>> Announcer: From Nice, France, it's theCUBE! Covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT here in Nice, France. Happy to welcome to the program Peter Grimmond, who is the EMEA CTO at Veritas. Peter, thanks so much for joining us. >> You're welcome. It's great to be here. >> All right, so, we had theCUBE at Veritas Vision earlier this year. My co-CEO Dave Vellante and I did a whole bunch of interviews, really re-introducing to a lot of people. I remember Veritas from back in the day, but through the Symantec acquisition, now, back out, you know, a lot of interesting things coming. Obviously a company that's always been a software company at its core, as opposed to, in the infrastructure world, a company like Nutanix. It's like, wait, wait, do you sell appliances or use software? What's your mix, there? Veritas, you're a software company. Why don't you start off with just a little bit about your role, how long you've been at Veritas, and what brings you here to this show. >> Yeah, by all means. I've been at Veritas forever. I actually started with the company in 1994, believe it or not, so, yeah, been here a long time. Spent a lot of time in consulting, working with our customers, installing, configuring backup solutions and delivering consulting around the data center, and then most recently moved into leading teams and acting as the CTO for the business here in ME. >> Wow, yeah. '94, that's many lifetimes in the tech world. Everybody thinks of Veritas back in the day, it was net backups, is what people know. What products are you involved with, when you're meeting with customers, what are the key things you're focused on? >> Our portfolio's grown substantially over those years, and most especially, actually, in the last year or so. We've actually launched seven new offerings in the last year, really expanding our reach to cover enterprise data management very broadly, and extending also out from the data center to really cover the multi-cloud. We can now provide pretty much end-to-end data management capability across the multi-cloud. >> Okay, great. And when you say multi-cloud, you're working with the public cloud providers, well, many of the infrastructure providers. Give us a little bit of the scope, what you do and don't do when it comes to multi-cloud. >> When I talk to my customers about what they're doing with cloud, almost all of them have what we describe as a multi-cloud approach. That means multiple public clouds, plus their own private cloud, and in some cases, more than one private cloud that they're working with as well. Our mission to deliver enterprise data management services to those customers has to also have that reach. We're working with a number of the large cloud service providers, such as Amazon and Google and Microsoft, IBM as well, and, indeed, Oracle, as well as working with private cloud providers such as Nutanix. >> Excellent. Let's connect to Nutanix, there. Nutanix talks about enterprise cloud. Most of their solutions today deployed in customers' data center. It's talking about edge deployments, talking about how they extend public clouds, like, for example, partnerships with Google, support with Microsoft they've always had. Tell us how Veritas and Nutanix, what's the boundaries, how do they connect? >> Ultimately, as customers move their workloads onto hyper-converged platforms, and a lot of our customers are doing that, they need to find ways to protect that data. Now, for those customers who are using a hypervisor such as VMware or Nutanix, we've been able to back up that data for them for a while, and we can back up data that's been on the Acropolis hypervisor in-guest. But what we've done with Nutanix recently is to integrate net backup with AHV, so we can now back up the VVMware level from Nutanix. >> Peter, take us in that, because it's been a discussion with a lot of the ecosystem, and it's like, okay, how much work is it to certify AHV, is this a Nutanix push or is it a customer pull? Take us inside a little bit as to what led to this work. How easy or hard was it, and what's the customer demand for it? >> The customer demand is high. Customers are looking, those that have had Nutanix deployed for some time are now interested in moving to AHV. They want to use that as a platform. There are some good benefits to them in doing that. One of the things that's potentially been stopping them from doing that is the ability to protect their data properly in those environments. Having the ability to do those backups in AHV is important to them, so they've certainly been asking us for that. I believe they've been asking Nutanix for it as well, and that's why we're partnering together. In terms of how complex it is, in the world of RESTful APIs, it actually becomes relatively straightforward. You know, NetBackup is a RESTful API which allows you to back up parallel workloads. Nutanix has a RESTful API that allows you to access their backup API, and we put those two together and get a solution reasonably quickly, actually. >> Awesome. I would assume most of your customers, they're doing multiple