>> From Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York, it's theCUBE covering Veritas Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome to New York City, everybody. We're here in the heart of Central Park at the beautiful location, Tavern on the Green. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. And this is our special coverage of the Veritas Solutions Day. The hashtag is VtasVision. Veritas Vision last year was a big tent customer event, several thousand customers at that event and Veritas decided this year to go out to the field. 20 of these solution days, very intimate events, couple hundred customers, keynote presentations from Veritas, breakout sessions, getting deep into the product but also talking strategy, and intimate conversations with executives, CxOs, CIOs, backup admins, and of course, New York City is one of those places where you get very advanced customers pushing the envelope, very demanding. I often joke they're as demanding as New York sports fans, and so they have high expectations. But they also have a lot of money, and so the vendor community loves to come to New York, they love to get intimate with these customers in New York, as do we at theCUBE. So we're going to be talking to customers today, we're going to be talking to executives of Veritas, some partners. So I want to talk a little bit about what's going on in the marketplace, in this backup and recovery space. It's transforming quite dramatically. For those of you who follow theCUBE, you know last year at VMworld, last two years, actually, data protection was one of the hottest topics at the event. Of course, multi-cloud, of course there was a lot of AI talk and containers and Kubernetes. But staid old backup, old, reliable data protection was one of the hottest topics. We're seeing VC money pour into this space. We're seeing upstarts like Cohesity and Rubrik trying to take aim at the incumbents like Veritas and Commvault, and IBM, and Dell EMC, so those traditional companies, those enterprise companies that have large install bases are trying to hold onto that install base and migrate their platforms to a modern software-defined platform, API-based, using containers, using microservices, building on top of the code that they've developed, simplifying the UI, and at the same time, allowing for an abstraction layer across clouds and multi-clouds. So what are the big drivers that are really pushing the trends, the megatrends of this space? Well, certainly digital transformation is one of them. The last 10 years of big data, people have gathered all this data, and now that data is in this place and people are now applying machine intelligence to that data. They're doing a lot of this work in the cloud. So digital transformation, data, big data, cloud, multi-cloud, simplification. People want a much simpler experience, so bringing the cloud experience to their data, wherever the data might live. Because of course, you get the three laws of cloud. You've got the law of physics, right? Physics says you can't just shove everything into the cloud. It just takes too long. If I have big bog of data, if I have a petabyte of data, you know how long that's going to take to put into the cloud? So I may not just move it in there unless I stick it on a Chevy truck and it cart it over on a bunch of tapes and nobody really wants to do that. So there's the law of physics. There's also the law of economics. It's very expensive to move that data. You need a lot of network bandwidth, so, you know, you might not necessarily put everything into the cloud, you might keep stuff on-prem. And of course, there's a law of the land. And the law of the land says, well, if I'm in country X, let's say Germany, that data can't leave that country. It's got to be physically proximate inside the boundaries, the borders of the country, by local law. So these three laws are something that was put forth to us by Pat Gelsinger in theCUBE at VMworld this year. We've evolved that thinking, but it's very true when we talk to customers about this. These are trends that are driving their decisions about cloud and multi-cloud and where to put it. We talked in theCUBE about the stat that the average enterprise has eight clouds. Well, we're a small enterprise and we have eight clouds, so I think that number's actually much, much higher, especially when you include SAS. So lots of data, lots of copies of data, so you need a way to abstract all that complexity and have a single place to protect your data. Now, a big part of this, digital transformation is driving more intense requirements on recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives, RPO and RTO, what do those words mean? Recovery point objective, think about... Ask a businessperson, how much data are you willing to lose? And they go, oh, what are you talking about? I don't want to lose any data. But if you think about it and you ask the next question, how much are you willing to spend so that you lose no data, and if they have to spend millions and millions of dollars to do that, they might relax that requirement a little bit. They might say, well, you know, if I lose 15 minutes of data in any given time and have to recreate it, not the end of the world. So that's what RPO is, is essentially the point in time that you go in to recover and how much data loss you're exposed to. And the way this works is you take, let's say, snapshots to simplify the equation, you push those offsite away from any potential disaster, and it's that gap between when you actually capture the data and when that disaster might happen that you're exposed. So to make that as close as zero as possible, that gap as close to zero as possible, is very, very expensive, so a lot of companies don't want to do that. At the same time, digital transformation's pushing them to get as close to zero as possible without breaking the bank. The other part of that equation is recovery time objective, how long it takes to get the application and the data back and running. And because of digital transformation, people want to make that virtually instantaneously. So because of digital transformation, people are re-architecting their data protection strategies to have near-instantaneous recovery. This all fits into the megatrend of cloud. People want it to be simpler, they want it to mimic the cloud-like experience, almost as if I'm on Amazon or I'm on Netflix, so simplifying the recovery process and the backup process is something that we're going to hear a lot more of. Automation is another big theme. People tend to automate through scripts. Well, scripts are fragile, scripts tend to break. When changes are made in software, scripts tend to have to be rewritten and maintained. And so it's a very high maintenance type of activity to do scripts, and over time, they just fade away, or don't, they stop working. So automation through API is very, very important, something that you're hearing much more, is much more thematic in this world of data protection. The other is getting more out of the corpus of data in my data protection infrastructure, because, let's face it, backup and recovery, it's like insurance. I hope I never need it, but if I do need it, it's very valuable at that point in time that I do need it. But it's an expense. It's not driving bottom-line revenue. It's not necessarily cutting cost. It is indirectly in the form of reducing the cost of downtime, but that's harder. That's kind of viewed oftentimes as a soft dollar benefit. So what you're hearing is a lot of the vendor community and the user community are talking about getting more out of the data that they have and out of the backup and recovery infrastructure by bringing analytics, and machine intelligence, or AI and machine learning to the equation. Studying analytics to identify anomalous behavior, maybe identifying security breaches, creating air gaps such that I can potentially thwart ransomware or other malware infections, analyzing the corpus of backup data because it holds all the company's corporate data, it's accessible. If you can analyze that data and look for anomalies, you might be able to thwart an attack. So getting more out of that data through analytics. Predictive maintenance is another example of data analytics that's driving some of these trends beyond just backup and recovery. And also governance. Governance and privacy are kind of, security and privacy are two sides of the same coin, so with GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation that came out, that went into effect in terms of fines going into effect this past May, very, very onerous and expensive fines, people are using their data protection corpus and the analytics around that to reduce their risk and to better govern their data. So these are some of the big trends that we're seeing. So Veritas is a leader here, we're going to be covering this all day. Veritas and some of its other brethren that have been around for decades are getting attacked by a lot of the upstarts, but they got the advantage that the install vendors have the advantage of a large install base. The incumbent vendors have the advantage of a large install base. The upstarts have the advantage of they're starting with a clean sheet of paper. We're going to talk to customers and find out what are they thinking in terms of their backup approach. Industry data suggest that over half of the customers that you talk to are rethinking their backup strategies because of digital transformation. Well, we're going to talk to some customers. Are they thinking about sticking with Veritas or they thinking about migrating? Why or why not? What are some of the advantages and considerations there? So Veritas, a long, rich story going back to the '80s when the company was founded, was a hot IPO, really super hot company, got sold to Symantec for about 13.5 billion, and then Symantec spun it out to private equity several years ago in an eight billion dollar go-private sale, and subsequently, Veritas got off the 90-day shot clock. We heard this from companies like Dell where they didn't have to report and get abused by the street for either missing a number or having one little metric that was off. So they could write their own narrative. They could invest in R&D, they could have more patient capital. And so you saw this from the Carlisle group that took Veritas private and has been sort of this march toward a new platform, spending money on R&D, and now, really going to market very aggressively. Another thing you're going to hear about is partnerships, partnerships with AWS and some of the other cloud-providers. There's a partnership that's being announced with the flash storage company, Pure, today. So we're going to dig into some of that. So we'll be here all day, Tavern on the Green. You're watching theCUBE and we're here in New York City. Keep it right there, we'll be right back. I'm Dave Vellante, back shortly. (digitalized music)

>> From Tavern on the Green, in Central Park, New York, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision Solution Day, brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to the beautiful Tavern on the Green, in the heart of Central Park. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name's Dave Vellante. We're covering Vertias Solution Days, #VtasVision. Veritas used to have the big, single tent, big tent customer event, and decided this year, it's going to go belly to belly. Go out to 20 cities, intimate customer events where they can really sit down with customers across from the table; certainly, this beautiful venue is the perfect place to do that. Harish Venkat is here as the VP of Marketing and Global Sales Enablement at Veritas. Thanks for coming on, Harish. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> So, we're going to change it up a little bit. Let's hit the Escape key a few times and talk about >> Yeah. >> some of the big mega trends that you're seeing. You spend a lot of time with customers. You had some intimate conversations today. What do you see as the big trends driving the marketplace? >> So at my level, what I observe with the highest thing is simplicity, instant gratification, is two things that customers love. Forget about customers, even we as individuals, we love simplicity and instant gratification. Examples around that, you know, think about back in the days where you had to take a picture, process the film, and then realize, "oh my god, the film's not even worth watching." Now you have digital photography, you take millions of pictures, and instantly you view the picture, and keep whatever you want, delete whatever you don't want. A small example of how simplicity and instant gratification is changing the world. In fact, if you listen to Warren Buffett, he'll say, "Invest in companies that is making your life a lot easier," so, if I spread that across the entire industry, I can go on with examples like Netflix disrupting Blockbuster because it made it easy for customers to watch movies at their time, and making it easy for consumption. You look at showrooming concept, where you go to Best Buy's of the world and many others, and look at a product, but you don't buy it right there. You go to your phone and say, "okay, do I do a price compare?" And then order it on the phone, where someone delivers it to your house So the list goes on and on, and the underpinning result as a result of this is disruption, all right? You look at Fortune 500 companies, just in the last decade. Over 52% of those companies have been disrupted and the underpinning phenomenon is all about instant gratification and simplicity. >> And Amazon is another great example of, I remember when my wife said to me, "Dave, you got to invest in this company." It was like... 1997. >> Yeah. >> Invest in this company, Amazon? >> Yeah. >> At the time, it was mostly books, but they started to get into other retail, so right-- >> We missed that boat, didn't we? >> I actually did, but I sold, ah! (laughs) >> I never lost money making a profit, so okay. So, at the same time, customer... Customers just can't get there... >> Yeah. >> Overnight, so what are some of the challenges that they have in getting to that level of simplicity? >> Yeah, so you look at IT spend, and when you look at the breakdown of IT spend, you'll see that about 87%, and in many cases, even greater than 90%, they spend just to keep the lights on and these are well-established companies that I'm talking about. In fact, I was doing a Keynote in, in Minneapolis one time and a CIO came and said, "Harish, I totally disagree." "In my company, it's 96%." >> (Dave laughs) >> Just to keep the lights on! So you're talking about less than 10% of your IT spend gone towards innovation, and then you look at emerging companies who are spending almost 100% all around innovation, leveraging the clouds of the world, leveraging the latest and greatest technology, and then doing these disruptions, and making things simple for consumption, and as a result, the disruption happens, so I think we have an opportunity to re-balance the equation in the enterprise space, and making it more available for innovation than just keeping the lights on. >> So part of that... the equation of shifting that needle, moving that needle, if you will, just eliminating non-value-producing activities that are expensive. We know, still, IT is still very labor-intensive, so we got to take that equation down and shift it. Are you seeing companies have success in shifting, re-training people toward digital initiatives and removing some of the heavy lifting, and what's driving that? >> Yeah, so I think it's a journey, right? So, I mean, the entire notion of journeying to the cloud is one of the big initiative to take out heavily manual-intensive, data center-intensive, which is costing a lot of money. If I can just shift all of those workloads to the cloud, that'll help me re-balance the equation. I view the concept of data intensity, which is really two variables to it. Back to your point, if I can take the non-core activity, rely on my partner ecosystem to say what is best in class solutions that I can use as my foundation layer, and then innovate on top of it, then yes, you have the perfect winning formula to really have a lot of market share and wallet share. If you're trying to do the entire stack by yourself, good luck. You'll be one of those guys who will be disrupted. There is no doubt. >> So well, okay, that says partnerships are very important. >> Without a doubt. >> You're not too alone. >> Channel is very important. >> Yes. >> So, so what do you see, in terms of the ebb and flow in the industry, of partnerships, how those are forming? Hear a lot about "co-opetition," which is kind of an interesting term, that is now, we're living. >> Yeah. >> What's your, what's your observation about partnerships, and how companies are able to leverage them? What's best practice there? >> Yeah, so just as Veritas, we're a data protection leader company. We have incredible market share and wallet share, amongst the Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies, but even within our incredible standing, we have to rely on other partners. We don't do everything on our own. We have incredible relationship with our cloud service providers, with the hyper-converged system to the world, like Nutanix. We just announced Pure today, so when we combine those partnerships, we can offer incredible solutions for our customers, who can then take care of the first variable that I talked about, and then innovate on top of it. So I think partner ecosystem is extremely important. For customers, it's very important that they pick the right players, so they don't have to worry about the data, and they can continually focus on innovation. >> We were talking to NBC Universal today, and one of themes in my take-aways was he's trying to get to the... he's a, basically a data protector, backup administrator, essentially, but he's trying to get to the point where he can get the business lines to self-serve. >> Yeah. >> And that seems to me to be part of the simplicity. Now... an individual like that, got to re-skill. Move toward a digital transformation. Move that needle so it's not 90% keeping the lights on. It's maybe you get to 50/50. >> Yeah. What are you seeing in terms of training and re-education of both existing people and maybe even how young people are being educated, your thoughts? >> Yeah, I think the young people coming out of college, they're already tuned to this, so to me, those are the disruptors of the world. You got to keep an eye on those millennials of the world because you don't have to train them more, because they're coming out of college, you know. They don't have the legacy background. They don't have the data centers of the world. They are already in the cloud. They're born in the cloud, sort of individuals, so I think the challenge is more about existing individuals who have the pedigree of all the journey that, you and I, we have seen, and how do you re-tune yourself to the modern world? And I think that presents an opportunity to say, "Okay look, if you don't adapt real quick," "you don't have a chance to survive" "in this limited amount of time you have in the IT space," but having said that, we're also seeing that you have some time window, and that time window will continue to shrink, so when we talk about this transformation journey, you can see year after year, the progress that, that's been made in the transformation, this leap and bound, and that's all related to Moore's Law. You think about computer and storage, it's becoming a lot cheaper, and so the innovation rate is continuing to go up. So you have very limited window: adapt or die. >> So, Harish, we were talking about, we've talked about digital transformation. We talk about simplifying; we're talking about agility. We're talking about shifting budget priorities, all very important initiatives. How is Veritas helping customers achieve these goals, so that they can move the needle from 90% keep the lights on to maybe 50/50, and put more into innovation. >> So four major themes: one is data protection. If you don't have your core enterprise asset, which is your data protected, then you can't really innovate anything on top of it. You'll constantly be worrying about what happens if I have a ransomware attack, what if I have a data outage, so Veritas takes care of it, back to the notion that you pick the best players to take care of the fundamental layer, which is around the data. The second thing that I... I would say Veritas can help is the journey to the cloud. Cloud, again, is another instrument for you to take out cost out of your data center. You're agile, you're nimble, so you can focus on innovation. Do you see the trend? So again, Veritas helps you with that journey to the cloud. It allows to move data and application to the cloud. When you're in the cloud, we protect your data in the cloud. The third thing I would say is doing more with less. I talked about the IT equation already. Software-defined storage allows you to do that. And the last thing I would say is compliance. We can't get away from compliance, the fact that Veritas has solutions to have visibility around the data. You can classify the data. You can always be compliant working with Veritas. You take care of these four layers, you don't have to worry about your data asset. You can worry about innovation at that point. >> So it, to me, it's sort of a modern version of the rebirth of Veritas. When Veritas first started, I always used to think of it as a data management company, not just a backup company. >> Right. >> And that's really what we're talking about here today, evolving toward a data-centric approach, that full life cycle of data management, simplifying that, bringing the cloud experience to your data wherever it is. Could be "on-prem." >> Yeah. >> Could be in the cloud, sort of this API-based architecture, microservices, containers... >> Yep. >> All the kind of interesting buzzwords today, but they enable agility in a cloud-like experience, that Netflix-like experience that you were talking about. >> Absolutely, right, so we're super excited. The one thing I would also say is what our latest net backup, 812, the other thing that I talked about, which is simplicity and ease of use: we are addressing both of that in addition to the robust brand that we have around protecting data. So you now you have simplicity, ease of use, instant gratification, all the basic ingredients, and Veritas is here to protect them. >> Harish, it's been a great day. Thanks for helping me close out the segment here. This venue is really terrific. It's been a while since I've been at Tavern on the Green. Some of you guys, I don't think you've ever seen it before. Seth's down here; he's, he's a city boy but we country bumpkins up in Massachusetts, we love coming down here, in the heart of Yankee country. So thanks very much-- >> Of course. >> For helping me close out here, great segment. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. We're out here, from New York City, Tavern on the Green. You've been watching theCUBE; I'm Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time. (light electronic music)

