what you're announcing at them on this year. >>Yeah, sure. So back in february we released the first version of the VM backup for G C p product in the marketplace and that's really intended to protect of course, i as infrastructure as a service workloads running on top of G C p and it's been very, very successful. It has integration with the core platform and what I mean by that is if you do a backup in G C P, you can do you can copy that back up on premises and vice versa. So it has a light integration at the data level. What we're about to release later on this summer is version two of that product that has a deep integration with the VM platform via what we call the uh team service platform, a PS themselves. And that allows a rich bidirectional uh interaction between the two products that you can do not just day one operations, but also day to operations. So you can update the software, you can harmonize schedules between on premises and in the cloud. It really allows customers to be more successful in a hybrid model where they're moving from on premises to the cloud. >>And that seems to be really critically important. As we talk about hybrid club all the time, customers are in hybrid. They're living in the hybrid cloud for many reasons, whether it's acquisition or you know, just the nature of lines of business leveraging their cloud vendor of choice. So being able to support the hybrid cloud environment for customers and ensure that that data is recoverable is table stakes these days. Does that give them an advantage over your competition Danny? >>It does. Absolutely. So customers want the hybrid cloud experience. What we find over time is they do trend towards the cloud. There's no question. So if you have the hybrid experience, if they're sending their data there, for example, a step one, step two, of course, is just to move the workload into the cloud and then step three, they really start to be able to unleash their data. If you think about what google is known for, they have incredible capabilities around machine learning and artificial intelligence and they've been doing that for a very long time. So you can imagine customers after they start putting their data there, they start putting their workloads here, they want to unlock it into leverage the insights from the data that they're storing and that's really exciting about where we're going. It's, they were early days for most customers. They're still kind of moving and transitioning into the cloud. But if you think of the capabilities that are unlocked with that massive platform in google, it just opens up the ability to address big challenges of today, like climate change and sustainability and you know, all the health care challenges that we're faced with it. It really is an exciting time to be partnered with Google >>Ryan. Let's dig into the infrastructure in the architecture from your perspective, help us unpack that and what customers are coming to you for help with. >>Yeah. So Danny mentioned, you know the prowess that google has with data and analytics and, and a, I I think we're pretty well known for that. Uh, there's a tremendous opportunity for people in the future. Um, the thing that people get just right out of the box is the access to the technology that we built to build google cloud itself. Just the scale and, and technology, it's, you know, it's, it's a, you know, just incredible. You know, it's a fact that we have eight products here at google that have a billion users and when you have, you know, most people know the search and maps and gmail and all these things. When you have that kind of infrastructure, you build a platform like google cloud platform and you know, the network as a perfect example, the network endpoints, they're actually close to your house. There's a reason our technology is so fast because you get onto the google private network, someplace really close to where you actually live. We have thousands and thousands of points of presence spread around the world and from that point forward you're riding on our internal network, you get better quality of service. Uh the other thing I like to mention is, you know, the google cloud storage, that team is built on our object storage. It's uh it's the same technology that underpins Youtube and other things that most people are familiar with and you just think about that for a minute, you can find the most obscure Youtube video and it's gonna load really fast. You know, you're not going to sit there waiting for like two minutes waiting for something to load and that same under underlying technology underpins GCS So when you're going to go and you know, go back to an old restore, you know, to do a restore, it's gonna load fast even if you're on one of the more inexpensive storage classes. So it's a really nice experience for data protection. It has this global network properties you can restore to a different region if there was ever a disaster, there's just the scale of our foundation of infrastructure and also, you know, Danny mentioned if we're super proud about the investments that google has made for sustainability, You know, our cloud runs on 100% renewable energy at the cloud at our scale. That's a lot of, that's a lot of green energy. We're happy to be one of the largest consumers of green energy out there and make continued investments in sustainability. So, you know, we think we have some of the greenest data centers in the world and it's just one more benefit that people have when they come to run on Google Cloud. >>I don't know what any of us would do without google google cloud platform or google cloud storage. I mean you just mentioned all of the enterprise things as well as the at home. I've got to find this really crazy, obscure youtube video but as demanding customers as we are, we want things asAP not the same thing. If you know, an employee can't find a file or calendar has been deleted or whatnot. Let's go in to finish our time here with some joint customer use case examples. Let's talk about backing up on prem workloads to google cloud storage using existing VM licensing Danny. Tell us about that. >>Yeah. So one of the things that we've introduced at beam is this beam, universal licensing and it's completely portable license, you can be running your workloads on premises now and on a physical system and then you can, you know, make that portable to go to a virtual system and then if you want to go to the cloud, you can send that data up to the work load up to the cloud. One of the neat things about this transition for customers from a storage perspective, we don't charge for that. If you're backing up a physical system and sending your your back up on premises, you know, we don't charge for that. If you want to move to the cloud, we don't charge for that. And so as they go through this, there's a predictability and and customers want that predictability so much um that it's a big differentiating factor for us. They don't want to be surprised by a bill. And so we just make it simple and seamless. They have a single licensing model and its future proof as they move forward on the cloud journey. They don't have to change anything. >>Tell me what you mean by future proof as a marketer. I know that term very well, but it doesn't mean different things to different people. So for means customers in the context of the expansion of partnership with google the opportunities, the choices that you're giving customers to your customers, what does future proof actually delivered to them? >>It means that they're not locked into where they are today. If you think about a customer right now that's running a workload on premises maybe because they have to um they need to be close to the data that's being generated or feeding into that application system. Maybe they're locked into that on premises model. Now they have one of two choices when their hardware gets to the end of life. They can either buy more hardware