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Lynne Doherty, Sumo Logic | AWS re:Invent 2022


 

>>Hey everyone, welcome back. It's the Cube live in Las Vegas. We've been here since Monday covering the event wall to coverage on the cube at AWS Reinvent 22, Lisa Martin here with Dave Ante. Dave, we're hearing consistently north of 50,000 people here. I'm hearing close to 300,000 online. People are back. They are ready to hear from AWS and its ecosystem. Yeah, >>I think 55 is the number I'm hearing. I've been using 50 for 2019, but somebody the other day told me, no, no, it was way more than that. Right, right. Well this feels bigger in >>2019. It does feel bigger. It does feel bigger. And we've had such great conversations as you know, because you've been watching the Cube since Monday night. We're pleased to welcome from Sumo Logic. Lynn Doherty, the president of Worldwide Field Operations. Lynn, welcome to the program. >>Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Talk >>To us about what's going on at Sumo Logic. We cover them. We've been following them for a long time, but what's what's new? >>We have a lot going on at Sumo Logic. What we do is provide solutions for both observability and security. And if you think about the challenges that our customers are facing today, everybody as they're doing this digital transformation is in a situation where the data and the digital exhausts that they have is growing faster than their budgets and especially in what looks like potentially uncertain economic times. And so what we do is enable them to bring that together on a platform so that they can solve both of those problems in a really cost effective way. >>What are some of the things that you're hearing from customers in the field where it relates to Sumo logic and aws? What are they asking for? >>They continue to ask for security and, and I think as everybody goes on that journey of digital transformation and, and I think what's going on now is that there are people who are kind of in wave two of that digital transformation, but security continues to be top of mind. And again, as as our customers are moving into potentially uncertain economic times and they're saying, Hey, I've gotta shore up and, and maybe do smarter things with my budget, cybersecurity is one piece of that that is not falling off the table. That their requirements around security, around audits, around compliance don't go away regardless of what else happens. >>How do you fit in the cloud ecosystem generally? AWS specifically? I think AWS is generally perceived as a more friendly environment for the ecosystem partners. We saw CrowdStrike yesterday, you know, stock got crushed. They had a great quarter, but not as great as they thought it could be. Yeah. And one, some of the analysts were saying, well, it could be Microsoft competition at the low end of the market. Okay. AWS is like the ecosystem partners are really strong in security, lot of places to add value. Where does Sumo Logic >>Fit? Yeah, we are all in with aws. So AWS is our platform of choice. It's the platform that we're built on. It's the only platform that we use. And so we work incredibly closely with aws. In fact, last year we were the first ever AWS ISV partner of the year for as Sumo Logic, which we're not as big as some of the other players, but it just is a testament to the partnership that we have with aws. >>When you're out in the field talking with customers, we talked about some of the challenges there, but where are your customer conversations? You talked about security and cyber as is not falling off the table. In fact, it's, it's rising up the stock, it's a board level conversation. So where are the customer conversations that you're having? Are they, are they at the developer level? Are they higher? Are they at the C-suite? What does that look like? >>Yeah, it's, it's actually at both the developer and the C-suite. And so there's really two motions. The first is around developers and practitioners and people that run security operation centers. And they need tools that are easy to use that integrate in their environment. And so we absolutely work with them as a starting point because if, if they aren't happy with the tools that they have, you know, the customer can't go on that digital transformation, can't have effective application usage. But we also need to talk to C-Suite and that to CIO or a CISO who's really thinking often more broadly about how do we do things as a platform and how do we consolidate some of our tools to rationalize what we're using and really make the most of the budget that we have. And so we come at it from both angles. We call it selling above the line and below the line because both of those are really important people for us to work with. >>Above the line being sort of the business executives, >>Business executives and C-suite executives. And then, but below the line are the actual people who are using the product and using a day to day interacting with the tools. >>So how are those above the line and below the line conversations, you know, different? What, what are the, what are the above the line conversations? What are the sort of keywords that, you know, that resonate? Let's start there. >>Yeah, above the line, there's a lot that's around how do we make the most of the investments that we're making. And so there are no shortage of tools, right? You can look around this AWS floor and see that there are no shortage of tools and software products out there. And so above the line it's how do we make use of the budget that we have and get the most out of the investments we've made and do that in a really smart way. Often thinking about platforms and consolidating tools and, and using the tools and getting full value of what they have below the line. I think it's really how do they have really strong ease of use? How do they get the fastest time to value? Because time to value is really important when you're a practitioner, when you're developing an application, when you're migrating and modernizing an application, having tools that are easy to use and not just give you data but give you insights. And so that's what a conversation with a practitioner for us is, is taking data and turning it into insights that they can use. >>You know, and it seems like we never get rid of stuff in it, but there's a big conversation now when you talk to practitioners, okay, well you got some budget pressures, your sales cycles are elongating. What are you doing about, a lot of 'em are saying, well, we're consolidating and nowhere is that more needed probably than insecurity. So how, how are you seeing that play out in the market? Are you able to take advantage of that as Sumo? >>I think there's the old joke that says there is no ciso. Whoever says, if I just had one more tool, I'd be secure. >>And >>Nobody ever says that it's not one more tool. It's having effective tools and having tools that integrate. And so when I think of Sumo Logic in that space, it's number one, we really integrate with so many different tools out there that give, again, not just security information, but security insights. And so that becomes a really important part of the conversation. What, when you talk about tool consolidation, that's absolutely, I think something that has been a journey that a lot of our customers have been on and probably will be on for the foreseeable future. And so that's a place that we can really help because we have a platform that you can leverage our tool on the DevOps side and on the security side. And that's a conversation that we have a lot with our customers. Are >>You helping bridge those two, the security folks, the dev folks? Cause we talk about Shift left and CISO being involved now. Is Sumo Logic helping from a cultural perspective to bridge those two? >>Yeah, well I think it's a really good point that you make. It's, there's part of it that's a technology challenge and then there's part of it that's a cultural challenge and an organization silo challenge that happens. And so it is something that we try to bring our customers together and often start in one area of the business and help move into other areas and bring them together. It, it also comes down to that data growing faster than budgets and customers can no longer afford to keep multiple copies of the same data, the same metrics, and all of that digital exhaust that comes as they move to the cloud and modernize their applications. And so we bring that together and help them get the most use out of it. >>There are a lot of, we've been talking all week in the cube about sort of adjacencies to security. We've talking about data protections now becoming an adjacency. You know, you talk about resilience within an organization, everybody was sort of caught off guard, obviously with the pandemic, not as resilient as they could have been. So it seems like the scope of security is really expanding. You know, they always say it's, it's a team sport, okay, it's a pro mine, but it's true. Right? Whereas it used to be that guy's problem. Yeah. What are you seeing in terms of that evolution? >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think the pandemics force some of that faster than was happening, but it's absolutely something that is going on that cybersecurity is now built in from the ground up and I've been in cyber security for years and it's moved from an afterthought or something that comes after the fact, Hey, let's build the application and then we'll worry about security to, it needs to be a secure application from the ground up. And so that is bringing together that dev and SEC ops a lot because it needs to be built in, the security piece needs to be built in from the ground up on the development side. >>Absolutely. The, the threat landscape has changed so much in the last couple of years. Has the fraudsters, bad actors, whatever you wanna call 'em, are getting far more sophisticated. Yeah. So security can't be an afterthought. Can't be a built on. Yeah, it's gotta be integrated, built in from the ground up for organizations to be able to be, as they've said, resilient. We're hearing a lot about resiliency and the importance of it. For any business. >>For any business, it's important for every business. And if you think about how we interact with companies now, our view of a bank isn't the branch, it's the app, our view of office, it's this, right? It's, it's on the phone, it's on digital devices, it's on a website. And so that is your interaction, that is your experience. And so that plays into, is it up, is it running, is it responsive? That application performance piece, but also the security piece of is it secure? Is my data protected? You know, do I have any vulnerability? >>Yeah, you must have, being in field operations, a favorite customer story that you really think defines the value proposition beautifully of Sumo Logic. What story is that? >>Wow, that's a good question. I have a lot of favorite stories. You know, we have customers, for example, gaming customers that maybe aren't able to predict what their usage looks like. And that's something that we really help our customers with is the peaks and valleys. And so we have gaming customers or retail customers that we're able to take their data sources and they may be at one level and go to 10 x in a day without any notice. And we're able to handle that for them. And I think that's something that I'm really proud of is that we don't make that the customer's problem. They're, they're peaks and valleys, they're spikes that may happen seasonally in retail. It's Black Friday sales that are coming up. It's a new game that gets released. It's a new music piece that gets released and they are going to see that, but they don't have to worry about that because of us. And so that really makes me proud that we handle that and take that problem off of their shoulders. I >>See Pokemon on the website, that's a hugely popular >>Game, Pokemon now. Yes. >>Last question for you, we've got about 30 seconds left. If you had a billboard to put up in Denver where you live about Sumo Logic and its impact like an elevator pitch or a phrase that you think really summarizes the impact, what would it >>Say? Yeah, well it's a really good question. I've got it on my shirt. I dunno, it's not for the G-rated, but we fix things faster. Fix shit faster. And so for us that's really, ultimately, it's not just about having information, it's not just about having the data, it's about being able to resolve your problems quickly. And whether that's an application or a security issue, we've gotta be able to fix it faster for our customers and that's what we enable them to do. >>Fix bleep faster. Lynn, it's been a pleasure having you on the program. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Awesome step at Sumo Logic. For our guest and for Dave Ante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube Live from Las Vegas, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

Published Date : Dec 1 2022

SUMMARY :

It's the Cube live in Las Vegas. but somebody the other day told me, no, no, it was way more than that. And we've had such great conversations as you know, Thank you for having me. To us about what's going on at Sumo Logic. And if you think about the challenges that our customers that is not falling off the table. AWS is like the ecosystem partners are really strong in security, lot of places to add And so we work incredibly closely with aws. You talked about security and cyber as is not falling off the table. And so we absolutely work with them as And then, but below the line are the actual people who What are the sort of keywords that, And so above the line it's how do we make use of the budget that we have and What are you doing about, a lot of 'em are saying, I think there's the old joke that says there is no ciso. And so that becomes a really important part of the conversation. Cause we talk about Shift left And so it is something that we try to bring our customers together So it seems like the scope of security is really And so that is bringing together that dev and SEC ops Has the fraudsters, bad actors, whatever you wanna call 'em, And so that is your interaction, the value proposition beautifully of Sumo Logic. And so we have gaming customers or retail customers that we're able to take Game, Pokemon now. or a phrase that you think really summarizes the impact, what would it dunno, it's not for the G-rated, but we fix things faster. the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

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Mark Geene, UiPath & Peter Villeroy, UiPath | UiPath FORWARD IV


 