hypervisors, though. Veritas, you play well in that environment? If I've got Veritas and AHV, or-- >> We've had support for hypervisors such as Vmware and Hyper-V for some time. AHV's one that we haven't supported, and so, this integration was overdue, and we've now done it. Customers can protect their data, whichever hypervisor they use. >> I guess the question was, if the customer has a multi-hypervisor environment, are there any complications, or it doesn't matter how many of the hypervisors they support? If you support 'em all, it's pretty straightforward. >> Yep. That's the case. We can deploy backup solutions across all of them, and manage all of those from a central management point, so it helps to take the complexity out of it. >> Okay. Want to switch a little bit to hear about customers. I know at Veritas Vision, and especially here at a European show, GDPR is a hot topic of conversation. I've heard some of the Veritas, does Veritas and Nutanix, is there a play jointly on there, or is that more of a separate initiative? >> Look, I think we're both hearing the same thing from our customers, right? Which is that GDPR is something that's exercising them. I've just come from the executive track, actually, where that was a topic of conversation. I think customers are definitely at different stages of maturity on that. When we talk to our customers, there are a lot of them at very early stages in thinking about GDPR, and there are those that have already appointed a data privacy officer and are working for a program to get that done. It's at different stages, but I think, generally speaking, enterprises are still looking for help to get that problem solved. >> Okay. What else are you hearing from customers, you know, big pain points, or areas where they're looking to modernize that Veritas can help? >> I think the big thing that we're hearing from customers is this move to the Cloud, and the thing that's really driving that move to the Cloud is digital transformation. All enterprises are looking to leverage a more digital model. They see cloud as a way of accelerating that, and so they are looking to move aggressively to the Cloud. One of the things that potentially makes that harder than it might otherwise be is assuring the proper management of your data, making sure it's secure and protected and available and performant, and that's where Veritas comes in. We're helping, we believe, to make it easier for customers to adopt a multi-cloud approach by giving them access to their data wherever they need it, by protecting that data, and giving them good visibility into that data wherever it sits, whether that be in Azure or in Office 365 or on-premise. >> Peter, now that Veritas is supporting AHV, what should we look for, really, for the next year? Certain go-to-market initiatives or other integration and engineering work that we should be looking for? >> As you probably heard, when we were at Vision together, our approach around data management is what we call 360 Data Management, which is a suite of tools that we've put together to solve the data management problem. Our aim, certainly, is to extend the 360 Data Management approach to Nutanix, so rather than just covering data protection, we're also covering other areas of data management, such as data access, disaster recovery, data visibility, those kind of areas. >> Okay, great. Peter, I want to give you the final word. At Veritas' show, we talked about the truth in information. What have you been hearing from customers here? What would you want them to take away from the Nutanix show, from a Veritas standpoint? >> I think the key message is that customers get great value from Nutanix HDI platform. Many of those same customers get great value from Veritas. Now they've got that value combined. >> Well, Peter Grimmond, really appreciate you joining us. We'll be back with more coverage here from the Nutanix .NEXT conference in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, and you're watching theCUBE. (fast techno music) >> This is Robin Matlock, CMO of VMware.

>> From Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York, it's the CUBE, covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> We're back at the beautiful Tavern on the Green in the heart of New York City in Central Park. I'm Dave Vellante, and you're watching the CUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. We're here covering the Veritas Solution Day with Veritas Vision, and Anteneh Miticu is here. He's the enterprise backup and data protection team leader at Teradyne, very experienced practitioner We love Anteneh talking to the customers. So thanks very much for coming on the CUBE. >> Thank you. Thank you for having me. >> You're very welcome. So talk about your role as the data protection team leader. What does that entail? >> Yeah, so basically Teradyne has data close to 1.5 terabytes that we protect on a day to day basis and weekly basis and we have 14 different sites that we protect data. So, we just, you know, do backups, and recovery, and restoration, and all that stuff. >> So what are the