which locks them into where they are today for the next three years in the next four years Or they can say, you know what, I don't want to lock into that. I want to model the license that is portable that maybe 12 months from now, 18 months from now, I can move to the cloud and so it future proof some, it doesn't give them another reason to stay on premises. It allows them the flexibility that licensing is taken off the table because it moves with you that there's zero thought or consideration and that locks you into where you are today. And that's exciting because it unlocks the capabilities of the cloud without being handicapped if you will by what you have on premises. >>Excellent. Let's go to the second uh use case lift and shift in that portability brian. Talk to us about it from your perspective. >>Yeah, so we obviously constantly in discussions with our customers about moving more applications to the cloud and there's really two different kind of approach is the lift and shift and modernization. You know, do you want to change and run on kubernetes when you come to the cloud as you move it in? In some cases people want to do that or they're gonna obviously build a new application in the cloud. But increasingly we see a lot of customers wanting to do lift and shift, they want to move into the cloud relatively quickly. As Danny said, there's like compelling events on like refreshes and in many cases we've had a number of customers come to us and say look we're going to exit our data centers. We did a big announcement Nokia, they're gonna exit 50 data centers in the coming years around the world and just move that into the cloud. In many cases you want to lift and shift that application to do the migration with his little change as possible. And that's one of the reasons we've really invested in a lot of enterprise, more classic enterprise support type technologies. And also we're super excited to have a really wide set of partners and ecosystem like the folks here at Wien. So the customers can really preserve those technologies, preserve that operational experience that they're already familiar with on prem and use that in the cloud. It just makes it easier for them to move to the cloud faster without having to rebuild as much stuff on the way in. >>And that's critical. Let's talk about one more use case and that is native protection of workloads that run on g c p Danny. What are you enabling customers to do there? >>Well? So we actually merged the capabilities of two different things. One is we leverage the native Api is of G C p to take a snapshot and we merge that with our ability to put it in a portable data format. Now. Why is that important? Because you want to use the native capabilities of G CPU want to leverage those native snapshots. The fastest way to recover a file or the fastest way to recover of'em is from the G C p snapshot. However, if you want to take a copy of that and move it into another locale or you want to pull it back on premises for compliance reasons or put it in a long term storage format, you probably want to put it in GCS or in our portable storage format. And so we merge those two capabilities, the snapshot and back up into a single product. And in addition to that, one of the things that we do, again, I talked about predictability. We tell customers what that policy is going to cost them because if for example a customer said, well I like the idea of doing my backups in the cloud, but I want to store it on premises. We'll tell them, well if you're copying that data continually, you know what the network charges look like, What the CPU and compute charges look like, What do the storage costs looks like. So we give them the forecast of what the cost model looks like even before they do a single backup. >>That forecasting has got to be key, as you said with so much unpredicted things that we can't predict going on in this world the last year has taught us that with a massive shift, the acceleration of digital business and digital transformation, it's really critical that customers have an idea of what their costs are going to be so that they can make adjustments and be agile as they need the technology to be. Last question Bryant is for you, give us a view uh, and all the V mon attendees, what can we expect from the partnership in the next 12 >>months? You know, we're excited about the foundation of the partnership across hybrid and in cloud for both VMS and containers. I think this is the real beginning of a long standing relationship. Um, and it's really about a marriage of technology. You think about all the great data protection and orchestration, all the things that Danny mentioned married with the cloud foundation that we have at scale this tremendous network. You know, we just signed a deal with SpaceX in the last couple of days to hook their satellite network up to the google cloud network, you know, chosen again because we just have this foundational capability to push large amounts of data around the world. And that's you know, for Youtube. We signed a deal with Univision, same type of thing, just massive media uh, you know, being pushed around the world. And if you think about it that that same foundation is used for data protection. Data protection. There's a lot of data and moving large sets of data is hard. You know, we have just this incredible prowess and we're excited about the future of how our technology and beans. Technology is going to evolve over time >>theme and google a marriage of technology Guys, thank you so much for joining me, sharing what's new? The opportunities that demand google are joined me delivering to your joint customers. Lots of great step. We appreciate your time. >>Thanks lisa >>For Danielle in and Brian Schwartz. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of Lehman 2021.

>> Hello, everybody. Welcome to VeeamON 2021. You're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of this year's event. My name is Dave Vellante, and as the saying goes, you can go faster alone but further together, and that observation is most certainly true in the technology business, and with me to talk about the importance of partners and ecosystem expansion and leverage are Daniel Fried, who's the senior vice president for EMEA and worldwide channels and Veeam, and David Harvey who's the vice president of Strategic Global Alliances at Veeam. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Come on inside. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Thanks so much. Thank you. >> So you're welcome. So Daniel, about 40 partners by my count did at VeeamON virtual this year. Wow. It's unfortunate we can't interact with them face to face, but part of the story here 25% ARR growth and partners, obviously big contributor there. Give us the update from your perspective. >> Well, yeah. So first of all, I think it's going to be much more than the 40 partners that are going to attend VeeamON, because it's a key event that we've had already for a number of years, and this one this year is going to be as huge as usual, even bigger, because it is all remote. So everybody can participate. Now going to the results of the company, it is entirely also due to the partners. All types of partners, because we are 100% partner-based. We are a travel company. So all our businesses go through the buffers to reach out to the end customers, all different types of partners. So I do thank very, very much all partners around the world, all types of partners, because they all participate to the success of Veeam software, and this fantastic 25% growth indeed. >> Yeah, so David that's pretty important when you send that message. I mean a lot of companies, a lot of tech companies, struggle with that. They have a heritage of direct sales, and they say, hey we're super partner friendly, and then they do a big reach around. You kind of clean that up from day zero, but maybe talk a little bit about your philosophy around