>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube! Covering Veritas Vision, 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. This is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage and we're here covering, wall-to-wall coverage of Veritas Vision 2017, hashtag: VtasVision. I'm Dave Vellante, with Stu Miniman. Lynn Lucas is here. She's the CMO of Veritas; welcome to The Cube. >> I am so excited to be on The Cube for the first time. Thank you for joining us. >> Well, thank you for having us. We're really excited to have you. We were talking off camera and this morning, in our open, about Richard Branson, the keynote. Very inspiring, so interesting, and then you got an opportunity to interview him and it was really substantive. So what was that like, what was it like meeting him, what was he like backstage? Share it with our audience. >> Absolutely. So, first, I, it really was an honor. The man has, when you do the research on him, the number of businesses he's created and disrupted is really amazing when you go back and look at it. The record industry, phone industry, airline industry. I mean, it goes on and on and he's still doing it. What I was most struck with, though, is that he's really humble and approachable. So we spent about 20 minutes with him in the backstage, and he was just a very genuine person. Very concerned, as you and your listeners may have heard, in the keynote, about the impact of the hurricanes. Really committed to philanthropy now, and what I loved is that he really understood what Veritas is doing with data, and he was able to really quickly connect that with how it might help on important issues that he's concerned about, namely climate change, making communities part of businesses, and so forth. It was fantastic. >> Well, I thought he did a really good job, and you guys did a really good job, because he's like, wow, Richard Branson, big name. But why is he at Veritas Vision? And he came, he talked about his agenda, he talked about the hurricane, he connected it to data, to climate change, and he very, like I said off camera, in a non-self-promoting way, let us know very quietly that yeah, of course the fee that I'm getting here I'm donating to the cause, and you should donate too. Right, and it was just really, congratulations on such a good get. >> Well, we were thrilled to have him and really honored to have him, and I truly felt that he understands the importance technology is playing. He actually told us that they were without cell phone and any kind of internet connection right after the hurricane for about, I think what he said was about seven days, and he said it was a very weird, disconnected feeling, because it's become so prevalent in our lives, and then when they all left and got on his plane to go back to London to mobilize aid for the British Virgin Islands, he said that he looked back in the plane, and he said every single person is on their phone like this. And it's such an interesting and powerful tool though, for generating interest in, unfortunately, the very horrible events that have happened, and so the social media, the connectivity that we all experience and getting that word out, I think he really connected with what we do as technologists here, and he had a really fascinating conversation with us about his interest in flying cars, so he's seeing potential for flying cars in the next few years and as a way to perhaps help us reduce carbon emissions and he's excited about technology. So I think he had a lot of fun. >> And we should mention, I think, Bill Coleman and Veritas is matching contributions and then you have extended that through his non-profit? >> Correct, so Bill Coleman also is a great philanthropist like Richard is, and ever since he's arrived here at Veritas he's been very lean-forward with making sure that Veritas is giving back. It was part of the culture, but I really feel that Bill has augmented that, and so for these recent set of disasters, hurricane Harvey, hurricane Irma, Veritas has set up a funding, and then we are doing double matching, and what we did after the unfortunate hurricane Irma came through is Virgin Unite is donating to the BBI's. We've added that to the list of charities and double matching that, as well. >> So people can go to Virgin Unite and donate, or they can donate through your website as well? >> They should go to Virgin Unite and donate, they should go to the, there's also the American Red Cross in the Houston area and the Miami area that are doing donations. Donate, you know, direct through them. >> So please, take a moment, if you can. Donate often, you know, every little bit helps for sure. Okay, so let's get into it. Quite a show, second year of Veritas. It's the rebirth of Veritas, and Veritas, in our view, how do you feel, give us the sort of rundown on the show. >> Oh, I, ah, fantastic. The feedback from the customers, which is what I'm really most concerned about here has been, this year, last year was a great coming out, but this Veritas is much more innovative than we ever thought you could be. We heard the predictions around 360 Data Management last year, but wow, you've delivered. You've got a new set of exciting announcements around what we're doing to move to the cloud. Clearly, the partnership with Microsoft is a huge part of that. New innovations in SDS. And so we've seen a great rise in attendance this year, in terms of our customers, and we've had a fabulous new set of sponsors, which I'm just thrilled to have here. Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, which I think shows the strength of what we're doing to help customers as they move to the cloud, and they really are transforming their datacenter environment. >> So, talk a little bit about digital, as a marketing pro. Every customer we talked to is going through, if you talk to the C-level, they're going through digital transformations; it's real. As a CMO, you're living in a digital transformation. What does it mean from a marketing perspective? How are you addressing, you know, these trends and taking advantage of them? >> It's crucial. I spend most of my time with my staff thinking about: how do we advance our own digital expertise and take advantage of the data that we too have. Really, CMOs are in command of so much data around customers, or should be in command of so much data around customers, in a good way, to provide more content that is directed at what their problems are. I think we've all experienced the uncomfortable feeling where maybe you Google something and suddenly you're getting ad after ad after ad from a company, and it might have been an accidental Google search, right? So we can use it for good in that way, understanding our customers. We're on a real digitization journey. It's a big word, but what it means for me in marketing at Veritas is really advancing and investing in our marketing infrastructure. One of the new things that we've just done is a complete underpinning reboot of Veritas.com, which the audience can see has gone live right here, for Vision. Making the site more personalized and more relevant to those that are visiting it. >> Yeah, Lynn, one of the things we've been digging into a little bit is you have a lot of existing customers with, you know, a very strong legacy. There's all these new trends, and you threw out lots of, you know, really interesting data. You know, the IOT with 269 times greater data than the datacenter, ah, how do you balance, kind of, helping customers, you know, get more out of what they have but bringing them along, showing them the vision, you know, helping them along that path to the future? Because, you know, change is difficult. >> It is, but you know, I have to say, and I think Mike Palmer said this as well, at one point, actually, when I've visited customers, I've been in, this year, I've been to Australia, I've been to France, been to Germany, London, Singapore, all over in the US, and talking to a lot of our existing customers, and what they're telling us is really that: we want your help in moving forward. So, we really embrace our existing customers. We're not in the business of trying to go around them. But they're our best advocates, and I think as a marketer, it's really key to understand that, is your existing customers are your best advocates. So we're helping them understand what we're doing for them today and also helping them learn how they can be advocates and heroes maybe to other parts of the business with some of these new technologies. >> Yeah, that's a great point. I'd love for you to expand on, you know, in IT it was always: up, the admin for my product is kind of where I'm selling, and how do I get up to the C-suite? Conversations we've been having this week, there's a lot of the, you know, cloud strategy, the GDPR, you know, digitization. It's, you know, the person who might have boughten that backup is pulling in other members of the team. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, the dynamics inside the company, where Veritas is having those conversations. >> Yeah, I think actually you brought up GDPR, and that's a perfect example. So GDPR is a regulation that is going to impact any company that is holding data about a European Union citizen, and it's an area that Veritas can really solve problems in, but we didn't know a lot of the legal and compliance buyers, which often are the ones making the purchase decisions in this case. We have been so thrilled to see that our existing advocates in the backup space have been bringing us into conversations and in Europe, what we've done so successfully now is actually bring the two groups together in roundtables and have our current customers bring us into conversations with legal and compliance. And it's creating, for them, stronger connections within the business, and that makes them more relevant to their bosses and those other lines of business, and there's a lot of proactive or positive feedback around that, that I think is what marketers and sales should be thinking about. It's not about how to go around, it's about how do I bring you with me. >> So, as you go around the world, I wonder if, again, another marketing, marketing to me, is very challenging; you've got a hard job. Marketers, I don't have the marketing DNA. But you want to maintain your relevance. You're a 30-plus year old company. Take something like GDPR. How do you think about the content that you serve up your audience? You can scare 'em to death, you know? That's what a lot of people are doing. You can educate them, but it's kind of deep and wonky. How are you thinking about that transfer of knowledge, you know, for the benefit of customers and obviously, ultimately, for the benefit of Veritas? >> So the way I think about that is B to H. Business to Human. So at the end of the day, you know, we talk about B to B marketing or B to C marketing. It's B to H, now, and what I mean by that is: at the end of the day, we're all human, individuals, we have a lot coming at us, as you've pointed out, with information and data, so what we've done is definitely not a scare tactic. Yes, GDPR is coming. But I think that in marketing, my philosophy is: let's work on how we can help you in the positive. I don't believe in the fear, uncertainty and doubt. And what we've done is approach it as we would hope to be approached, which is: let's give you some practical information simply, in amounts that you can absorb. And let's face it, I think Josie was the one that said this, our attention span is about that of a goldfish. I can't remember if it was plus or minus one second. And so, what we've actually gotten great feedback on is that we've broken the GDPR regulation down into very simple parts, and we've said: hey, here are the five parts. Here's how we're relevant and can help you. And we've done that in pieces that are as simple as a one-page infographic. We can obviously go a lot more complex, but at the beginning, when you're researching a topic, you're not looking for the 40-page white paper anymore. You're looking for what we call "snackable" pieces of content that get you interested. >> Yeah, that was good. I remember that infographic from the session yesterday. It was sort of, you know, discover and then four other steps and then, you know, made it sound