drivers of your business that affect the data protection strategy? >> So, basically data changes from day to day basis and data grows and we have a lot of threats around us that we have to protect the data. So, we have to make sure that we are on top of protecting it on a day to day basis and archiving it so. >> Okay, so one of the challenges obviously is that you're data's not just in one box. >> That's right. >> You mentioned 14 sites a terabyte and a half and... >> Not terabyte. Petabyte, sorry. >> That's right Petabyte. >> Petabyte, that's right. >> I got a terabyte in my backpack. So, and that presumably occurred over time, sprawled over time. So, what kind of challenges did that create in terms of your ability to protect your data and keep up with the backup Windows the RPO's and the RTO's requirement. >> Yeah, yeah, so basically the way the backup has been evolving is that, originally, we had tape backup where the capacity of each tape is very small and the data is big and using libraries and tape drives take a long time to boot backup and also you need people in each location to be able to manage libraries and tapes and there are so many factors that affect the day to day backup. So in combination all that when you put all that together it's very challenging to protect the data. And then, slowly, to mitigate those kinds of problems then we apply disk-based backup and then cloud-based backup which makes it easier and easier. >> So you still use tape? >> Yes. >> Just not for backup, right? >> Yes, we still use tapes in some locations, but slowly we are growing towards cloud backup and disk-based backup. So, because of still using tape, still using libraries, still using managing multiple locations using people who are in that location to help us out while the team is managing it from remote side. All that is challenging and complex. >> So here at this Veritas Solution Day, CEO is here earlier when you sit down with the Veritas executives, you're a big customer, what do you tell them? What do you tell them you need? What do you tell them you want? What do you tell them in terms of the direction you want Veritas to go? >> Yeah, so basically what we want is simplicity on our tape backup on our backup structure strategy. And also, it shouldn't be too expensive to protect data. So, now the cost of storage is getting cheaper and slowly it's getting cheaper to put data on the cloud but we want to see simplicity, number one. We want to see user friendly software and applications to be able to help us manage the data and visibility to the data that we're managing so that we understand what's dark data and what's live data. And we want to be able to see all our environment from a single platform instead of multiple platforms. So the conference today is showing us that kind of road map, that things are getting integrated and the visibility is coming and the cost is coming down much, much better. So, down the road we can see that we're going to be able to manage much better than how we've been managing so far. >> So Anteneh, you're one of Veritas' 50,000 customers. As you well know there's a lot of startups in this business. There's a lot of competition, it's a big market. A lot of money pouring in. So you must be, the vendors must be knocking down your door to try to win your business. So how do you evaluate that? You come to a session like this you hear some road map items. We were talking to a customer earlier and he was saying, you know, they don't really want to migrate if they don't have to. You have an affinity with Veritas. What kinds of things do you evaluate? Are you thinking about changing your backup approach or even your backup vendor? How do you evaluate those decisions? >> Yeah, I mean, obviously we always have to check and see where we should go in terms of protecting our data. And we have to evaluate our strategy. So, so far Veritas has been one of the great companies we've been working with and we don't see any plan of moving away from Veritas, but, there are so many other companies that are coming that are simpler and that provide much better flexibility. So, if those companies work out, we'll see how it goes, but as of today, Veritas has been very good for us. We've been working with Veritas for a long time at least as long as I've been working with Teradyne. So, but, we'll see how it goes. >> So there's the promise of 8.1.2 is to deliver to you the simplicity that you're demanding. Where are you today in terms of releasing? >> Yeah, so, right now we're on 8.1.1 so what I have heard on 8.1.2 is incredible. Basically, it's going to give us a lot of capabilities that we are doing outside of 8.1.1 which is manual like upgrading our clients and being able to see all our clients and mass of service from one location. All that integration is coming. So, I'm very excited about 8.1.2 and I can't wait to go back and start using it. >> When you have to go from 8.1.1 to 8.1.2 can you describe what that's like? What the planning is like, what you have to do to get there. How much is involved? >> Yeah, so, you're going to have to go and deploy 