partnering. >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's been a core pillar, as you said Dave, of Veeam from day one, and we've been true to that message all the way through, and when you look at the rich ecosystem of the ProPartner Network that Daniel was talking about, and you also look at the way that we've embraced Alliances, not only from the technology integration point of view, but also within the go-to market position. It's just been a really rich experience for the Veeam field, the alliances and partner field, but more important for the customers, because they get the best of breed from both sides. They get peace of mind on supply chain, but fundamentally, and you touched on this point Dave, a lot of people talk about it in principle. We live it all day every day, and I think when you look at the rich experience that you're going to get from VeeamON, when you look at the fact that the Alliance partners have lent in as the premium sponsors. These are the biggest guys in the industry. It's just a testament to trust, and it's a testament to delivering value to the customers. >> How should we think about the sort of partner makeup, and I'm interested in particularly the perspective from EMEA, but I mean a number of the partners, the majority of the premier partners, for example, they're U.S.-based companies, but of course they have very strong presence around the world, and then of course within EMEA, Daniel, you've got a lot of local partners as well. How should we think about that makeup? The big whales, who account for, many, many tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars but as well the collective of the larger ecosystem. How should we think about that pyramid? >> Well, this is a fantastic question. I think that we have to go back into understanding what the role of partner is to reach out to the end customers, and because Veeam is selling to companies, which are very small ones, very small SMB customers all the way to the very large complex multinationals. We need partners who have these capabilities to address all those, and of course the number of companies around the world. It's hundreds of millions of them. To give you an idea, because of the partners, our coverage is more than a hundred countries. In other words, we sell to more than a hundred countries around the world, even in places where our Veeam presence, physical presence is not there. We need different types of partners depending on what is needed, what the customers are requesting, We talk about the popup neural network, but I would like to talk, to go even farther, and talk about an ecosystem, of business ecosystems, using the theme solutions and the Veeam technologies with the alliancers, with the STEM integrators, with the VAR, with the resellers, and with the service providers, with all different types of typologies partners, and it is not one unique way of doing businesses. So you've got huge companies, but you have a lot of small ones to be capable to sell to a mom and dad shop somewhere in the middle of the desert or somewhere around the world, but we also need to have competencies, because customers have requests that become more and more complex, because the world is becoming more and more complex from an IT perspective. So we need to have competencies, and this is what we try in this co-partner network software is to bring these competencies up to be capable through the partners to answer all the requests and all the needs of all the customers around the world. >> So, David, it's not just sort of generic. I mean obviously, as a 100% channel partner company, you're looking for volume and distribution, but as Daniel just said, there's competency. So what are some of the competencies that partners bring to the table? Maybe you have some examples that you can share. >> Yeah, absolutely. So if you look at a couple of different areas, what I would say is we look at this problems that customers are dealing with in two ways. One, they're dealing with the fact that they want a technology solution to something that they're dealing with today, and secondly, they want somebody to support them with a human workflow evolution that's going on with them today, and GSIs is a good example of that one. When you look at the work we're doing and the success we're having with the large global GSIs, what we're solving in that area is two things. Workplace optimization, huge topic at the moment, and secondly, the data center modernization, and what's happening as you go through that evolution is you're dovetailing together the workflows of their business. You're using data as a lifeblood to be able to be successful and relate to their share price, et cetera, but more importantly, you want to make sure that you're bringing into account both those sides. You can't just have a technology solution without an understanding of implementation, and you can't have a great concept without a solid solution to back that up. So that's where we dovetail together. The top alliances that are out there in the market with the top global systems integrators, and both of those combined solutions benefit everybody including the channel, but obviously more importantly, the customer, and I think when you look at that, the work we're doing with Accenture, with Capgemini, the work we're doing with guys like HPE and VMware and all these large thought leaders, that's where it's a really nice dovetail, and as we talked about before, because that's been the lifeblood of our organization from day one, it's a very harmonious experience focused on solving the customer pain. >> So I like that focus on solutions. I'm just thinking about workplace optimization. You think about remote work. I mean everybody's trying to figure out hybrid now. How do I get hybrid right, and of course you guys fit in. What's the right data protection model? Modernization. There's app modernization. Because of cloud, there's a rethink of how you protect data. Maybe it's additional layers, and then of course, I mean every time I look in the paper, there's another hit of ransomware or some cybersecurity attacks. You guys fit in there. There's this solution emphasis, which really dovetails nicely into the customer problem. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and the role that partners play and what role you play. >> The role that we play is I'm just here, and we complements response, cause it can be a very large extended answer, and with the role we play is I would say twofold. Just to try to be, to simplify as much as we can, as much as I can. One of them is to provide solutions, and this is number one. So Veeam is providing solutions to end customers through the partners. The partners, they have these competencies, which allow them to build solutions and services to answer the request and the needs of the customers. So this is the key thing. They generate the value add on top of our technologies, on top of our solutions, to meet what the customers request, and you're totally right, because we talked about the marketplace, we talked about a lot of things, but what is very important is we see more and more customers wanted to go to services. So not for themselves to manage the infrastructures, and their back up centers, and their back ups. They are everything which is needed to the security of the data, but to have it done by a potentially third party companies like the system integrators, like the cabin service providers, like all different types of companies, even some consultants giving advices on architectures, the neighborhoods, and all kinds of different services, which are built. I even had some partners that are now developing. We talk about containers more and more, and we have, sorry to be a bit technical here, but we have some partners of ours, obviously some larger ones, which are contributing what they call microservices, which is for this new generation of containers. So they are all developing