>> From Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Tavern on the Green. We're in the heart of Central Park in New York City, the Big Apple. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here at the Veritas Solution Day #VtasVision. Veritas used to have a big main tent day where they brought in all the customers. Now they're going out, belly-to-belly, 20 cities. Dave Raffo is here, he's the editorial director for TechTarget Storage. Somebody who follows this space very closely. David good to see you, welcome to theCUBE. >> Yeah, it's great to be on theCUBE. I always hear and watch you guys but never been on before. >> Well you're now an alum, I got to get him a sticker. So, we were talking about VMworld just now, and that show, last two years, one of the hottest topics anyway, was cloud, multi-cloud, Kubernetes of course was a hot topic. But, data protection was right up there. Why, in your view, is data protection such a hot topic right now? >> Well there's a lot of changes going on. First of all, couple years ago it was backup, nobody calls it backup anymore right. The whole market is changing. Data protection, you have newer guys like Cohesity and Ruberik, would come out with a, you know, architecture. They're basically, from scratch, they built scale-out and that's changing the way people look at data protection. You have all of the data protection guys, the Dell EMC, CommVault, Veeam, they're all kind of changing a little. And Veritas, the old guys, have been doing it forever. And now they're changing the way that they're reacting to the competition. The cloud is becoming a major force in where data lives, and you have to protect that. So there's a lot of changes going on in the market. >> Yeah I was talking to a Gartner analyst recently, he said they're data suggested about 2/3 of the customers that they talk to, within the next, I think, 18 months, are going to change they're backup approach or reconsider how they do backup or data protection as it were, as you just said. What do you think is driving that? I mean, people cite digital transformation they cite cloud, they cite big data, all the buzz words. You know, where there's smoke, there's fire, I guess. But what are your thoughts? >> Yeah, it's a little bit of all of those things, because the IT infrastructure is changing, virtualization containers, everything, every architectural change changes the way you protect and manage your data, right. So, we're seeing a lot of those changes, and now people are reacting to it and everybody's figuring out still how to use the cloud and where the data is going to live. So then, you know, how do you protect that data? >> And of course, when you listen to vendors talk, data protection, backup, recovery, it's very sexy when you talk to the customers they're just, oftentimes, drinking from the fire hose, right. Just trying to solve the next problem that they have. But what are you hearing from the customers? TechTarget obviously has a big community. You guys do a lot of events. You talk personally to a lot of customers, particularly when there are new announcements. And what does the landscape look like to you? >> So they're all, you know like I said, everybody's looking at the cloud. They're looking at all these, how they're going to use these things. They're not sure yet, but they want data protection, data management that will kind of fit in no matter which direction they go. It's kind of, you know, we know we're looking at where we're going to be in five years and now we want to know how we're going to protect, how we're going to manage our data, how we're going to use it, move it from cloud to cloud. So, you know, it's kind of like, it's a lot of positioning going on now. A lot of planing for the future. And they're trying to figure out what's the best way they're going to be able to do all this stuff. >> Yeah, so, you know the hot thing, it used to be, like you said, backup. And then of course, people said backup is one thing, recovery is everything. You know, so it was the old bromide, my friend Fred Moore, I think coined that term, back in the old storage tech days. But when you think about cloud, and you think about the different cloud suppliers, they've all got different approaches, they're different walled gardens, essentially. And they've got different processes for at least replicating, backing up data. Where do you see customers, in terms of having that sort of single abstraction layer, the single data protection philosophy or strategy and set of products for multi-cloud? >> Well, where they are is they're not there, and they're, you know, far from it, but that's where they want to be. So, that's where a lot of the vendor positioning is going. A lot of the customers are looking to do that. But another thing that's changing it is, you know, people aren't using Oracle, SQL databases all the time anymore either. They're using the NoSQL MongoDB. So that change, you know, you need different products for that too. So, the whole, almost every type of product, hyper-converged is changing backup. So, you know, all these technologies are changing the way people actually are going to protect their data. >> So you look at the guys with the big install base, obviously Veritas is one, guys like IBM, certainly CommVault and there are others that have large install bases. And the new guys, the upstarts, they're licking their chops to go after them. What do you see as, let's take Veritas as an example, the vulnerabilities and the strengths of a company like that? >> So the vulnerabilities of an old company that's been around forever is that, the newer guys are coming with a clean sheet of paper and coming up and developing their products around technologies that didn't exist when NetBackup was created, right. So the strength is that, for Veritas, they have huge install base. They have all the products, technology they need. They have a lot of engineers so they can get to the board, drawing board, and figure it out and add stuff. And what they're trying to do is build around NetBackup saying all these companies are using NetBackup, so let's expand that, let's build archiving in, let's build, you know, copy data protect, copy data management into that. Let's build encryption, all of that, into NetBackup. You know, appliances, they're going farther, farther and farther into appliances. Seems like nobody wants to just buy backup software, and backup hardware as separate, which they were forever. So you know, we're seeing the integration there. >> Well that brings up another good point, is you know, for years, backup's been kind of one size fits all. So that meant you were either over protected, or under protected. It was maybe an after thought, a bolt-on, you put in applications, put it in a server, an application on top of it. You know, install Linux, maybe some Oracle databases. All of the a sudden, oh, we got to back this thing up. And increasingly, people are saying, hey, I don't want to just pay for insurance, I'd like to get more value. And so, you're hearing a lot of talk about governance, certainly security, ransomware is now a big topic, analytics. What are you seeing, in terms of, some of those additional value, those value adds beyond that, is it still just insurance, or are we seeing incremental value to customers? >> Yeah, well I think everybody wants incremental value. They have the data, now it's not just, like you said, insurance. It's like how is this going to, how am I going to use this data? How's it going to help my business? So, the analytics is a big thing that everybody's trying to get in. You know, primary and secondary storage everybody's adding analytics. AI, how we use AI, machine learning. You know, how we're going to back up data from the edge into and out of thing. What are we going to do with all this data? How are we going to collect it, centralize it, and then use it for our business purposes? So there's, you know, it's a wide open field. Remember it used to be, people would say backup, nobody ever changes their backup, nobody wants to change backup. Now surveys are saying within the next two years or so, more than 50% of people are looking to either add a backup product, or just change out their whole backup infrastructure. >> Well that was the interesting about when, you know, the ascendancy of Data Domain, as you recall, you were following the company back then. The beauty of that architecture was, you don't have to change your backup processes. And now, that's maybe a challenge for a company like that. Where people are, because of digital, because of cloud, they're actually looking to change their backup processes. Not unlike, although there are differences, but a similar wave, remember the early days of virtualization, you had, you're loosing physical resources, so you had to rethink backup. Are you seeing similar trends today, with cloud, and digital? >> Yeah, the cloud, containers, microservices, things like that, you know, how do you protect that data? You know people, some people are still struggling with virtualization, you know, like, there's so many more VMs being created so quickly, and that you know, a lot of the backup products still haven't caught up to that. So, I mean Veeam has made an awful great business around dealing with VM backup, right? >> Right. >> Where was everybody else before that? Nobody else could do it. >> We storage guys, we're like the cockroaches of the industry. We're just this, storage just doesn't seem to die. You know the joke is, there's a hundred people in storage and 99 seats. But you've been following it for a long time. Yeah, you see all the hot topics like cloud and multi-cloud and digital transformation. Are you surprised at the amount of venture capital over the last, you know, four or five years, that has flooded in to storage, that continues to flood in to storage? And you see some notable successes, sure some failures, but even those failures, you're seeing the CEOs come out and sell to new companies and you're seeing the rise of a lot of these startups and a lot of these unicorns. Does it surprise you, or is that kind of your expectation? >> Well, I mean, like you said, that's the way it's always been in storage. When you look at storage compared to networking and compute, how many startups are there in those other areas. Very few, but storage keeps getting funded. A couple of years ago, I used to joke, if you said I do Flash, people would just throw hundreds of millions of dollars at you, then it was cloud. There always seem to be like a hot topic, a hot spot, that you can get money from VCs. And there's always four or five, at least, storage vendors who are in that space. >> Yeah, the cloud, the storage cloud AI blockchain company is really the next unicorn right? >> Right, yeah, if you know the right buzz words you can get money. And there's never just one right, there's always a couple in that same area and then one or two make it. >> Yeah, or, and or, if you've done before, right, you're seeing that a lot. I mean, you see what the guys like, for instance at Datrium are doing. Brian Biles he did it a Data Domain, and now he's, they just did a giant raise. >> Qumulo. >> Yeah, you know, Qumulo, for sure. Obviously the Cohesity are sort of well known, in terms of how they've done giant raises. So there's massive amount of capital now pouring in, much of which will go into innovation. It's kind of, it's engineering and it's you know, go to market and marketing. So, you know, no doubt, that that innovation curve will continue. I guess you can't bet against data growth. >> Right, you know, yeah, right, everybody knows data is going to grow. They're saying it's the new oil, right. Data is the big thing. The interesting thing with the funding stuff now is the, not the new companies, but the companies that have been around a little bit, and it's now time for them to start showing revenue. And where in the past it was easier for them to get money, now it seems a little tougher for those guys. So, you know, we could see more companies go away without getting bought up or go public but-- >> Okay, great. Dave, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. >> Alright. >> It was great to have you. >> Thanks for having me on. >> Alright keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE from Veritas Vision in Central Park. We'll be right back. (theCUBE theme music)

>> From Tavern On The Green, in Central Park, New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Hello everybody welcome back to the Tavern On The Green. We're here in the heart of Central Park in New York City you're watching theCUBE the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, big events, small events. We're here at the Veritas Solution Days, #VtasVision. Veritas Vision used to be a very large, big tent conference. They've changed the format now and they go out, they're going out to 20 cities this year belly to belly with the customers and we've got one here. Vishal Kadakia who is the data protection manager at NBC Universal. Vishal thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> No problem thank you for having me. >> So as I say we love to get the customer perspectives, but let me start with this event. Why, you're a busy person, you're managing a lot of data, why do you take time out to come to event like this? What do you learn? >> You always get to learn new stuff, new products that you don't necessarily get to learn, 'cause you're always just zoned into your day-to-day work that you're doing so you don't always get to see what the new features may be or you miss it. These type of events are generally good to come see that. >> So what's the day in the life like these days for data protection manager and really I'm interested in how it's changed over the last five or six years, as you see things like, the buzzwords, digital transformation, big data, cloud, multi cloud, all the vendor buzzwords, but you actually have to live that. So how has that changed the role of data protection and data protection managers specifically? >> It's definitely a lot more complicated. Before you were just backing up om prem, you had tape, pretty much made it simple. Now you have all these different workloads, you're sending out to clouds, multi tenant as they keep calling it, the hybrid, which is another buzzword. Trying to manage the different workloads is a lot more complex than it was five years ago. You have various cloud vendors, you have various storage vendors, so managing all of that, obviously the data growth from the smaller backups to now, big data which could be terabytes, petabytes, to try to back that up has been a bit of a challenge. >> But that's a challenge for someone like you who's, you know, RPO and RTO is not getting relaxed. >> Right. >> Right. And you know people always talk about getting my weekends back so, but now you have to keep up with all of these other technologies so what is it? Is it a lot of reading, is it just going to sessions like this, having vendors come in, how do you keep up with it all? >> I think it's a big mix of both. It's going out to these events, but also having vendors come to you. Doing your own research, so it's a combination of just constantly keeping up. So, I would say it's a combination of all. >> One of the things that I would be concerned about in your roll is to have just more stove pipes. Are you able to just conceptually, not technical, deep technical anyway, I love tech, but are you to create, let's call it a abstraction layer for your data protection. Is that kind of your vision or where you're headed, so that you don't have to have 10 different formats and methodologies and processes around data protection? >> Yeah, I think that's the goal that I think every company's trying to go to, is consolidate, simplify. Whether that's vendor, whether that's hardware. I think that's really the goal of any organization now. And that's kind of where we're headed also. >> So if it's a baseball game analogy, and you're nine inning game, where are you in terms of that journey? Is it early days, kind of first inning, are you kind of warmin' up in the bullpen, are you sort of well into the game? >> I think we're well into the game. We're probably into the middle innings I would say. >> Okay. So you can see sort of that vision becoming a reality. And what are the priorities then in terms of getting to that point? Is it skill sets, is it technology, is it people? >> I would say it's technology. I would say that consolidation is probably the big word. We're all trying to consolidate while trying back up the large data sets. And I think that's where we are right now. That's where we're starting to get to, and see the plan forming, seeing where our methodologies, our strategies on how we're going to go forward. >> As you move toward the cloud, Vishal, whether or not it's even pushing data to the cloud, a lot of times you just can't. But it seems like that cloud operating model is something that's alluring to folks. Simplifying, agility, self service, are those initiatives that you guys have enacted? >> In terms of that, yeah we're I think in that phase, I think we're in our beginning to form that plan, because once you get to a cloud, you have to really have a good plan. Otherwise, your data is going to be all over the place. You're not going to know where it is, and managing that's just going to become that much harder. So I think in terms of that, we're trying to really come out with a good plan of how you migrate to the cloud. 