>>from the bellagio hotel in Las Vegas >>it's the >>cube >>covering Ui >>Path Forward four brought to you >>by Ui Path. >>Welcome back to las Vegas. The cube is live with you. I Path forward four at the bellagio lisa martin with Dave Volonte. We're gonna be talking about you I Path integration suite, we have a couple of guests joining us here. Mark Jeannie is here the GM of Ui Path, formerly the co founder and Ceo of cloud elements and Peter Villeroy also joins us Director of Global I. T. Automation practice at UI Path guys welcome to the program. >>Thanks lisa. Great to hear. >>So Mark, let's go ahead and start with you. The Cloud elements acquisition was done in about the last six months. Talk to us about why you chose to be acquired by Ui Path and where things are today. Some big announcements yesterday. >>Yeah absolutely. So yeah if you go back six months ago um you know we have been in conversations with you I Path for for quite a while and um you know as we were looking at our opportunities as an api integration platform. So cloud elements just to step back a little bit um was a leader in helping companies take a P. I. S integrate applications together and bed that into their into their apps and um you know I Path approached us about the combination of what's happening in the automation world and you know these these have been a society as the marine Fleming from I. D. C. Mentioned this morning integration and DARPA have been separate swim lanes and what we saw and what you I. Path approaches with was ability to combine these together and really be the first company to take and take ui automation and seamlessly connected together with A. P. I. Automation or api integration >>Peter What's been some of the feedback? We know you guys are more than 9000 customers strong now we've had a whole bunch of amount yesterday and today. What's been the feedback so far on the cloud elements acquisition? So >>there's a huge amount of interest. We've had very positive feedback on that lisa the combination of Ui driven automation and A. P. I. Uh Native Integrations is is key especially to the I. T. Leadership that I work with. Um some of whom have traditionally compartmentalized you ipads platform in the Ui space and legitimately think about their own internal processes as being having very little to do with the user interface right. And so combining Ui driven automation together with uh api integration really helps too pick them up where they are and show them the power of that kind of a hyper automation platform that can deliver value in a number of spaces. And you guys ever >>see the movie Blindside? All right. You know what I'm talking about with joe. Theismann gets hit from the blind side and then his career is over and and that's when people realized oh my gosh the left tackle for right handed quarterback is so important and it's subsequent drafts when somebody would pick a left tackle like a good left all the rest went and that's what's happening in in the automation business today. You guys took the lead, you you set the trend. People said wow this is actually going to be a huge market. And then now we're seeing all this gonna occur. And a lot of it from these big software companies who believe every dollar of software should go to them saying hey we can actually profit from this within our own vertical stacks. So what do you make of all the M. And A. That's going on in particular? There was one recently where private equity firm is mashing together a long time R. P. A vendor with a long time integration firm. So it looks like you guys, you know on the right >>side of history in this regard. Your thoughts. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean if you think about automation right you've got to obviously help people do their jobs better. But if you're going to automate a process and a department you needed connect the applications that they use that those people use otherwise you can't accomplish it. And where ap is fit in as is automation and ui automation has become more and more mission critical and it's become bigger and bigger part of enterprise I. T. Wants to get involved. And so enterprise gets involved and what's their stack. It's api based their technology stack is how you connect back is through api so more and more companies are seeing what you I path saw is that if you're gonna automate every process and every department for every person you need to connect to every application that they're using and that's why this is now becoming right. Three companies now just recently have done these types of acquisitions of bringing an integration platform in and combining them together are trying to combine them together. >>All mps are not created equally as we know. Some are sort of half baked lot of them. Many of them don't have decent documentation so there's sort of a spectrum there. How do you, how do you think about prioritizing? How do you think about the landscape? Do you just kind of ignore the stuff that's not well documented and eventually that will take care of itself. How should we think about there have always >>been layers of integration right. Especially working with the ICTy organizations. So you've got our native integrations would make it easy to drag and drop activities and then you've got the A. P. I. Is that we can consume with various activities. That area has really grown through the acquisition of cloud elements and then you've got that third layer where when all else fails, you go on to the user interface and interact with the application like a human does and what you see is that our our interaction with college elements really enables a great enhancement of that lower base level um which is mildly interesting to the lines of business very important. I Yeah, for sure. >>So the reason I asked that question is I was talking to one of your customers this big ASAP customers said I love you ipad. The problem I have is I got so many custom mods and so it's just you know orally documented and I can't I wanna put automation in there but I can't. So to those parts of the tech stack become like the main frame of you know what I mean? And just sort of they live there and they just keep doing their thing but there's so much innovation that pops up around it. How do you how do you see that? >>Well that's part of the agility that comes with the platform like you ipads is that you can interact with the very clean uh swagger documented restful aPI s and you can interact with SCP on their proprietary ages old A. P. I. S. Um Those are things that we've traditionally done decently well, but again through this acquisition we could do that on a grander scale um with bidirectional triggering and all the goodness that you >>solve that problem today that your customer and this is a couple of years ago, you can solve that problem with cloud elements. Is that right? >>Yeah, absolutely. The the ability to integrate too these enterprise platforms like ASAP you need multiple tools to do the job. Right. So ui automation is great but if you've customized ui significantly or other things like that then the A. P. I can be a great structure for it and other cases where um that api provides a resiliency in a in a scale to it that um opens up new processes as well to those corporate systems. Right? So the balance of being able to bring these two worlds together is where you can unlock more because you got >>east west automation >>that's very good overhead and now >>you're going north south with cloud elements is deeper. Right, >>bottom line from the VP of its point of view, the more that can be done from a machine to machine communication the better. So sure. >>What's the opportunity for the existing cloud elements customers to take advantage of here? >>Yeah, absolutely. Um We've continued to support, brought our customers over with us. Uh Part of our customer base has actually been a significant number of software customers. Uh cos S. A. P. S. One of them doc you sign gain site, you know, so household names in the world of software as well as large financial services institutions like US Bank and Capital One and american Express, all of them had that common need where um they wanted to have an api centric approach to being able to connect to customers and partners and leverage our platform to do that. So we will continue to support that extend that. But we see opportunities where again we couldn't automate everything for our customers just threw a PS And uh you know for example one of our major financial services institutions were working with wants to take um and provide a robot for their uh customers and commercial payments to be able to automatically kick off in A. P. I. And so that seamless integration where we can combine that automation with robots leveraging and kicking off a P. I. S automatically takes us further into automating those processes for those >>customers. So you guys six months right. Uh talk about how that integration api integration company better gone smoothly. But what was that like you guys are getting the knack of M and a talk about that, what you learn maybe what you would do differently to even accelerate further, How'd it go? Uh >>That's the best answer from you having been on the >>acquisition side. Um Well we how well it went is six months later, which I think is really unheard of in the technology world, we're introducing our combined offering you I Path integration service that essentially takes what cloud elements built embeds it right into automation. Cloud studio in the Ui Path products. We and uh it's been a global effort. Right? So we had the Ui Path team was based in Hyderabad Denver and Dallas and then we've got um Ui Path engineers working with that cloud elements team that are in Bucharest Bellevue and bangalore and with the miracles of zoom and uh that type of thing, never meeting anyone in person, we were able to integrate the product together and launch it here today >>six months is a fast turnaround time frame was how much of that was accelerated by the, by the fact of the global situation that we're in. >>Yeah, well you know in some respects that that helped right? Because we um um we didn't have to waste time traveling and we could hop on zoom calls instantly. We spent a lot of time even over zoom making sure there was a cultural fit. You I path has a, you know, not only the humble, bold and type of values but it's a very collaborative environment, very open and collaborative environment as Brent can attest to. And that collaboration, I think in that spirit of collaboration really helped us feel welcome and move quickly to pull this together. And also >>the necessity is the mother of innovation right. Uh you ipad traditionally being popular in the CFOs organization were becoming the C I O s best friend and the timing was right to introduce this kind of capability to combine with what we traditionally do well and really move into their picking up like I said the customer where they are and leading them into that fully end to end automation capability and this was integral. So it wasn't time to kick the tires but to get moving >>and my right, there's a governance play here as well because I. T. Is kind of generally responsible for governance if you make it easier for them to whatever governance systems they're using >>governance privacy >>security that now you can just connect. They don't have to rip and replace. Is there an angle there? >>Sure, yeah. So nothing is more important than I. T. Than than control and governments and change management and half of the uh conversations we're having out there on the floor are around that right um uh ensuring that all of the good governance is in place um and we have a lot of the uh integrations and frameworks necessary to help that through your devops pipeline and doing proper ci cd and test automation um and you know introducing that integration layer in addition to what we already have just helps all of that to uh move more smoothly and bring more value to our customers. >>Mark talk to me about some of the feedback from customers that you mentioned, doc Watson. S A P probably I imagine joint customers with you. I path now there you're working together, what's the what's in it for them? >>Yeah, no the feedback has been tremendous. Right, so um api automation is not new to you. I path but customers have been asking for more capability. So one of them is in that governance area that we were just talking about, right, the ability to create connections centrally enable them disable them. Right? You got mission critical corporate applications. You want to be able to make sure that those applications are being controlled and monitored. Right? So that was one aspect. And by bringing this as a cloud based service, we can accomplish that. Um the other area is that this eventing capability, the ability to kick off workflows and processes based on changes to corporate applications, a new employees added in workday. I want to kick off a process to onboard that new employee and that triggered eventing service has been really well received and then um yeah, so that I'd say with the ability to also create new connections more simply was the third big factor. Uh we created a standardized authentication service. So no matter where you are in the UI Path product line, you get a consistent way to create a new connection, whether it's a personal connection by a business user too, you know, google docs or Microsoft office or your C O E R I T. Creating a connection to uh an important corporate system. >>How about the partner? I know you guys had partner day here leading into forward for they must be stoked about this gives you a lever to even add new partners. What was those >>conversations like? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. The partners are excited about those same features but um they're also excited about something in our roadmap which we expect to be previewing early next year and that's a connector builder. So the ability for partners to uh more quickly than ever create their own connectors. That'll work just like first party connectors that we ui Path build and add them into catalogs, share them in the market place. So there's new revenue opportunities, new opportunities for partners to create reusable assets that they can leverage and yeah so um lots of things, lots of work to continue to do, right? It's only been six months and uh but that's that's gonna be a big initiative going forward. >>So integration service as you mentioned, announced at this conference, we know that that's the first step obviously accomplished as we also talked about very quickly in a six month time period. But what does the future hold for api automation and integration service? >>So um one of the key areas just continue to expose the integration service um more broadly in the Ui Path product portfolio. Now that we have this service, more Ui Path products will be able to leverage it. Right? We're starting off with studio and orchestrator but that we can all use and share that common common capability. Um The other is to make access to complex business systems easier. So you think about it right. A uh to get a purchase order from net suite might take five or six api calls to do. Well, a citizen developer doesn't know what those five or six things you have to do. So we'll be creating these business activities or just get me open purchase orders that will work seamlessly in the studio product. And behind the scenes. Well, chain together those 56 aPI calls to make that a simple process. Right? So taking the integration service and making it even more powerful tool for that citizen developer than nontechnical user as well. So that's >>development work you're going to do. >>That's what we're gonna do as well as enable partners to do as well. So it's a key part of our road map over time. Because >>yeah I mean the partner pieces key because when net suite changes how it you're creating that abstraction layer. So but that's value add for the partners. >>Absolutely. And they have that domain expertise, right. They can create assets, leveraging the UI path automation capabilities but also bring their knowledge about A. S. A. P. Or workday and those oracle ebs and those core business systems and then combine that together into assets that enhance integration service that they build and I can I can share with their customers and share with our market >>because the work workday developer is going to know about that well ahead of time. No, >>it's coming and they know better than we do. Right. That's their business. That's what they know really well. >>Nice nice value at opportunity, peter >>One of the things that you iPad has been known for is its being very and I've said this on the program the last two days, that's being a good use case for land and expand. You guys have 70% of revenue that comes from existing customers. Talk to me about the cloud elements acquisition as a facilitator of because you kind of mentioned, you know, we're used to be really in bed with the cfos now we're going to see us and we've heard from a number of your customers where they started in finance and it's now Enterprise White, how is this going to help facilitate that? Even more? >>It really helps, you know, touching on what Mark just mentioned about the citizen developer, right, just as one of many examples, the empowerment of end users to automate things for themselves um is critical to that land and expand um successes that we've been seeing and where from an I. T standpoint, the frustration with the citizen developer is, you know, maybe what they're building isn't so top notch right? It works for themselves. What we can't replicate that, but put making it easy to make api integration part of what they do in studio X is so key to enhancing also the reusability of what's coming out of there. So that c uh C O E S can replicate that across teams are globally within their organization and that's part of land and expand because you may find something that's valuable in one line of business replicates easily into another line of business if the tool set is in place >>pretty powerful model lisa >>it is guys. Thanks so much for joining us today, talking about the club elements acquisition, what you're uh, doing with integration service, What's to come the opportunities in it for both sides and your partners? We appreciate your time. >>Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. I >>appreciate it. Thank you for >>David Want I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cube live in las Vegas at the bellagio Ui Path forward for stick around. We'll be right back. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm mm.

Published Date : Oct 6 2021

SUMMARY :

We're gonna be talking about you I Path integration suite, Great to hear. Talk to us about why you chose to be acquired in the automation world and you know these these have been a society as the marine We know you guys are more than 9000 customers strong now we've had a whole bunch And you guys ever So what do you make of all the M. api so more and more companies are seeing what you I path saw is that if How do you think about the landscape? and interact with the application like a human does and what you see is that our our of the tech stack become like the main frame of you know what I Well that's part of the agility that comes with the platform like you ipads is that you can interact you can solve that problem with cloud elements. So the balance of being able to bring these two worlds together is you're going north south with cloud elements is deeper. bottom line from the VP of its point of view, the more that can be done from a machine to Uh cos S. A. P. S. One of them doc you sign the knack of M and a talk about that, what you learn maybe what you I Path integration service that essentially takes what cloud elements built embeds it by the fact of the global situation that we're in. Yeah, well you know in some respects that that helped right? Uh you ipad and my right, there's a governance play here as well because I. T. Is kind of generally responsible for governance if you make it easier security that now you can just connect. and half of the uh conversations we're having out there on the floor are around that right um Mark talk to me about some of the feedback from customers that you mentioned, doc Watson. So no matter where you are in the UI Path product line, you get a consistent way I know you guys had partner day here leading into forward So the ability for partners to uh more quickly than So integration service as you mentioned, announced at this conference, we know that that's the first step So you think about it right. So it's a key part of So but that's value add for the partners. service that they build and I can I can share with their customers and share with our market because the work workday developer is going to know about that well ahead of time. it's coming and they know better than we do. One of the things that you iPad has been known for is its being very and I've said this on the program the last two days, and that's part of land and expand because you may find something that's valuable in one line of business replicates what you're uh, doing with integration service, What's to come the opportunities in it for both Thank you very much. Thank you for David Want I'm lisa martin.

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Elaine Harvey, AWS | AWS EC2 Day 2021


 