services to meet the requests and the needs of their customers. There is a big focus at the end customers. So we provide the technology. They add value. >> Well, I don't think you ever have to apologize in theCUBE for talking tech. I mean you think about containers, and your acquisition of Kasten, the whole notion of microservices. Containers used to be ephemeral and stateless, and now they're becoming a fundamental application development platform, and they need protection. So I think that's an important area. We're going to dig into that in some other conversations in theCUBE. but your point, Daniel, about value add is critical. It used to be I call it box selling even though it's, the software's in a box, but it used to be okay I'm going to make some margin just reselling. Partners today want to add value. They just don't want to be a pass through, because they'll get disinter mediated. So that's important. I wonder if you guys could talk about some of the details of your partner programs. There's the ProPartner Network, and I'm very interested in the Veeam Universal License approach that you guys take. What kind of details can you share with us on those two things? >> Daniel, that's a good one for you. >> Right, okay. So what you call the Veeam Universal License, so this is part of the technology that we provide and the licensing that we provide. It's about recurring licensing model, which is totally agnostic. So in other words, it is the same types of licensers that customers can use for whether if they are hydrates, they go with an architecture, which goes to the heartbeat clouds, or any type of architecture or premise, so they can just move down action. So it's from one place to another place when they need it. So we give them the full flexibility with this licensing model to adapt to the new needs that they may have. So to influence that, they define an architecture, which is totally frozen, and then they cannot change it anymore. With us, with our technologies, with our licensing model, with our VUL licensing system, they have full flexibility, and this is a key differentiator for a lot of customers and obviously from our own competition. >> And my understanding is when you guys really started leaning into the ARR model, you actually were were pretty innovative in the way you kind of made that transparent, or irrelevant really, for your partner's sales channels. You guys set up front. We're going to... This is like no change. Go sell. We'll figure out the economics on the backend, and most organizations in your position don't do that. They try to micromanage the margin upfront, and it's sort of the finance guys running the spreadsheet or sort of determining the relationship as opposed to the relationship working backwards. Is that a correct inference on my part? I sort of got this from talking to some of your big partners and asked them, well, isn't that a real challenge when you shift to that model. They said no. Veeam just sort of made it all transparent to us and sort of aided at the backend or however you did that. >> So I think, Dave, that this is a very, very correct statement that you got from the partners, because it is not something which is new, and it is not only on this subscription licensing model What we always try to do with all partners is to have a consistent approach and a very transparent approach with the steps and move step by step to the next grade walls, to the next strategies, to the next ways of doing businesses with them. So the key thing to have a network of partners which works, which really develop and generates a good value add, it is the trust, and I think, I don't want to be too outspoken, but I think, and they can give us feedback, I think that we've succeeded year after year after year to build that trust with the partners, which means that we have the transparency. They just move along with the moves that we do, but our moves also come from them. So in other words, depending on what the end customers request, we help the partners to meet the requests of the end customers. So we help them develop more businesses. >> David, let me ask you something. So if you had 100$ to spend of resource, and you had to spend it on going deeper, sort of the existing partners or expanding the number of partners, and maybe even the quality of partners, and thinking about where IT is headed, Veeam's role in that, how do you allocate your time and your resources? >> Great question, and I think simple answer for me. You go deeper with what you have, and the reason for that is it's expensive, and it's about building trust, as Daniel said, and it's about making sure that the customer isn't caught up in the middle of it, and I think that's the really important part related to this as well. You said at the start of the conversation, Dave, with regards to the complexity, and the reality is there's multiple decisions going on right now. How do I adjust my infrastructure based on the needs of today? How do I look at the blend on hybrid cloud? What's going where, et cetera. How do I evolve into containers? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and I think when you go down that line, and you're presented with these titans of industry that we're looking at here with some of our premium alliances, et cetera, it takes a long time to make sure that you integrate. It takes a long time to make sure you'll go to market and pain-based statements are clear. It takes a long time to go through the trenches, to learn together so that the customer is the one that has choice, doesn't have to investigate the way that Veeam wants to do it or our alliance wants to do it or our partner wants to do it. It's about looking at the best solution for their pain, and I think from that point of view you can only do that with continual commitment. I mean we add to our program in all aspects, but you will see consistency. You'll see releases from day one of the company when we launched the product, with Alliances as an example. That consistency and investment is peace of mind. It's trust, but more important it's innovative, because you get to invest for multiple years moving forwards. So that ideally we can continue our philosophy of being just ahead of what the customer needs, while listening to them and working with their other parts of the IT infrastructure, because as you said from the start again, this is an ecosystem. This is not a singular component, and I think that's where it's really key to have a philosophy, which we have here in Veeam, which is double down with your friends, make sure you make it work, look to evolve as the market evolves with some extension, but you never forget where you came from. >> I like that answer cause it was something. It was kind of a loaded question, because when I talked to a lot of companies behind the scenes, one of their big frustrations is there's a push to get more, more, more, but in reality when they look at the productivity, it's like a snake swallowing a basketball. They got a few partners that are really productive, and then the rest, and they're spending all this time doing Barney press releases. I love you. You love me and dah, dah, dah, and nothing ever happens out of it. So when you approach a strategic partnership, why Veeam? So when you approach a strategic partnership, why Veeam? Pitch me on why I should spend my time with Veeam versus one of the many other competitors that are out there. >> 100%. I mean that's the great thing. We're programmed from a history point of view, and there's nothing better than when you're talking to a strategic partner, than to be able to say you've put your money where your mouth is. Secondly, that money is key. We invest heavily, and it is expensive. It's an expensive scenario. I mean our Alliances organization globally is almost 100 people, and it's a big investment position, because you've got to make sure that you've got the ability to balance out what both sides are