(peppy music) >> Welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at our Palo Alto studios for a Cube Conversation. It's a great way to get a little closer to people when we're not at the hustle and bustle of a big show. Although this guest just came from a big show. He's Eric Seidman, director of solutions marketing for Veritas Technology, just back from Microsoft. Welcome, Eric. >> Thank you very much. >> So how was the desert? >> It was very hot. >> (laughs) It was very hot. >> It was very hot. >> So big Microsoft partner show, Inspire. What was kind of the vibe? Things are obviously going really well for Microsoft. We read about they're gaining market share on the cloud space against Amazon. So you know, Satya really seems to have done a great job moving that company. >> Indeed. So there was a lot of focus on Azure at the show. But I thought it was a great event for their partners that are attending there, not only to get more immersed in the capabilities of Microsoft, but also to meet with companies like us, like Veritas, to be able to learn more about our solutions, how they complement what Microsoft is doing, particularly in the public cloud space, and help those partners generate more revenue and help solve the customers' business problems as well. >> It's interesting. You guys are big in appliances. You've got a couple appliances, and we'll talk about specifically the Flex appliances. But more generically, some people might have a question. There's all this rise of public cloud. They're getting more and more percentage of the workloads. How does an appliance fit in a public cloud world? >> Yeah, so that's a great question. We got that a little bit at the Inspire show as well. So first off you kind of have to consider that everything that we do as a company comes out as software first, right? So we're software-defining everything, basically. But there's a lot of consideration that we look at what our customers' requirements are. And so there's many customers that prefer to consume in that agility model that software-defined allows them to do in terms of being able to very quickly scale, Add new features and capabilities on the hardware of their choice. You know, software-defined, particularly storage gives many customers that cloud agility that they're looking for. But there's other sets of companies that are also looking for that same software features and capabilities but prefer more of an appliance consumption model. Maybe they're not ready for that bifurcated type of approach to software and hardware, or they're looking for faster implementation of a fully supported solution. So we provide our customers kind of the best of both worlds. They can consume our solutions, our data protection and storage products as software or as appliances based on the requirements of the company. >> And what's kind of the special, for people that aren't as familiar with appliances, we always hear about industry standard hardware and you know, the hardware's going to zero. What's the advantages that you can accomplish with an appliance that you couldn't just use, you know, with regular kind of off-the-shelf hardware? >> Yeah, well, certainly we take care of that integration and task, and it's a fully supported configuration. So they get all of the benefits of that. But we also, I'd say our unique capability from an appliance standpoint is that it truly is software defined and remains software defined. So as an example of a customer chooses to deploy our Access appliance, which is a long-term retention appliance which complements our net backup, our data protection solutions. Even though they're getting it as an appliance, that software license isn't tied or locked to that appliance. It's still licensed separately. So as an example, if we come out with a new type of storage appliance, they're free to move that license to it. Or if they choose to even move to a third-party hardware, the newer, greener, cheaper pasture storage server, they can transfer that license to that. So while they're consuming it as an appliance for all the benefits around a fully supported solution for them, We still provide that software-defined flexibility or capability, so that's one of the unique aspects of that. >> And then really, you deliver kind of this mixed benefit to the client as well, so they've got the benefits of having it locally. You can put fast storage in there and have local storage as well as manage the pushing out of the other data that maybe is more appropriate in the public cloud or whatever. >> Yeah, so if we take kind of a look at what we were speaking to our Microsoft partners at Inspire, it was around our appliances. And like you were saying, well, why are you talking about appliances? You know, a big push to Azure and all. So we were able to show them with our Flex appliance, which is a very unique container-ized solution for multiple net backup solutions, being able to scale those out in containers versus physical storage devices or servers and also turn on or off cloud tiering capabilities as a service as well. So customers may have a requirement for multiple net backup domains, and in the future they want a tier to Azure or another public cloud, they can simply turn on that cloud tiering service in this Flex appliance. And then our Access appliance that I mentioned that complements our net backup solutions for on-premise long-term retention can also tier to Azure or public clouds as well. And those things both work together where we have very high performance retention in the Flex appliance for the best RPO RTO of the data protection services there. And that can tier to Access for additional on-prem storage at a lower cost per terabyte. And then either or through both, tier to the cloud, depending on the type of data. So a customer may have a requirement where they have to keep data on site, maybe it's for compliance or governance reasons. And then other domains may be okay to move that data longer-term into public cloud. So the appliances provide that type of flexibility that enables the customer to put the data where it meets the requirements, either for cost performance or for compliance requirements. >> So I'd like to kind of go up a notch. You know, you're out with customers all the time and listening to their needs and requirements. We hear all the time the explosion of data, unstructured data, regular data. How are you seeing that really manifest itself in customers that have specific problems today that are sitting at the table with you guys? I mean, what kind of stories are they telling you of kind of the rise of the data quantity that they're having to deal with? I don't know if you have some interesting anecdotes. >> Yeah, well, certainly it's not getting deleted. So more and more of it is being retained for various reasons. Some of it's for data protection reasons, ensuring that they're able to meet, like, litigation requirements and things like that. So there's a lot of long-term retention for those type of requirements. But more and more we're also seeing the growth of this type of data just for the use of mining it and getting more value