(light music) >> Welcome to this session at the Amazon EC2 15th birthday event. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I'm joined by Elaine Harvey, director and technical advisor at AWS. Elaine, welcome to the program. It's great to see you. >> Thank you, Lisa. I'm really glad to be here. >> So here we are celebrating EC2's 15th birthday, probably back in the day, so many customers and many industries couldn't imagine how they would be using the service. Talk to me about how long you've been involved in EC2 and some of the growth and the maturation of the service that you've seen. >> Yeah, I mean, I joined EC2 about eight years ago and it was big then, but much smaller than it is now. And it's grown in so many directions, both in the scale, the instances that we offer, as well as the types of instances, the various types of hardware effectively that we offer for customers to support their workload. It's just grown in so many dimensions. It's really exciting. >> I see here 80 availability zones. 25 regions, local zones in Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, and nine new locals zones coming just this year. Talk to me a little bit about that. >> So really, what we are trying to do is get compute where customers needed. So we've already had these presences around the world. And with this expansion, we're trying to bring the EC2 offering to customers with much lower latency. And that's why we're doing local zones, regions, availability zones in so many places. So customers can have that compute with low latency to help them interact with their customers. >> I know since its inception, AWS has always been so customer centric, it's always day one there, but prior to joining AWS, as you said, eight years ago, you were involved in a number of startups. One of the things that we consistently hear is how instrumental EC2 has been in reinventing the startup space. What can you tell me about that involvement that it's had? >> Yeah, I mean, the great thing was, I was an EC2 customer before I worked at EC2. So I had been in the startup community for almost 25 years before joining Amazon. And I had been through that life cycle of a startup where you begin, you need some capacity, you need some computers to run your stuff on and eventually you reach a size and you have to go figure out all the hard work. Where am I going to put them? Do I need a data center? What kind of network connectivity do I need? And not only that, you have to invest a lot of money, which startups very rarely have in the early days into buying the equipment you need, just so you could run your business. Do the thing you're really trying to do for your customer. EC2 is a game changer. So I started using EC2 at one of the startups I was at before coming here. Actually I had two prior startups before coming to EC2. And the ability to just get capacity when you needed it, you didn't have to go buy computers. You didn't have to have data center contracts. You just said, I need a hundred of these. And suddenly you had a hundred of the instance you were asking for, completely game changing, especially for a startup where you just don't have that capital to invest. And frankly, you don't want to spend your time dealing with data centers when that's not your business, your business is to serve your customers. >> And I can't imagine the last year and a half, we've seen such acceleration of digital business transformation, how startups and enterprises alike would have fared without having the ability to quickly turn on services like EC2 in this time. >> Yeah, yeah. It was just amazing. During COVID times, we definitely saw that rush of everybody trying to go online companies that had been already starting down that path, going online, scaling more. And suddenly it went from zero to 100 in March and everybody had to go online and it was super exciting to be part of EC2 and be able to enable everybody in the world to do that. >> Incredible amount of acceleration, but also maturation and growth in the whole portfolio of AWS. We've talked about that a number of times on The Cube in the last six or eight months or so, you mentioned nine new availability zones coming in 2021. You've been involved in the regional and the local zone build out. Talk to me about how these regional zones, these availability zones are helping enterprises to run their businesses and applications worldwide with the high availability that their customers are demanding. >> Yeah, yeah. So there's the book the location aspect. So we do need to be worldwide because our customers are worldwide. So we need to be where they need to be. And so that's how we think about the growth of our regions and availability zones and now local zones with lower latency to end customers. There's another aspect to availability zones and regions that is super important for our customers availability, foundationally we treat those as fault zones. So their fault boundaries beyond which customers will not experience faults. So for example, the fundamental way that we think about designing our services isolates faults between regions and between availability zones and customers can use that in their designs such that they'll have a Multi AZ behavior and we contain faults along those boundaries so they can design with that in mind, and their applications can be fault tolerant, relying on those foundational fault domains effectively. >> That's even becoming more and more important as consumers become more and more demanding that services are just available. And you can get anything with the click of a link on your phone. That high availability is really no longer a nice to have what EC2 is delivering, it's table stakes for an organization I can imagine in any industry. >> Absolutely, absolutely. Our customers totally rely on that so that they can serve their customers consistently and reliably. >> It's a tremendous amount of growth Elaine, in the first 15 years, you said you've been with EC2 on this side now working for it for eight years, but had a lot of experience with it before when it was probably in its infancy as a startup customer. What are some of the things that excite you most about the direction in which EC2 is going? >> Yeah, I think we are steadily providing more and more flexibility to our customers. So we are providing them with new instance types to suit their particular workloads. So we're getting more into a variety of offerings that customers can use to achieve the outcomes they want. That's exciting. I think probably the thing that excites me the most though, is the work we're doing around custom silicon. So our Graviton, Inferentia, Trainium chips where we are building custom silicon for a number of reasons. A big factor of that is we are giving our customers the ability to have a much better ROI on compute to cost for their workload. So we're trying to make it more and more cost efficient for our customers to do what they want. The thing that really excites me about it, though, I'll tell you the secret thing that excites me about it is not very well known, but Graviton is not only cost to compute higher efficiency, but it is also power to compute higher efficiency. So it's a greener option. So if a customer for a given workload wanted to reduce their carbon footprint, they can move to Graviton and it consumes substantially less power for the same workload. And that makes me really excited. >> That is exciting and something that I think everybody can wrap their heads around. I was reading something about EC2 and Graviton paving the way for another important initiative, and that's telecommunications, some of the big news, that Dish Network is coming out saying we're going to be building our 5g core network on AWS. A lot of work going on there in telecommunications. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's very exciting. And in line with our overall strategy to get much closer to the end customers, again, to reduce that latency, whether those customers are on a 5g network or on the internet, what we want the ability for our customers to be able to provide compute and their applications wherever their customers are. >> Well Elaine, thank you so much for joining me on the EC2 15th birthday event. A lot of innovation has gone on in the first 15 years. We know what you're excited about and I'm sure, can't even imagine what the next five, 10 or 15 years will hold for EC2, its services and the customers that it delights. We thank you for joining us today. >> Thanks so much, Lisa. >> Elaine Harvey, I Lisa Martin, thanks for watching today's session. (light music)

Published Date : Aug 24 2021

SUMMARY :

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Breaking Analysis: Chaos Creates Cash for Criminals & Cyber Companies


 

from the cube studios in palo alto in boston bringing you data-driven insights from the cube and etr this is breaking analysis with dave vellante the pandemic not only accelerated the shift to digital but also highlighted a rush of cyber criminal sophistication collaboration and chaotic responses by virtually every major company in the planet the solar winds hack exposed supply chain weaknesses and so-called island hopping techniques that are exceedingly difficult to detect moreover the will and aggressiveness of well-organized cyber criminals has elevated to the point where incident responses are now met with counterattacks designed to both punish and extract money from victims via ransomware and other criminal activities the only upshot is the cyber security market remains one of the most enduring and attractive investment sectors for those that can figure out where the market is headed and which firms are best positioned to capitalize hello everyone and welcome to this week's wikibon cube insights powered by etr in this breaking analysis we'll provide our quarterly update of the security industry and share new survey data from etr and thecube community that will help you navigate through the maze of corporate cyber warfare we'll also share our thoughts on the game of 3d chest that octa ceo todd mckinnon is playing against the market now we all know this market is complicated fragmented and fast moving and this next chart says it all it's an interactive graphic from optiv a denver colorado based si that's focused on cyber security they've done some really excellent research and put together this awesome taxonomy and mapped vendor names therein and this helps users navigate the complex security landscape and there are over a dozen major sectors high-level sectors within the security taxonomy in nearly 60 sub-sectors from monitoring vulnerability assessment identity asset management firewalls automation cloud data center sim threat detection and intelligent endpoint network and so on and so on and so on but this is a terrific resource and can help you understand where players fit and help you connect the dots in the space now let's talk about what's going on in the market the dynamics in this crazy mess of a landscape are really confusing sometimes now since the beginning of cyber time we've talked about the increasing sophistication of the adversary and the back and forth escalation between good and evil and unfortunately this trend is unlikely to stop here's some data from carbon black's annual modern bank heist report this is the fourth and of course now vmware's brand highlights the carbon black study since the acquisition and it catalyzed the creation of vmware's cloud security division destructive malware attacks according to the recent study are up 118 percent from last year now one major takeaway from the report is that hackers aren't just conducting wire fraud they are 57 of the bank surveyed saw an increase in wire fraud but the cyber criminals are also targeting non-public information such as future trading strategies this allows the bad guys to front run large block trades and profit it's become very lucrative practice now the prevalence of so-called island hopping is up 38 from already elevated levels this is where a virus enters a company's supply chain via a partner and then often connects with other stealthy malware downstream these techniques are more common where the malware will actually self-form with other infected parts of the supply chain and create actions with different signatures designed to identify and exfiltrate valuable information it's a really complex problem of major concern is that 63 of banking respondents in the study reported that responses to incidents were then met with retaliation designed to intimidate or initiate ransomware attacks to extract a final pound of flesh from the victim notably the study found that 75 percent of csos reported to the cio which many feel is not the right regime the study called for a rethinking of the right cyber regime where the cso has increased responsibility in a direct reporting line to the ceo or perhaps the co with greater exposure to boards of directors so many thanks to vmware and tom kellerman specifically for sharing this information with us this past week great work by your team now some of the themes that we've been talking about for several quarters are shown in the lower half of the chart cloud of course is the big driver thanks to work from home and the pandemic to pandemic and the interesting corollary of course is we see a rapid rethinking of endpoint and identity access management and the concept of zero trust in a recent esg survey two-thirds of respondents said that their use of cloud computing necessitated a change in how they approach identity access management now as shown in the chart from optiv the market remains highly fragmented and m a is of course way up now based on our research it looks like transaction volume has increased more than 40 percent just in the last five months so let's dig into the m a the merger and acquisition trends for just a moment we took a five month snapshot and we were able to count about 80 deals that were completed in that time frame those transactions represented more than 20 billion dollars in value some of the larger ones are highlighted here the biggest of course being the toma bravo taking proof point private for a 12 plus billion dollar price tag the stock went from the low 130s and is trading in the low 170s based on 176 dollar per share offer so there's your arbitrage folks go for it perhaps the more interesting acquisition was auth 0 by octa for 6.5 billion which we're going to talk about more in a moment there's more private equity action we saw as insight bought armis and iot security play and cisco shelled out 730 million dollars for imi mobile which is more of an adjacency to cyber but it's going to go under cisco's security and applications business run by g2 patel but these are just the tip of the iceberg some of the themes that we see connecting the dots of these acquisitions are first sis like accenture atos and wipro are making moves in cyber to go local they're buying secops expertise as i say locally in places like france germany netherlands canada and australia that last mile that belly-to-belly intimate service israel israeli-based startups chalked up five acquired companies in the space over the last five months also financial services firms are getting into the act with goldman and mastercard making moves to own its own part of the stack themselves to combat things like fraud and identity theft and then finally numerous moves to expand markets octa with zero crowdstrike buying a log management company palo alto picking up devops expertise rapid seven shoring up its kubernetes chops tenable expanding beyond insights and going after identity interesting fortinet filling gaps in a multi-cloud offering sale point extending to governance risk and compliance grc zscaler picked up an israeli firm to fill gaps in access control and then vmware buying mesh 7 to secure modern app development and distribution