'Cause once you get to the cloud, there's a whole different set of complexities that you have in managing it. >> Like what? Maybe tick off a few, so we can paint a picture. >> So once you get to the cloud, migrating, so you've formulated your plan how to get to, what cloud to use, what vendor you're using. How do you migrate from your on prem to the cloud is I think one of the big complexities, which I think kind of stumps a lot of people. You know you want to go to the cloud, just don't know how to get there. >> Is that just because the volume of data and you got to move data and it just takes so long? I mean to back up your iPhone takes forever and it fails left and right. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So okay. It's the amount of data and the time it takes? >> Right, and you also have legacy applications, which may not be cloud ready and how do you deal with that? So you have that hybrid model you still want to keep some stuff om prem but you want to go the cloud. What goes to the cloud, which cloud do you go to? All of that is where I think we're really at and I don't think it's any different than any other organization, so that's kind of where. >> And how about this notion of multi cloud? I mean is that something that is real in your business? >> Yeah, I think it definitely is. I think our end users are trying to take advantage of where to go best? Some places Azure might work best. Some places AWS might work. There's also Google now that's coming up, so I think you have to kind of consider where the workload would be best to go to. >> Is Shadow sort of IT and cloud creep problematic for you and in other words, you know, lines of businesses saying, it's easy, I can swipe a credit card and I'm up and running in minutes. And then, oh I got to protect this data, it's got to be compliant. Has that been a challenge for you, do you feel like you have that under control? >> No, that has definitely been a challenge area. Different groups that have kind of tried to do their own thing and then found out, oh wait, this is way harder than we thought. Let us go back to our central team. But by then it's kind of all over the place, right so that's definitely been interesting. >> Yeah it's hard, because thinking about that you probably might have done it differently. You might have put in processes and procedures in place and now you've got to clean up the mess so to speak. But okay, so I want to get into Veritas, and you're a Veritas customer? >> I am. >> So how does Veritas help you with all these solutions? I mean a lot of the things I've just asked you, I think are part of either their road map or they're making claims that they can currently help solve some of these problems. Can they, what do you do with Veritas, and how legitimate is their ability in terms of being able to solve some of these problems? >> So we've been able to use Veritas to kind of, as a central location, management of everything. One of their tools as such is CloudPoint. So our biggest thing is if you don't have a central management tool like CloudPoint, which can manage your various cloud backups, then you're left with managing each cloud on its own. So as an operations standpoint, that's like a nightmare. So having a tool such as CloudPoint, right, and then that getting integrated back into NetBackup, which now gives us a central location for all my backups, for reporting, for audit purposes, any of that has been great. And I've been using Veritas since 3.1 so I've been a Veritas customer for a long time. I've seen the evolution of when it was 3.1, a lot of it was manually operated, a lot of scripts, where now a lot of it is automated. So that's helped a lot. We're automating VM policies, we're automating SQL backup policies, all of that has been great. >> Where are you today in terms of these. >> I'm sorry? >> Where are you at today in terms of the release? >> We're, I know they just released eight one two, we're on eight one one. >> Okay so close to current. Yeah I've seen some videos on eight one two. It looks like they've really put a lot of time and effort in to refreshing it. It looks like a microservices architecture, they're talking about containers and certainly you know, saying all the right things. From your perspective have you dug into it yet or is it still early? >> It's still early. I did deploy it on a test environment. Haven't fully played around with it but some of the cool concepts obviously are, you're going away from that Java console eventually, getting to that web based, able to access it from anywhere, the manageability, like a central tool to manage all of that. That I think they're finally gearing towards that and. >> And you guys are a VMware shop? >> We are a VMware shop. >> So when we were at VM World last August, this past year, and even the year before. Data protection was one of the hottest topics, you know, on the show floor. Were you there, I don't know if you were there. >> I was not there. >> I mean it was really a lot of buzz there, sort of a lot of new entrance in that space, and would I imagine a lot of people coming after you for your business, because that's a very large install base. So when you look at the vendor landscape, how do you look at it? Where do you position Veritas, relative to some of the other upstarts? Your thoughts on the competitive landscape, why Veritas? >> Well, my point of view has always been, if it's not broke you don't fix it. There may be other that may be doing something better, but at the end of the day if it's not drastically different, it's a lot of work to move away from one product to another. They'll always come to you and say, hey, we do this better, we do this better. But then when you compare it, to me, Veritas is that all encompassing. It doesn't only do virtual, it does physical well also. It doesn't only do big data, it does all the traditional databases as well. They're always constantly evolving and adding new workloads that it can also be compatible with. >> Yeah so, I would imagine it would be a little difficult to go to your CFO and try to justify a huge migration project given the other priorities that you have. Give me some insight there. I mean what kinds of things do you want to focus on, I mean obviously nobody wants to migrate anything, it's like moving a house. >> Yeah. >> You really don't want to do it, I mean sometimes you get a bigger house or a nicer house or a smaller house, but it's, moving is always a pain. So you'd rather put your effort in your shop somewhere else. Where are you putting that effort? What are some of the priorities that you have either personally or professionally? >> I would say in this sense I think it's I don't want to work the weekends, right. So how do we automate? How do we make operations easier for everybody, the engineering, the solution, the operations. I want to make it simple. I think Veritas allows us to do that 'cause they're an open source, they work with many vendors which makes it nice. So you can, such as VMware, it works with vRealize. All those plugins with VMware and you can eventually just automate and make it simple. >> And kind of get rid of a lot of the scripts which tend to be fragile, they take a lot of maintenance, they tend to be error prone, so if you can through a set of APIs automate programmatically move towards sort of infrastructurous code or a DevOps environment. I'm sure you guys do that internally. And what a difference it makes, from the sort of classic waterfall in terms of speed, agility, quality. I presume that you're seeing that in your shop? >> Yeah, we definitely are and something like a flex appliance would allow us to move towards that. It simplifies, gets us to where we are, but also helps us with our goals of simplifying, reducing our footprint, but still being able to be agile enough to go to cloud, to keep a hybrid model. So something like that is I think where we're seeing. >> Well Vishal, we love the customer perspective, Thank you for coming on. We like to hear the truth, Vertias, truth in Latin, of course. And really appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. All right keep it right there everybody. We're here at Vtas Vision, #VtasVision, Veritas Vision Days in New York City, Central Park, Tavern on the Green, beautiful location. My name's Dave Vallante. We'll be right back, right after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to Veritas Vision, #VtasVision. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, and this is our second day of Veritas Vision 2017. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Stu Miniman, my cohost, Jim Livingston is here. Here's the world-wide Vice President of Global Services at Veritas. Good to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Ah, I appreciate the opportunity. >> So we love talking services. We've been talking off camera, and to me it's where the value is when you talk to customers. It's really, I mean, yeah, product is great, features are great, but it's services, at the end of the day are what keeps 'em coming back, keeps 'em happy, solves their problem. It's where the rubber meets the road. So, tell us about-- >> So Dave, I need you to be one of my top sales reps. >> Dave: Right, I mean, you know! >> That's outstanding. >> Well, because you know, services doesn't get the attention I think it deserves. It's sort of undervalued, certainly, in the trade press. I mean, I'm sure you'd agree with that. But when you talk to a customer and say okay, you have 100 points to allocate, how much would you place on service? It's oftentimes well over 50%. Is that what you've seen? >> Eh, so I'd say it varies by solution. You know, I will tell you that from my perspective, running a services business inside a product company is a little bit different. I, first and foremost, I believe my charter is really to ensure that our customers get the most value from the products. They're able to explore and utilize any of the features and functions that really are applicable to the objectives they're trying to solve, the outcomes they're trying to drive towards. And that's a critical piece. And then we just want to make sure they have a great experience. So from my perspective, what I really want to focus on is making sure that we really drive that. What's interesting, though, is I will tell you one of the challenges with that is if you look at, as we ramped up our innovation engine which is phenomenal, all the product launches, all the new products, a lot of which we talked about this week at the conference, is then coming on me to make sure that we've done all the things to continue to refine and redevelop and retrain our people to make sure that they're aligned to those. But also aligned to not just the skills and the new products, and skills necessary to extract the value from those products, but all the things associated with the new environmental aspects, all the cloud platform attributes, container-based complications or things like that. So, it's been phenomenal to build and align to that journey. >> So, we spoke to Bill Coleman yesterday, and he talked about putting in the leadership to help drive not only the innovation, but kind of the culture, the vision, and where you're driving it. What do you see as the opportunity, and how much change needs to happen inside the services organization compared to when it was a piece of Symantec? >> So I think the very first thing we have to do is we have to continue to recalibrate around thinking outcomes. It's a very simple thing to say. It's a very difficult thing to do. It really, what it requires first and foremost is trying to engage earlier in that lifecycle, earlier in that process of engaging and talking to customers and trying to identify, ultimately, what are the objectives they're trying to solve for, what are the outcomes that they're looking for, what's their imperatives? And so for me that's a large piece of this is to engage early. And then focus all those discussions around outcomes versus, fundamentally, that's the basic difference between a product sales motion and a solution sales motion, is really aligning to those outcomes. So it's a cultural shift, no doubt. >> And there's a lot of emerging tech that we're talking about this week. How much is consulting, how much is services, what's kind of the makeup of your organization look like in your engagement with customers? >> So I'd say right now, it's about 50-50. Where about 50% of those services we're trying to engage, and I'm trying to move that to more and more earlier in the process. You know, if I think about, as we develop skills not just around our platform but around the things that are ancillary, cloud, containers, all the different things that are adjacent or add complexity to our world, and most importantly to the customer's world. For me, the earlier we can bring those in so that we can align and ensure that we start their journey, we align to the things that they want, the things that they need in terms of their environment, of serving their customers, aligning to their strategy. So that's a big piece of it, is shifting earlier and driving much more of a consulting base versus just the traditional deployment services. >> So people, process, and technology. We always talk about that on theCUBE. Technology execs always tell us, the practitioners, generally we got that covered. You've been around long enough to know, see different evolutions of technology, and how that technology's applied. The industry's getting so much more complex, things are happening much, much faster. But in thinking about not the technology, but the people and process pieces that have evolved, I wonder if you could comment on what you've seen over your years. Describe kind of where we are today, and where you see it all going? >> Great question. So the rate of change, has been phenomenal. And, it absolutely, it creates challenges every day, which are actually, typically every challenge is an opportunity from my perspective. For me personally, what we really try to focus on is first and foremost develop the skills that are closest, in closest relation to us, so that we can apply those skills and the knowledge and expertise of our engineering team, our consulting team, is ultimately aligned to the customer's. So if you think about things that are happening, for example, without a doubt the one that's happening to virtually all of our customers is a proliferation of cloud. What it really means to them is their information fabric, where their information lies, their charter as an IT organization, our traditional customer, their charter's become much more complex. Just the challenge to identify where all the information assets are is a big opportunity for us to come in and assist them in that process. And then ultimately, to be able to take their strategies around data protection, business continuity or disaster recovery, whatever it is around how they protect and secure that data, to be able to take that into something that has proliferated into so many different areas, both in the infrastructure base and then driven by applications and other cloud deployment methods, so. >> So you guys were both at EMC, where Tucci was always famous for saying we're a products company, not a services company. Veritas, obviously, great engineering team, product company. Talk about services inside of a products company? >> So I'll go back to what I said first and foremost. I believe service is the first charter, although it doesn't have to be the only charter. The first charter that you have to do well is that you have to ensure that you have the skills and capability to guarantee a great customer experience. That for me is the very first piece. So typically that doesn't rise to the occasion of saying it's a services company. It really rises to the occasion of we have a great customer experience, we have a loyal customer base, and we have a customer base that ultimately is so rewarded with the capabilities of the product because they're enjoying them, it's well-integrated in their environment, et cetera, it becomes a sticking customer as well. And that's, I believe that's our first charter. Go ahead? >> Just take us inside some of those customers. What are the real, some of the maintain points you're seeing what are the areas that you find that your team is able to help them the most? >> That's great. Multiple areas. You know, you get started with the very basics, what I would consider very infrastructure-oriented, and very basic around storage. You know, customers are constantly, as clouds are proliferating, so is their storage base. And all of them are ultimately looking for ways that they can lower their costs and still maintain access to the information that they need and protect in the same manner. So, going in and design or architect a solution that allows them to leverage commodity storage, cloud-based storage, et cetera, and still have a lot of the functionality that they're used to, it aligns right into their existing data protection strategy, is one good piece. Monster ROIs on that. Then you get into more complex things around compliance. You know, most notably GDPR being six, seven, eight months out, and it's driving a lot of interest and demand, but in reality if you go around the globe, the vast majority of the countries are driving some level of increased focus on regulations that drive a level of protection of privacy, personal data privacy, et cetera. And again, having the technology is one thing, and Mike does a phenomenal job of building the products that the customers need to be able to locate, classify, protect, et cetera. My job and my charter is to make sure the customers can actually take that technology and use it in that manner, so we're doing, to your question, I'm seeing a huge uptick in that just in the short time I've been here. Tremendous amount of interest, and customers wanting to engage and leverage in that fashion. >> Talk about where Veritas picks up and leaves off relative to some of the SI partners that you have. What's that relationship like? >> So, I'd say we tend to stay fairly focused on our technology, and how we work and partner and align to those types of partners. As a matter of fact, compliance and regulatory activities are a great example of that. If you really think about a typical customer's concerns around how they protect their customer data, their employee data, their supplier data, et cetera. We provide a lot technology and the infrastructure behind that. The overarching process and the business process go much wider. And that's where alignment with systems integrators and things like that that have a much more robust, in terms of breadth and lots of business units, et cetera, becomes an important partnership on our part. We can focus on our piece, really create a solution that's beneficial first and foremost to the customer, and helps complete their solution. >> One of the things Stu and I have been talking about this week is you've got this massive Veritas install base. You're moving towards this vision of modern data protection and information management. Service is going to be key there. How do you get the customer from Point A to Point B, Bill Coleman said, "It's ours to lose." that means pressure's on your organization to make it happen. So what's the conversation like, what's the journey you're taking customers through there? >> A lot of those, what we try and start those journeys first and foremost with assessments or things that are really driven around identifying what the transformational event is. That's all about engaging, bringing the breadth of knowledge around not just the products, but how the products are used and how they can be deployed early in the process. >> And that's a for-pay service? >> That's a for-pay service. But it's something that we really focus on the deliverable, so it's a for-pay service that says hey, we're going to come out with a roadmap, a specific solution, et cetera. >> But that's important, because the customer has skin in the game. >> Jim: They do. >> You know, if it's a freebie, that's nice, but then a lot of times they don't show up for the meeting. >> And that's so true, Dave, and that's a big piece, honestly. And in some cases, candidly, the challenge or the opportunity in terms of for-pay, is to ensure there