from our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto California this is a cute conversation hi everybody welcome to the cubes Palo Alto studios my name is Dave Volante and digital transformation is the big buzzword today and everybody's trying to become a digital business what does that mean well digital business means that you're using data in new ways to drive business value but protecting that data has become increasingly important it's not just about backing that data up anymore it's really about managing that data through a full lifecycle and finding new use cases for all those assets that you have ramaa Kalapana is here he is vice president of product management at Dell EMC data protection division Rama great to see you welcome to the cube thank you good to good to see you again so relatively new to Dell EMC talk about your role as a head of product management and what what lured you to Dell EMC absolutely it's been a few months here I run the data protection division for appliances in product management right and one of the things as you know data protection is one of the hot areas and I've been in this space for a while and one of the things I was looking for us to continue to be in this space and there's a lot of innovation happening you know there's almost a billion dollar in private capital the frustration in this space and I was looking for a place where a company is doing a couple of things one is a lot of investment in R&D and as you know with a lot of announcement that's happening we've been investing a lot and secondly innovation right new technologies new areas both from the software and appliances point of view so I was saying up front you know talking about digital business people use the term data capital we were joking a lot we hear that your phrase data is the new oil and we say no data is actually more valuable than oil you can either put oil in your car you can put in your house we can't put them both data you can use in so many different ways so data capital people are becoming more aware of the value of data and then obviously we're gonna talk about protecting it but you guys use that term data capital what does it mean to you we use it a lot in customers actually use it even more often right essentially a lot of the customers and most of the organization in in general they're actually considered themselves like as technology companies and they differentiate among themselves and if it is a retail customer or if it is any other segment with the type of data that they have right and the kind of differentiation they offer is like what value can they derive out of it and how can they differentiate for that data so the data capital is is very important I mean it's it's not about backup anymore right once you have your secondary data customers expect that they want to use that for multiple use cases so that's what the data capital plays a very important role in in many many areas so ever since I've been in the business customers have problems and your job is technology suppliers to solve those problems so talk about why data protection is so difficult from a customer standpoint what are their challenges specifically as it relates to data protection see when I've been talking to customers for many years especially on the data protection context right as you know the complexity of the customer environment is changing quite a bit and it's a very dynamic environment what I mean by that is it's it's then it's whether they want to actually manage the data or protect the data on Prem in the cloud hybrid etc the type of workloads has become pretty complex as well in the sense that it used to be traditional databases and of course the VMware workloads etc now it is all the no sequel my sequel and different type of workloads a a IML workloads so that has become quite complex as well secondly it's also about the data growth and I've seen companies and customers basically with 50 to 80 percent data growth in one year right that's incredible a lot of data and finally it's also about any major events like for example ransomware attacks or any downturn down time that happens so what customers are looking for is a solution that can actually help them with that right like a very a gap solution for cyber recovery type solutions etc in the impact of losing data is is much higher I mean it just seems to get worse and worse if we here right as data becomes more important to our business having whether it's a breach or a loss of data or any outage really it's just more costly than it's ever been I've totally agree I mean that's where the more customers I mean when we talk to customers it's not about the backup admins anymore and that is the users were actually using that database admins we actually talked to see is the security officers especially when we are dealing with some of the ransomware type use cases etc right so that's getting very interesting as we move forward you know your bromide back up is one thing recovery is is everything and now recovery it has a much much wider meaning you're recovering from a lot of different places is there's a lot more complexity in sort of the data stores you know the edge is starting to become more prominent people are using the term data management more often and data management can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people the database people have one view of what data management is but what is data management - - Dell EMC and in what is the shift going on from the data protection to data management it's I'm glad you asked that because the market is already shifted in that direction right you should be data protection is an insurance copy you should be able to restore it and you should be good that right but customers actually are looking for they already are protecting the data I mean it's a secondary copy they expect that they use that copy for multiple use cases I've seen a lot of customers you know it's been spinning up a copy for devtest use cases whether it's on Prem or in the cloud for dr use cases so you can actually reduce the infrastructure cost and running analytics around on it search and providing you know insights within the data set if you