simple. Even though we know it's more complicated, but at least it allows a customer to frame it. Okay, I think I can now get my arms around these. I understand there's a lot of depth beneath each of them, but it helps me at least begin to clock it. Another topic we want to talk about is women in tech. We had a great conversation with Alicia Johnson from Accenture about WAVE, which is Women and Veritas Empowered. Right? Talk about, again, the relevance of those programs generally and I want to ask you some follow-up questions. >> Sure, so I'm a big believer in those types of programs. We want to sponsor those here and bring together our own Veritas female engineering community, but also our customers that are here. I think that while we would all like it to be a world where we were at a neutral, bias-free, we're not quite there yet. And I think programs that bring people together, whether it's gender or any other dimension, are important to get people to connect in a community, share with each other, learn from each other, and so, I do hope one day for my daughter, who's 11, perhaps that this is a non-topic, but until it isn't, I think the power of sharing is important, and so I'm really pleased to have WAVE. It's our second year having WAVE. It was a bigger program with Accenture sponsoring it. And we look forward to continuing to do that. Veritas also will have a big presence at the Anita Borg Institute, which is coming up next month, as well. >> Yeah, and The Cube will be there, of course. It'll be our, what, fourth year there, Stu? So it's a big show for us and we're obviously big supporters of the topic; we tend to talk about it a lot. And I think, you know, Lynn, your point is right. Hopefully by the time our daughters are grown up, we won't be talking about it, but I think it's important to talk about now. >> Lynn: It is. >> And one of the things that Accenture laid out is that, by 2025, their objective is to have 50 percent, you know, women on staff, and I think it was 25 percent women in leadership positions. I was impressed and struck, and I wonder if you can comment as a C-level executive, struck by the emphasis on P&L management, which, you know, tends to be a man's world. But, thoughts on that and you, as a C-level executive, you know, women in that position? >> Yeah, and again, it's one of these things where I'll have to say it's a little both uncomfortable, but obviously I feel that it is still important to talk about because I wish we were at a place where we didn't have to. I'm really proud of Veritas, because we have myself and Michelle Vanderhar on Bill's staff. So Bill has been a promoter of having diversity on his own direct staff, and I think that top down approach is super important in Silicon Valley and any business that there's real support for that. And Michelle Vanderhar is our chief council, which has, in many cases, not been a position where you would have seen a lady leading that. So we work on that at Veritas, and I personally believe it and I think Mr. Branson said that, as well, in his keynote as well this morning. When we have diversity, we have a breadth of ideas that makes it just a better place to work, and frankly, I think, leads to better innovation in whatever field that you're in. >> Lynn, last question I wanted to ask you, the tagline of the conference is: the truth in information. So much gets talked about, you know, what's real news? You know, what's fake? What do you want people, as the takeaway for Veritas and the show? The truth in information is our rallying cry, and you're right, I think it couldn't be more timely. We're not here to take a particular political stance, but what we find is in the business world, the companies are struggling with: where do I find what's really relevant? Let me give you a story. I was in France earlier this year, sitting with a CIO of one of the very largest oil and gas companies in France. Happens to be a lady who was formerly the chief data officer and she'd moved from that position into the CIO position. And when we talk about the truth in information, the example that she gave us which was so striking is that they've been doing the scans of the Earth, and actually the streets of Paris, for 50, 60 years, to understand the infrastructure, what they may have, and so forth, and at this point, with all of that data, they literally are having a hard time understanding what, out of all of these pieces of information, these topographical scans that they have, is relevant anymore. And this is the same story that I've heard in pharmaceutical companies that are doing drug tests. This is the same story that you would hear in, frankly, media companies that are doing filming, and are trying and all of this is digitized. So, when we talk about that with our customers, it really resonates, is that with so much coming at us, it's hard, in business as well as it is in our consumer lives, to really know: what do I have that's relevant? And I think the opportunity Veritas has is to help customers with a single data management platform, start to get a handle on that and be able to be much more efficient and productive. >> Alright, Lynn Lucas, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube. We really appreciate it. >> Thank you! I really enjoyed my first time. I can't wait to be back on again, and hope to have you guys here next year, Vision 2018. >> We'd love to be here. Alright, bringing you the truth, from Veritas Vision, this is The Cube. We'll be right back. (uptempo musical theme)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCube. Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody, this is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. This is day one of two day coverage of Veritas Vision #VtasVision. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host Stu Miniman. Zach Bosin is here. He's the director of information governance solutions at Veritas. And Anna Simpson is a distinguished systems engineer at Veritas. Which Anna means you know where all the skeletons are buried and how to put the pieces back together again. Welcome to theCube, thanks for coming on. >> Thank You. >> Thank You. >> Let's start with, we've heard a little bit today about information governance, Zach we'll start with you. It's like every half a decade or so every decade, there's a new thing. And GDPR is now the new thing. What's the state of information governance today? How would you describe it? >> I think the primary problem that organizations are still trying to fight off, is exponential data growth. We release research every year called the Data Genomics Index, and what came back this past year is that data growth has continued to accelerate, as a matter of fact, 49% year over year. So this problem isn't going anywhere and now it's actually being magnified by the fact that data is being stored, not only in the data center on premises, but across the multi-cloud. So information governance, digital compliance is all about trying to understand that data, control that data, put the appropriate policies against it. And that's really what we try to do with helping customers. >> I always wonder how you even measure data. I guess you could measure capacity that leaves the factory. There's so much data that's created that's not even persistent. We don't even know, I think, how fast data is growing. And it feels like, and I wonder if you guys agree or have any data suggestions, it feels like the curve is reshaping. I remember when we were talking to McAfee and Brynjolfsson it feels the curve is just going even more exponential. What's your sense? >> That's typically what we see. And then you have IoT data coming online, faster and faster and it really is a vertical shot up. And all different types and new files types. One of the other really interesting insights, is that unknown file types jumped 30-40%. Things that we don't even recognize with our file analysis tools today, are jumping off the charts. >> It used to be that PST was the little nag, it looks trivial compared to what we face today, Anna. What's your role as a distinguished systems engineer? How do you spend your time? And what are you seeing out there? >> I definitely spend my time dealing with customers around the world. Speaking to them about information governance. Particularly around risk mitigation these day. In terms of the issues we see in information governance, data privacy is a big one. I'm sure you've been hearing about GDPR quite a bit today already. That's definitely a hot topic and something our customers are concerned about. >> Are they ringing you up saying, "Hey, get in here. "I need to talk you about GDPR?" Or is more you going in saying, "You ready for GDPR? How does that conversation go? >> It's definitely a combination between the two. I think there is definitely a lot of denial out there. A lot of people don't understand that it will apply to them. Obviously if they are storing or processing data which belongs to an EU resident, containing their personal data. I think organizations are either in that denial phase or otherwise they're probably too aware, so they've probably started a project, done some assessment, and then they're buried in the panic mode if we have to remediate all these issues before May next year. >> What's the bell curve look like? Let's make it simple. One is, "we got this nailed." That's got to be tiny. The fat middle which is "we get it, we know it's coming, "we got to allocate some budget, let's go." Versus kind of clueless. What's the bell curve look like? >> I would say that there's 2% of companies, maybe, that think they have it nailed. >> Definitely in single digits, a low single digits. >> I think maybe another 30% at least understand the implications and are trying to at least but a plan in place. And the rest, 66% or so, still aren't very aware of what GDPR means for their business. >> Dave: Wow. >> Can you take us inside? what's Veritas's role in helping customers get ready for GDPR? We talked to one of Veritas's consulting partners today and it's a big issue, it crosses five to ten different budget areas. So what's the piece that Veritas leads and what's the part that you need to pull in other partners for? >> Sure thing. So in terms of our approach, we have what we refer to as a wheel. Which sort of attacks different parts of the GDPR, so various articles step you through the processes you need to be compliant. Things like locating personal data, being able to search that data, minimizing what you have, because GDPR is really dictating you can no longer data hoard, because you can only keep data which has business value. Further downstream it's obviously protecting the data that has business value, and then monitoring that over time. From a Veritas approach perspective, we tying those articles obviously to some of our products, some of our solutions. There's also definitely a services component around that as well. When you think about e-discovery of regulatory requirements, when the regulators come in, generally they're not necessarily going to be questioning the tools, they're going to be questioning how you're using those tools to be compliant. It is sort of a combination between tools and services. And then we're also partnering with other consulting companies on that process piece, as well. Zach, at the keynote this morning, there was a lot of discussion about there's dark data out there, and we need to shine a light on it I have to imagine that's a big piece of this. Why don't you bring us up to speed. What are some of the new products that were announced that help with this whole GDRP problem. >> In to that point, 52% of data is dark, 33% is rot, 15% is mission critical. Today we announced 23 new connectors for the Veritas information map. This is our immersive visual data mapping tool, that really highlights where you're stale, and orphaned, and non-business critical data is across the entire enterprise. New connectors with Microsoft as your Google Cloud storage, Oracle databases, so forth and so on, there's quite a number that we're adding into the fold. That really gives organizations better visibility into where risk may be hiding, and allows you to shine that light and interrogate that data in ways you couldn't do previously because you didn't have those types