looking for, and sometimes you do things that maybe aren't 100% in your best interest, but that's important to your partner and your alliance and vice versa, and so from that point of view, you've got history and proven position. You've got investment potential, and the capital to be able to build together, to move forward, and thirdly, it's about the execution, and that's not just your philosophy where I started. This is about the ability to turn concept into tangible, frankly benefit, which comes down to economics for both sides, and those three things together to me are the way that we've been so successful, in not only growing and maintaining our position, but also attracting new ones as we look to see the evolution of the IT market. Daniel, you may have a different view. >> No, no, no, no, no. No, no, I totally agree. I just would like to complement your part by two things. Two things are very much marketing related. We are number two now worldwide, as IDC mentioned it. So in other words, that means that customers like our technologies, our solutions. So partners are looking for making businesses with somebody who is trusted. Also we get customers, and number two, we have a big marketing machine, and that helps very, very, very much the business, through the partners all the way to the end customers. We always involve the buffers, always systematic. >> Sorry to interrupt. I saw some of that IDC data. You guys are number two worldwide, but am I correct that you're the number one, like pure play independent or am I missing something there? >> Number one. Yeah. Number one in EMEA. >> Right. So I always ask that, because a lot of times other people, it's like cloud washing. I could throw a bunch of stuff in my cloud numbers and say I'm number one in cloud, but when you talk about Veeam all your revenue comes from backup data protection. That's the pure play. We love the pure plays, because they're easier to understand, and even though you guys are a private company, you're more transparent than most private companies. So it's helpful as an analyst to really kind of gauge the progress. So, okay guys. Hey, we got to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on and talking about the all important partner ecosystem. You guys have done a great job there. Congratulations, and I hear it from your partners and obviously the numbers prove it out. So great job. >> Thanks. Thanks for your time today. >> All right. You're very welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's continuous coverage of VeeamON 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there for more great content.

>>VM is one of the more interesting stories we've covered in the past decade. Born in 2006 with a simple premise to make backing up virtualized systems easy, fast, consistent and cost effective. The company's timing was perfect as it rode the coattails of the virtualization trend with a laser focus on developing great products that just work. That's the tagline fast forward to 2021 and the team has surpassed the billion dollar mark in revenues and is transformed into a leading the, leading the number one independent pure play company for backup and data protection. Software company is expanding its tam extending from its on prem routes into cloud, cloud data backup containers and SAS data protection and with me to talk about its progress and how it thinks about the future of Bill Largent is the Ceo and chairman of VM and Jim Krueger. The CMO at the company. Gentlemen welcome, Great to see you again. >>Hey, great to see you again. Dave. >>Thank you, Dave, Great to be here. >>It's great, great introduction but I appreciate that set up >>following you guys for a long time but you know, you don't sit still so give us the business update. I mean you guys are cranking you just put out a press release on your progress. You're pretty transparent for a private company. We love that. But give us the update bill. >>Yeah, thanks very much. I'll do that really. We're pretty excited about the press release. We said Q one how we're 25% up air our growth, we've made a great transition with our team um super strong on our performance, our economic performance. We like being transparent were transparent with Clearly our owners now insight venture partners and that's been a big transaction that occurred in the last 15, 14 months. And we're we're transparent with our customers, our partners, our distributors, so and our vendors. So we're just that way we like to make sure we're good partners with all those along the line and we care quite a bit about him. So I think that transparency helps us with our customer base and where we're going with our product and what we've had to offer. We're now over 4500, employees strong around the globe. 40 plus countries operating uh, well, in all those jurisdictions with the covid being coming out of, I would say, coming out of hopefully coming out of the rough time period from from the geographical geopolitical covid issues. So we believe we've done extremely well through then businesses continued to grow for us. So we're really excited about where things are, insight has done a great job and helping us advance our business and thinking about looking at new tams to go after. And we're pretty excited about it. So. Well >>I had 13 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for a company of of of your age and size is is very impressive. You don't see that often. >>Yeah we've we work pretty hard at that. It's I'd say we really focus on that year to year even though our quarters just keep popping along very nicely for us. You know, starting back in oh six, having been around since then we did start at absolute zero. We didn't have a didn't have a bit in the bank at that time. Uh Now it's a whole different story with our second year over a billion dollars. And when you look at A. T. C. V. Kind of calculation and us transforming into an A. R. R. A. Heavy perpetual base. So we've transitioned with new product offering being all subscription base. So that's uh that's making us um making us even more competitive than than we have been passed. >>I like how you couch that because you don't want to be trapped into that, you know, the quarterly shot clock, but still it's quite impressive performance. And with the A. R. R. That sort of smooth things out, jim I want to ask you about vermin again, virtual this year, second year in a row. Uh You know, it's been it's been frustrating because we can't be face to face, but well, what have you learned about the sort of virtual events? How is it performed for you? Do you see that continuing in some way, shape or form when you get back to physical? How are you thinking about that? >>Yeah, we had, we had two major virtual events last year. And so to your point, we we did learn a lot in terms of what works, what doesn't work, and we've continued to refine refine the plans. Uh One thing that it does is it just really opens the doors for a much broader audience. Typically we get about 2000 ISH people Uh that attend in person for vermin. Uh and uh and last year we had actually about 28,000 people representing 150 countries that registered for the event, and we had over 11,000 that actually attended. Uh and the engagement was, was really good and we, we were our scores in terms of satisfaction, we're, you know, four plus out of five. And so I think we did a pretty good job, but we continue to learn one of the things that you need to do is you need to sort of shorten the agenda because the attention span is not not very long. So all of our sessions are 30 minutes or less and we've actually uh put it over two days where it's about 3.5 hours each day, so we try to keep it a little bit lighter. We still have 30 different breakout sessions. We have keynotes, um, uh, some great speakers that are coming, some great customers that are coming, but you have to integrate some fun, some incentives, things of that sort. So we've