services so tons and tons of activity here okay so let's look at some of the etr data to put the cyber market in context etr uses the concept of market share it's one of the key metrics which is a measure of pervasiveness in the data set so for each sector it calculates the number of respondents for that sector divided by the total to get a sense for how prominent the sector is within the cio and i.t buyer communities okay this chart shows the full etr sector taxonomy with security highlighted across three survey periods april last year january this year in april this year now you wouldn't expect big moves in market share over time so it's relatively stable by sector but the big takeaway comes from observing which sectors are most prominent so you see that red line that dotted line imposed at the sixty percent level you can see there are only six sectors above that line and cyber security is one of them okay so we know that security is important in a large market but this puts it in the context of the other sectors however we know from previous breaking analysis episodes that despite the importance of cyber and the urgency catalyzed by the pandemic budgets unfortunately are not unlimited and spending is bounded it's not an open checkbook for csos as shown in this chart this is a two-dimensional graphic showing market share in the horizontal axis or pervasiveness and net score in the vertical axis net score is etr's measurement of spending velocity and we've superimposed a red line at 40 percent because anything over 40 percent we consider extremely elevated we've filtered and limited the number of sectors to simplify the graphic and you can see in the sectors that we've highlighted only the big four four are above that forty percent line ai containers rpa and cloud they exceed that sort of forty percent magic water line information security you can see that is highlighted and it's respectable but it competes for budget with other important sectors so this of course creates challenges for organization because not only are they strapped for talent as we've reported they like everyone else in it face ongoing budget pressures research firm cybersecurity ventures estimates that in 2021 6 trillion dollars worldwide will be lost on cyber crime conversely research firm canalis pegs security spending somewhere around 60 billion dollars annually idc has it higher around 100 billion so either way we're talking about spending between one to one point six percent annually of how much the bad guys are taking out that's peanuts really when you consider the consequences so let's double click into the cyber landscape a bit and further look at some of the companies here's that same x y graphic with the company's etr captures from respondents in the cyber security sector that's what's shown on the chart here now the usefulness of the red lines is 20 percent on the horizontal indicates the largest presence in the survey and the magic 40 percent line that we talked about earlier shows those firms with the most elevated momentum only microsoft and palo alto exceed both high water marks of course splunk and cisco are prominent horizontally and there are numerous companies to the left of the 20 percent line and many above that 40 percent high water mark on the vertical axis now in the bottom left quadrant that includes many of the legacy names that have been around for a long time and there are dozens of companies that show spending momentum on their platforms i.e above single digits so that picture is like the first one we showed you very very crowded space but so let's filter it a bit and only include companies in the etr survey that had at least a hundred responses so an n of a hundred or greater so it's a little easy to read but still it's kind of crowded when you think about it okay so same graphic and we've superimposed the data that determined the plot position over in the bottom right there so it's net score and shared n including only companies with more than 100 n so what does this data tell us about the market well microsoft is dominant as always it seems in all dimensions but let's focus on that red line for a moment some of the names that we've highlighted over the past two years show very well here first i want to talk about palo alto networks pre-covet as you might recall we highlighted the valuation divergence between palo alto and fortinet and we said fortinet was executing better on its cloud strategy and palo alto was at the time struggling with the transition especially with its go to market and its sales force compensation and really refreshing its portfolio but we told you that we were bullish on palo alto networks at the time because of its track record and the fact that cios consistently told us that they saw palo alto as a thought leader in the space that they wanted to work with they said that palo alto was the gold standard the best especially larger company cisos so that gave us confidence that palo alto a very well-run company was going to get its act together and perform better and palo alto has just done just that as we expected they've done very well and they've been rapidly moving customers to the next generation of platforms and we're very impressed by the company's execution and the stock has generally reflected that now some other names that hit our radar and the etr data a couple of years ago continue to perform well crowdstrike z-scaler sales sail point and cloudflare a cloudflare just reported and beat earnings but was off the stock fell on headwinds for tech overall the big rotation but the company is doing very well and they're growing rapidly and they have momentum as you can see from the etr data and we put that double star around proof point to highlight that it was worthy of fetching 12 and a half billion dollars from private equity firm so nice exit there supporting the continued control consolidation trend that we've predicted in cyber security now let's turn our attention to octa and auth zero this is where it gets interesting and is a clever play for octa we think and we want to drill into it a bit octa is acquiring auth zero for big money why well we think todd mckinnon octa ceo wants to run the table on identity and then continue to expand his tam he has to do that to justify his lofty valuation so octa's ascendancy around identity and single sign sign-on is notable the fragmented pictures that we've shown you they scream out for simplification and trust and that's what octa brings but it competes with some major players most notably microsoft with active directory so look of course microsoft is going to dominate in its massive customer base but the rest of the market that's like jump ball it's wide open and we think mckinnon saw the opportunity to go dominate that sector now octa comes at this from an enterprise perspective bringing top-down trust to the equation and throwing a big blanket over all the discrete sas platforms and unifying employee access octa's timing was perfect it was founded in 2009 just as the massive sasification trend was happening around crm and hr and service management and cloud etc but the one thing that octa didn't have that auth 0 does is serious developer chops while octa was crushing it with its enterprise sales strategy auth 0 was laser focused on developers and building a bottoms up approach to identity by acquiring auth0 octa can dominate both sides of the barbell and then capture the fat middle so yes it's a pricey acquisition but in our view it's a great move by mckinnon now i don't know mckinnon personally but last week i spoke to arun shrestha who's the ceo of security specialist beyond id they're a platinum services partner of octa and there a zero trust expert he worked for octa for a number of years and shared with me a bit about mckinnon's style and think big approach arun said something that caught my attention he said firewalls used to be the perimeter now people are and while that's self-serving to octa and probably beyond id it's true people apps and data are the new perimeter and they're not in one location and that's the point now unfortunately i had lined up an interview with dia jolly who was the chief product officer at octa in a cube alum for this past week knowing that we were running this segment in this episode but she unfortunately fell ill the day of our interview and had to cancel but i want to follow up with her and understand how she's thinking about connecting the dots with auth 0 with devs and enterprises and really test our thesis there this is a really interesting chess match that's going on let's look a little deeper into that identity space this chart here shows some of the major identity players it has some of the leaders in the identity market and there's a breakdown of etr's net score now net score comprises five elements the lime green is we're adding the platform new the forest green is we're spending six percent or more relative to last year the gray is flat send plus or minus flat spend plus or minus five percent the pinkish is spending less and the bright red is where exiting the platform retiring now you subtract the red from the green and that gets you the result for net score which you can see superimposed on the right hand chart at the bottom that first column there the far column is shared in which informs and indicates the number of responses and is a proxy for presence in the market oh look at the top two players in terms of spending momentum now sales sale point is right there but auth 0 combined with octa's distribution channel will extend octa's lead significantly in our view and then there's microsoft now just a caveat this includes all of microsoft's security offerings not just identity but it's there for context and cyber arc as well includes its acquisition of adaptive but also other parts of cyberarks portfolio so you can see some of the other names that are there many of which you'll find in the gartner magic quadrant for identity and as we said we really like this move by octa it combines positive market forces with lead offerings from very well-run companies that have winning dna and passionate people now to further emphasize emphasize what what's happening here take a look at this this chart shows etr data for octa within sale point and cyber arc accounts out of the 230 cyber and sale point customers in the data set there are 81 octa accounts that's a 35 overlap and the good news for octa is that within that base of sale point in cyber arc accounts octa is shown by the net score line that green line has a very elevated spending and momentum and the kicker is if you read the fine print in the right hand column etr correctly points out that while sailpoint and cyberarc have long been partners with octa at the recent octane 21 event octa's big customer event the company announced that it was expanding into privileged access management pam and identity governance hello and welcome to coopetition in the 2020s now our current thinking is that this bodes very well for octa and cyberark and sailpoint well they're going to have to make some counter moves to fend off the onslaught that is coming now let's wrap up with what has become a tradition in our quarterly security updates looking at those two dimensions of net score and market share we're going to see which companies crack the top 10 for both measures within the etr data set we do this every quarter so here on the left we have the top 20 sorted by net score or spending momentum and on the right we sort by shared n so again top 20 which informs shared end and forms the market share metric or presence in the data set that red horizontal lines those two lines on each separate the top 10 from the remaining 10 within those top 20. in our method what we do is we assign four stars to those companies that crack the top ten for both metrics so again you see microsoft palo alto networks octa crowdstrike and fortinet fortinet by the way didn't make it last quarter they've kind of been in and out and on the bubble but you know this company is very strong and doing quite well only the other four did last quarter there was same four last quarter and we give two stars to those companies that make it in both categories within the top 20 but didn't make the top 10. so cisco splunk which has been steadily decelerating from a spending momentum standpoint and z-scaler which is just on the cusp you know we really like z-scaler and the company has great momentum but that's the methodology it is what it is now you can see we kept carbon black on the rightmost chart it's like kind of cut off it's number 21 only because they're just outside looking in on netscore you see them there they're just below on on netscore number 11. and vmware's presence in the market we think that carbon black is really worth paying attention to okay so we're going to close with some summary and final thoughts last quarter we did a deeper dive on the solar winds hack and we think the ramifications are significant it has set the stage for a new era of escalation and adversary sophistication now major change we see is a heightened awareness that when you find intruders you'd better think very carefully about your next moves when someone breaks into your house if the dog barks or if you come down with a baseball bat or other weapon you might think the intruder is going to flee but if the criminal badly wants what you have in your house and it's valuable enough you might find yourself in a bloody knife fight or worse what's happening is intruders come to your company via island hopping or inside or subterfuge or whatever method and they'll live off the land stealthily using your own tools against you so they can you can't find them so easily so instead of injecting new tools in that send off an alert they just use what you already have there that's what's called living off the land they'll steal sensitive data for example positive covid test results when that was really really sensitive obviously still is or other medical data and when you retaliate they will double extort you they'll encrypt your data and hold it for ransom and at the same time threaten to release the sensitive information to crushing your brand in the process so your response must be as stealthy as their intrusion as you marshal your resources and devise an attack plan you face serious headwinds not only is this a complicated situation there's your ongoing and acute talent shortage that you tell us about all the time many companies are mired in technical debt that's an additional challenge and then you've got to balance the running of the business while actually affecting a digital transformation that's very very difficult and it's risky because the more digital you become the more exposed you are so this idea of zero trust people used to call it a buzzword it's now a mandate along with automation because you just can't throw labor at the problem this is all good news for investors as cyber remains a market that's ripe for valuation increases and m a activity especially if you know where to look hopefully we've helped you squint through the maze a little bit okay that's it for now thanks to the community for your comments and insights remember i publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com these episodes they're all available as podcasts all you do is search breaking analysis podcast put in the headphones listen when you're in your car out for your walk or run and you can always connect on twitter at divalante or email me at david.valante at siliconangle.com i appreciate the comments on linkedin and in clubhouse please follow me so you're notified when we start a room and riff on these topics and others and don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data this is dave vellante for the cube insights powered by etr be well and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Published Date : May 8 2021