8.1.2 on the master server and that is going to give you the capability to be able to push it to other servers as well. But before, 8.1.1 then we have to go to each master server and push it which was very time consuming. And also, we have over 400 clients that we have to use something else outside of net backup to be able to upgrade. Now, we can use 8.1.2 to be able to upgrade all those clients from 8.1.2. >> And you referenced earlier Cloud, you use multiple clouds I presume, like most companies, and SAS is in there as well? >> Yeah, so we just started using Cloud. We still are using the old-fashioned way which is tape and disk on most of our locations, but right now just deployed Azure Cloud using backup catalyst server and that's working out very well. It's working out very well and it's making our life much simpler and much better. So we see ourselves moving toward that direction. >> You like the cloud, okay. So, we joke, do you get your weekends back? >> Yeah, actually people who supported from the field offices, now they get their weekend back. Because they are the ones who helped us out while we are supporting it from Boston. >> So you're using Azure, you said. Are you a Microsoft shop predominantly? >> No, this is just the beginning, but we're open on NWES and other cloud providers as well. >> Okay, so it's not, Azure wasn't selected because you had a big Microsoft install base. It was more for the capabilites of the infrastructure that you went there. >> Yes, yes, but we are very flexible and we are open to see other providers as well. And that backup provides users the capability to use other providers as well. >> So, traditionally, the backup admin was somebody to whom pretty much anybody had to go the application guys had to go, the database people, the lines of business, if they wanted to protect their data. That sort of group, or that individual would really be the gatekeeper, if you will. With the Cloud, there's a move towards self-service. Now, what do you think about that and how does that fit with your strategy? Is that something that you're aggressively promoting? How do you protect the corporation from anomalous behavior or non-compliance and things like that? Talk about the trend towards self-service and how that role of the backup admin is evolving. >> Yeah, so the role of the backup admin is very complex, even before. But now, because of self-serving, self-service is available, then the database admins or the virtual team can be able to manage their own backups from their side. But still, backup admins have to be able to manage it in a way that fits according to the strategy that we want the organization to run their backups. So the role of the backup admins is now more complex, and it's not only in one place doing one thing, but working with multiple team allowing other people to have visibility and control while the backup admins manage it from behind. >> You've been with Teradyne almost two decades. You remember the days when backup was just always an afterthought, and still is in a lot of applications, by the way. But increasingly with things like Dev Ops, applications are getting more involved in essentially making infrastructure programmable and building in security, building in data protection. Have you seen that trend at your company and where do you see that going? >> Yeah, so say that again? Sorry. >> So, specifically with regard to building data protection in from the beginning as opposed to bolting it on at the end. Is that something that you guys are able to do with your developers and your Dev Ops teams? >> Yeah, so right now, protecting the data is very strategic and the approach is not just taking the data and putting it somewhere and forgetting about it, but with a plan and purpose, you know? >> So anything here today that you saw that was exciting? What did you think of the event? >> The event was great, and I was glad to be here. And the last couple of years, I was in Vegas with the Veritas Conference as well. And it was very good to be able to talk to other peers and good to get the road map from Veritas as to where they are heading going forward, and so we can be able to align our road map with their road map as well. It's good to get the big picture, and it's good to have conversations and discussions. Just now we came out of so many detailed technical discussions. I'm excited to be here. >> So you saw Richard Branson last year. That was pretty cool, wasn't it? >> That's right. Yeah, he's a great guy and I'm his admirer, and seeing him up close and explaining his experiences and all that stuff was great. >> It's always good to see billionaires giving back and he does sincerely. >> That's right. >> Thanks very much for coming on the CUBE and sharing your experience and your knowledge. I really appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're very welcome. Alright. Keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. We're going to take this short break. You're watching the CUBE, from Veritas Solutions Days at Central Park Tavern on the Green. We'll be right back. (digital music)