of insights. >> Also we heard about Risk Analyzer? >> Yes, that's right. We just recently announced the Veritas Risk Analyzer, this is a free online tool, where anyone can go to Veritas.com/riskanalyzer, take a folder of their data, and try out our brand new integrated classification engine. We've got preset policies for GDPR, so you drop in your files, and we'll run the classification in record speed, and it will come back with where PII is, how risky that folder was, tons of great insights. >> So it's identifying the PII, and how much there is, and how siloed it is? Are you measuring that? What are you actually measuring there? >> We're actually giving you a risk score. When we're analyzing risk, you might find one individual piece of PII, or you might find much more dense PII. So depending on the number of files, and the types of files, we'll actually give you a different risk tolerance. What we're doing with the Risk Analyzer is giving you a preview, or just a snapshot of the types of capabilities that Veritas can bring to that discussion. >> Who do you typically talk to? Is it the GC, is it the head of compliance, chief risk officer, all of the above? >> Yeah, it's definitely all of the above-- >> Some person who has a combination of those responsibilities, right? >> Yeah, exactly. It's usually, if we're talking GDPR specifically, it's usually information security, compliance, legal, and particularly in organizations now, we're definitely seeing more data privacy officers. And they're the ones that truly understand what these issues are; GDPR or other personal data privacy regulations. >> Let's say I'm the head of compliance security risk information governance, I wear that hat. Say I'm new to the job, and I call you guys in and say, "I need help." Where do I start? Obviously you're going to start with some kind of assessment Maybe you have a partner to help you do that, I can run my little risk analyzer, sort of leech in machine, and that's good but that's just scratching the surface. I know I have a problem. Where do we start? What are the critical elements? And how long is it going to take me to get me where I need to be? >> I think visibility is obviously the first step, which Zach already spoke to. You really have to be able to understand what you have to then be able to make some educated decisions about that. Generally that's where we see the gap in most organizations today. And that's particularly around unstructured data. Because if it's structured, generally you have some sort of search tools that you can quickly identify what is within there. >> To add on to that, you actually have 24 hours. We can bring back one hundred million items using the information map, so you get a really clean snapshot in just one day to start to understand where some of that risk may be hiding. >> Let's unpack that a little bit. You're surveying all my data stores, and that's because you see that because you've got the back-up data, is that right? >> The backup data is one portion of it. The rest is really coming from these 23 new connectors into those different data stores and extracting and sweeping out that metadata, which allows us to make more impactful decisions about where we think personal data may be, and then you can take further downstream actions using the rest of our tool kit. >> And what about distributed data on laptops, mobile devices, IoT devices, is that part of the scope, or is that coming down the road, or is it a problem to be solved? >> It's a little out of scope for what we do. On the laptop/desktop side of things, we do have e-discovery platform, formally known as Clearwell, which does have the ability to go out and search those types of devices and then you could be doing some downstream review of that data, or potentially moving it elsewhere. It's definitely a place we don't really play right now. I don't know if you had other comments? >> You got to start somewhere. Start within your enterprise. This has always been a challenge. We were talking off camera about FRCP and email archiving. I always thought the backup ... The back company was in a good spot. They analyzed that data. But then there's the but. Even these are backed up, kind of, laptops and mobile devices. Do you see the risk and exposures in PII really at the corporate level, or are attorneys going to go after the processes around distributed data, and devices, and the like? >> I think anything is probably fair game at this point given that GDPR isn't being enforced yet. We'll have to see how that plays out. I think the biggest gap right now, or the biggest pain point for organizations, is on structured data. It kind of becomes a dumping ground and people come and go from organizations, and you just have no visibility into the data that's being stored there. And generally people like to store things on corporate networks because it gets backed up, because it doesn't get deleted, and it's usually things that probably should not be stored there. >> If I think back to 2006, 2007 time frame with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which basically said that electronic information is now admissible. And it was a high profile case, I don't want to name the name because I'll get it wrong, but they couldn't produce the data in court, the judge penalized them, but then they came back and said, "We found some more data. "We found some more data. "We found some more data." Just an embarrassment. It was one hundred million dollar fine. That hit the press. So what organizations did, and I'm sure Anna you could fill in the gaps, they basically said, "Listen, "it's an impossible problem so we're going to go after "email archiving. "We're going to put the finger in the dyke there, "and try to figure the rest of this stuff out later." What happened is plaintiff's attorney's would go after their processes and procedures, and attack those. And if you didn't have those in place, you were really in big trouble. So what people did is try to put those in place. With GDPR, I'm not sure that's going to fly. It's almost binary. If somebody says, "I want you to delete my data," you can't prove it, I guess that's