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and on the bubble but you know this

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Breaking Analysis: Chaos Creates Cash for Criminals & Cyber Companies


 

>> From The Cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from The Cube in ETR. This is "Breaking Analysis" with Dave Vellante >> The pandemic not only accelerated the shift to digital but it also highlighted a rush of cyber criminal sophistication, collaboration, and chaotic responses by virtually every major company in the planet. The SolarWinds hack exposed supply chain weaknesses and so-called island hopping techniques that are exceedingly difficult to detect. Moreover, the will and aggressiveness of well-organized cybercriminals has elevated to the point where incident responses are now met with counter attacks, designed to both punish and extract money from victims via ransomware and other criminal activities. The only upshot is the cybersecurity market remains one of the most enduring and attractive investment sectors for those that can figure out where the market is headed and which firms are best positioned to capitalize. Hello, everyone. And welcome to this week's Wikibon Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this "Breaking Analysis" we'll provide our quarterly update of the security industry, and share new survey data from ETR and the Cube community that will help you navigate through the maze of corporate cyber warfare. We'll also share our thoughts on the game of 3D chess that Okta CEO, Todd McKinnon, is playing against the market. Now, we all know this market is complicated, fragmented and fast moving. And this next chart says it all. It's an interactive graphic from Optiv, a Denver, Colorado-based SI that's focused on cybersecurity. They've done some really excellent research and put together this awesome taxonomy, and it mapped vendor names therein. And this helps users navigate the complex security landscape. And there are over a dozen major sectors, high-level sectors within the security taxonomy and nearly 60 subsectors. From monitoring, vulnerability assessment, identity, asset management, firewalls, automation, cloud, data center, sim, threat detection and intelligent endpoint network, and so on and so on and so on. But this is a terrific resource, and going to help you understand where players fit and help you connect the dots in the space. Now let's talk about what's going on in the market. The dynamics in this crazy mess of a landscape are really confusing sometimes. Now, since the beginning of cyber time, we've talked about the increasing sophistication of the adversary, and the back and forth escalation between good and evil. And unfortunately, this trend is unlikely to stop. Here's some data from Carbon Black's annual modern bank heist report. This is the fourth, and of course now, VMware's brand, highlights the Carbon Black study since the acquisition, and to catalyze the creation of VMware's cloud security division. Destructive malware attacks, according to the recent study are up 118% from last year. Now, one major takeaway from the report is that hackers aren't just conducting wire fraud, they are. 57% of the banks surveyed, saw an increase in wire fraud, but the cybercriminals are also targeting non-public information such as future trading strategies. This allows the bad guys to front-run large block trades and profit. It's become a very lucrative practice. Now the prevalence of so-called island hopping is up 38% from already elevated levels. This is where a virus enters a company supply chain via a partner, and then often connects with other stealthy malware downstream. These techniques are more common where the malware will actually self-form with other infected parts of the supply chain and create actions with different signatures, designed to identify and exfiltrate valuable information. It's a really complex problem. Of major concern is that 63% of banking respondents in the study reported that responses to incidents were then met with retaliation designed to intimidate, or initiate ransomware tax to extract a final pound of flesh from the victim. Notably, the study found that 75% of CISOs reported to the CIO, which many feel is not the right regime. The study called for a rethinking of the right cyber regime where the CISO has increased responsibility and a direct reporting line to the CEO, or perhaps the COO, with greater exposure to boards of directors. So, many thanks to VMware and Tom Kellerman specifically for sharing this information with us this past week. Great work by your team. Now, some of the themes that we've been talking about for several quarters are shown in the lower half of the chart. Cloud, of course is the big driver thanks to work-from-home and to the pandemic. And the interesting corollary of course, is we see a rapid rethinking of end point and identity access management, and the concept of zero trust. In a recent ESG survey, two thirds of respondents said that their use of cloud computing necessitated a change in how they approach identity access management. Now, as shown in the chart from Optiv, the market remains highly fragmented, and M&A is of course, way up. Now, based on our research, it looks like transaction volume has increased more than 40% just in the last five months. So let's dig into the M&A, the merger and acquisition trends for just a moment. We took a five-month snapshot and we were able to count about 80 deals that were completed in that timeframe. Those transactions represented more than $20 billion in value. Some of the larger ones are highlighted here. The biggest of course, being the Thoma Bravo, taking Proofpoint private for a $12 plus billion price tag. The stock went from the low 130s and is trading in the low 170s based on the $176 per share offer. So there's your arbitrage, folks. Go for it. Perhaps the more interesting acquisition was Auth0 by Optiv for 6.5 billion, which we're going to talk about more in a moment. There was more private equity action we saw as Insight bought Armis, an IOT security play, and Cisco shelled out $730 million for IMImobile, which is more of an adjacency to cyber, but it's going to go under Cisco security and applications business run by Jeetu Patel. But these are just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the themes that we see connecting the dots of these acquisitions are first, SIs like Accenture, Atos and Wipro are making moves in cyber to go local. They're buying SecOps expertise, as I say, locally in places like France, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, and Australia, that last mile, that belly to belly intimate service. Israeli-based startups chocked up five acquired companies in the space over the last five months. Also financial services firms are getting into the act with Goldman and MasterCard making moves to own its own part of the stack themselves to combat things like fraud and identity theft. And then finally, numerous moves to expand markets. Okta with Auth0, CrowdStrike buying a log management company, Palo Alto, picking up dev ops expertise, Rapid7 shoring up it's Coobernetti's chops, Tenable expanding beyond Insights and going after identity, interesting. Fortinet filling gaps in a multi-cloud offering. SailPoint extending to governance risk and compliance, GRC. Zscaler picked up an Israeli firm to fill gaps in access control. And then VMware buying Mesh7 to secure modern app development and distribution service. So tons and tons of activity here. Okay, so let's look at some of the ETR data to put the cyber market in context. ETR uses the concept of market share, it's one of the key metrics which is a measure of pervasiveness in the dataset. So for each sector, it calculates the number of respondents for that sector divided by the total to get a sense for how prominent the sector is within the CIO and IT buyer communities. Okay, this chart shows the full ETR sector taxonomy with security highlighted across three survey periods; April last year, January this year, and April this year. Now you wouldn't expect big moves in market share over time. So it's relatively stable by sector, but the big takeaway comes from observing which sectors are most prominent. So you see that red line, that dotted line imposed at the 60% level? You can see there are only six sectors above that line and cyber security is one of them. Okay, so we know that security is important in a large market. But this puts it in the context of the other sectors. However, we know from previous breaking analysis episodes that despite the importance of cyber, and the urgency catalyzed by the pandemic, budgets unfortunately are not unlimited, and spending is bounded. It's not an open checkbook for CSOs as shown in this chart. This is a two-dimensional graphic showing market share in the horizontal axis, or pervasiveness in net score in the vertical axis. Net score is ETR's measurement of spending velocity. And we've superimposed a red line at 40% because anything over 40%, we consider extremely elevated. We've filtered and limited the number of sectors to simplify the graphic. And you can see, in the sectors that we've highlighted, only the big four are above that 40% line; AI, containers, RPA, and cloud. They exceed that sort of 40% magic waterline. Information security, you can see that as highlighted and it's respectable, but it competes for budget with other important sectors. So this is of course creates challenges for organization, because not only are they strapped for talent as we've reported, they like everyone else in IT face ongoing budget pressures. Research firm, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that in 2021, $6 trillion worldwide will be lost on cyber crime. Conversely, research firm, Cannolis peg security spending somewhere around $60 billion annually. IDC has at higher, around $100 billion. So either way, we're talking about spending between 1 to 1.6% annually of how much the bad guys are taking out. That's peanuts really when you consider the consequences. So let's double-click into the cyber landscape a bit and further look at some of the companies. Here's that same X/Y graphic with the companies ETR captures from respondents in the cybersecurity sector. That's what's shown on the chart here. Now, the usefulness of the red lines is 20% on the horizontal indicates the largest presence in the survey, and the magic 40% line that we talked about earlier shows those firms with the most elevated momentum. Only Microsoft and Palo Alto exceed both high watermarks. Of course, Splunk and Cisco are prominent horizontally. And there are numerous companies to the left of the 20% line and many above that 40% high watermark on the vertical axis. Now in the bottom left quadrant, that includes many of the legacy names that have been around for a long time. And there are dozens of companies that show spending momentum on their platforms, i.e above single digits. So that picture is like the first one we showed you, very, very crowded space. But so let's filter it a bit and only include companies in the ETR survey that had at least 100 responses. So an N of 100 or greater. So it was a little easier to read but still it's kind of crowded when you think about it. Okay, so same graphic, and we've superimposed the data that determined the plot position over in the bottom right there. So there's net score and shared in, including only companies with more than 100 N. So what does this data tell us about the market? Well, Microsoft is dominant as always, it seems in all dimensions but let's focus on that red line for a moment. Some of the names that we've highlighted over the past two years show very well here. First, I want to talk about Palo Alto Networks. Pre-COVID as you might recall, we highlighted the valuation divergence between Palo Alto and Fortinet. And we said Fortinet was executing better on its cloud strategy, and Palo Alto was at the time struggling with the transition especially with its go-to-market and its Salesforce compensation, and really refreshing its portfolio. But we told you that we were bullish on Palo Alto Networks at the time because of its track record, and the fact that CIOs consistently told us that they saw Palo Alto as a thought leader in the space that they wanted to work with. They said that Palo Alto was the gold standard, the best, especially larger company CISOs. So that gave us confidence that Palo Alto, a very well-run company was going to get its act together and perform better. And Palo Alto has just done just that. As we expected, they've done very well and rapidly moving customers to the next generation of platforms. And we're very impressed by the company's execution. And the stock has generally reflected that. Now, some other names that hit our radar in the ETR data a couple of years ago, continue to perform well. CrowdStrike, Zscaler, SailPoint, and CloudFlare. Now, CloudFlare just reported and beat earnings but was off, the stock fell on headwinds for tech overall, the big rotation. But the company is doing very well and they're growing rapidly and they have momentum as you can see from the ETR data. Now, we put that double star around Proofpoint to highlight that it was worthy of fetching $12.5 billion from private equity firm. So nice exit there, supporting the continued consolidation trend that we've predicted in cybersecurity. Now let's turn our attention to Okta and Auth0. This is where it gets interesting, and is a clever play for Okta we think, and we want to drill into it a bit. Okta is acquiring Auth0 for big money. Why? Well, we think Todd McKinnon, Okta CEO, wants to run the table on identity and then continue to expand as TAM has to do that, to justify his lofty valuation. So Okta's ascendancy around identity and single sign-on is notable. The fragmented pictures that we've shown you, they scream out for simplification and trust, and that's what Okta brings. But it competes with some major players, most notably Microsoft with active directory. So look, of course, Microsoft is going to dominate in its massive customer base, but the rest of the market, that's like (indistinct) wide open. And we think McKinnon saw the opportunity to go dominate that sector. Now Okta comes at this from an enterprise perspective bringing top-down trust to the equation, and throwing a big blanket over all the discreet SaaS platforms and unifying employee access. Okta's timing was perfect. It was founded in 2009, just as the massive SaaSifiation trend was happening around CRM and HR, and service management and cloud, et cetera. But the one thing that Okta didn't have that Auth0 does is serious developer chops. While Okta was crushing it with its enterprise sales strategy, Auth0 was laser-focused on developers and building a bottoms up approach to identity. By acquiring Auth0, Okta can dominate both sides of the barbell and then capture the fat middle. So yes, it's a pricey acquisition, but in our view, it's a great move by McKinnon. Now, I don't know McKinnon personally, but last week I spoke to Arun Shrestha, who's the CEO of security specialist, BeyondID, they're a platinum services partner of Okta. And they're a zero trust expert. He worked for Okta for a number of years and shared with me a bit about McKinnon's style, and think big approach. Arun said something that caught my attention. He said, firewalls used to be the perimeter, now people are. And while that's self-serving to Okta and probably BeyondID, it's true. People, apps and data are the new perimeter, and they're not in one location. And that's the point. Now, unfortunately, I had lined up an interview with Diya Jolly, who was the chief product officer at Okta and a Cube alum for this past week, knowing that we were running this segment in this episode but she unfortunately fell ill the day of our interview and had to cancel. But I want to follow up with her, and understand how she's thinking about connecting the dots with Auth0 with devs and enterprises and really test our thesis there. This is a really interesting chess match that's going on. Let's look a little deeper into that identity space. This chart here shows some of the major identity players. It has some of the leaders in the identity market, and is a breakdown at ETR's net score. Now net score comprises five elements. The lime green is, we're adding the platform new. The forest green is we're spending 6% or more relative to last year. The gray is flat send plus or minus flat spend, plus or minus 5%. The pinkish is spending less. And the bright red is we're exiting the platform, retiring. Now you subtract the red from the green, and that gets you the result for net score which you can see super-imposed on the right hand chart at the bottom, that first column there. The far column is shared in which informs and indicates the number of responses and is a proxy for presence in the market. Oh, look at the top two players in terms of spending momentum. Now SailPoint is right there, but Auth0 combined with Okta's distribution channel will extend Okta's lead significantly in our view. And then there's Microsoft. Now just a caveat, this includes all of Microsoft's security offerings, not just identity, but it's there for context. And CyberArk as well includes this acquisition of adaptive, but also other parts of CyberArk's portfolio. So you can see some of the other names that are there, many of which you'll find in the Gartner magic quadrant for identity. And as we said, we really like this move by Okta. It combines positive market forces with lead offerings from very well-run companies that have winning DNA and passionate people. Now, to further emphasize what's happening here, take a look at this. This chart shows ETR data for Okta within SailPoint and CyberArk accounts. Out of the 230 CyberArk and SailPoint customers in the dataset, there are 81 Okta accounts. That's a 35% overlap. And the good news for Okta is that within that base of SailPoint and CyberArk accounts, Okta is shown by the net score line, that green line has a very elevated spending in momentum. And the kicker is, if you read the fine print in the right hand column, ETR correctly points out that while SailPoint and CyberArk have long been partners with Okta, at the recent Octane21 event, Okta's big customer event, The company announced that it was expanding into privileged access management, PAM, and identity governance. Hello, and welcome to co-opetition in the 2020s. Now, our current thinking is that this bodes very well for Okta and CyberArk and SailPoint. Well, they're going to have to make some counter moves to fend off the onslaught that is coming. Now, let's wrap up with what has become a tradition in our quarterly security updates. Looking at those two dimensions of net score and market share, we're going to see which companies crack the top 10 for both measures within the ETR dataset. We do this every quarter. So here in the left, we have the top 20, sorted by net score spending momentum and on the right, we sort by shared N. So it's again, top 20, which informs, shared N informs the market share metric or presence in the dataset. That red horizontal lines, those two lines on each separate the top 10 from the remaining 10 within those top 20. And our method, what we do is we assign four stars to those companies that crack the top 10 for both metrics. So again, you see Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Okta, CrowdStrike, and Fortinet. Fortinet by the way, didn't make it last quarter. They've kind of been in and out and on the bubble, but company is very strong, and doing quite well. Only the other four did last quarter. They were the same for last quarter. And we give two stars to those companies that make it in both categories within the top 20 but didn't make the top 10. So Cisco, Splunk, which has been steadily decelerating from a spending momentum standpoint, and Zscaler, which is just on the cusp. We really like Zscaler and the company has great momentum, but that's the methodology. That is what it is. Now you can see, we kept Carbon Black on the right most chart, it's like kind of cut off, it's number 21. Only because they're just outside looking in on net score. You see them there, they're just below on net score, number 11. And VMware's presence in the market we think, that Carbon Black is right really worth paying attention to. Okay, so we're going to close with some summary and final thoughts. Last quarter, we did a deeper dive on the SolarWinds hack, and we think the ramifications are significant. It has set the stage for a new era of escalation and adversary sophistication. Now, major change we see is a heightened awareness that when you find intruders, you'd better think very carefully about your next moves. When someone breaks into your house, if the dog barks, or if you come down with a baseball bat or other weapon, you might think the intruder is going to flee. But if the criminal badly wants what you have in your house and it's valuable enough, you might find yourself in a bloody knife fight or worse. Well, what's happening is intruders come to your company via island hopping or insider subterfuge or whatever method. And they'll live off the land stealthily using your own tools against you so that you can't find them so easily. So instead of injecting new tools in that send off an alert, they just use what you already have there. That's what's called living off the land. They'll steal sensitive data, for example, positive COVID test results when that was really, really sensitive, obviously still is, or other medical data. And when you retaliate, they will double-extort you. They'll encrypt your data and hold it for ransom, and at the same time threaten to release the sensitive information, crushing your brand in the process. So your response must be as stealthy as their intrusion, as you marshal your resources and devise an attack plan. And you face serious headwinds. Not only is this a complicated situation, there's your ongoing and acute talent shortage that you tell us about all the time. Many companies are mired in technical debt, that's an additional challenge. And then you've got to balance the running of the business while actually effecting a digital transformation. That's very, very difficult, and it's risky because the more digital you become, the more exposed you are. So this idea of zero trust, people used to call it a buzzword, it's now a mandate along with automation. Because you just can't throw labor at the problem. This is all good news for investors as cyber remains a market that's ripe for valuation increases and M&A activity, especially if you know where to look. Hopefully we've helped you squint through the maze a little bit. Okay, that's it for now. Thanks to the community for your comments and insights. Remember I publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. These episodes, they're all available as podcasts. All you got to do is search breaking analysis podcasts, put in the headphones, listen when you're in your car, or out for your walk or run, and you can always connect on Twitter @DVellante, or email me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com. I appreciate the comments on LinkedIn and in Clubhouse, please follow me, so you're notified when we start a room and riff on these topics and others. And don't forget to check out etr.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Vellante for The Cube Insights powered by ETR. Be well, and we'll see you next time. (light instrumental music)

Published Date : May 7 2021

SUMMARY :

This is "Breaking Analysis" and at the same time threaten to release

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Breaking Down Data Silos | Beyond.2020 Digital


 