been creating a lot of buzz leading up to Vermont with um, a lot of social activity. We have some some new uh, VM Nike kicks that people can win, which has generated a lot of excitement uh, and uh, and we'll be doing a lot of incentives and prizes and things as a part of the event. Uh, so, so that that's a key learning that we, we, we know that people love and just creates a lot of us in addition to of course the great content >>VM has good swag too, is an analyst. I always appreciate that VM and pure storage as you guys are at the top of the living >>area and a >>big thanks for that. But I gotta ask you, so one of the hard parts because you guys are all channel, 100% channel have been from day zero. That's some, that's gotta be tough because we've been in this business a long time doing hybrid for a long time and the sellers love to be belly to belly. They never wanted sort of hybrid. So it's gotta be tougher for the partners as well who are big channel. So how do you integrate the partners? What can we expect, you know, in these types of things going forward? >>Yeah. So I can start with just with the man bill and then we can talk a little bit more, but for the moment we actually have a really strong partner registration, so partners are attending Vermont as well, we have separate sort of cordoned off content specifically for our partners, so they're definitely a key part of that. We have 38 uh sponsors uh that uh you know a part of our ecosystem uh and uh so you know, partners kind of overall are a really key part of iman in addition to to customers attending as well. Uh So that's one way that we continue to connect with with our partners >>bill, that's part of the tam expansion, obviously it's leverage. Right? >>Absolutely. It is and you know, we'll stay with that two tier distribution system that we have affected with those partners and distributors as to how we work through them. Uh Partners are absolutely key key for us all around the globe. Different kinds of partners in the U. S. A rather large wind sell a lot of small ones uh same in the media and same in A P. J. So we'll keep that network going. Why? Because they're they're an extension of the VM arm of our internal sales group that numbers well over 2000 of our people that focus on the selling. But the partners are key. They've adapted nicely I believe, to a lot of virtual events like we're going through now and they to sound like they're as excited as we are about getting things back in uh in person. >>So I always been fascinated by tam expansion. It's part of the Ceos job you have. You know, I love the fact that that incite the board promoted from within somebody. They tapped a Ceo who knew the business. You have to do a reset your at $5 billion Mantra. And so when you're thinking about your tam expansion, cast an acquisition cloud, uh, you guys have been into the SAS backup world for for a bit now it's starting to produce. How are you thinking about the future and opportunities ahead. >>We've got great opportunities with cast and so into the cooper Nettie space. That's a huge uh, market expansion for us in an evolving marketplace. So our goal was, let's be that thought leader. Let's get the best technology that's out there and then you'll see us execute really well. This on the sales side. This uh, this year also 2021 here and beyond the public cloud. Peace with azure with aws with our Google offering. So we're continuing to bring those up the up to up to speed in a sense of size because there's this tremendous future there, that's a big expansion of our team. Also I think Jim might talk a little bit about jumping into that security space a little bit. That is going to be big, It's big for us, It's a selling um selling feature that I think has come a long way. So it is about expanding that tam and our focus is always long term. It is, yeah, evaluation is important, but more important is that, you know, that long term customer service uh meaning new products for them like Office 3 65 that we brought out that has had tremendous growth for us. Uh so we're really excited about the growth, but again, our focus is on for that customer over the long term. It's uh it's years out, it's not the quarters and it's not about that valuation, it's really about how we keep them going in their business. >>So jim talk about that positioning, I mean, you're not a security company, you're not like building firewalls and and perimeters and so forth. But the notion of security and data protection plays in there. I mean, you think about these ransomware attacks, if I can actually recover from a ransomware attack, I got way more leverage and you're part of that recovery process. So those lines are blurring. How do you think about it? >>Yeah, that's that's definitely a key benefit that our solution provides in terms of protection from that. Uh And as we've had new releases into the market v 10 last year, the 11 this year, we've continued to up the ante relative to the protection from ransomware that's obviously a hot topic in the marketplace. And uh, and and we have some some great differentiators that we brought to market. And I think that that's part of why we're seeing the, you know, the strong growth, Uh, B 11, you know, Focus on ransomware, but over 200 new features and capabilities that we have brought to market to make it easier for our customers. We have kind of three key pillars around simplicity, flexibility, reliability, uh, and also just super powerful with the features and capabilities that we bring the market. So, uh, so we're seeing great traction there. Uh, and uh, and that's definitely an area that we're focused on. Uh, as again, we're not a security company, but we do protect from that. And some of the capabilities, you know, give you, if you do run into that situation, the capability to recover quickly and not have to pay a ransom And keep your business running, which is a key focus for us across all of our 400,000 plus customers. >>What about cloud? Cloud is a lot of people, you know, traditionally on prem vendors, they're like threatened by cloud. But clouds a gift for wien I mean it's like the internet is a gift is this big platform that's been built out, you can build on top of it. So how are you guys thinking about the cloud opportunity and the SAS data protection? >>Yeah, we want to go and >>Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, Jim. Yeah, it is a tremendous market opportunity for us. We've evolved as, you know, get back to our roots and 06, it was about um protecting those virtual workloads and we've evolved from there with evolved from there maintaining that that on print businesses is not going away. The public cloud businesses skyrocketed the private cloud business the same way. And we want to have products for all um all of those and the ability to move and move data's move, move workloads around, move those datas around, move that data around. So big piece for us, the casting piece, I keep getting back in how that might evolve with the SAs offering or not. Well, we'll tell over time period here as we work on that product roadmap. So, absolutely tremendous opportunity for us. >>Well, when you think about hybrid jim, I mean, the first thing that people say is for developers, containers, first thing you do is containerized the app and then you don't care where run anywhere right at once. Run it anywhere. That's a big opportunity. >>Yeah, so, so we're definitely focused on building a single platform for all environments. Uh So with the storage integration with the top three hyper scale ear's uh moving into kubernetes and containers, uh backup and protection. Uh So that that's a key part of our strategy. It's again to make it easy for customers To be able to manage all of their backup from one single console. Uh So so that's a key strategy and their own, you know, the research that we've done, I think, you know, due to Covid, we're actually seeing an increase in the move to