process-wise, you're in trouble, in theory. We'll see how it holds up and what the fines look like, but it sounds like it's substantially more onerous, from what we understand. Is that right? >> Yes, I would 100% agree. From an e-discovery standpoint, there's proportionality and what's reasonable relative to the cost of the discovery and things like that. I actually don't think that that is going to come into play with GDPR because the fines are so substantial. I don't know what would be considered unreasonable to go out and locate data. >> Zach you have to help us end this on an up note. (group laughs) >> Dave: Wait, I wanted to keep going in to the abyss. (group laughs) We've talk about the exponential growth of data, and big data was supposed to be that bit-flip ... of turned it for, "Oh my God, I need to store it "and do everything, I need to be able to harness it "and take advantage of it" Is GDPR an opportunity for customers, to not only get their arms around information, but extract new value from it? >> Absolutely. It's all about good data hygiene. It's about good information governance. It's about understanding where your most valuable assets are, focusing on those assets, and getting the most value you can from them. Get rid of the junk, you don't need that. It's just going to get you into trouble and that's what Veritas can help you do. >> So a lot of unknowns. I guess the message is, get your house in order, call some experts. I'd call a lot of experts, obviously Veritas. We had PWC on earlier today, and a number of folks in your ecosystem I'm sure can help. Guys, thanks very much for coming on theCube and scaring the crap out of us. (group laughs) >> Thanks a lot. >> Alright, keep it right there buddy, we'll be back for our wrap, right after this short break. (light electronic music)

(lively music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody. We're here at The Aria Hotel covering Veritas Vision. This is day one of our two day coverage. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my cohost, Stu Miniman. Tyler Welch is here, the Director of Communities at Veritas. He's joined by Justine Velcich who runs the VIP program for the VOX community and advocacy. Folks, welcome to theCUBE and thanks so much for coming on. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for having us. >> So, Tyler, let's start with you. What is VOX, what does it stand for, what's it all about? >> Yeah, so VOX is Veritas Open Exchange. It is our customer community where our customers, our partners, employees are sharing knowledge and information. VOX in Latin means voice. If you think about Veritas in terms of truth, this is a place where we're being very open. We want people to come, share their knowledge, help each other and learn. >> Yeah, so I see the three bullets: seek answers, share insights, and make informed decisions. So these are practitioners in your community and your ecosystem just sharing ideas and helping each other grow. Is that the basic idea? >> Absolutely. If you think about digital transformation, right? To transform means your going from somewhere to another location and if we're sharing knowledge and information, these individuals are saying, "Hey, there's a lot of complexity right now." Right, we know things are changing in our industries. How we store our data is changing. And in VOX, we've got users that are saying, "Hey, I understand this complexity, I can simplify that, "I can help you, and I'm going to share my experience so "that others can benefit from that." >> Alright, Justine, let's bring you into the conversation. What's your role, what's the VIP program all about? >> My role within the VOX team is I lead the community and advocacy programs for VOX. So the VIP programs, so Veritas Information Professionals is an award program. It's a program essentially rewarding our super users, our top users in the community who are making outstanding contributions within the VOX platform. Some of them log in every single day and jump in to produce content and help out the community answering questions and whatnot. So it's a recognition program just to say thank you. >> I find some people that aren't in IT don't understand the communities that are built. It still amazes me how much people give back. I think back when Dave actually found Wikibon, it was around online communities and we said, "I don't need you full time." One of my favorite stats is if you took .02 percent of the United States television watching in one year, you could create all of Wikipedia. It's like tiny little bits ... Can you give us the size of the community? I heard some people are coming on every day, tell us a little bit to help us get our arms around the voice of your community? >> So VOX actually launched just over a year ago. We actually took a lot of the content from the Veritas technologies that were part of Symantec. We brought them over, we brought those users over and since then we've actually seen an increase of over 10,000 users coming to the site. It's something that we've got a lot of active employees, a lot of partners, a lot of customers that are there asking questions. >> So, coming to the site, they've come, they've registered? Well actually you have information on them already but they've agreed to participate in some way, shape or form? What's the hurdle they have to go through to become a member? >> Well to join VOX just come to the site and hit the join button, pretty easy. Create a user name and start asking questions. Most of our users actually come because they actually have a question. They'll come through Google, right? "Hey, help me do this or I'm trying to figure out this "type of deployment," and they'll land there and they'll realize "Hey, there's a lot of good information here. And there's people here that are actually really knowledgeable and I want to come back because I'm able to get answers to questions. Or I'm able to learn how to actually do things better than maybe I was doing them in the past." >> And the computer community comprises generally IT practitioners, storage admins, data center managers ... >> All of the above. We also have blogs