>>Yeah, yeah, >>Hello. We're back with Today's the last session in the creating engaging analytics experiences for all track breaking down data silos. A conversation with Snowflake on Western Union Earlier today, we did a few deep dives into the thought spot product with sessions on thoughts about one. Thoughts were everywhere on spot. Take you to close out this track. We're joined by industry leading experts Christian Kleinerman s VP of product at Snowflake and Tom Matzzie, Pharaoh, chief data officer at Western Union, for a thought provoking conversation on data transformation on how to avoid the pitfalls of traditional analytics. They'll be discussing in key challenges faced by organizations, why user engagement matters and looking towards the future of the industry. No Joining Thomas and Christian in conversation is Angela Cooper, vice president of customer success at Thought spot. Thank you all for being here today. We're so excited for what is what this conversation has in store. Handing it over now to Christian to kick things off. >>Hi. So, a few years ago, when when someone asked about Snowflake, the most common answer, it was like, what is snowflake and what do you do? Hopefully in the last couple off months, things have changed and and here I am showing a couple of momentum data points on, uh, where we have accomplished here it Snowflake. So we we have received Ah, a lot of attention and buzz. Recently, we were listed in the New York Stock Exchange And we even though we still think of ourselves as a small start up company, we have crossed the 2000 employees mark. More important, we count with 3 3000 plus amazing customers. And something that we obsess about is the a satisfaction of our customers. We really are working hard. The laboring technology that having a platform for better decisions, better analytics and then the promoters course off 71 depicted here is a testament of that. And last, but certainly not least about snowflake. It's very important that we know that we succeed with our partners. We know that we don't go to market by ourselves. We actually have Ah, fantastic set of partners and of course, thoughts. But it is one of our most important partners. >>Good morning. Good afternoon. Eso Amman Thomas affair on the chief kid officer here at Western Union. It's gonna be a background of a Western union and what we, uh, what we do and how we service our customers. So today we are in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. We have a 550,000 retail Asian network to service all of our customers, uh, needs from what he transfer and picking up in a depositing cash. We also have our digital transformation underway, where we now have educate abilities up and running and over 35 countries with paled options to accounts in over 120 countries. We think about our overall business and how support are over our customers and our services. It really has transformed over the past 12 months with Cove it and it's part of that We have to be able to really accelerate our transformation on a digital front to help to enable in the super those customers going forward. Eso as part of that, You know, a big, big help in a big supporter of that transformation has been snowflake and has been thought spot as part of that transformation. If you go the next to the next slide are our current, uh B I in our illegal tools right to date, uh, have been very useful up until the last one or two years. As data explodes and as as our customer needs transform and as our solutions and our time to act in our time to react in the overall market becomes faster and faster, we need to be able to basically look across our entire company, our entire organization and cross functionally to visit to leverage data leverage our insights to really basically pivot our overall business and our overall model to support our customers and our and to enable those services and products going forward. So as part of that, snowflakes been a huge part of that journey, right, allowing us to consolidate over our 30 plus data stores across the company on able to really leverage that overall data and insights to drive, uh, quick reaction right with the pivot, our business offered to enable new services and improve customer experiences going forward and then being able to use a snowflake and then being put the applications on top of that like thought spot, which allows, uh, users that are both technical and nontechnical to the go in and just, um, ask the question as if the searching on Google or Yahoo or being they can just ask any question they want and then get the results back in real time, made that business call and then really go forward through these is this larger ecosystem as a whole. It's really enabled us to really transform our business and supporter customers going forward. >>Wonderful. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Christian, for the overview of both snowflake and Western Union. Both have big presence in Denver, which is where Tom and I are tonight. Um, I'm here. I'm the vice president of customer success for Thought spot, and I wanted to ask both of you some questions about the industry and specific things that you're facing within Western Union. So first I was hoping Christian that you could talk to me a little bit about Snowflake has thousands of customers at this point, servicing essentially located data sets. But what are you seeing? Has been the top challenges that businesses air facing and how it snowflake uniquely positioned to help. Yeah, >>so certainly the think the challenges air made. I would say that the macro challenge above everything is how to turn data into a competitive differentiator, their study after study that says companies that embrace data and insights and analytics they are outperforming their competitors. So that would be my macro challenge. Once you go into the next level, maybe I can think of three elements. The first one Tom already perfectly teed up the topic of of silence and the reality For most organizations, data is fragmented across different database systems. Even filed systems in some instances transactional databases, analytical data bases and what customers expect is to have, ah, unified experience like I am dealing with company extra company. Why? And I really don't care if behind the scenes there's 10 different teams or 100 different systems. I just want a unified experience. And the Congress is true. The opportunity to deliver personalized custom experiences is reliant on a single view of the day. The other topic that comes to mind this is the one of data governance, Um, as data becomes more important than a reorganization, understanding the constraints and security and privacy also become critical to not only advanced data capability but do it doing so responsibly and within the norms off regulation and the last one which is something court to tow our vision. We are pioneering the concept of the data cloud and the challenge that that we're addressing there is the problem around access to data, right. You can no longer as an organization think of making decisions just on your own data. But there's lots of data collaboration, data enrichment. Maybe I wanna put my data in context. And that's what we're trying to simplify and democratize access and simplify connecting to the data that improves decisions on all three fronts. Obviously, we're obsessed. That's no bling on on tearing down the silos on delivering a solution that is very focused on data governance. And for sure, the data cloud simplifies access to data. >>Wonderful. Now, I know we we really focused on those data silos is a business challenge. But Tom, going through your digital transformation journey are there specific challenges that you faced with Western Union That thought spot and snowflake have helped you overcome? >>Yeah. So? So first off fully agree what Christian just said, right? Those are absolutely, you know, problems that we faced. And we've had overcome, um, service, any company right being able to the transforming to modernize the cloud. Um, for us, one of the biggest things is being able to not just access our information, but have it in a way that it can be consumed, right? Have it in a way that it could be understood, right? Have it in a way that we can then drive business business decision points and and be able to use that information to either fix a problem that we see or better service our customers or offer a product that we're seeing right now is a miss in the marketplace to service in a underserved community or underserved, um, customer base. Also, from our standpoint, being able toe look, um um, uh and predict in forecast what's going to happen and be able to use that information and use our insights to then be proactive and thio in either, You know, be thoughtful about how do we shift our focus, or how do we then change our strategy to take advantage of that for that forecast in that position that we're seeing into the future? >>Wonderful. I've heard from many customers you could not have predicted what was going to happen to our businesses in the year 2020 with the traditional models and especially with what did you say? 30 plus different data silos. Being able to do that type of prediction across those systems must have been very, very difficult. You also mentioned going through a digital transformation at Western Union. So can you talk to me, Tom? A little bit about kind of present day? And why? Why is it important to enable your frontline knowledge workers with the right data at the right time with the right technology? >>Yeah, so? So you're spot on, by the way. But, uh, no one predicted that that we would have a pandemic that would literally consume the entire globe right And change how consumers, um uh, use and buy services and products, or how economies would either shut down or at the reopening shut down again. And then how different interests to be impacted by this? Right. So, uh, what we learned and what we were able to pivot was being able to do exactly what you just said, right. Being able to understand what's happening the date of the right time, right then being able to with the right technology with the right capabilities, understand? what's happening. I understand. Then what should our pivot be? And how should we then go focus on that pivot to go into go and transform? I think it's e. It's more than just just the front lines. Also, our executives. It's also are back office operations, right, because as you think through this, right as customers were having issues right, go into retail locations that were closed. It end of Q one Earlier, Q two. We obviously had a a large surplus right of phone calls coming into our call centers, asking for help, asking for How can we transact better? Where can we go? Right? How do we handle the operationally? Right? As we had a massive surge onto our digital platform where we were, we had 100% increase year over year in Q one and Q two. How do we make sure that our platform the technology can scale right and still provide the right S L A's and and and and the right, um uh, support to our internal customers as well as our extra customers in the future? Eso so really interesting, though, you know, on on on the front line side, our sales staff, right? And even our front line associates with our agent locations A to retail side, you know, for us, is really around. How do we best support them? So how do we partner with them to understand? You know, when a certain certain governments or certain, uh, regions were going toe lock down, how do we support them to keep them open, right. How do we make them a essential service going forward? How do we enable them? Right, the Wright systems or technology to do things a bit differently than they have in the past to adopt right with the changing times. But, you know, I'll tell you the amount of transformation in the basement we've done this year, I think you know, has a massive and actually on Lee, you know, created a larger wave for us to actually ride into the future as we can, to base to innovate, you know, in partnership with both thought spot and with the snowflake into the future. >>Absolutely. I've seen many, many a industry analyst reports talking about how companies now in 2020 have accelerated that digital transformation movement because of current day. In current time, Christian What are you seeing with the rest of the industry and other global companies about enabling data across the globe at the right time? >>Yeah, so I can't agree more with with with with what? Tom said. And he gave some very, um, compelling and very riel use cases where the timeliness of data and and and and and at the right time concept make a big difference. Right? They aske part of our data marketplace with snowflake with deliver, for example, um, up to date low ladies information on, uh, covert 19 data sets where we're infection spiking. And what were the trends? And the use case was very, very riel. Every single company was trying to make sense of the numbers. Uh, all machine learning models were sort of like, out of whack, because no trends and no patterns may make sense anymore. And it was They need to be able to join my data and my activity with this health data set and make decisions at the right time. Imagine if if the cycle to makes all these decisions waas Ah, monthlong. You would never catch up, right? And he speaks to tow a concept that it that is, um, dear, it wasa snowflake and is the lifetime value data right? The notion of ableto act on a piece of data on an event at the right time and obviously with the slow laden see it's possible, makes a big difference. And and there is no end of example. Stomach gives her all again very compelling ones. Um, there's many others, but if you're running a marketing campaign and would you want to know five minutes later that it's not working out, you're burning your daughters? Or would you want to know the next day? Or if someone is going to give you you have a subscription based business and you're going toe, for example, have a model that predicts the turn of your customer? How useful is if you find out Hey, your customer is gonna turn, but you found out two months later. Once probably you are really toe action and change the outcome. Eyes different and and and this order to manage that I'm talking about days or months are not uncommon. Many organizations today, and that's where the topic of right technology matters. Um, I love asking questions about Do you know, an organization and customers. Do you run data, transformations and ingests at two and three in the morning? And the most common answer is yes. And then you start asking why. And usually the answer is some flavor off technology made me do it and a big part of what we're trying to do, like what we're pioneering is. How about ingesting data, transforming data enriching data when the business needs it at the right time with the right timeliness? Not when the technology had cycles. So they were Scipio available, so the importance can't be overstated. There is value in in in analyzing understanding data on time, and we provide technology and platform to any of this. >>That's such a good point. Christian. We ended up on Lee doing processes and loading in the middle of the night because that's what the technology at that time would allow. You couldn't have the concurrency. You couldn't have, um, data happening all at the same time. And so wonderful point that stuff like enables. I think another piece that's interesting that you guys a hit on is that it's important to have the same user experiencing user interface at the right time. And so what I found talking to customers. And Tom what? You and I have discussed this. When you have 30 different data sets and you have a interface that's different, you have a legacy reports system. Maybe you have excel on top of another. You have thought spot on one. You have your dashboard of choice on another, those different sources in different ways. To view that data, it can all be so disjointed. And the combination of thought spot with snowflake and all the data in one place with a centralized, unified user experience just helps users take advantage off the insights that they need right at that right moment. So kind of finishing up for our last question for today I'm interested to hear about Christian will go back to you quickly about what do you see from snowflakes? Perspective is ahead. Future facing for data and analytics. >>One of the topics you just alluded toe Angela, which is the fact that many data sets are gonna be part of the processes by which we make decisions and that that's where were the experience with thoughts but a single unified search experience for a single unified. Um automatic insects, which is what's para que does That is the future, right? I I don't think that x many years from now on, and I think that that X is a small number. Organizations are going to say I had some business activity. I collected some data. I did some analysis and I have conclusions because it always has to be okay, put it in context or look at industry trends and look at other activity that can help him make more sense about my data. The example of tracking they covert are breaking is ah, timely one. But you can always say go on, put it in context with, I don't know, maybe the GDP of the country or the adoption of a platform and things like that. So I think that's ah big trend on having multiple data sets. Contributing towards better decisions towards better product experience is for better services. And, of course, Snowflake is trying to do its part, is doing its part with vision and simplify answers today and the answer on hot spot simplifying blending the interface so that would be super useful. The other big piece, of course, is, um, Predictive Analytics people Talk machine Learning and AI, which is a little bit to buzz worthy. But it is true that we have the technology to drive predictions and and do a better job of understanding behaviors off what's supposed to happen based on understanding the best and the last one. If if if I'm allowed one. Exco What's ahead for data industry, which sounds obvious, but But we're not all the way. There is both cloud the adoption and moving to the cloud as well as the topic of multi Cloud. Increasingly, I think we we finally shifted conversations from Should I go to the cloud or not? Now it's How fast do I do it? And increasingly what we hear is I may want to take the best of the different clouds and how doe I go in and and and embrace a multi cloud reality without having to learn 100 plus different services and nuances of services on on every car and this work technologies like snowflake and thoughts about that can can support a different multiple deployment are being well received by different customs, nerve fault, >>Tom industry trends, or one thing I know. Western Union is really leading in the digital transformation and in your space, What's next for Western Union? >>Yeah, so just add on Requip Thio Christian before I dive into a Western Union use case just to your point. Christian, I really see a convergence happening between how people today work or or manage their personal life, where the applications, the user experiences and the responses are at your fingertips. Easy to use don't need to learn different tools. It's just all there, right, whether you're an android user or an apple user rights, although your fingertips I ask you the same innovation and transmission happening now on the work side, where I see to your point right a convergence happening where not just that the technology teams but even the business teams. They wanna have that same feature, that same functionality, where all their insights their entire way to interact with the business with the business teams with their data with their systems with their products for their services are at their fingertips right where they can go and they can make a change on an iPad or an iPhone and instant effect. They can go change a rule. They could go and modify Uh uh, an algorithm. They can go and look at expanding their product base, and it's just there. It's instant now. This would take time, right? Because this is going to be a transformational journey right across many different industries, but it's part of that. I really see that type of instant gratification, uh, satisfaction, that type of being able to instantly get those insights. Be able thio to really, you know, do what you do on your personal life in your work life every single day. That trend is absolutely it's actually happening. And it's kind of like tag team that into what we're doing at Western Union is exactly that we are actually transforming how our business teams, uh, in our technology teams are able to interact with our customers, interact with our products, interact with our services, interact with our data and our systems instantly. Right? Perfect example that it's that spot where they could go on typing any question they want. And they instigate an answer like that that that was unheard of a year ago, at least for our business. Right being able to to to go and put in in a new rule and and have it flow through the rules engine and have an instant customer impact that's coming right. Being able to instantly change or configure a new product or service with new fee structure and launch in 15 minutes. That's coming, right? All these new transformations about how do we actually better, uh, leverage our capabilities, our products and our services to meet those customer demands instantly. That's where I see the industry going the next couple of years. >>Wonderful. Um, excited to have both of you on the panel this afternoon. So thank you so much for joining us, Christian and Tom as just a quick wrap up. I, you know, learned quite a bit about industry trends and the problems facing companies today. And from the macro view with snowflake and thousands of customers and thought spots, customers and Western Union. The underlying theme is data unity, right? No more fragmented silos, no more fragmented user experiences, but truly bringing everything together in a governed safe way for users. Toe have trust in the data to have trust in what to answer and what insight is being put in front of them. And all of this pulled together so that businesses can make those better decisions more informed and more personalized. Consumer like experiences for your customers in modern technology stacks. So again, thank you both today for joining us, and we look forward to many more conversations in the future. Thank you >>for having me very happy to be here. >>Thank you so much. >>Thanks. >>Thank you, Angela. And thank you, Tom and Christian for sharing your stories. It was really interesting to hear how the events of this year have prompted Western Union to accelerate their digital transformation with snowflake and thought spot and just reflecting on alot sessions in this track, I love seeing how we're making the search experience even easier and even more consumer like in that first session and then moving on to the second session with our customer Hayes. It was really impressive to see how quickly they'd embedded thought spot into their own MD audit product. And then, of course, we heard about Spot Ike, which is making it easier for everybody to get to the Y faster with automated insights. So I'm afraid that wraps up the sessions in this track. We've come to an end, But remember to join us for the exciting product roadmap session coming right up. And then after that, put your questions to the speakers that you've heard in Track two in I'll meet the Experts Roundtable, creating engaging analytics experiences for all. Now all that remains is for me to say thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time. I hope it's been interesting and valuable. And if it has, we'd love to pick up with you for a 1 to 1 conversation Bye for now.

Published Date : Dec 10 2020

SUMMARY :

we did a few deep dives into the thought spot product with sessions on thoughts about one. the most common answer, it was like, what is snowflake and what do you do? and as our solutions and our time to act in our time to react and I wanted to ask both of you some questions about the industry and specific things that you're facing And for sure, the data cloud simplifies access to data. that you faced with Western Union That thought spot and snowflake have helped you overcome? to either fix a problem that we see or better service our customers or offer Why is it important to enable your frontline knowledge ride into the future as we can, to base to innovate, you know, in partnership with both thought spot and with data across the globe at the right time? going to give you you have a subscription based business and you're going toe, and loading in the middle of the night because that's what the technology at that time the adoption and moving to the cloud as well as the topic of multi Cloud. in the digital transformation and in your space, What's next for Western Union? Be able thio to really, you know, do what you do on your And from the macro view with snowflake and thousands of customers for me to say thank you for joining us.