is skin in the game. I think further down, further into the journey, around what I consider things around driving operational efficiency or optimizing the customer's environment, that actually becomes another great point of entry. And sometimes you go in and just want to ensure that the customers are getting maximum value for their product, that they're continuing to have a great experience, et cetera. But in all cases, ultimately, there's always changes in the environment around, not just environmental changes, changes within the customer around new priorities, new objectives, new imperatives for next year, the following year. And to the extent that we can take that opportunity through assessments and health checks and things like that to identify those, map them up to their business imperatives, and ultimately go in and be sure that they continue down that journey with our solutions is a big piece. >> Jim, one of the things we're also looking at, you sell point products. And then it was kind of a suite, and now we've been talking a little bit about a platform. What's the impact on the services for moving to that integrated platform? >> So it's actually, I'd say, twofold. The first piece is really, first and foremost we want to make sure the customer's are getting maximum value for the solution. And I'd say that's probably charter number one. The other piece is, in many cases, a little bit going to the transformational or the assessment-type services, or more traditional consulting services. In many cases, you buy a platform and you engage and you have three or four pieces of functionality and you're really looking for three. And we just gave you four. One of the opportunities from my perspective is how do we actually ensure that the customer understands the value that they have on that fourth, and then we can deploy it in a manner that they get the most value for it, and it becomes a benefit for us and most importantly a benefit for our customers. >> Feedback from the customers at the event? What have you been hearing? I mean you guys are a year into this 360. What are they telling you? >> It's been phenomenal. Both from customers and partners. I've spent time really probably equally with both. It's been a lot of excitement around the product launches, a lot of excitement around the innovation, not just of the launches for this week, but really the innovation, the changes that have taken place over the last year, even before I joined. I'd say one of the ones that actually has resonated and I've heard most often is when people talk about modernizing data protection. Mike Palmer in yesterday's general session used this slide, it was actually the first time I had seen it as well, and like I got to get a copy of that, because it actually just, it shows with any customer of ours the breadth of change that's taken place in their environment from cloud and hybrid and all the different things. Which is a challenge, and the opportunity for me, to go in and ensure that we continually align to those and we ensure that they're aligned. >> Jim, Veritas has a long history working on lots of different solutions. From a services standpoint, though, I got to think cloud's a little bit different. We've talked to customers. If you're a big customer, you probably get good support. Some smaller ones, well, you're a little bit more on your own. What's your experiences, how is it to work with those hyper-scale partners? >> Uh, so from, one of the things I'd like to do, is I like to ensure that, candidly, we can establish an environment that we can improve and level out the consistency, in some cases, of some of the cloud experiences our customers have. And by the way, I'm also a big fan, and we're really putting a lot of our focus around automation. Which actually takes the burden off of the customers, in many cases. And we'll have a lot of focus in the second half of our fiscal year in the next six months, really around driving automation so that as cloud touches any type of deployment, or interaction with our products, there's all the work, obviously, that Mike and the product teams are driving themselves. There's areas that really fall below that that are really much more aligned to the business process that the customers perform, where I can actually, I believe I can do a lot to improve their service across all the platforms. Whether it's Amazon, Azure, IBM, Google, et cetera. >> We'll give you last thoughts. You talked a little bit about some of the feedback, but Veritas Vision 2017, what's your takeaway? >> Exciting event, great opportunity for me personally to meet a lot of customers in one location. I think a great demonstration of the excitement around the company, where we're at in terms of our evolution as a company, most importantly, where we're at with regards to our product roadmap. >> All right, Jim, we'll leave it there. Thanks very much for coming to theCUBE! >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Thank you, good luck. All right, keep it right there, buddy, we'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Veritas Vision 2017. Right back. (rippling music)

>> 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)

>> 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. We are here covering Veritas Vision 2017, the hashtag is VtasVision. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stuart Miniman my cohost David Noy is here, he's the vice president of product management at Vertias. David, thanks for coming to The Cube. >> Thanks for having me, pretty excited. >> Yes, we enjoyed your keynote today taking us through the new product announcements. Let's unpack it, you're at the center of it all. Actually, let's start with the way you started your keynote is you recently left EMC, came here, why, why was that? >> I talk to lots and lots of customers, hundreds, thousands of customers. They're enterprise customers, they're all trying to solve the same kind of problems, reducing infrastructure costs, moving to commodity based architectures, moving to the cloud, in fact they did move to the cloud in Angara. If you look at the NAS market in 2016 it had been on a nice two percent incline until about the second half of 2016 it basically dove 12% and a big part of that was enterprises who were kicking the tires finally saying we're going to move to cloud and actually doing it as opposed to just talking about it. At EMC and a lot of the other big iron vendors they have a strategy that they discuss around helping customers move to cloud, helping them adopt commodity, but the reality is they make their money, their big margin points, on selling branded boxes, right? And as much as it's lip service, it's really hard to fulfill that promise when that's where you're making your revenue, you have revenue margin targets. Veritas on the other hand, it's a software company. We're here to sell software, we're able to make your data more manageable to understand that it's a truth in information, I don't need to own every bit, and I thought that the company that can basically A, provide the real promise of what software define offers is going to be a software company. Number two is that you can't buck the trend of the cloud it's going to happen, and either you're in the critical path and trying to provide friction, in which case you're going to become irrelevant pretty soon or you enable it and figure out how to partner with the cloud vendors in a nonthreatening way. I found that Veritas, because of its heterogeneity background, hey you want AIX, you want Linux, you want Solaris, great, we'll help you with all those. We can do the same thing with the cloud, and the cloud vendors will partner up with us because they love us for that reason. >> Before we get into the products, let's unpack that a little bit. Why is it that as Veritas you can participate in profit from that cloud migration? We know why you can't as a hardware vendor because ultimately the cloud vendor is going to be providing the box. >> Well, the answer is that, a couple things. One is, we believe and even the cloud vendors believe that you're going to be in a hybrid environment. If you project out for the next ten years, it's likely that a lot of data and applications and workloads will move to cloud, but not all of them will. And you probably end up in about a 50/50 shift. The vendor who can provide the management and intelligence and compliance capabilities, and the data protection capabilities across both your on-prem, and your off-premise state as a single unified product set is going to win, in my opinion, that's number one. Number two is that the cloud vendors are all great, but they specialize in different things. Some are specialized in machine learning, some are really good with visual image recognition, some are really good with mobile applications, and people are, in my opinion, going to go to two, three, four different clouds, just like I would go to contracting agencies, some might be good at giving me engineers, I might go to dice.com for engineers, I might go to something completely different for finance people, and you're going to use the best of breed clouds for specific applications. Being able to actually aggregate what you have in your universe of multicloud, and your hybrid environment and allowing you, as an administrator to be aware of all my assets, is something that as a non-branded box pusher, as a software vendor I can go do with credibility. >> You're a recovering box pusher. >> I'm a recovering box pusher, I'm one month into recovery, so thank you very much. >> And David, one of the things we're trying to understand a little bit, you've got products that live in lots of these environments, why do you have visibility into the data? Is it because they're backup customers, is it other pieces? Help us understand in that multicloud world, what I need to be to get that full. >> That's a great question and I'll bridge into some of the new products too. Number one is that Veritas has a huge amount of data that's basically trapped in repositories because we do provide backup, we're the largest backup vendor. So we have all this data that's essentially sitting inactive you know, Mike talks about it, Mike Palmer our CPO, talks about it as kind of like the Uber, you know, what do you do with your car when it's not being used, or Air BnB if you will, what do you do with your home when it's not being used, is you potentially rent it out. You make it available for other purposes. With all this trapped data, there's tons of information that we can glean that enterprises have been grabbing for years and years and years. So that's number one, we're in a great position 'cause we hold a lot of that data. Now, we have products that have the capabilities through classification engines, through engines that are extending machine learning capabilities, to open that data up and actually figure out what's inside. Now we can do it with the backup products, but let's face it, data is stored in a number of different other modaliites, right? So there's blocked data that is sitting at the bottom of containerized private clouds, there are tons and tons of unstructured data sitting in NAS repositories, and growing off-prem, but actually on prem this object storage technology for the set it and forget it long term retention. All of that data has hidden information, all of it can be extracted for more value with our same classification engines that we can run against the net backup estate, we can basically take that and extend that into these new modalities, and actually have compelling products that are not just offering infrastructure, but that are actually offering infrastructure with the promise of making that data more valuable. Make sense? >> It does, I mean it's the holy grail of backup. For years it's been insurance, and insurance is a good business, don't get me wrong, but even when you think about information governance, through sarbanes-oxley and FRCP et cetera, it was always that desire to turn that corpus of data into something more valuable than just insurance, it feels like, like you're saying with automated classification and the machine learning AI, we're sort of at the cusp of that, but we've been disappointed so many times what gives you confidence that this time it'll stick? >> Look, there's some very straightforward things that are happening that you just cannot ignore. GDPR is one, there's a specific timeline, specific rules, specific regulatory requirements that have to be met. That one's a no brainer, and that will drive people to understand that, hey when they apply our policies against the data that they have they'll be able to extract value. That'll be one of many, but that's an extreme proof-point because there's no getting around it, there's no interpretation of that, and the date is a hard date. What we'll do is we'll look quickly at other verticals, we'll look at vertical specific data, whether its in data surveillance, or germain sequencing or what have you, and we'll look at what we can extract there, and we'll partner with ISVs, is a strategy that I learned in my past life, in order to actually bring to market systems or solutions that can categorize specific, vertical industry data to provide value back to the end users. If we just try to provide a blanket, hey, I'm just going to provide data categorization, it's a swiss army knife solution. If we get hyper-focused around specific use cases, workloads and industries now we can be very targeted to what the end users care about. >> If I heard right, it's not just for backup, it's primary and secondary data that you're helping to solve and leverage and put intelligence into these products. >> That's right, initially we have an enormous trapped pool of secondary data, so that's great, we want to turn that trapped pool from just basically a stagnant pool into something that you can actually get value out of. >> That Walking Dead analogy you used. >> The Walking Dead, yeah. We also say that there's a lot of data that sits in primary storage, in fact there's a huge category of archive, which we call active archive, it's not really archive, still wanted on spinning disk or flash. You still want to use it for some purpose but what happens when that data goes out into the environment? I talked to customers in automotive, for example, automotive design manufacturers, they do simulations, and they're consuming storage and capacity all the time, they've got all of these runs, and they're overrunning their budget for storage and they have no idea which of those runs they can actually delete, so they create policies like "well, if it hasn't been touched "in 90 days, I'll delete it," Well, just because it hasn't been touched in 90 days doesn't mean there wasn't good information to be gleaned out of that particular simulation run, right? >> Alright, so I want to get back to the object, but before we go deeper there, block and file, there's market leaders out there that seems that, it's a bit entrenched, if you will, what between the hyperscale product and Veritas access, what's the opportunity that you see that Veritas has there, what differentiates you? >> Sure, well, let's start with block. The one big differentiator we'll have in block storage is that it's not just about providing storage to containerized applications. We want to be able to provide machine learning capabilities to where we can actually optimize the IO path for quality of service. Then, we also want to be able to through machine learning determine whether, if it's how you decide to run your business, you want a burst workloads actually out into the cloud. So we're partnered with the cloud vendors, who are happy to partner with us for the reasons that I described earlier, is that we're very vendor agnostic, we're very heterogeneous. To actually move workloads on-prem and off-prem that's a very differentiated capability. You see with a few of the vendors that are out there, I think Nutanix for example, can do that, but it's not something that everyone's going after, because they want to keep their workloads in their environments, they want to check controls. >> And if I can, that high speed data mover is your IP? >> That's right, that's our IP. Now, on the file system side... >> Just one thing, cloud bursting's one of those things, moving real-time is difficult, physics is still a challenge for us. Any specifics you can give, kind of a customer use case where they're doing that? A lot of times I want this piece of the application here, I want to store the data there, but real time, doing things, I can't move massive amounts of data just 'cause, speed of light. >> If you break it down, I don't think that we're going to solve the use case of, "I'm going to snap my finger "and move the workload immediately offline." Essentially what we'll do is we'll sync the data in the background, once it has been synced we'll actually be able to move the application offline and that'll all come down to one of two things: Either user cases that exceed the capabilities of the current infrastructure and I want to be able to continue to grow without building them into my data center, or I have an end of the month processing. A great case is I have a media entertainment company that I used to work with that was working on a film, and it came close to the release date of that film, and they were asked to go back and recut and reedit that film for specific reasons, a pretty interesting reason actually, it had to do with government pressure. And when they went to go back and edit that film they essentially had a point where like, oh my gosh, all of the servers that were dedicated to render for this film have been moved off to another project. What do we do now, right? The answer is, you got to burst. And if you had cloud burst capabilities you could actually use whatever application and then containerize whether you're running on-prem or off-prem, it doesn't matter, it's containeraized, if we can get the data out there into the cloud through fast pipes then basically you can now finish that job without having to take all those servers back, or repurchase that much infrastructure. So that's a pretty cool use case, that's things that people have been talking about doing but nobody's every successfully done. We're staring to prove that out with some vendors and some partners that potentially even want to embed this in their own solutions, larger technology partners. Now, you wanted to talk about file as well, right, and what makes file different. I spent five years with one of the most successful scale-up file systems, you probably know who they are. But the thing about them was that extracting that file system out of the box and making it available as a software solution that you could layer on any hardware is really hard, because you become so addicted to the way that the behavior of the underlying infrastructure, the behavior of the drives, down to the smart errors that come off the drives, you're so tied into that, which is great because you build a very high performance available product when you do that, but the moment you try to go to any sort of commodity hardware, suddenly things start to fall apart. We can do that, and in fact with our file system we're not saying "hey, you've got to go it on "commodity servers and with DAS drives in them." You could layer it on top of your existing net app, your Isolon, your whatever, you name it, your BNX, encapsulate it, and create policies to move data back and forth between those systems, or potentially even provision them out say, "okay, you know what, this is my gold tier, "my silver tier, my bronze tier." We can even encapsulate, for example, a directory on one file service, like a one file system array, and we can actually migrate that data into an object service, whether its on-prem or off-prem, and then provide the same NFS or SMB connectivity back into that data, for example a home directory migration use case, moving off of a NAS filer onto an object storer, on premise or off premise and to the end user, they don't know that things have actually moved. We think that kind of capability is really critical, because we love to sell boxes, if that's what the customer wants to buy from us, and appliance form factor, but we're not pushing the box as the ultimate end point. The ultimate end point is that software layer on