go right so tons of use cases so that is the shift that we are seeing and especially here del e MC we are investing a quite a bit on the data management part of it and new technologies play a critical role in there with a IML use cases I have to use cases blockchain use case and so on so forth right so that shift has already happened to me remember - it's about leveraging that that asset I mean you talked about analytics before we you know you talk about ransomware you can use analytics to identify anomalous behavior I mean even air gaps people can get through them so you're not you're never safe and so you need to be vigilant and and and being able to apply these data management techniques becomes increasingly important for digital businesses absolutely we actually look for especially from enterprise customers we look for a few attributes right for data management which are primarily scale performance reliability and a whole bunch of use cases from a usability point of view cloud use cases and so on so forth well let's let's dig into that a little bit so what are the important aspects and attributes of a data management solution from Delhi MCS point of view see for example if you look at performance right we have actually built in flash within our dispatched appliance for catering use case to the use cases like instant access instant recovery for databases we also support random i/o you know I observe about 40k with a very minimal almost like a 20 millisecond latency etc right so performance is key secondly scale right customers are looking for scale for example within the appliances portfolio customers can start small and they can actually replace the controller grow from you know a six series domain appliance to all the way to nine series scale up to a petabyte and if you have d dupe of say 50 to one that's almost like a 50 petabyte of data in active tier we actually support two x in cloud which means that it's 150 petabyte of data that's scale right and and the third part is the reliability part right we use a very robust architecture dia based data invulnerability architecture that actually is very important for customers because that this is the last resort for them there's the copy as part of data protection right and customers rely on Dell EMC for that and finally some of the capabilities as I mentioned right cloud use cases we support multi cloud and multi cloud is very important for customers now multiple use cases and then usability we track some of the metrics like from box to backup that's important we look at some of the manageability upgrade ability and serviceability use cases very critical so those are kind of the key attributes I would highlight in terms of what we do and what we focus on and pretty much aligned with what customers are looking for so talk a little bit more about the product portfolio daily MC has always been on a cadence of product people buy product I like that you know Rd turns into product and it generates revenue solves customer problems how should we think about the the portfolio how its evolving so as I said earlier right what was intriguing really interesting for me is the investment they're putting in R&D right and from a portfolio point of view especially for appliances we have the whole nine Series and the six series for the high-end deer domain right as a target appliance we have the of course the the three series and for the low end and we have the mid market as well so we segment it as your target appliance and then we have the integrated appliance and as you might have actually talked to a bunch of my colleagues last year we announced a DB 4400 primarily on the mid market lower lower end of it right and then we also have the eighth season five series for the higher end so overall we have from a portfolio point of view we have the integrated appliance we have the target appliance in the PBA market and we have the data friction suite from a software point of view where all of our multiple use cases that we cater to for customers all right so we've talked about some of the challenges the customers are facing you know kind of why it's so difficult some of the trends and in data protection the portfolio what the customers view as success how do they measure success what are the outcomes that you're trying to achieve with customers see from customers if customer I mean we are successful if customers are successful right and primarily what we are looking for and from we've heard from customers is that we provide solution that will help with lowering the TCO right and what they do with that is essentially invest in new technologies like you know data in data science AI ml IOT blockchain as I talked about right apps we've seen customers take that dollar and invest in their business and that's how they can actually be successful right and finally customers are also looking for one solution that can actually cater to many needs it's not just your data protection but be able to use the secondary data to you know solve many of these use cases whether it's your dr or dev test and so on and so forth I mean that's to me a really an important point that you're making is it's not just about okay I'm gonna do a backup your one myopic to the use case I can get more asset leveraged again if we talk about the analytics before I think that's a key key part of it last question Dell technology's world is coming up into April early May this is our tenth year were doing the cube the first cube we ever did was at the predecessor of Dell technologies world of EMC world 2010 we're excited the cube will be there again typically one of our biggest shows of the year what can you tell us what to expect some of you some of the innovations you're talking about show a little leg DTW I'll talk about this gonna be a lot of exciting news both from the appliances and software side just have to wait to hear it it's just one month away and we are super excited to announce a lot of innovative innovation ramaa thanks very much for coming of the Q thank you Dave you're very welcome all right thanks for watching everybody this is Dave vallarte and the cube from our Palo Alto office we'll see you next time [Music] you [Music]