on VOX where our employees at Veritas are actually sharing their perspectives as well. So we actually have a lot of different audiences that run from our executives that are blogging. Will Coleman has a blog. We're talking about what we're doing all the way to storage admin, "Hey I'm looking to do a deployment, "what does this mean? "How do I administer these types of things?" So through VOX, you'll see there's a lot of ways to make different connections with different audiences. >> Justine, what are you seeing as far as some of the content trends? What kinds of things are people producing? Is it sort of forum posts? You mentioned blogs, Tyler, videos, what's the content makeup? >> So from the VIP side of things, in terms of the content, and the types of participation in the program, like I said, it's our super users, it's our very active subject matter experts that are very passionate about sharing a community with like minded individuals that are just like them. They are doing everything from creating blog posts to jumping in answering troubleshooting questions and discussion boards. Actually discussions are probably one of our busiest, high traffic areas. It's quite technical in nature which is what our audience is looking for. So it's everything, all of the above really. >> What's the reward system look like? >> It's not really a reward, it's more of an award for thanking them for the last year of their outstanding contributions. We didn't want it to be a do this, get that type of an economy. It's more of a genuine effort when they can come in and just share their knowledge based on their passion for being part of a community that they get to fuel and grow. >> So their incentive really is that community feel? >> Justine: Absolutely. >> That's the primary motivation for them right? >> It's also reputation around ... You know if you're a partner and you're active in the community and you're sharing information you've got that credibility and that's important. Some people, as they're looking at the next phase of their career, these are things I'm doing, this is how I'm contributing to the industry that I participate in. I think, especially with what's going on right now and how this industry is transforming, nobody's just one thing, we all have multiple hats. This is a place where people can expand some of the things they're talking about, they're learning, and they're sharing back. >> Is there a reputation system? Does the community measure itself on the quality of the contributions or the frequency? How does that reputation get translated into ... Or quantified, or does it? >> In terms of ... Again, speaking from the VIP program, our super users, we didn't want to launch the program with a thousand qualified super users. There probably are a thousand super users on the platform but we're really looking for quality content. So we launched actually just last night so that was a big milestone for us. We launched last night with 28 individuals welcomed into the program so we kept it small for a thoughtful reason. They are everywhere from, when you asked the type of people that are part of the community but in terms of the VIP program, they're everywhere from a VP of a medium to large organization to a functional IT from an enterprise organization to a consultant and everything in between. They actually are represented across 13 plus countries and some of these people actually have known each other for decades being parts of other communities where they're talking about the same types of products. So they already have built relationships and that's kind of what makes the community unique. >> Tyler, please if you want to ... >> It's interesting you said rewards because I thought about that. The reality is these individuals are out there sharing their knowledge, we're actually just thanking them for what they're already doing. They're already there. I think that's the purpose of our program is then to give additional access to information, better connection with each other, and allow those connections and those relationships to flourish because it's a community, that's really why we're here is to help make those connections for those individuals. >> Obviously you've launched the VI program here, what else is happening at Vision? You've got the VOX online program, I always see with communities, a lot of times, there's planful things like "Hey, let's get a meetup together "or let's do something." So what's happening around this this week? >> This week at Vision, our VIPs are obviously plugged in to the sessions and they're attending those sessions. We're actually here on the Vision live floor talking to the session attendees talking about VOX. They're coming into the booth, we're showing them the platform. Again we just launched a year ago so we're still relatively new. One of the things we're doing is if you are here at vision and you're watching, come by the booth, we're doing professional head shots. Those can be things that are used in your LinkedIn profile. I don't know about you guys but I think the last time I did my LinkedIn profile, I was on vacation and I got a good light shot and I'm going to use that and I cropped it a bit so we thought, "Hey, we could do a little bit better." >> Better than the selfie. >> We're providing that right now. No selfies. >> We use cube shots. >> That's true. >> So that's one of the things we're doing to actually bring people together and share that experience of what community actually means to them and we've got some interesting responses so far from our audience. >> That's great and maybe when they update their profile they won't have that pixelated photo from like 15 years ago. I saw even there was one customer on the keynote and they blew it up on the screen and it was a little pixelated so stop by the booth and they'd get that. >> Yeah, pixelation's not really in style, I don't know if it was ever in style. I don't know, throwback. >> So you said you launched a year ago? >> Yeah. >> Is that right? >> So talk about network effects, any community like this you want to achieve some kind of scale and you get this sort of flywheel effect. I