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Paul Grist, AWS | AWS Public Sector Summit Online


 

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit Online. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. I wish we could be there in person, but we're doing remote because of the COVID and the pandemic. We've got a great guest, Paul Grist. Worldwide Public Sector, Head of Education International for AWS. Paul, thank you for coming on remotely. >> Great to be here, John. >> There's a lot of disruption in the education space this year with universities and schools still uncertain about what the future will look like. What are some of the biggest trends you're seeing? >> John, what we've seen is the rapid adoption of technology and the growth of flexible online learning, learning that can take place anytime, anywhere. What we've seen is universities, national education systems, and schools rapidly migrating systems and content to the cloud, spinning up new applications. And we've seen companies that provide technology and content and platforms, the ed techs and publishers of the world, increasing their capacity, increasing their capability to deliver new applications to education. >> What is some of this research that you're finding out there? >> Yeah. You know, a time of much change and things happening very, very fast. We responded fast to the changes, John. Got a load of customer conversations together, looking at speeches by educationalists who were responding to the changes at some of the online events that spun up very quickly at places like the University of Buckingham, ASU, JSV, Inside Higher Education, places like Blackboard World. And really just talked to those leaders about their responses to the change, what kinds of things they were doing, and brought that together into the research. It's underpinned by some in-depth research and insights from education reports and articles too. >> Thanks Paul, really appreciate it. Having that research is critical. I know you guys do a lot of work on that. I know you got some news, take a quick plug for the new research that's coming out. You guys just put out today, just take a minute to quickly explain what it's about and how to find it. >> We're publishing today some new research that shows the seven key emerging trends in this new world of education. Check it out on the AWS website. Two key trends, flexible learning and the new world of employability. >> So you guys got a lot of data. It's great with Amazon, got a lot of customers. Good to see you guys getting that research. The question I have for you Paul is, what amount of the research shows really the COVID situation? Because there's before COVID, there's kind of during, and then there's going to be a post-COVID mode. Was that prior research in place with COVID or after COVID? Can you share kind of the update on the relevance of your research? >> Yeah, I think the sector has changed. The sector has gone through the fastest change it's ever gone through. And undoubtedly most of the issues, most of the challenges and opportunities in the sector, predate the pandemic. But what we've seen is COVID accelerate many of the challenges and the opportunities, but also bring new opportunities. >> Yeah, one of the things we've seen with education is the disruption, and the forcing function with COVID. There's a problem, we all know what it is. It's important, there's consequences for those. And you can quantify the disruption with real business value and certainly student impact. There's been downsides with remote education. More teacher-parent involvement and students having to deal with isolation, less social interaction. How do you guys see that? Or what is Amazon doing to solve these problems? Can you talk about that? >> Yeah. I think you know, education is very much a people business. And what we've been trying to do is partner with organizations to ensure that the people are kept at the center of the business. So working with organizations such as LS, sorry, Los Angeles United School District in the US to spin up a call center to allow students to contact their tutors. And parents to interact with tutors, to get questions answered. >> So one of the challenges these academic institutions are facing is speed, it's pace of change. What's going on with competition? How are they competing? How are universities and colleges staying relevant? Obviously there's a financial crisis involved. There's also the actual delivery aspect of it. More and more mergers. You're starting to see ecosystem changes. Can you talk about what's going on in the educational ecosystem? >> Yeah I mean, educational institutions are being forced to rethink their business models. It's an international marketplace in higher education. It's been a growing marketplace for many, many years. That suddenly stopped overnight, so every university has had to rethink about where their revenues are coming from, where the students are coming from. There's been some surprises too. I mean in the UK, actually international enrollments are up post-COVID because one of the strange side effects of COVID is without being able to travel, there's actually a cost saving for students. And so we've seen universities in the UK benefit from students who want to study, perhaps travel and the cost of study was too high previously. Now being able to study remotely. It's an unexpected and unintended consequence. But it kind of shows how there are opportunities for all organizations during this time. >> Many countries had to cancel exams altogether this year, which has been a big, huge problem. I mean people are outraged and people want to learn. It's been, you know, the silver lining in all this is that you have the internet (laughs). You have the cloud. I want to get your thoughts. How are universities and schools dealing with this challenge? Because you have a multi-sided marketplace. You've got the institutions, you've got the students, you got the educators, they all have to be successful. How are universities dealing with this challenge? >> Yeah I think, you know, teaching and learning has been online for 20, 30 years. And I think a lot of organizations have adopted online teaching and learning. But I think assessment is the one big area of education that remains to be made available at scale at low cost. So most assessment is still a pen-and-paper-based. There's big trust and identity issues. And what we're seeing through this COVID change is organizations really getting to grip with both of those issues. So, having the confidence to put assessment online, to make it available at scale, and then also having the confidence to tackle trust and identity questions. So who is taking the exam, where are they sitting? Can we be sure that it's actually that person taking that exam? So you know, the rise of things like proctoring technologies giving organizations the opportunity to assess remotely. >> How has this crisis affected research at academic institutions? Because certainly we know that if you need a lab or something, certainly we're seeing students need to be physically in person. But with remote and all those changes going on with the scale and the pace of change, how has research at academic institutions been impacted? >> Yeah I mean, research has always been a really collaborative activity, but we've seen that collaboration increase. It's had to increase. Researchers have had to go remote. Many of them work in labs. They haven't been able to do that. They've needed to spin up applications and new technologies in the cloud to continue working. But what we're seeing is governments taking an increased interest in the research being applicable, making sure that it leads to innovation which is meaningful. Getting much more involved and insisting that the research is made available now. And of course there's no place that that's clearer than in health research and trying to find a cure for COVID. And then secondly, we're seeing that research is becoming much more collaborative not just across institutions but also countries. So one of the great projects we're involved in at the moment is with the University of Adelaide who are collaborating with researchers from the Breeding and Acclimatization Institute in Poland on a project to study the increase in crop yield of wheat. >> One of the things that's coming out of this, whether it's research or students is open online courses, virtual capabilities. But a concept called stackable learning. Can you explain what that is? >> Yeah. We're in a global marketplace in education and there's increased competition between universities and education providers to make new types of certificates and online badges available. We know that employers are looking for ever more agile methods of scaling and upskilling. And stackable learning is a concept that's been around for a couple of decades now, where learning is broken down into smaller chunks, put together in a more personalized way from a number of different providers. Spun up very, very quickly to respond to need and then delivered to students. We're seeing some of the big providers like edX and Coursera who, again have been around for over a decade become really prominent in the provision of some of these stackable credentials. Their systems run on the cloud. They're easy to access, in many, many cases they're free. We're seeing an increasing number of employers and education institutions adopt and embed these types of delivery systems into their curriculum. >> Totally a fan of stackable learning, it's called the Lego model, whatever I call it. But also online brings the nonlinear progressions. The role of data is super important. So I'm very bullish on education being disrupted by cloud providers and new apps. So you know, I wanted to call that out because I think it's super important. Let me get to a really important piece that it has to be addressed, and I want to get your thoughts on. Cyber security. Okay, cyber attacks and privacy of students are two areas that are super important for institutions to address. What's your reaction to that? >> Yeah, I mean the use of more technology becomes, you know again, a target for cyber attack and unfortunately it's an increasing phenomenon. Simply put, every organization needs to put security first. Needs to operate as a security-first organization. They need to adopt technologies, people and processes that can protect their investments. And work with data management vendors, cloud vendors who've got the compliances and the common privacy and security frameworks such as GDPR in place to make sure that they provide secure services. AWS's security offerings include auditing, login and identity management, data encryption capabilities that offer more transparency and control, to allow institutions protect student data. >> Super important, thanks for sharing. Finally, what's the steps institutions can take to close the digital divide because now some people are taking gap years. Research is changing. People might not even have PCs or internet connections. There's still, this exposes the haves and have nots. What steps can institutions take to do their part? >> Yeah, digital learning is here to stay, John. We've learned that many learners do not have access to technology necessary for online learning. Whether those are devices or a reliable internet connection. But again, you know governments, states, educational authorities have all turned their attention to these issues over the last few months. And we're seeing organizations partner with technology providers that can provide internet connections. Partners in AWS, such as Kajeet who've installed hotspot devices on buses to deploy in areas with no connectivity. You know whether that's a place like Denver, Colorado or whether it's a place, you know, in Nigeria in Africa, remote connection remains a problem everywhere. And we're seeing everybody addressing that issue now. >> Paul, great to have you on theCUBE and sharing your insights on what's going on in international education. Final question for you. In your own words, why is this year at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online important? What's the most important story that people should walk away in this educational industry? >> The most important story, John, is it's a time of incredible change but also incredible opportunity. And we're seeing organizations who have wanted to change, who've wanted to deliver more to their students, who want to deliver a greater experience, who want to access more students and have much greater reach. Now with the appetite to do that. re:Invent is a great opportunity to work with AWS, to understand what's going on with our partners, with our customers. And look at some of the common solutions for the challenges that they're looking to solve. >> Paul Grist, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Worldwide Head of Education for International AWS. Thank you for sharing. >> Thanks John, great to be here. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector Online Summit. Remote, virtual, this is theCUBE virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. 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from around the globe it's thecube covering space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly hello everyone welcome to the space and cyber security symposium 2020 hosted by cal poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together i'm john furrier your host with thecube here in california i want to welcome our featured guest lieutenant general john f thompson with the united states space force approach to cyber security that's the topic of this session and of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in los angeles air force base also heading up space force general thank you for coming on really appreciate you kicking this off welcome to the symposium hey so uh thank you very much john for that very kind introduction also uh very much thank you to cal poly uh for this opportunity to speak to this audience today also a special shout out to one of the organizers uh dustin brun for all of his work uh helping uh get us uh to this point uh ladies and gentlemen as uh as uh john mentioned uh i'm jt thompson uh i lead the 6 000 men and women of the united states space forces space and missile system center which is headquartered here at los angeles air force base in el segundo if you're not quite sure where that's at it's about a mile and a half from lax this is our main operating location but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country with about 500 people at kirtland air force base in albuquerque new mexico uh and about another 500 people on the front range of the rockies uh between colorado springs and uh and denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide uh we're responsible for uh acquiring developing and sustaining the united states space force's critical space assets that includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites and we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the u.s space force and a number of our critical mission partners across the uh department of defense and the intelligence community um just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustained the 31 satellite gps constellation that satellite constellation while originally intended to help with global navigation those gps signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy uh over the past three decades i mean gps is everywhere i think everybody realizes that agriculture banking the stock market the airline industry uh separate and distinct navigation systems it's really pervasive across both the capabilities for our department of defense and capabilities for our economy and and individuals billions of individuals across our country and the planet some of the other work we do for instance in the communications sector uh secure communications satellites that we design and build that link america's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real-time support and comms for our deployed forces and those of our allies we also acquire uh infrared missile warning satellites uh that monitor the planet for missile launches and provide advanced warning uh to the u.s homeland and to our allies uh in case some of those missile launches are uh nefarious um on a note that's probably a lot closer to home maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of california in 2018 smc jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy uh to partner with the u.s forest service during the two of the largest wildfires in the state's history the camp and woolsey fires in northern california as those fires spread out of control we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet and we collaborated with the us forest service so that firefighters on the ground uh could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading thereby saving lives and and property by identifying hot spots and flare-ups for firefighters that data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the u.s forest service and authorities here in california was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters it was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread we've continued uh that involvement in recent years using multiple systems to support firefighters across the western u.s this fall as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue working together with the u.s forest service and with other partners uh we like to make uh we like to think that we made a difference here but there's still a lot more work to go and i think that we should always be asking ourselves uh what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to uh stakeholders so that they can use it for for purposes of good if you will how else can we protect our nation how else can we protect our friends and allies um i think a major component of the of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly um just over the past few years uh john and i were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have uh space programs 80 nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet um if you just look at one mission area that uh the department of defense is interested in and that's small launch there are currently over a hundred different small launch companies uh within the u.s industrial base vying for commercial dod and civil uh payload capabilities uh mostly to low earth orbit it's it's just truly a remarkable time if you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning um where we're revolutionary revolutionizing really uh the ways that we generate process and use data i mean it's really remarkable in 2016 so if you think about this four years ago uh nasa estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day and that was four years ago um uh obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience of this congress or in this conference uh we need to work with big thinkers like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data we need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge edge theories of data mining cyber behaviorism and internet of things 2.0 it's just truly a remarkable time uh to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the states of the space business are truly truly daunting and important to uh to all of us um integrating cyber security into our space systems both commercial and government is a mandate um it's no longer just a nice to have as the us space force and department of the air force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years space is becoming congested and contested and that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security uh in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on uh cyber security day in and day out the value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer from the ground control segments associated with it and this value is not just military it's also economic and it's not just american it's also a value for the entire world particularly particularly our allies as we all depend upon space and space systems your neighbors and friends here in california that are employed at the space and missile system center uh work with network defenders we work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers um our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global commons of space free and open for exploration and for commerce um as john and i were talking earlier before we came online there's an aspect of cyber security for space systems especially for some of our legacy systems that's more how do we bolt this on because we fielded those space systems a number of years ago and the the challenges of cyber security in the space domain have grown so we have a part that we have to worry about bolting it on but then we have to worry about building it in as we as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that that realizes that the cyber threat or the cyber security landscape will evolve over time it's not just going to be stagnant there will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we always have to look at look uh as secretary barrett who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning the american way of life really depends on space and as part of the united states space force we work with defense leaders our congress joint and international military teammates and industry to ensure american leadership in space i really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today john and thanks so much to cal poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event i really look forward to this for uh several months and so with that i look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here general thank you very much for the awesome uh introductory statement uh for the folks watching on the stream brigadier general carthan is going to be in the chat answering any questions feel free to chat away he's the vice commander of space and missile systems center he'll be available um a couple comments from your keynote before i get to my questions because it just jumped in my head you mentioned the benefits of say space but the fires in california we're living that here that's really real time that's a benefit you also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space and i only imagine moore's law smaller faster cheaper applies to rockets too so i'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned so you know is it going to be more rules around that i mean this is an interesting question because it's exciting space force but for all the good there is potentially bad out there yeah so i i john i think the uh i think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space what kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps deorbit themselves what kind of basic protections does do all satellites should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space i think those are all fantastic questions and i know that u.s and many uh allied policy makers are looking very very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we uh you know how how we field and field is the military term but you know how we uh populate uh using civil or uh commercial terms uh that space layer at different altitudes uh low earth orbit mid mid-earth orbit geosynchronous earth orbit different kinds of orbits uh what the kind of mission areas we accomplish from space that's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as uh as the place gets a little bit not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out well i'm super excited for space force i know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging changing great space the focus here at this conference is space and cyber security intersection i'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that space force is taking to cyber security and how it impacts our national goals here in the united states yeah yeah so that's a that's a great question john let me let me talk about in two uh two basic ways but number one is and and i know um some people in the audience this might make them a little bit uncomfortable but i have to talk about the threat right um and then relative to that threat i really have to talk about the importance of uh of cyber and specifically cyber security as it relates to that threat um the threats that we face um really represent a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber uh we've seen a lot of action in recent months uh from certain countries notably china and russia uh that have threatened what i referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space for example uh it through many unclassified sources and media sources everybody should understand that um uh the russians have been testing on orbit uh anti-satellite capabilities it's been very clear if you were following just the week before last the department of defense released its uh 2020 military and security developments involving the people's republic of china um uh and uh it was very clear that china is developing asats electronic jammers directed energy weapons and most relevant to today's discussion offensive cyber uh capabilities there are kinetic threats uh that are very very easy to see but a cyber attack against a critical uh command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of gps and important to note that that gps system also impacts many civilians who are dependent upon those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to a system to mislead operators so that they send emergency services personnel to the to the wrong address right attacks on spacecraft on orbit whether directly via a network of intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the