top, and that's where the Veritas DNA really shines. >> That's interesting, the traditional use cases for block certainly, and maybe to a lesser extent file, historically fairly well known an understood. So to your point, you could tune an array specifically for those use cases, but in this day and age the processes, and the new business models that are emerging in the digital economy, very unpredictable in terms of the infrastructure requirements. So your argument is a true software defined capability is going to allow you to adapt much more freely and quickly. >> We've also built and we've demoed at Vision this week machine learning capabilities to actually go in and look at your workloads that are running against those underlying infrastructure and tell you are they correctly positioned or not. Oh, guess what, we really don't think this workload should belong on this particular tier that you've chosen, maybe you ought to consider moving it over here. That's something that historically has been the responsibility of the admin, to go in and figure out where those policies are, and try to make some intelligent decisions. But usually those decisions are not super intelligent, they're just like, is it old, is it not old, do I think it's going to be fast? But I don't really know until runtime, based on actual access patterns whether it's going to be high performance or not. Whether it's going to require moving or aging or not. By using machine learning type of algorithms we can actually look at the data, the access patterns over time, and help the administrators make that decision. >> Okay, we're out of time, but just to summarize, hyperscales, the block, access is the scale out, NAS piece, cloud object... >> Veritas cloud storage we call it. Veritas cloud storage, very similar to the access product is for object storage, but again it's not trying to own the entire object bits, if you will, we'll happily be the broker and the asset manager for those objects, classify them and maintain the metadata catalog, because we think it's the metadata around the data that's critical, whether it lives off-prem, on-prem, or in our own appliance. >> You had a nice X/Y graph, dollars on the vertical axis, high frequency of access to the left part of the horizontal axis, lower SLAs to the right, and you had sort of block, file, object as the way to look at the world. Then you talked about the intelligence you bring to the object world. Last question, and then let's end there. Thoughts on object, Stu and I were talking off camera, it's taken a long time, obviously S3 and the cloud guys have been there, you've seen some take outs of object storage companies. But it really hasn't exploded, but it feels like we're on the cusp. What's your observation about object? >> I think object is absolutely on the cusp. Look, people have put it on the cloud, because traditionally object has been used for keeping deep, and because performance doesn't matter, and the deeper you get, the less expensive it gets. So a cloud provider's great, because they're going to aggrigate capacity across 1,000 or 20,000 or a million customers. They can get as deep as possible, and they can slice it off to you. As a single enterprise, I can never get as deep as a cloud service provider. >> The volume, right? >> But what ends up happening is that more and more workloads are not expecting to hold a connection open to their data source. They're actually looking at packetize, get-put type semantics that you can see in genomic sequencing, you see it in a number of different workloads where that kind of semantic, even in hydoop analytic workloads, where that kind of get-put semantic makes sense, not holding that connection open, and object's perfect for that, but it hasn't traditionally had the performance to be able to do that really well. We think that by providing a high performance object system that also has the intelligence to do that data classification, ties into our data protection products, provides the actionable information and metadata, and also makes it possible to use on-prem infrastructure as well as push to cloud or multicloud, and maintain that single pane of glass for that asset management for the objects is really critical, and again, it's the software that matters, the intelligence we build into it that matters. And I think that the primary workloads in a number of different industries in verticals or in adopting object more and more, and that's going to drive more on premise growth of object. By the way, if you look at the NAS market and the object market, you see the NAS market kind of doing this, and you see the object market kind of doing this, it's left pocket right pocket. >> And that get-put framework is a simplifying factor for organizations so, excellent. David, thank you very much for coming on The Cube. We appreciate it. >> Appreciate it, thanks for having me. >> You're welcome, alright, bringing you the truth from Veritas Visions, this is The Cube. We'll be right back, right after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. (peppy digital music) >> Veritas Vision 2017 everybody. We're here at The Aria Hotel. This is day two of theCUBE's coverage of Vtas, #VtasVision, and this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stuart Miniman who is my cohost for the week. Stu, we heard Richard Branson this morning. The world-renowned entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson came up from the British Virgin Islands where he lives. He lives in the Caribbean. And evidently he was holed out during the hurricane in his wine cellar, but he was able to make it up here for the keynote. We saw on Twitter, so, great keynote, we'll talk about that a little bit. We saw on Twitter that he actually stopped by the Hitachi event, Hitachi NEXT for women in tech, a little mini event that they had over there. So, pretty cool guy. Some of the takeaways: he talked a lot about- well, first of all, welcome to day two. >> Thanks, Dave. Yeah, and people are pretty excited that sometimes they bring in those marquee guests, someone that's going to get everybody to say, "Okay, wait, it's day two. "I want to get up early, get in the groove." Some really interesting topics, I mean talking about, thinking about the community at large, one of the things I loved he talked about. I've got all of these, I've got hotels, I've got different things. We draw a circle around it. Think about the community, think about the schools that are there, think about if there's people that don't have homes. All these things to, giving back to the community, he says we can all do our piece there, and talking about sustainable business. >> As far as, I mean we do a lot of these, as you know, and as far as the keynote speakers go, I thought he was one of the better ones. Certainly one of the bigger names. Some of the ones that we've seen in the past that I think are comparable, Bill Clinton at Dell World 2012 was pretty happening. >> There's a reason that Bill Clinton is known as the orator that he is. >> Yeah, so he was quite good. And then Robert Gates, both at ServiceNow and Nutanics, Condi Rice at Nutanics, both very impressive. Malcolm Gladwell, who's been on theCUBE and Nate Silver, who's also been on theCUBE, again, very impressive. Thomas Friedman we've seen at the IBM shows. The author, the guy who wrote the Jobs book was very very strong, come on, help me. >> Oh, yeah, Walter Isaacson. >> Walter Isaacson was at Tableau, so you've seen some- >> Yeah, I've seen Elon Musk also at the Dell show. >> Oh, I didn't see Elon, okay. >> Yeah, I think that was the year you didn't come. >> So I say Branson, from the ones I've seen, I don't know how he compared to Musk, was probably the best I think I've ever seen. Very inspirational, talking about the disaster. They had really well-thought-out and well-produced videos that he sort of laid in. The first one was sort of a commercial for Richard Branson and who he was and how he's, his passion for changing the world, which is so genuine. And then a lot of stuff on the disaster in the British Virgin Islands, the total devastation. And then he sort of went into his passion for entrepreneurs, and what he sees as an entrepreneur is he sort of defined it as somebody who wants to make the world a better place, innovations, disruptive innovations to make the world a better place. And then had a sort of interesting Q&A session with Lynn Lucas. >> Yeah, and one of the lines he said, people, you don't go out with the idea that, "I'm going to be a businessman." It's, "I want to go out, I want to build something, "I want to create something." I love one of the early anecdotes that he said when he was in school, and he had, what was it, a newsletter or something he was writing against the Vietnam War, and the school said, "Well, you can either stay in school, "or you can keep doing your thing." He said, "Well, that choice is easy, buh-bye." And when he was leaving, they said, "Well, you're either going to be, end up in jail or be a millionaire, we're not sure." And he said, "Well, what do ya know, I ended up doing both." (both laughing) >> So he is quite a character, and just very understated, but he's got this aura that allows him to be understated and still appear as this sort of mega-personality. He talked about, actually some of the interesting things he said about rebuilding after Irma, obviously you got to build stronger homes, and he really sort of pounded the reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, and can't be the same old, same old, basically calling for a Marshall Plan for the Caribbean. One of the things that struck me, and it's a tech audience, generally a more liberal audience, he got some fond applause for that, but he said, "You guys are about data, you don't just ignore data." And one of the data points that he threw out was that the Atlantic Ocean at some points during Irma was 86 degrees, which is quite astounding. So, he's basically saying, "Time to make a commitment "to not retreat from the Paris Agreement." And then he also talked about, from an entrepreneurial standpoint and building a company that taking note of the little things, he said, makes a big difference. And talking about open cultures, letting people work from home, letting people take unpaid sabbaticals, he did say unpaid. And then he touted his new book, Finding My Virginity, which is the sequel to Losing My Virginity. So it was all very good. Some of the things to be successful: you need to learn to learn, you need to listen, sort of an age-old bromide, but somehow it seemed to have more impact coming from Branson. And then, actually then Lucas asked one of the questions that I put forth, was what's his relationship with Musk and Bezos? And he said he actually is very quite friendly with Elon, and of course they are sort of birds of a feather, all three of them, with the rocket ships. And he said, "We don't talk much about that, "we just sort of-" specifically in reference to Bezos. But overall, I thought it was very strong. >> Yeah Dave, what was the line I think he said? "You want to be friends with your competitors "but fight hard against them all day, "go drinking with them at night." >> Right, fight like crazy during the day, right. So, that was sort of the setup, and again, I thought Lynn Lucas did a very good job. He's, I guess in one respect he's an easy interview 'cause he's such a- we interview these dynamic figures, they just sort of talk and they're good. But she kept the conversation going and asked some good questions and wasn't intimidated, which you can be sometimes by those big personalities. So I thought that was all good. And then we turned into- which I was also surprised and appreciative that they put Branson on first. A lot of companies would've held him to the end. >> Stu: Right. >> Said, "Alright, let's get everybody in the room "and we'll force them to listen to our product stuff, "and then we can get the highlight, the headliner." Veritas chose to do it differently. Now, maybe it was a scheduling thing, I don't know. But that was kind of cool. Go right to where the action is. You're not coming here to watch 60 Minutes, you want to see the headline show right away, and that's what they did, so from a content standpoint I was appreciative of that. >> Yeah, absolutely. And then, of course, they brought on David Noy, who we're going to have on in a little while, and went through, really, the updates. So really it's the expansion, Dave, of their software-defined storage, the family of products called InfoScale. Yesterday we talked a bit about the Veritas HyperScale, so that is, they've got the HyperScale for OpenStack, they've got the HyperScale for containers, and then filling out the product line is the Veritas Access, which is really their scale-out NAS solution, including, they did one of the classic unveils of Veritas Software Company. It was a little odd for me to be like, "Here's an appliance "for Veritas Bezel." >> Here's a box! >> Partnership with Seagate. So they said very clearly, "Look, if you really want it simple, "and you want it to come just from us, "and that's what you'd like, great. "Here's an appliance, trusted supplier, "we've put the whole thing together, "but that's not going to be our primary business, "that's not the main way we want to do things. "We want to offer the software, "and you can choose your hardware piece." Once again, knocking on some of those integrated hardware suppliers with the 70 point margin. And then the last one, one of the bigger announcements of the show, is the Veritas Cloud Storage, which they're calling is object storage with brains. And one thing we want to dig into: those brains, what is that functionality, 'cause object storage from day one always had a little bit more intelligence than the traditional storage. Metadata is usually built in, so where is the artificial intelligence, machine learning, what is that knowledge that's kind of built into it, because I find, Dave, on the consumer side, I'm amazed these days as how much extra metadata and knowledge gets built into things. So, on my phone, I'll start searching for things, and it'll just have things appear. I know you're not fond of the automated assistants, but I've got a couple of them in my house, so I can ask them questions, and they are getting smarter and smarter over time, and they already know everything we're doing anyway. >> You know, I like the automated assistants. We have, well, my kid has an Echo, but what concerns me, Stu, is when I am speaking to those automated assistants about, "Hey, maybe we should take a trip "to this place or that place," and then all of a sudden the next day on my laptop I start to see ads for trips to that place. I start to think about, wow, this is strange. I worry about the privacy of those systems. They're going to, they already know more about me than I know about me. But I want to come back to those three announcements we're going to have David Noy on: HyperScale, Access, and Cloud Object. So some of the things we want to ask that we don't really know is the HyperScale: is it Block, is it File, it's OpenStack specific, but it's general. >> Right, but the two flavors: one's for OpenStack, and of course OpenStack has a number of projects, so I would think you could be able to do Block and File but would definitely love that clarification. And then they have a different one for containers. >> Okay, so I kind of don't understand that, right? 'Cause is it OpenStack containers, or is it Linux containers, or is it- >> Well, containers are always going to be on Linux, and containers can fit with OpenStack, but we've got their Chief Product Officer, and we've got David Noy. >> Dave: So we'll attack some of that. >> So we'll dig into all of those. >> And then, the Access piece, you know, after the apocalypse, there are going to be three things left in this world: cockroaches, mainframes, and Dot Hill RAID arrays. When Seagate was up on stage, Seagate bought this company called Dot Hill, which has been around longer than I have, and so, like you said, that was kind of strange seeing an appliance unveil from the software company. But hey, they need boxes to run on this stuff. It was interesting, too, the engineer Abhijit came out, and they talked about software-defined, and we've been doing software-defined, is what he said, way before the term ever came out. It's true, Veritas was, if not the first, one of the first software-defined storage companies. >> Stu: Oh yeah. >> And the problem back then was there were always scaling issues, there were performance issues, and now, with the advancements in microprocessor, in DRAM, and flash technologies, software-defined has plenty of horsepower underneath it. >> Oh yeah, well, Dave, 15 years ago, the FUD from every storage company was, "You can't trust storage functionality "just on some generic server." Reminds me back, I go back 20 years, it was like, "Oh, you wouldn't run some "mission-critical thing on Windows." It's always, "That's not ready for prime time, "it's not enterprise-grade." And now, of course, everybody's on the software-defined bandwagon. >> Well, and of course when you talk to the hardware companies, and you call them hardware companies, specifically HPE and Dell EMC as examples, and Lenovo, etc. Lenovo not so much, the Chinese sort of embraced hardware. >> And even Hitachi's trying to rebrand themselves; they're very much a hardware company, but they've got software assets. >> So when you worked at EMC, and you know when you sat down and talked to the guys like Brian Gallagher, he would stress, "Oh, all my guys, all my engineers "are software engineers. We're not a hardware company." So there's a nuance there, it's sort of more the delivery and the culture and the ethos, which I think defines the software culture, and of course the gross margins. And then of course the Cloud Object piece; we want to understand what's different from, you know, object storage embeds metadata in the data and obviously is a lower cost sort of option. Think of S3 as the sort of poster child for cloud object storage. So Veritas is an arms dealer that's putting their hat in the ring kind of late, right? There's a lot of object going on out there, but it's not really taking off, other than with the cloud guys. So you got a few object guys around there. Cleversafe got bought out by IBM, Scality's still around doing some stuff with HPE. So really, it hasn't even taken off yet, so maybe the timing's not so bad. >> Absolutely, and love to hear some of the use cases, what their customers are doing. Yeah, Dave, if we have but one critique, saw a lot of partners up on stage but not as many customers. Usually expect a few more customers to be out there. Part of it is they're launching some new products, not talking about very much the products they've had in there. I know in the breakouts there are a lot of customers here, but would have liked to see a few more early customers front and center. >> Well, I think that's the key issue for this company, Stu, is that, we talked about this at the close yesterday, is how do they transition that legacy install base to the new platform. Bill Coleman said, "It's ours to lose." And I think that's right, and so the answer for a company like that in the playbook is clear: go private so you don't have to get exposed to the 90 day shock lock, invest, build out a modern platform. He talked about microservices and modern development platform. And create products that people want, and migrate people over. You're in a position to do that. But you're right, when you talk to the customers here, they're NetBackup customers, that's really what they're doing, and they're here to sort of learn, learn about best practice and see where they're going. NetBackup, I think, 8.1 was announced this week, so people are glomming onto that, but the vast majority of the revenue of this company is from their existing legacy enterprise business. That's a transition that has to take place. Luckily it doesn't have to take place in the public eye from a financial standpoint. So they can have some patient capital and work through it. Alright Stu, lineup today: a lot of product stuff. We got Jason Buffington coming on for getting the analyst perspective. So we'll be here all day. Last word? >> Yeah, and end of the day with Foreigner, it feels like the first time we're here. Veritas feels hot-blooded. We'll keep rolling. >> Alright, luckily we're not seeing double vision. Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back right after this short break. This is theCUBE, we're live from Vertias Vision 2017 in Las Vegas. We'll be right back. (peppy digital music)