the cloud, uh and we play in in in two key areas, ones with the hyper sailors and providing, you know, the backup and recovery within those environments, but then also with our service providers and as a service we're seeing really strong growth within that market and that ecosystem. So uh you know, working to to partner with them closely and continue to build that ecosystem and support them and their efforts to to uh to drive growth in the market as well. >>All right I'm gonna let you guys go the last question bill is so what's life like with insight? I know these guys are players. We've we've seen the moves they make is what's the future like? Is I. P. O. Still on the table? What can you tell us about life with insight? >>It's a great question. Well keep in mind we worked with insight in our prior entity uh starting in I think in 2002 we brought them in. So and our partner that's on our account has been with us since that time even though after we sold the business they were out of him. So uh No I'm really well they've been a big help their operations operationally efficiency, efficiently focused. I'd say they're helping us bring new ideas back to the M. And A activity back to your I. P. O. Question. I think that's an avenue for us. We clearly are pushing in that direction to get set up that way. What's it do for us? It gives us that bigger currency versus just cash. It gives you that stock currency to use on M. And A activity that you know I think you saw us do that with Kasten. Uh in the sense of acquiring M. And A. That's been different for vein. We build it from within that was a buy from outside. You'll see us do both both of those in the future. Very important I think uh you know without being too predictive I would say hopefully that's something you see in the I. P. O. Side that in the next 12 24 months a run like that. >>Well, Hey, uh, as an upside of observing the street wants growth, they want execution, they want consistency and you guys bring all those guys. Thanks so much for coming back in the Cube. Always a pleasure. And look forward to seeing you face to face. Hopefully before 22. >>It would be nice. >>All right. Thank you. Thanks. >>Dave. All right. >>You're welcome. Alright, keep it right, everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the Cubes, continuous coverage of them on 2021, the virtual edition, We're right back.

(upbeat music) >> 2020 was the most unpredictable year of our lives, a forced shutdown of global economies left everyone have the conclusion that the tech industry spending would decline and of course it did, but you'd hardly know it if you watch the stock market and the momentum of several well-positioned companies. Those firms that had products and services that catered to the pivot to work from home, SAS based solutions were focused on business resiliency and cloud saw huge growth. The forced match to digital turned a buzzword into reality overnight, where if you weren't a digital business, you were out of business. And one of the companies participating in that growth trend was Veeam. Veeam virtual is scheduled to take place on May 25th and 26th. And it's one of our favorite physical events and the Cube will be there again as a virtual participant. One of our traditions prior to VeeamON has always been to bring in an executive into the Cube and talk not only about what to expect at the show, but what's happening in the market. And with me is many times Cube alum Danny Allan is the chief technology officer at Veeam. Danny welcome is always great to see you. >> I am delighted to be here again. Disappointed it's virtual, but excited to talk with you. >> Yeah, me too. You know, it's coming. It's getting jabbed but you know, you look at the surprises here. I mean, look at the chip shortage, you know everybody thought, Oh, well stop ordering chips. I mean furniture, et cetera, cars. And it's just kind of crazy. What was your expectation going into the pandemic and what did you actually see looking back? >> Well, it's funny, you never know what's going to happen. And for the first few weeks I would say there's a lot of disruption because all of a sudden you have people who've been going into an office for a long time, working from home and you know, from an R&D perspective at Veeam those people weren't used to working from home. So there's a lot of uncertainty I'll say for the first three or four weeks but what very quickly picked up was the opportunity. I'll say to focus more specifically on delivering things for our customers. And one of the things obviously that just exploded was use of digital technologies like Slack and Microsoft teams. And as you say, Veeam was well positioned to help customers as they move towards this new normal, as they say. >> So what were some of the growth vectors that you guys saw specifically that were helping your customers going to get get through this time? >> Yeah well, people always associate Veeam with knowing data protection for the virtual environment but two things really stood out last year as our emerging markets. One was Office365, and I think that's due to the uptake of Microsoft teams. I mean, if you look at the Microsoft results, you can see that people are doing SaaS. And we were very well positioned to take advantage of that. Help customers move towards collaborating online. So that was a huge growth vector for us. And the second one was cloud. We had more data moving to cloud than ever before in Veeam history. And that continues on into 2021. >> You guys, well, yeah, let's talk more about that set SAS piece of your business. You were very early on in terms of SAS data protection. You kind of had to educate the market. People are like, well, why do I need to back up my SAS doesn't the cloud provider do that? And then you sort of you had to educate, so it was you were early and but it's really paid off. Maybe talk about how that trend has benefited some of your customers. >> Yeah. So if you go back four years, we didn't even have data protection for Office365. And over the last four years, we've emerged into the market leader the largest in protection for Office365. And as you say, it was about education. Early on people knew that they needed to protect exchange when they ran it on premises. And when they first went to the cloud there was this expectation of, Hey Microsoft or my provider will do that for me. And very quickly they realized that's not the case and there's still the same threats. It might not be hardware failure, but certainly misconfiguration or deleted items or ransomware in 2021, sorry, 2020 was massive. And so we do data protection for Exchange, for SharePoint online, for one drive, and most recently for Microsoft teams. And so that data protection obviously helps organizations as they adopt Office365 and SaaS technologies. >> I sent him my last breaking analysis. When you look at the ETR data, Veeam has been really steady. You know, some competitors spike up and come down, others, you know, maybe aren't doing so well or the larger established players don't have as much momentum. It just seems like Veeam even though you cross the billion dollar revenue mark, you've been able to keep that spending momentum up. And I think it's, I would observe it's a function of your ability to identify that the waves and ride those waves and anticipate them. We just talked about SAS, talked about virtualization. You were there cloud, we'll talk about that more as well, plus your execution. It seems like since the acquisition by insight you guys have continued to execute. I wonder if you could help the audience understand how do you think about the phases that Veeam has gone through in its ascendancy and where you're headed? >> Yeah. And so I look at it as three things, it's having the right product, but it's not just enough to have the right product, the right product it's the right timing and it's the right execution. So if you think about where Veeam started, it