out of it. They're not deleting it. They're finding that there's ways to monetize that data in different means. So we see that, and that's one of the reasons why our Access appliance has been very well accepted in the market, because it can retain vast amounts of data on-prem at a low price point and be utilized for either backup data protection aspects or the archival in these cases as well. >> So one of the concepts we talk a lot about on theCUBE is about data as a balance sheet asset. It never really was before, right? It was a liability, because you had to buy a bunch of gear to store it. And you couldn't keep it all, and it was too expensive, and you threw stuff away. Clearly the pendulum has swung, and now data's very valuable. Some argue it's the core asset of the business. So I'm just curious if you've seen a change in the investment profile, the ROI metrics, some of the ways that people are making purchase decisions in a world where they want to keep everything, where they recognize that data is an asset. And now it's really, it's not a cost to hold this stuff that's expensive to hold, but it's really now more of an investment to drive an asset that's hopefully going to drive cost savings to get into new businesses or opportunities for revenue. How is that manifesting itself in some of the decision processes that the buyers are going through? >> Yeah, I mean, often we hear a lot of those similar problems within our customers that we talk to. And I think the biggest challenge is, as you were talking about, the cost aspect. They're really trying to figure out, well, how do we move from a cost center or burden for storing all of this data to a value that delivers value to the company. >> Right, a business benefit. >> A business benefit from a cost nature. And we help the customers achieve that in many different ways. We have an object storage offering that has an integrated cognitive engine that can provide very, very deep search capabilities as well as integration into external ML and AI facilities to extract more value from the data. We have some cool products like info map that will allow a company to really see where all those important assets are stored and what type of data that they have and where it's located, you know, basically data center wide, company wide, and even what's in their cloud. And that's from info map. And so they can see it. Like, they may have important data that needs to be treated with GDPR compliance. How do you know where that's located, right? And how do I make sure I'm meeting those type of requirements? So those are some of the kind of tools that we're helping our customers move from that cost center to more of a value proposition where they're delivering business benefits and revenue to the company. >> Right, right. I'm just curious on the GDPR thing. We had a little thing here when it was GDPR day just a couple Fridays ago. >> I heard about that, yeah. >> How are those conversations? Was it a Y2K kind of a moment in the months leading up to it? Was it not that big of a deal? Did people get out in front of it? It seems like the regs passed a long time ago, but the due dates were delayed for quite a bit. And then oh, my goodness, it's GDPR day. >> Yeah, well, I was in the industry back in the Y2K days. I don't think it had that, it didn't have that same type of feeling of impending doom or something, like we don't know what to do. >> Right, until the first couple of clients drop it. >> Yeah, well, maybe, but I think it was more about, well, this is predictable. We've been working on GDPR, being able to provide the compliance to that for a couple years before that regulation came out, you know, working with our customers in Europe and stuff. So we've built a lot of infrastructure and software and capabilities that helped customers achieve that, you know, before the requirements hit. So I guess from our standpoint at Veritas, while it looked pretty menacing, you know, maybe from the outside, but we had been working with our customers all along so that they're already in that mode where they can comply with those new requirements. >> Right, but it just seems so counter to what computers do well. Computers write very well, and they copy very well. You know, so much effort in terms of your product and stuff is protecting that data, replicating the data, duplicating the data, making sure. And now with the GDPR requirement, I want you to take me out of your system. Like, where exactly is that record? And how many versions of that record are stored where? It's kind of that funny movie they made about the cloud. It's in the cloud; it's everywhere. It's nowhere at the same time. So was that kind of a unique challenge, Or you guys have been on top of that for a long time? >> Well, we've been on top of that, right? So that's where I think we brought this capability to our customers, so they were like, we're okay now. Take a deep breath. We're okay, because we have tools that can classify information, and we've had those for a very, very long time. So the customers can already know what their PII data is, where it's located, and then automatically tree it in different manners, like provide the right type of security associated with that PII data, store it in the right locations. All of those type of aspects, we've already automated that process through any of our various capabilities, some of them within our storage product, like I've mentioned, the cognization of our object storage and external software that we bring to the party, and of course, the visualization of it so that you can see it all through the info map. >> So I'm curious, we're halfway through 2018, which I still can't believe we're halfway through 2018. So as you look forward, what are some of the priorities for the balance of the year? What are some of the priorities going forward? >> Well, for us it's still meeting, helping those customers meet their GDPR requirements and ensuring that they're on top of those. Being able to visualize where their data is, is very, very important. And then like we were talking about just a couple of minutes ago, extracting the value from that data. So you'll see some new technologies coming from us later on this year that I'm really excited about. I'm looking forward to talking more about those with you in the future, and our customers that are going to continue that value proposition. We'll continue to help them store vast amounts of their growth of unstructured data, doing it economically, doing it in new ways, and again extracting more value from those data sets as well. >> Yeah, I love, you used "vast." You know, the rate and the amount and the quantity and the value is just going up, up, up. >> It is. >> So you guys are in a pretty good space. >> We think so, yeah, very good. >> All right, Eric, well, thanks for taking a few minutes. And welcome back from Vegas. I'm glad it's not 115 here for you. >> Yeah, so am I, thank you very much. >> All right, he's Eric Seidman and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We're at Palo Alto studios having a Cube Conversation. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)