>> 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)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas it's The Cube, covering Veritas Vision 2017 brought to you by Veritas. (mid tempo electronic tones) >> Vegas everybody, this is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We're covering Veritas Vision 2017 at The Aria Hotel. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with Stu Miniman. Eric Kessels is here, he's the CTO for Fairbanks, a partner of Veritas' out of the Netherlands and Carlos Carrero is Senior Principle Product Manager at Veritas and we're going to talk OpenStack. Gentlemen, welcome. >> Thank you. >> We love this topic, I mean five years ago Stu, it was the hottest thing in the planet, OpenStack came out, many people including John Furrier called it a Hail Mary against Amazon, which it kind of was and now the narrative around OpenStack is well, it's kind of, nobody is really doing it, blah, blah, blah. But there are definitely pockets of interest. The developer community is still, you know, passionate about it and service providers are you know, still glomming on to OpenStack. So Carlos, give us the update from Veritas' perspective. What's your interest in OpenStack and your role at Veritas? >> Yeah, so the good thing is what Veritas has been doing with OpenStack and also what Veritas is doing with containers solves emerging problems for emerging technologies and one of the key things is, with our partners Fairbanks, all the things we have been doing to validate the product and to bring the product into market. So for us, Fairbanks is one of the perfect partners because what the value that we bring with that. So they are OpenStack experts and he will go through all the content, you know, what they do, but they really understand about OpenStack. They really identify the issues that customers have with OpenStack and how they collaborate with Veritas to build HyperScale as a product to bring those gaps into a solution and deliver those enterprise class services to customers that-- >> I mean it's the ultimate in true private cloud visions too but Eric, you guys use to be VMware experts and decided to move beyond VMware to OpenStack. What was that journey like? >> Yeah right, so that was about I think five years ago where we did a lot of VMware implementations but we, at some stage we wanted to be a different chapter in the market, so a lot of people knew VMware was more a commodity in the IT so, we started to design a Blue Ocean Strategy for our company and then we went looking in the OpenSource market, which Open Source initiative was feasible for us to move forward with. We're knowledgeable about infrastructure, so then we went into OpenStack and we did a technical validation and we looked on what the attention was is the market. So from that stage we transferred completely our company from being a VMware house to a complete OpenSource company, but it took us a while of course because it was not like a switch of a couple months. I think it took us about three years to make that complete transition from being a VMware shop to being a complete OpenSource company. >> Eric, can you talk to us about your customers? Did they come saying "I want OpenStack" or are they coming saying "You know, I need to digitally transform." What's the conversation you're having with them that leads to your solution and what are your customers doing these days? >> So when we decided for OpenStack, at that stage we had already made a decision that we would move forward for the private cloud decision, so we were not focusing on public cloud initiative for OpenStack. So we think that OpenStack was initially built for private cloud environments. So one thing that we saw is that the VMware login for VMware or for Microsoft was pretty big and customers didn't like that anymore and the costs were pretty high for the VMware licensing. So then we started talking with those customers and say, "Okay hey, there's a different kind of way of running "your workloads in a different kind of environment. "Would you be interested in it if we can "cut the cost 50 percent?" for example. And of course that's always a good trigger to get in contact with our customers and what we see is that our customers are more like enterprise customers. They're not big service providers but just companies like a customer that is running a customer site so that they can do customer, a call center for that, so that's really an enterprise-like company and I just want to add that for them, that they decided to move to OpenStack because they needed to expand their infrastructure with like, with 20 nodes and if they did it with OpenStack, it was one-third of the price in doing that, so. >> So more than 50 percent. So are these cloud service providers predominantly, or? Describe the customers. >> Yeah, we have of course customers that are service providers because they have a huge price pressure on providing virtual machines, so they need to cut costs on their infrastructure and I think that OpenStack is really suitable for that because it's flexible, it is open, you can incorporate your management systems into OpenStack very fairly easily. So for those companies, OpenStack was a really good choice of doing that. And we have also other kind of customers that are, like we have packaging company, so they print the packaging for McDonald's, for example and they have developer departments in their company that want have really fast VMs for developing their own software and if you go by more the traditional route, it takes too long before that all is in place, so they want to have some self-service functionality and that's also what OpenStack can provide, providing self-service for their departments so to make it more easy. >> Carlos, this morning your CEO Bill Coleman said that the future is software defined, multi-cloud and HyperScale. I'm sure you're sitting there, well my product is HyperScale. So maybe, you've launched the product HyperScale at the OpenStack show in Boston. We got to talk with you on The Cube there. Bring us up to speed as to that product and how it fits into really the portfolio of you from Veritas. Especially I'm kind of curious, the multi-cloud world as opposed to this is very specifically and on premises, you know, type offer. >> So we talked in Boston. In Boston we launched the 1.0 version, last week we launched the 1.1 version. We're going to launch the next one together with Red Hat. It is one of the key things we're doing together working with them and as Bill mentioned, you know it's multi-cloud and it's software-defined. So if you understand the architecture for HyperScale, for OpenStack, HyperScale for containers, it's really pure software. So what that means is that it's the hardware of your choice, we don't have any locking. As Eric mentioned there's no locking into any specific platform, that's one of the key things. But also the architecture we're building is the perfect thing for your private cloud because in a multi-cloud environment you still have to have something in house, so that's the private cloud. With all the data management capabilities that we have with Veritas, we can move the data however we want. So typically and that's the challenge you have with OpenStack, you get the locking, you get a closed environment, how do you move the data? We've got things already with net backup where we can just move the data from the data plane, move workloads somewhere else, do the recover and allow customers to just one click and recover that workloads wherever they want. So that's a perfect thing in all, the 360 Data Management that we got with Veritas. >> So what do you hear from customers around the function? I mean obviously we hear about the V-tax. People don't want to pay the VMware tax. But Eric, you're talking about when you started the conversations with your customers, what if you could save 50 percent? You must've had conversations with customers who said "Well, but I like the functionality of VMware. "I like V-Motion, I like the recovery capabilities and "they're doing a good job of adding capabilities and stuff." So where are we, CTO perspective, in terms of the functionality of OpenStack private clouds versus sort of where VMware is. >> That's a good question because the reason that we get in contact with Veritas for this kind of functionality is because the customer will start running work loads on their OpenStack environment and in the beginning, they don't worry about backups. They don't worry about quality of service and then they get into production and then they get problems with performance. They kept, "Hey, I need to have a backup, how do I do it? And oh, we don't have a backup. So these kind of gaps that were really not good resolved in OpenStack and these were the gaps that HyperScale filled in. So then on functional comparison with VMware, we took away those concerns and have a real good comparison on the functional level between OpenStack and VMware. >> I think that it was interesting. Last week we launched in the OpenStack Benelux Days. I had a keynote presenting HyperScale and I was talking about quality of service and backup data protection really, so focused on that, right? After that we had a panel with three customers and the moderator asks the three customers, "What is your biggest challenge now "you've got OpenStack, what do you need?" And the first answer was backup and the moderator said, "What do you mean, there is no backup?" And the answer for 400 people in the room, he said "No, you got Freezer but that's a project." Well now we can get it from Veritas. So that's the thing is that you need to move those workloads, you need data protection and they saw the demo where with one click, you can recover your workloads and the third customer mentioned that it is quality of service and that's a customer that Eric has been working already, they are already working on installing a HyperScale and they need quality of service because they have a workload and running on the cloud and they have to make sure they get the performance that they need for some critical workloads. And again it's a solved problem that again all the work, what we did together with Fairbanks validate and what needs they have is coming all together now. >> Eric, one of the knocks on OpenStack has been I want simplicity and OpenStack, it's got all these pieces, how do I put it together? Oh it's all software, wait backup, I didn't even think of that. How does Fairbanks help? What does kind of your stack look like and how much is it you can just roll this out and how much is it The customers actually? Some customers like that flexibility. Service providers, oh I've got my management layer and things like that. What's kind of the typical environment? And give us some of the variables. >> So based on of course the journey that we made and of course there were a good projects and bad projects, that's the learning curve that we also needed to do but we managed to build a best practice for OpenStack, so we now can do an implementation of OpenStack in less than two weeks because we know the components, we know what you should do and what you don't have to do and so we have a good starting point about an environment where you have 11 nodes in total as a good starting point for having a production environment for OpenStack and then with HyperScale included, then you need two add to data nodes additionally because then it's necessary for the copy that you need to have. But a 10 or 11 node configuration is from our perspective a very good starting point where you start with different customers with different sizes of course. >> Do you deploy the OpenStack distribution? Does the customer have preference on that? I know Veritas has a couple of options, so. >> So we have a preference for a canonical distribution because it's very open. I think the good thing from canonical is that the function set that they provide as an OpenSource product is exactly the same if you want to add that with the managed service from canonical to it and I think that the real cool thing about canonical is their way of deploying OpenStack because it leverages a really consistent way of deploying OpenStack. So for us it's very important that when we deploy OpenStack, that the result is the same on every customer's side and that's what the tools from Canonical provide us with. >> So I want to ask you about what you just said about you could do an OpenStack deployment in two weeks. I can hear some cloud guy going, "Oh I'll just go to Amazon and speed it up." So I wonder if you could address that and as well, how does that compare for instance to a VMware installation of a deployment of a private cloud? Those two examples. >> I think that when you look at the private cloud from VMware, I think for the installation it takes about the same time I think. But that's all about the knowledgeability of the partner that's doing the installation. Because that's the journey that we had so they can do the implementation fast and that they can rely on that environment because as you know in OpenStack, in the beginning there was a little bit of doubt about if it was production ready or not. And to take that away, it must be a solid implementation and that they can rely on that and then they can make sure that they can put their really important workloads also on top of OpenStack instead of making a decision, yeah, should I run it on that or not? >> So from your standpoint, it's parity in terms of just deployment ease and functionality, we could debate that all day long. What about the public cloud example? How do you respond to somebody who says "Oh, we'll just spin it up in AWS or Azure." >> Yeah, I think the public cloud is still a good thing. It's not a bad thing to have public cloud because I think in most companies you have a hybrid cloud environment, so you will have firmware and maybe you have a public cloud and a private cloud in one company. But it all depends a little bit on the type of workloads that you're going to run inside of that environment. So I think there are workloads that you should, that you can't run on a public cloud. >> Eric, does Fairbanks get involved with how they manage that, you know, kind of hybrid or multi-cloud environment? We know Carlos wants to jump in with the Veritas answer. >> Yeah, we get the question a lot of course because we know the infrastructure, how it works and as you probably know, there are a lot of cloud orchestration products in the market that can do the multi-cloud management. But to be honest, at this moment there is not one real good product that handles all the clouds correctly and managing all the bits and pieces that you need to have for an infrastructure. So, we're still looking on that to find the one that can do that. >> Yeah, what's on your wish list? What are you looking for from the ecosystem? >> I think it's really good to have, that there is no difference anymore about the type of workloads that you can run on different kind of environments. So that you choose based on functionality, what you are going to run on that. Now you see there's a lot about a focus on virtual machines but actually it all goes about the application because that's the, on the end that's something what needs to be run on that environment and having that manageability to manage the application. I think that's more important than managing the infrastructure underneath it. >> How about jumping in with the multi-cloud commentary? >> Well I think it's the customer's choice and what we do as a company is being able to give them the choice is that we don't care and that's in our DNA really. With that in the past as Mike Farmer explained today is that we didn't care about two apparatuses at the beginning, now we don't care if you are using OpenStack containers and what you want to run those. So that is the way we're building products nowadays with Veritas is that user choice. So we don't care about that anymore. >> All right Carlos, Eric, thanks very much for coming to The Cube, appreciate it. >> Thank you >> All right, you're welcome. >> Okay, keep it right there. My buddy Stu and I will be back with our next guest. We're live from Veritas Vision. Hashtag VtasVision. This is The Cube, be right back. (mid tempo electronic tones)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to the Aria in Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. We're here at Veritas Vision 2017, #VtasVision. Jyothi Swaroop is here. He's the vice president of product and solutions marketing at Veritas. Jyothi, welcome to theCUBE. Good to see you. >> Thanks, Dave. I'm an officially an alum, now? >> A CUBE alum, absolutely! >> Two times! Three more times, we'll give you a little VIP badge, you know, we give you the smoking jacket, all that kind of stuff. >> Five or six times, you'll be doing the interviews. >> I'm going to be following you guys around, then, for the next three events. >> So, good keynote this morning. >> Jyothi: Thank you. >> Meaty. There was a lot going on. Wasn't just high-level concepts, it was a lot of high-level messaging, but then, here's what we've done behind it. >> No, it's actually the opposite. It's a lot of real products that customers are using. The world forgets that Veritas has only been out of Symantec, what, 20 months? Since we got out, we were kind of quiet the first year. That was because we were figuring our strategy out, investing in innovation and engineering, 'cause that's what Carlyle, our board, wants for us to do is invest in innovation and engineering, and build real products. So we took our time, 18 to 20 months to build these products out, and we launched them. And they're catching on like wildfire in the customer base. >> Jyothi, Bill came on and talked about, he made a lot of changes in the company. Focused it on culture, innovation, something he's want. What brought you? You know, a lot of places you could've gone. Why Veritas, why now? >> Well, Bill is one of the reasons, actually. I mean, if you look at his history and what he's done with different companies over the years, and how the journey of IT, as he put it during his keynote, he wants to make that disruption happen again at Veritas. That was one. Two was just the strategy that they had. Veritas has a Switzerland approach to doing business. Look, it's granted that most Fortune 500 or even midmarket customers have some sort of a Cloud project going on. But what intrigued me the most, especially with my background, coming from other larger companies is, Veritas was not looking to tie them down or become a data hoarder, you know what I mean? It's just charge this massive dollar per terabyte and just keep holding them, lock them into a storage or lock them into a cloud technology. But, we were facilitating their journey to whichever cloud they wanted to go. It was refreshing, and I still remember the first interview with Veritas, and they were talking about, "Oh, we want to help move customers' data "into Azure and AWS and Google," and my brain from previous storage vendors is going, "Hang on a minute. "How are you going to make money "if you're just going to move all of this data "to everyone else?" But that's what is right for the customer. >> Okay, so, how are you going to make money? >> Well, it's not just about the destination, right? Cloud's a journey, it's not just a destination. Most customers are asking us, "On average, we adopt three clouds," is what they're telling us. Whether it's public, private, on-prem, on average, they have about three separate clouds. What they say is, "Jyothi, our struggle is to move "an entire virtual business service "from on-prem to the Cloud." And once we've moved it, let's say Cloud A is suddenly expensive or is not working out for them. To get out of that cloud and move it to Cloud B is just so painful. It's going to cost me tons of money, and I lost all of the agility that I was expecting from Cloud A, anyway. If you have products like VRP from Veritas, for example, where we could move an entire cloud business service from Cloud