was all in data protection for vSphere, for the hypervisor. And that was right at the time when VMware was taking off and the modernized data center was being virtualized. And so that helped us grow, I'll say into a $600 million company, but then about four years ago, we see the ascendancy of SaaS and specifically Office365. And so, you know, we weren't first to market but I would argue the timing with the best product, with the right execution has turned that into a massive a very significant contribution to our bottom line. And then actually the third wave through 2020 is the adoption of cloud. We moved last year, 242 petabytes into cloud storage and already in the first quarter of 2021, we've moved to 100 petabytes. So there's this massive adoption or migration of data into the cloud. And Veeam has been positioned with the right product, at the right time, with the right execution, to take advantage of that. >> So I wonder if you could help us quantify that IDC data you know, the IDC did a good job quantifying the market. Maybe you could share with us sort of your position there, maybe some of the growth that we're seeing. Can you add some color to that? >> Yeah. We have some very exciting results from the recent IDC report. So in the second half of 2020, we saw 17.9% year over year growth in our revenue. That was actually triple the closest competitor. And our sequential growth was over 21%. So massive growth and all of that is in the second half of the year, 563 million in revenue. So over a billion dollar company. So these aren't just, you know, 20% growth on small numbers. This is on a very significant number. And we see that continuing forward, we'll be announcing some things I'm sure at VMR coming up in a few weeks here, but that trend continues. And again, it's the right product, right time, with the right execution. >> Cloud continues to roll on. You're seeing, you know, solid weather. If you add them all up the big four 30 plus percent growth you're seeing Azure, even higher growth. You know, AWS is huge, Google growing, Google cloud, probably in the 60 to 70% range. So cloud still hot, it's kind of gone mainstream but there's still feels like there's a long way to go there. What's happening in cloud? You guys, again, leaning in, riding that wave. What can you tell us? >> We are leaning in, you're going to see some things coming up at Veeam related to that. But two things I would say, one is we're in the marketplace of all three of the major hyperscalers. So there's a Veeam backup for AWS, Veeam backup for Azure, and a Veeam backup for GCP. And not only is there products that are purpose-built for those clouds in the marketplace, all three of them have integrations to the core Veeam platform. And so this isn't just standalone products while it is in the marketplace, it's integrated into the full strategy around modern data protection for the organizations. And so I am thrilled about some of the things that we're going to be showing in there but we're leaning in very closely with those. We think we're in early days, like I say maybe first, second year, and it will be the next decade as they truly emerge into their dominant position. But even more than cloud if you asked me what I get excited about looking forward certainly cloud adoption is massive, but Kubernetes, that's what's enabling some of the models of both on-prem and cloud hosted. And we're clearly doing some things there as well. >> So I'm glad you brought that up because I think the first time I ever sort of stumbled into a company that was actually doing data protection for containers was out of a VeeamON event. It was one of your exhibitors. And I was like, Hmm, that's an interesting name. And yeah, of course he ended up buying the company. But so, you know, it's funny, right? Because containers have been around forever. And then when you started to see Kubernetes come to for, containers are really ephemeral they really didn't, you know, they weren't persistent but they didn't have state, but that's changing. I wonder if you could give us your perspective as to how you're thinking about that whole space. >> I truly believe that the third big wave of technology transformation, the first was around physical systems and mainframes and things. And then we went into the virtualized era. I think that the third world is not the cloud. I actually think it is containers. Now why containers? Because as you mentioned, Dave, they're a femoral, they're designed for the world of consumption. Everything else is designed for you, install it. And then you build to the high watermark. The whole thing about containers is that they're a femoral and they're built for the consumption model. The other thing about containers is that they're highly portable. So you can run it on premises with OpenShift but then you can move it to GKE or HKS or EKS or any of the big cloud platforms. So it definitely aligns with organization's desire to modernize and to choose the infrastructure of best choice. Now, at the same time, the reason why they haven't taken off I would argue as quickly as they could have is because they've been really complex, in early days the complexity of containers was very difficult, but the model, the platform or ecosystem is evolving, they are becoming more simple. And what is happening is IT operations teams are now considering the developer, their customer and they're building self-service models for the developers to be more productive. So I think of this as platform apps and certainly backup and security is a part of this but it is moving and we're seeing traction actually faster than it would have predicted in early 2020. >> Yeah. We've been putting forth this vision of a layer that abstracts the complexity of the underlying clouds whether it's on prem, across clouds, eventually the edge and containers are linchpin to enabling that. Let's talk about VeeamON 2021. Show us a little leg, give us a preview. >> So we always come with the excitement and we always come with showing a sneak peek of what's to come. So certainly we're going to celebrate some of the big successes. We brought version 11 to market earlier this year that had security capabilities around ransomware type, continuous data protection it at a whole lot of things. So we're going to celebrate some of the products have already recently launched but we're also going to give a sneak peek of what's coming over 2021. Now, if you ask me what that is, we talk an awful lot about cloud. So you should expect to see things around Veeam backup for AWS and Azure and GCP. You should expect to see things around our Kubernetes data protection with our casting Cape 10 product, you should expect to see evolution of capabilities with our SaaS data protection with Office365. So we're going to give a sneak peek of lots of things to come. And as always, we bring lots of innovation to the market. It's not just another checkbox theme has always said, how can we do it differently? How can we do a better? And then we're going to show that to our customers at VeeamON. >> Well, we're always super excited to participate in the Veeam community. We've always had a lot of fun. They're great events. Yes, it's virtual, but you guys always have an interesting spin on things and make it fun. It's May 25th and 26th. It starts at 9:00 AM Eastern time. You go to Veeam V-E-E-A-M.com and sign up, make sure you do that and check out all the content. The Cube of course will be there. I will be interviewing executives, customers, partners. There's tons of content for practitioners. And, you know, as always you guys got the great demos and always a few surprises. So Danny, really looking forward to that and really appreciate your time and the Cube today. >> Thank you, Dave. >> All right. And thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for the Cube. Again, May 25th and 26th 9:00 AM. Eastern time, go to veeam.com and sign up. We'll see you there. (upbeat music)