mean, 10,000 in 12 months is pretty good number. Of course, there's the number and then there's the activity and those are two different sort of dimensions. But do you feel like you're on the steep part of the S-curve or just heading there or have surpassed that? Talk about the network effect. >> Absolutely, so in my experience with launching communities you do have that hockey stick where in the very beginning a lot of people are coming and they're joining. The great news is we're seeing high activity on a monthly basis of people coming back. No surprise in a community in the very beginning you're coming through search, Google, because you're typing a question into that box, where do you land? We want them to land on Veritas Open Exchange so we can be part of that broader conversation around what's going on for information management. At Veritas, we believe that a connected experience across our different platforms. If you think about what we're sharing on social media, what we're sharing in our communities, those users that are logging in to get information out of our different portals, we want to start to blend some of those connections together and we see community as a way to do that. A great example is if you're on a product page and you want to look at information about a particular product, net backup, being able to access blogs, some of the community content's really important because there's a lot of authenticity that comes from a community voice, a user voice, alongside our voice as Veritas as well. >> You talk a little bit about how you seeded it when you had some relationship with the Symantec data but how did you actually get the seedling to not die? What was that secret because that's the hardest part I think or at least one of the hard things about building a community is cultivating it so it doesn't wilt early on. >> Yeah, communities are about the value for those individuals. The value for us in the very beginning was the content that was there and the content that was created by the community. And so as we set out, and our roadmap was to launch VOX one of the early decisions was we need to make sure we can bring all of the content over with us that's relevant. And that felt like an easy decision at the beginning but it got harder as you started to look at database structures ... >> Dave: Yeah, content migration. >> Yeah, it would be a lot easier to start over. And we stayed true to that. I think we would have launched earlier in the year had it not been for some complexity there. But I think we've been able to continue to grow because we've got good content and I want to stress the fact that that content is coming from our customers, our partners, and our employees. And those are the individuals that are sharing their experience which is so valuable and it's authentic. >> Did you have an existing CMS or did you choose a new one when you started? A content management system? >> We went from one platform provider to another and there were some differences as you would suspect in those database structures. But we realized is we're thinking about a better experience from a mobile device. How do we actually start to connect our community into Veritas.com. Integrated into our support portal, we wanted to have flexibility across some of those touchpoints realizing that our customers and our partners are going to define where they want to go and we want to be able to take that content and make it easier for them to access. >> Well, and Justine, you just launched the VIP program, you may have some new requirements or feature requirements. What are you seeing there? What kinds of things do you envision your VIPs are going to require out of the system? >> Requirements out of the system ... >> Right, you follow me? So it's sort of a new thing, the VIPs, does the system accommodate those? Do you have to add new features? These are challenging problems, right? There's underlying infrastructure that you have to deal with. How do you sort all that out? >> I think in terms of being able to maybe plug in new requirements especially with different types of technology, we're trying to introduce new types of content into the community as well that would hopefully be appealing to newer advocates that would be welcomed into the program in the future. >> Dave: Like what? >> Podcasting is something that we're actually doing. We've paired up with the social team, as well and we're running podcasts here on the Vision Live floor which is really exciting. So we're going to have new content up on the community shortly. Hopefully we'll be able to plug our VIPs into those new types of content and provide different avenues for digesting content. >> Where do you want to see this go? What's the vision? >> Success for us is we make Veritas Open Exchange, VOX, an integrated part of being a customer, a partner, or even an employee of Veritas. There's relevance there. This is a place where I have presence, I'm able to share what I know and participate in a broader conversation. Talk a little bit about roadmap, one of the beautiful things about having a close relationship with a very passionate group of individuals is they want to make things better. They want to make it easier and we see that through requirements that are coming in and questions about how to make VOX better. But also about our products and services at Veritas. There's a rich dialogue that we can have with them as result of that. So we're constantly evaluating, looking at those things, of how do we just actually make things easier. It's so easy to make things complicated these days with features, right? Let's do this, let's do that. We're looking at how do we actually make this simpler, provide a better experience so you can be on your mobile device, you can be on your tablet, you can be at your desk and find the information that you're looking for. >> Great. Alright folks, we have to leave it there. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> Alright, you're welcome. Keep it right there, everybody, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. As theCUBE, we're live from Veritas Vision 2017. Right back. (techno music)