A to Cloud B, and guess what. We can move it back onto on-prem on the fly. That's brilliant for the customers. Complete portability. >> Let's see. The portfolio is large. Help us boil it down. How should we think about it at a high level? We only have 20 minutes, so how do we think about that in 15, 20 minutes? >> I'll focus on three tenets. Our 360 data management wheel, if you saw at the keynote, has six tenets. The three tenets I'll focus on today are visibility, portability, and last, but definitely not the least, storage. You want to store it efficiently and cost-effectively. Visibility, most of our customers that are getting on their cloud journey are already in the Cloud, somewhere. They have zero visibility, almost. Like, "What applications should I move into the Cloud? "If I have moved these applications, "are they giving me the right value? "Because I've invested heavily in the Cloud "to move these applications." They don't know. 52% of our customers have dark data. We've surveyed them. All that dark data has now been moved into some cloud. Look, cloud is awesome. We have partnered up with every cloud vendor out there. But if we're not making it easy for customers to identify what is the right data to move to the Cloud, then they lost half the battle even before they moved to the Cloud. That's one. We're giving complete visibility with the Info Map connectors that we just announced earlier on in the keynote. >> That's matching the workload characteristics with the right sort of platform characteristics, is that right? >> Absolutely. You could be a Vmware user, you're only interested in VM-based data that you want to move, and you want role-based access into that data, and you want to protect only that data and back it up into the Cloud. We give you that granularity. It's one thing to provide visibility. It's quite another to give them the ability to have policy-driven actions on that data. >> Jyothi, just take us inside the customers for that. Who owns this kind of initiative? The problem in IT, it's very heterogeneous, very siloed. You take that multi-cloud environment, most customers we talk to, if they've got a cloud strategy, the ink's still drying. It's usually because, well, that group needed this, and somebody needed this, and it's very tactical. So, how do I focus on the information? Who drives that kind of need for visibility and manages across all of these environments? >> That's a great question, Stu. I mean, we pondered around the same question for about a year, because we were going both top-down and bottoms-up in the customer's organization, and trying to find where's our sweet spot. What we figured is, it's not a one-strategy thing, especially with the portfolio that we have. 80% of the time, we are talking to the CIOs, we are talking to the CXOs, and we're coming down with their digital transformation strategy or their cloud transformation strategy, they may call it whatever they want. We're coming top-down with our products, because when you talk visibility, a backup admin, he may not jump out of his seat the first thing. "Visibility's not what I care about, "the ease of use of this backup job "is what I care about, day one." But if you talk to the CIO, and I tell him, "I'll give you end-to-end visibility "of your entire infrastructure. "I don't care which cloud you're in." He'll be like, "I'm interested in that, "'cause I may not want to move 40% of this data "that I'm moving to Cloud A today. "I want to keep it back, or just delete it." 'Cause GDPR in Europe gives the citizens the right to delete their data. Doesn't matter which company the data's present in. The citizen can go to that company and say, "You have to delete my data." How will you delete the data if you just don't know where the data is? >> It's in 20 places in 15 different databases. Okay, so that's one. You had said there were three areas that you wanted to explore. >> The second one is, again, all about workload data and application portability. Over the years, we had storage lock-ins. I'm not going to name names, but historically, there are lots of storage vendors that tend to lock customers into a particular type of storage, or to the company, and they just get caught up in that stacked refresh every three years, and you just keep doing that over and over again. We're seeing more and more of cloud lock-in start to happen. You start migrating all of this into one cloud service provider, and you get familiar with the tools and widgets that they give you around that data, and then all of a sudden you realize this is not the right fit, or I'm moving too much data into this place and it's costing me a lot more. I want to not do this anymore, I want to move it to another local service provider, for example. It's going to cost you twice as much as it did just to move the data into the Cloud in the first place. With VRP, Veritas Resiliency Platform, we give our customers literally a few mouse clicks, if you watched the demo onstage. Literally, with a few mouse clicks, you identify the data that you want to move, including your virtual machines and your applications, and you move them as a business service, not just as random data. You move it as an entire business service from Cloud A to Cloud B. >> Jyothi, there's still physics involved in this. There's many reasons why with lock-in, you mentioned, kind of familiarity. But if I have a lot of data, moving it takes a lot of time as well as the money. How do we handle that? >> It goes back to the original talk track here about visibility. If you give the customer the right amount of visibility, they know exactly what to move. If the customer has 80 petabytes of data in their infrastructure, they don't have to move all 80 petabytes of it, if we are able to tell them, "These are the 10 petabytes that you need to move, "based on what Information Map is telling you." They'll only move those 10 petabytes, so the workload comes down drastically, because they're able to visualize what they need to move. >> Stu: Third piece of storage? >> Third piece of storage. A lot of people don't know this, but Veritas was the first vendor that launched the software to find storage solution. Back in the VOS days, Veritas, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems, we had the first file system that would be this paper over rocks, if you will, that was just a software layer. It would work with literally SAN/DAS, anything that's out there in the market, it would just be that file system that would work. And we've kept that DNA in our engineering team. Like, for example, Abhijit, who leads up our engineering, he wrote the first cluster file system. We are extending that beyond just a file system. We're going file, block, and object, just as any other storage vendor would. We are certifying on various commodity hardware, so the customers can choose the hardware of their choice. And not just that. The one thing we're doing very differently, though, is embedding intelligence close to the metadata. The reason we can do that is, unlike some of the classic storage vendors, we wrote the storage ground-up. We wrote the code ground-up. We could extract, if you look at an object, it has object data and metadata. So, metadata standard, it's about this long, right? It's got all these characters in it. It's hard to make sense of it unless you buy another tool to read that object and digest it for the customer. But what if you embed intelligence next to the metadata, so storage is not dumb anymore? It's intelligent, so you avoid the number of layers before you actually get to a BI product. I'll just give you a quick example in healthcare. We're all wearing Apple Watches and FitBits. The data is getting streamed into some object store, whether it's in the Cloud or on-prem. Billions of objects are getting stored even right now, with all the Apple Watches and FitBits out there. What if the storage could predictively, using machine learning and intelligence, tell you predictively you might be experiencing a stroke right on your watch, because your heartbeats are X and your pulse is Y? Combining all of the data and your history, based on the last month or last three months, I can tell you, "Jyothi, you should probably go see the doctor "or do something about it." So that's predictive, and it can happen at the storage layer. It doesn't have to be this other superficial intelligence layer that you paid millions of dollars for. >> So that analytic capability is really a feature of your platform, right? I mean, others, Stu, have tried it, and they tried to make it the product, and it really isn't a product, it's a byproduct. And so, is that something I could buy today? Is that something that's sort of roadmap, or, what's the reaction been from customers? >> The reaction has been great, both customers and analysts have just loved where we're going with this. Obviously, we have two products that are on the truck today, which are InfoScale and Access. InfoScale is a block-based product and Access is a file-based product. We also have HyperScale, which was designed specifically for modern workloads, containers, and OpenStack. That has its own roadmap. You know how OpenStack and containers work. We have to think like a developer for those products. Those are the products that are on the truck today. What you'll see announced tomorrow, I hope I'm not giving away too much, because Mike already announced it, is Veritas Cloud Storage. That's going to be announced tomorrow, and we're going to go deep into that. Veritas Cloud Storage will be this on-prem, object-based storage which will eventually become a platform that will also support file and block. It's just one single, software-defined, highly-intelligent storage system for all use cases. Throw whatever data you want at it. >> And the line on Veritas, the billboards, no hardware agenda. Ironic where that came from. Sometimes you'll announce appliances. What is that all about, and when do you decide to do that? >> Great question. You know, it's all about choice. It's the cliched thing to say, I know, but Veritas, most people don't know this, has a heavy channel revenue element to what we do. We love our partners and channel. Now, if you go to the channel that's catering to midmarket customers, or SMBs, they just want the easy button to storage. Their agility, I don't have five people sitting around trying to piece all of this together with your software and Seagate's hardware and whatever else, and piece this together. I just want a box, a pizza box that I can put in my infrastructure, turn it on, and it just works, and I call Veritas if something goes wrong. I don't call three different people. This is for those people. Those customers that just want the easy button to storage or easy button to back up. >> To follow up on the flip side, when you're only selling software, the knock on software of course is, I want it to be fast, I want it to be simple, I need to be agile. How come Veritas can deliver these kinds of solutions and not be behind all the people that have all the hardware and it's all fully baked-in to start with? >> Well, that's because we've written these from the ground up. When you write software code from the ground up, I mean, I'm an engineer, and I know how hard it is to take a piece of legacy code that's baked in for 10, 20 years. It's almost like adding lipstick, right? It just doesn't work, especially in today's cloud-first world, where people are in the DevOps situation, where apps are being delivered in five, 10, 15 minutes. Every day, my app almost gets updated on the phone every day? That just doesn't work. We wrote these systems from the ground up to be able to easily be placed onto any hardware possible. Now, again, I won't mention the vendor, but in my previous lives, there were a lot of hardware boxes and the software was written specifically for those hardware configurations. When they tried to software-define it forcefully, it became a huge challenge, 'cause it was never designed to do that. Whereas at Veritas, we write the software layer first. We test it on multiple hardware systems, and we keep fine-tuning it. Our ideal situation is to sell the software, and if the customer wants the hardware, we'll ship them the box. >> One of the things that struck me in the keynote this morning was what I'll call your compatibility matrix. Whether it was cloud, somebody's data store, that really is your focus, and that is a differentiator, I think. Knocking those down so you can, basically, it's a TAM expansion strategy. >> Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, TAM expansion strategy, as well as helping the customer choose what's best for them. We're not limiting their choices. We're literally saying, we go from the box and dropboxes of the world all the way to Dell EMC, even, with Info Map, for example. We'll cover end-to-end spectrum because we don't have a dollar-per-terabyte or dollar-per-petabyte agenda to store this data within our own cloud situation. >> All right, Jyothi, we got to leave it there. Thanks very much for coming back on theCUBE. It's good to see you again. >> Jyothi: No, it's great to be here. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. We're live from Veritas Vision 2017. This is theCUBE. (fast electronic music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE. Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome back to the Aria in Las Vegas everybody. This is the CUBE, the leader is live tech coverage. And we're here covering Veritas Vision, #VtasVision. I'm Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. Bill Coleman is here. He's the CEO of Veritas. Bill, thanks for coming on the CUBE, good to see you. >> My pleasure, thank you for hosting us. >> Well, you're very welcome. And so, hot off the keynote, how do you feel, how's the show going for you so far? >> Well, I'll tell you what. I feel verit-awesome! >> (laughs) Verit-awesome is the watchword here. Get the crowd talk of Verit-awesome. I love that you started out with a little retrospective from last year. You used the term digital twin. We love that term, and you said it's sort of grown up now. I like to think the digital twins are sort of in their adolescent or even teenage years. The data is sort of out of control. We're not hearing today a message of legacy backup. We're hearing a vision of the future. Talk about that and what that vision looks like. >> Our customers obviously need data protection. They need resiliency. They need everything they've needed in the past. But that's not what they're interested in. That's assumed, that has to work. What they're interested in is the power of information. We like to say that our mission is to harness the power of information. And it's what's called digital transformation. Being able to use all that data out on the internet with all of their data, to change how they do business. To change what their products are. To change their supply chain. It's all about machine learning, predictive analytics, and the power of information. >> So I started in this business the same year that Veritas was born. And so I saw the ascendancy of Veritas and the many different forms that the company had taken. But I used to use Veritas as an example. You want to be like Veritas, with no hardware agenda. You want to be the glue that brings things together. And I saw in the conversation today a little bit of BEA-like thinking. The binder, if you will. Binding clouds together. My term, you guys didn't use that term, but to us, that's a critical value-add, and it's all around the data. You guys talked about digital business. To us, digital business means data, and it seems like we sort of share that common belief. >> Absolutely. You know, we've called this the information age for 50 years? But it's not been about information, it's been about technology. We finally have the ability to address that information, and do it over the internet, everywhere and everything. That's really what our vision is. You know, at BEA, we saw the internet emerging. And the world had to distribute, and take advantage of all that power across the whole world. And we invented that. But the key was, when I came up with the first concept of BEA in '93, I said, "You know, by the year 2000, "the network is going to be the computer." The network needs an operating system to make it all work. Well the concept here, and the reason that I actually took this job, is looking ahead ten years. Everything's going to be about information. No organization's going to be able to exist without leveraging the power of that information. Because that's the only way they'll bring their customer the value they need. That's the only way they compete, and without it, their business is just going to go down. >> Yeah, Bill, how are customers going to leverage data? You mentioned it's about the information, it's not about the technology. But you know, I look at customers. They've had storage people, they have network people. You know, "Oh, I'm excited about containers." We spent the last 15 years focused on virtualization. Is it Chief Data Officer? Or is it some other structure that customers, how are some of the leading customers that are going to be able to adopt this, how are they changing to be able to leverage that data and information? >> Well first, you have to understand, the technology has been complex, hard to use, hard to manage. As we saw earlier in the keynotes, it's like building a Rube Goldberg device. They had 27 different software products, and 14 different hardware products to sort of work together. Well, that's all disappearing. With cloud and the internet, it's becoming like a utility. You just subscribe to it. So that goes away. Now what you have to do, what we have to do, is we have to give them the tools that they can easily, visually look at that data, determine what's in that data, be maneuvering it, move it around, like in the movie, uh-- >> Stu: Minority Report? >> Minority Report. And literally, the things we talked about today, the demos we showed can lead to that. With machine learning predictive analytics, our biggest customers are already investing billions of dollars to do that. 'Cause they know if they don't jump ahead, their competition's going to do it. It's the power of information. >> So one of the things I might take away today was not only is Veritas hardware agnostic, but in many respects, you're workload agnostic. In other words, what I mean by that is, a lot of the events that Stu and I and the CUBE goes to, the enterprise companies are talking about on prem and that's where their business is, and much of your business, of course, is on prem. But we heard a message today of, "We really don't care where it lives. "We want to be the innovator "to help you get value out of your data "no matter where it lives." Now a lot of people will say that, but you really don't care where it lives. Is that true? >> And we can't. Look at, data's not just in an enterprise's data centers anymore. They're using clouds. We've surveyed our customers. Our average enterprise customer is using three public clouds already. And they have dozens of SASS applications like Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow. Their data's in there too. That's really complex. What we've done is we've take and build the products that run in the cloud, across the cloud, to and from the cloud all by one policy orchestration. So you don't have to think about any of that. You can discover the data, categorize the data, manage the data and analyze the data all from one interface, end to end. >> So the obvious hard question follow-up is that what give you confidence that the cloud guys, once they get that workload, aren't going to just sort of usurp that agenda? What do you have to do to maintain that customer delight? >> Well, the first thing is the cloud, the public cloud providers, are our very close partners. You know, the first month we started this, Bill Voss, who heads storage for AWS, and I worked with him and Sun, came down to us and said, "Look, our customers need backup." You know, snapshots are great, but if somebody deletes a snapshot, it's gone. Your data's gone. How are you going to protect that? How are you going to analyze that data? When we want to partner with you? So we partnered with them. But the other thing he said was, "And if we do it exclusively, "the enterprises aren't going to use us." I had the CIO of one of the top five banks in the world tell me right after I started this, "We've got to be using three clouds simultaneously. "We never want to be stuck in the cloud." So the cloud service providers know that the enterprise customers want and demand that portability. And we become their, we're the premier partner for Amazon, for Microsoft, for Google, and for IBM. >> So, it's relationships. >> Right. >> But it's also innovation. >> Absolutely. >> So talk about where you are with R & D. You're purchased by a private equity company. You might have heard the narrative beforehand. A lot of the old private equity model is to suck all the cash out. Kind of the new private equity model is to invest, grow the valuation of the company. I think that's where I see you guys going. But talk about how you're able to innovate. Talk about the R & D mojo that you guys have. >> You had several questions there. >> Yeah (laughs). >> But let me start with that, with the last one. When we carved this company out 19 months ago, it became apparent that we weren't a real player in the cloud. We weren't in some of the more modern workloads. And we had to change rapidly. So, we created a strategy that led to this whole 360 data management integrated platform, software-defined storage. Integrating it with a restful API interface. And then in one year, we built seven new products from scratch that operate in the cloud, on prem, or across cloud. Automated that entire thing. We literally took the startup mentality. Now I've been a startup guy most of my life. I spent the last five and a half years before this funding early-stage startups, and the thing is being agile, and moving fast. We can move faster than anyone around now. We're a big company. Let's take Cloudpoint. We just introduced our Cloud Snapshot. That was a thought in somebody's eye in February. We defined what we needed to do, working with our customers. We put together the team. We built a micro-service end to end archistructure, and we shipped it, supporting the major, all the major cloud snapshot capability in five months, end to end. Totally new product. Now that is a startup mentality. >> Yeah, Bill, can you explain to us a little bit some of the internal plumbing of how you've managed that. On the one hand, Veritas, trusted company, strong engineering culture, product like NetBackup, you know. 15 years, leader in it's space, versus brand new stuff, whole new spaces. What staying the same, what's changing? How do you manage some of those transitions? Because you know, typical company, it's like, "We've got 7500 employees." It's like, "Well, I've got revenue streams "and product lines that I know how to do "and can keep chugging, but I've got the new stuff too." So how do you manage that internally? >> I've have a very simple philosophy of what it takes to lead a major company. You got to have a direction to go in, you have to draw higher-grade people, and you have to organize around the first two. But the key is where are you going? Where's the puck going to be in five to 10 years? And I call that the three V's. WHat's the vision of where the market's going to be? And number two, what's the value that brings to customer? The value that will justify their switching costs. And the third is, what are the values that you build your company on, that customers and partners will be able to trust and count on. So, when you start with that, we created the vision. It has to be a compelling and urgent vision. Ten years from now, all of our products are going to be obsolete. They're going to mostly be obsolete in five years. All of our traditional products. It's all going to be a microservice. Change on the fly, customers never have to upgrade kind of environment, right? There's an urgency there. And customers want to transform. There's an urgency there. The key is, based on your values, you have to develop a culture that embodies the norms to execute your strategy. And then you keep those things and balances. The cultural change has been the most profound and the most important thing we've done in this company. And this company now has a startup, win-in-the-marketplace, customer-first culture. >> So you laid out the vision. In terms of the value to customers you said, when you talk to your CIO customers and other customers, three things came out. Cut costs, deal with governance and compliance, and then help us with the digital transformation. Help us become a digital business, essentially. >> Yeah. >> So those two are pretty clear. Talk about the values that you espouse. What are they? >> So, when you start with values have to be built around what you're providing to a customer. And there's sort of three aspects of that. I'm going to give them the best possible products. I'm going to give them the lowers possible price, or I'm going to give them the best possible service that they can count on. I'm asking our customers to bet their future. So it has to be the third. So it starts with, we produce customer value, right? Then the next aspect of it is, they have to believe that what you're doing is going to be there for them, that it's going to really work. So our next one is, we're going to do that by inventing the future, to bring them the customer value. We're not going to look back and try to add features and functions where we are. We need to help them jump ahead to where they need to be. The third part of that, the pyramid there is customers are going to rely on you. So trust, accountability, ethics, integrity. Those three things come together. Then, we're all about employees, right? So, how do you empower employees to succeed, grow, and be accountable. And you put these values together, and the values will never change. The culture will evolve as strategy moves, and keeping in balance means you're going to have to reorganize on a continual basis around where you are in your strategy. I told this company, we're going to be reorganizing continuously, at least once a year. We're about to do a pretty fundamental reorganization in parts of our company. And this is second time in six months. But you have, you know, you have to be an agile organization. >> Bill, the venture community thinks that this is a hot space. There's a whole number of startups, highly focused. Obviously they're smaller than you, don't have the breadth of products. How do you look at the marketplace? What do you say about that aspect? >> Well, as I said, I spent five and a half years in early-stage venture. >> Yeah. >> We had the highest return fund for our first fund of multiple of any venture capital company. I really love that world. Venture capital is the the center of invention, the center of innovation in this country, in the world. You know, back in the 40s, 50s and 60s, you used to have these big corporate labs. You know, Bell Labs, Sarnoff Labs, et cetera. They don't exist anymore. It's all done by these. So they're inventing the future. Now the difference between the pre-dot-com era and after is, the vast majority of startups are, well, the the vast majority have failed. >> Will fail. (laughs) The vast majority of what's left are acquired, and a few go public, right? So to me, number one, they are the laboratory. They are in the areas that we that are merging, and that we don't necessarily have a core competence, we want to look on how to do that. In BEA, in six years, I did 24 acquisitions to build the company. I never acquired anything that came to us. It was all, here's part of our strategy, we need this competency, we need this time to market. How do we make it work, right? Matter of fact, there was a joke. BEA stood for Built Entirely on Acquisitions. (hosts laugh) >> Well, people used to, Larry Elison himself used to denegrate people for writing checks, not code. And then, of course, he changed the software business with (laughs) some big checks. Well, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the team. So when you took over here at Veritas, you mentioned off camera, you started with the team. How did you go about that? Maybe describe, add some color to the team. >> You know, like I said, one of the three pillars of my management is hire great people. And if you're going to transform a company, if you're going to do a turnaround, it has to start with the leadership team. Period, you can't start anywhere else. But you have to have a leadership team that shares the vision, shares the drive, knows how to work hard together. And when they walk in that room, there's not one thought about my organization or my career, or my compensation. Because they all know, if we make this work, all the rest can take care of itself. Now, when you're doing these sort of things, there are certain times in certain organizations, that people's skills are optimal. You know, the group that was managing this as part of Semantec, they weren't necessarily the best people to manage it as a change in culture, change in strategy. So I had to go out, and I brought in a couple of folks that I've worked with before. We brought in some real amazing people. Mike Palmer is just unbelievable at all dimensions of product development. Scott Genereux, he knows sales back, forward. He knows every customer out there by name, and he knows how to really motivate a sales force. Well, every member of my leadership team except Todd Hauschildt, the CIO, has come in with the same vision, the same, and of course that works down the organization as you're building. And that's how you change the culture. With that, here's the vision of where we're going. Here's the values, what we are going to do. This is how we're going to lead it. >> So major objectives. Obviously you want to keep moving fast. >> I presume you're going to, >> Yeah. >> You're reorganizing frequently to support that. But what are the main objectives that we should be looking for as outside observers over the next six, nine, 12, 18 months? We are changing the agenda of the information management industry. The first place is, for digital transformation, corporations have to switch. They have to get off what they're doing today ultimately and go to something new. And in an enterprise, that can only be one platform. You can't have two platforms deleting, moving data asynchronously. So, its going to be a major transformation. Now that has to be a platform. We've put the stake in the ground. We have that platform. Now, this is our battle to lose, because the incumbents in a transformation get to win if they're good enough. You know, in the disruption, only a startup can win. That's how I won at BEA, how we won at Sun. But this isn't disruption. Nobody's going to throw away all their data centers and jump into somebody before who said, "Oh, I've managed 100 terabytes. "Give me your 50 pedabytes." (Dave laughs) You know? And no customer is going to trust them. So this is our battle to win. We're changing the entire agenda with 360 data management. What we, our number one challenge is, we have to change the positioning in our own customers' minds, because they know us as the 30 years of that legacy, backup, recovery and archiving company. And it's really working. But that's number one. That's my number one objective. 'Cause the rest will take care of itself. >> And as a private company, do you feel like you're in a more advantageous position to do that, and why? >> Well, I don't think I could do this as other than a private company. Because it changes the economics dramatically. Also, at the same time, we're switching from mostly licensed revenue, to mostly rateable avenues, we move to subscription. In a public company, that's a, "Oh, our revenue's going to go down for awhile, "and so is our profits, but trust me." >> Hang with us. (laughs) >> Yeah, hang with us. There are companies like adobe that did that flawlessly, but it's not an easy thing to do. >> Yeah, it's not easy. >> And I'll tell you, I have the best partner in the world. When I, when we started this whole carveout, and I figured out, "Whoa, we don't have the right products. "We got to build this whole thing." I went to Carlisle with the strategy and the vision of what we needed to do. And I said, "Look, because pricing pressure is so high, "We're not going to be able to grow based on your plan." How you invested. "But if you want me to do that, "I can do it, and you need to invest this much more. "But I recommend that we invest as fast as we can "to get to digital transformation." They chose the third. They chose to, we're spending 99 million more dollars in R & D and go-to-market this year than was in the original plan. I wouldn't be able to do that in the public markets. >> Yeah. >> You know? But they are the perfect partner. They build for growth. They stay in two to four years after an IPO. Their return is based on multiples of growth, and that's what, so our goals are totally aligned, and aligned with what the customers are going to need. >> Bill, great story, I know you're super busy. A lot of customers to meet. So thanks very much for taking time out and joining us on the CUBE. >> Bill: This has been a pleasure. Thank you, >> You're welcome. >> Bill: you got me all stimulated. >> All right, good deal. All right, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest. This is the CUBE. We're live from Veritas Vision 2017. We'll be right back. (electronic rhythmic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Dave: We're here at Veritas Vision, #VtasVision, The Truth in Information. This is a company that was founded in 1983 and has gone through a very interesting history, acquired by Symantec for around 15 or 16 billion dollars and then spun back out and purchased by a private equity Carlyle Group in 2005 for about 7 billion net of cash; it's about a two and a half billion dollar company with a really interesting growth plan, one that involves transforming from what many consider to be a legacy backup company into a multi cloud, hyperscale, data protection, value of information organization. My name is Dave Valente and I'm here with Stu Miniman. Stu! Good to see you. >> Stu: Great to be here with you, Dave. It's interesting, yeah, Veritas Company, I've known for, I don't know, gosh, about 20 years and they kind of went under the radar a little bit, under the Symantec piece and now back at it, but you know gosh, felt like a time warp hearing about like Netbackup, you know? A product that you know well, entrenched in the market, has lots of customers, so you know, in talking to the people here, people on board Veritas, some, you know, very veteran to the company, a lot of new faces though, and you know, they say it's energy, innovation, bringing as Bill Coleman who we're going to have on shortly, it's about the software-defined, multi cloud, hyperscale word so you know, A for hitting all the buzzwords and excited to, in the next two days, to kind of dig in and see where the reality is. >> Dave: Yeah, and you know, Stu, you know me, Stu. I like to look at the structure and the organizational structure and the market caps and things like that, but I always felt like, you know Veritas kind of disappeared under Symantec's governance and now, it is breaking out. I love the new private equity play, I want to hear from Bill Coleman about that, what the relationship is with Carlyle, you know it used to be that private equity would come in and they would just suck all the cash out of a company, I mean the classic example was ZA, right? They would maybe do some acquiring companies, they would maybe buy cashflow positive companies, take on more debt, suck all of the cash out and leave the carcass. That's not the new private equity way. We see that with Riverbed, we see that with Infor, VMC, and many, many others have said, you know what, the public markets aren't going to give us the love that we need, we're going to go private, we're going to get a deal on the company, we're going to invest in that company, invest in R&D, build the asset value of that company, maybe even in some cases do acquisitions, grow it, and then maybe do another exit, and that is a great way, a better way in fact, for these private equity firms to really cash in and I think Veritas is an interesting asset from that regard. >> Stu: Yeah, absolutely, I think back, you know, Dave, when I worked at EMC, you know Veritas was one of those competitors that EMC was like, we got to keep an eye on them. Veritas would put out, you know, billboards and have people running around in shirts that said No Hardware Agenda. One of the reasons I think that Veritas also disappeared a little bit under Symantec, is while they were great for lots of environments, they didn't really hit hard that wave of virtualization. Interesting thing is that, you know, EMC bought VMware, everybody knows, but the company that almost bought VMware was Symantec, and lots of us say, what if? What if Symantec had bought Vmware, would they, as a software company, really kind of squash that, you know, could Veritas have then really, integrated very deep here, and now as, Dave, you and I were at the Veem show earlier this year, and they said Veem and VREN, you know, the tenures of virtualization, and now hopping on multi cloud, well, you know, a lot of that message I hear from companies like Veem, companies like NetApp, you know, software-based storage companies, if you're not living in that multi cloud world, you know, what is your future, so. >> Dave: Well, to your point. >> Stu: Microsoft and Google, Amazon, and how those all fit. >> Dave: To your point, with no hardware agenda, Veritas was always viewed as the company with that sort of open software glue to bring together the data management pieces, and as I said, it sort of got lost over the last several years under Symantec. When you hear the keynotes this morning, you hear a story of information, information value, leveraging that information, information governance, a lot of talk about GDPR, obviously a lot of talk about backup, multi cloud, really an entirely new vision from the brand that has frankly become Veritas over the last decade, and new management really trying to affect that brand and send a message to customers that we hear you, that we're self-deprecating, talking about their UX not being what it should be, listening to customers, and putting forth the vision around not just the backup, but data management, now, that's always been the Holy Grail. Can you use that data protection backup corpus of data to really leverage that, to turn information into an asset, that's something that we're going to be unpacking all week with executives, partners, customers, analysts and the like. Last thought before we get to our next guest. >> Stu: Yeah, Dave, absolutely, you know, a bunch of new products are out there, it's that balance of how do they build off of their brand, all of their customer adoption, and now they have a lot of new things going on, so how do they fit in that environment, how do they differentiate, because everyone's trying to partner with the mega clouds, and it's not just the big three that we talk about. IBM and Oracle are two big partners that Veritas is talking about here, and something like hyperconverged infrastructure, Veritas has a play there. They came out with an object story, you know, you're asking me like wait, is this an array, or is it, well no, it's Veritas, it's software, it's always going to be software. Joseph Skorupa who was giving one of the super sessions, we're going to have him on to say your infrastructure does not differentiate you, it is your data, and that is what they want to highlight to the top. I think a message that we in general agree with, and looking forward to digging into it. >> Dave: Okay, so we'll be here for the next two days and what we like to do in theCUBE is what we hear in the messaging, and then we like to test that messaging, poke at it a little bit with the executives, talk to the customers about it, see how well it aligns, and then opine on where we think this is going, but if you were at Vmworld, you knew that data protection was the hottest category, it's an exploding area, a lot of dynamism, because it's all about the data, so we'll be talking about that, digital business. Keep right there everybody, this is theCUBE. Veritas Vision, #VtasVision. We'll be right back with our next guest, right after this short break. (electronic music)