systems production uh while we're building the satellite can [ __ ] or corrupt the data denial of service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control i mean if gps went down i you know i hesitate to say it this way because we might elicit some screams from the audience but if gps went down a starbucks wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you and domino's certainly certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less right so with a little bit of tongue-in-cheek there from a military operations perspective it's dead serious um uh we have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like lance ransomware and malware and those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems however what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled if you will to use against our national security space systems uh day in and day out um as i said during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity if commanders in the field uh firefighters in california or baristas in in starbucks can't trust the data they see they're receiving then that really harms their decision-making capabilities one of the big trends we've recently seen is the mood move towards proliferated leo uh uh constellations obviously uh spacex's uh starlink uh on the commercial side and on the military side the work that darpa and my organization smc are doing on blackjack and casino as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionize how we plan and field warfighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems but they're also heavily reliant on cyber security uh we've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage uh loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from uh you know satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning on board spacecraft or at the edge our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector they're basically flying boxes full of software right and we need to ensure the data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms govern governing the right actions and that those uh that those systems are impervious to the extent possible uh to nefarious uh modifications so in summation a cyber security is vital element of everything in our national security space goals and i would argue for our national uh goals uh writ large including uh economic and information uh uh dimensions uh the space force leadership at all levels uh from uh some of the brand new second lieutenants that general raymond uh swore into the space force this morning uh ceremonially from the uh air force association's air space and cyberspace conference uh to the various highest levels general raymond uh general d t thompson myself and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise we've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems because it they absolutely depend on it you know you mentioned uh hardware software threats opportunities challenges i want to ask you because you you got me thinking of the minute there around infrastructure i mean we've heard critical infrastructure you know grids here on on earth you're talking about critical infrastructure a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is an extension of what we have so i'd love to get your thoughts about space force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors because you know the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyber space oh yeah threat vectors they're always increasing the surface area well if the surface area is from space it's an unlimited surface area so you got different vectors so you got new critical infrastructure developing real time really fast and you got an expanded threat vector landscape putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues how would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things well so i tell you um i just like um uh just like uh i'm sure people in the security side or the cyber security side of the business in the banking industry feel they feel like it's uh all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system to the financial sector on the department of defense side we've got to have sort of the same mindset um that threat vector from to and through space against critical space systems ground segments the launch enterprise or transportation uh to orbit and the various different uh domains within uh within space itself like i mentioned before uh leo mio and geo-based satellites with different orbits all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that i mentioned earlier some that i didn't mention like weather tactical or wide band communications uh various new features of space control all of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security uh threat perspective and it's a it's a daunting challenge right now right yeah it's awesome and one of the things we've been following on the hardware side here in the on the ground is the supply chain we've seen you know malware being you know really put into really obscure hardware who manufactures it as being outsourced obviously government has restrictions but with the private sector uh you mentioned china and and the us kind of working together across these these peaceful areas but you got to look at the supply chain how does the supply chain the security aspect impact the mission of the u.s space force yeah yeah so so um how about another um just in terms of an example another kind of california-based historical example right um the very first u.s satellite uh explorer one was built by uh the jet propulsion uh laboratory folks uh not far from here in el segundo up in uh up in pasadena um that satellite when it was first built in the late 50s uh weighed a little bit over 30 pounds and i'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by u.s companies fast forward to today the global supply chain is so tightly coupled and frankly many industries are so specialized almost specialized regionally around the planet we focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the the heritage if you will of some of the parts that are used the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized right the space industry especially uh national security space sector um uh is relatively small compared to other commercial industries and we're moving to towards using more and more parts uh from non-us companies uh cyber security and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily um understand 100 percent like an explorer one uh the the lineage of that particular part the environmental difficulties in space are well known the radiation environment the temperature extremes the vacuum those require specialized component and the us military is not the only uh customer in that space in fact we're definitely not the dominant customer uh in space anymore all those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains from a quality perspective a security perspective and availability um there's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from um many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of uh you know compromised patches if you will and our adversaries are aware of these techniques as i mentioned earlier with other forms of attack considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries so we have to uh take that threat seriously um between the government and industry sectors here in the u.s we're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities last fall we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at space and missile system center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio and it sounds really kind of you know businessy geeky if you will you know hey we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cyber security as dynamically as we possibly could and so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts to require system developers to implement some more advanced uh protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment so that data handling and supply chain perspective uh protections um from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account uh cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now it's as important as the the mission performance of the system it's as important as cost it's as important as schedule because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost uh it can perform that missile warning or that communications mis mission perfectly but it's not cyber secure if it doesn't have cyber protections built into it or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber uh threats then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the k the the war fighter or the nation uh any good um supply chain risk management is a is a major challenge for us uh we're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners uh we're all facing it head on uh to try and build secure and trusted components uh that keep our confidence as leaders firefighters and baristas uh as the case may be uh but it is a challenge and we're trying to rise to that challenge you know this so exciting this new area because it really touches everything you know talk about geeking out on on the tech the hardware the systems but also you put your kind of mba hat on you go what's the roi of the extra development and how you how things get built because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like you're building cool stuff people love it's it's exciting but you still have to build and cyber security has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture so you're still building things which means you've got to acquire things you got to acquire parts you got to acquire build software and and sustain it how is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space yeah from initial development uh through planning for the acquisition design development fielding or production fielding and sustainment it impacts all aspects of of the life cycle john uh we simply especially from the concept of baking in cyber security uh we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure so we've moved way further uh towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cyber security from the very beginning of a system's development cyber security and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute as i mentioned earlier equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance we like to talk in uh in the space world about uh mission assurance and mission assurance has always you know sort of taken us as we as we technically geek out right mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space right can it work in a vacuum can it work in you know as it as it uh you know transfers through uh the van allen radiation belt or through the the um the southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly right will it work out in space and now from a resiliency perspective yeah it has to work in space it's got to be functional in space but it's also got to be resistant to these cyber security threats it's it's not just i think uh general dt thompson quoted this term it's not just widget assurance anymore it's mission assurance um uh how does that satellite uh operator that ground control segment operate while under attack so let me break your question a little bit uh just for purposes of discussion into into really two parts uh cyber uh for cyber security for systems that are new and cyber security uh for systems that are in sustainment or kind of old and legacy um obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threaten both and we really have to employ different strategies for for defense of of each one for new systems uh we're desperately trying to implement across the department of defense in particular in the space world a kind of a devsecops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems here at smc we have a program called enterprise ground services which is a tool kit basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems egs as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of of bad behavior malicious behavior if you will um uh it's rudimentary at this point but because we're using devsecops and that incremental development approach as we scale it it just becomes more and more capable you know every every product increment that we field here at uh at uh la air force base uh uh we have the united space space forces west coast software factory which we've dubbed kobayashi maru they're using those agile devops uh software development practices uh to deliver uh space awareness software uh to the combined space operations center uh affectionately called the csp that c-spock is just down the road uh from cal poly uh there in san luis obispo at vandenberg air force base they've securely linked the c-spock with other space operation centers around the planet our allies australia canada and the uk uh we're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations so lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development uh capabilities for our our space systems but as i mentioned earlier we've got large constellations on satellite of satellites on orbit right now some of them are well in excess of a decade or more old on orbit and so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old and so but we still have to worry about them because they're critical to our space capabilities um we've been working with an air force materiel command organization uh called crows which stands for the cyber resiliency office for uh weapon systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to to live through this increasingly cyber security uh concerned era that we currently live in our industry partners have been critical to to both of those different avenues both new systems and legacy systems we're working closely with them to defend and upgrade uh national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with uh with new national assets coming online the vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threaten the way we've done business in the past both militarily and in the case of gps economically the impacts of that cyber security risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes but i've got to tell you it that as the threat vectors change as the vulnerabilities change we've got to be nimble enough agile enough to be able to bounce back and forth we can't just say uh many people in the audience are probably familiar with the rmf or the risk management framework approach to um to reviewing uh the cyber security of a system we can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an rmf on a system and then hey high five we're all good uh it's a journey not a destination that's cyber security and it's a constant battle rhythm throughout a weapon systems life cycle not just a single event i want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question but before i go there you mentioned the agile and i see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles you've got to be faster and we saw this in the computer industry mainframes mini computers and then when you started getting beyond me when the internet hit and pcs came out you saw the big enterprises the banks and and government start to work with startups it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that you know there's no way if you're a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise now that used to be for public sector and certainly uh for you guys so as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved i'm sure would love to love to have a contract with space force there's an roi calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view edit software you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you uh whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile but they might not be that big company we are john that's a fantastic question we are desperately trying to reach out to to those new space advocates to those startups to those um what we sometimes refer to within the department of defense those non-traditional uh defense contractors a couple of things just for uh thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight um uh three years ago we created here at uh space and missile system center uh the space enterprise consortium uh to provide a platform uh a contractual vehicle really to enable us to rapidly prototype uh development of space systems and to collaborate uh between the u.s space force uh traditional defense contractors non-traditional vendors like startups and even some academic institutions uh spec as we call it space enterprise consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts uh awarded quickly many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements and that's what spec is based on and so far in just three years spec has awarded 75 different uh prototyping contracts worth over 800 million dollars with a 36 reduction in time to award and because it's a consortium based competition for um for these kinds of prototyping efforts the barrier to entry for small and non-traditional for startups even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototypings is really lowered right um uh these types of partnerships uh that we've been working through on spec uh have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security uh for their systems both their developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build we want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together and support um uh kind of mutually beneficial uh relationships between all um recently uh at the annual air force association uh conference that i mentioned earlier i moderated a panel with several space industry leaders uh all from big traditional defense contractors by the way and they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships uh between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrants uh and that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those uh larger contractors uh that we rely on day in and day out advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that i think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations as i mentioned earlier the spec has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values and it's just going to get better right there's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium 80 of them are non-traditional kinds of vendors and we just love working with them another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators uh if you will and innovators that include uh cyber security experts is our space pitch day events right so we held our first event last november in san francisco uh where we awarded over a two-day period about 46 million dollars to 30 different companies um that had potentially game-changing ideas these were phase two small business innovative research efforts uh that we awarded with cash on the spot uh we're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. uh we're planning on doing it right here in los angeles uh covent 19 environment permitting um and we think that these are you know fantastic uh uh venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups startups and small businesses who are interested in uh really truly partnering with the us air force it's a as i said before it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business uh and working with the innovation economy uh is something that the department of defense uh really needs to do in that um the innovation that we used to think was ours you know that 80 percent of the industrial-based innovation that came from the department of defense uh the the script has been flipped there and so now more than 70 percent uh particularly in space innovation uh comes from the commercial sector not from uh not from the defense business itself and so um that's a tsunami of uh investment and a tsunami of uh capability and i need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it you know what i mean yeah i mean it's one of those things where the flip the script has been flipped but it's exciting because it's impacting everything are you talking about systems architecture you're talking about software you're talking about a business model you talk about devsecops from a technical perspective but now you have a business model innovation all the theaters of uh are exploding in innovation technical business personnel this brings up the workforce challenge you've got the cyber needs for the u.s space force there's probably a great roi model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts that's a entrepreneurial innovation you got the the business model theater you've got the personnel how does the industry adopt and change you guys are clearly driving this how does the industry adjust to you yeah so um i think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the u.s space force from a from an acquisition perspective and in this particular case from a from a cyber security perspective as i mentioned earlier it's the most exciting time to be in space programs uh really since the days of apollo um uh you know just to put it in terms that you know maybe have an impact with the audience uh from 1957 until today approximately 9 000 satellites uh have been launched from the various space faring countries around the planet uh less than two thousand of those nine thousand are still up on orbit and operational and yet in the new space regime um players like spacex have plans to launch you know 12 000 satellites for some of their constellations alone it really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities whether they're commercial civil or defense are going to require appropriate cyber security uh protections it's just a really exciting time uh to be working in stuff like this and so uh folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cyber security are just the kind of people that we want to work with because we need to make sure our systems are are secure and resilient we need folks that have technical and computing expertise engineering skills to be able to design cybersecure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks uh but we also as you alluded to we need people that have that business and um you know business acumen human networking background so that we can launch the startups and work with the non-traditional businesses uh help to bring them on board help to secure both their data and our data and uh and and make sure our processes and systems are are free as much as possible from uh uh from attack um for preparation for for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this uh trade space um you gotta be smart on digital networking uh you gotta understand basic internet protocols concepts uh programming languages uh database design uh learn what you can from penetration or vulnerability testing and and uh risk assessment i will tell you this and i don't think he will i know he will not mind me telling you this but you've got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago i'm at home one evening and i get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss the commander of air force space command uh general j raymond who is now currently the chief of space operations and he is on temporary duty flying overseas he lands where he's going and he first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes jt um while i was traveling um i noticed that there were e-books available on the commercial airliner i was traveling on and there was an e-book on something called scrumming and agile devsecops and i read it have you read it um and i said no sir but if you tell me what the title of the book is i will read it and so i got to go to my staff meeting um you know the very next week the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the stab meeting hey if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming then i'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our gs13s all of our government employees can get smart on uh the scrumming development process and interestingly as another side i had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays where he was trying to take some leave and i said sir what are you up to today are you are you you know making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever and the chief of space operations told me no i'm trying to teach myself python i'm at lesson two and it's not going so well but i'm i'm gonna figure this out and so that kind of thing if the chief of staff or the you know the the the chief of space operations can prioritize scrumming and python language and innovation in his daily schedule then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that and we'll just say lower levels of rank uh throughout our entire space force enterprise um look i i we don't need to need people that can code a satellite from scratch but we need to know we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cyber security requirements and that can turn those things into into meaningful actions obviously in the space domain things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important uh space is not an intuitive uh domain so under understanding how things survive uh on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions and you know i know there's probably a lot because of this conference i know there's a probably a whole lot of high-speed cyber security experts out in the audience and i need those people in the u.s space force the the country is counting on it but i wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy right i have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers and they don't have to be high-end cyber security experts but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections um into our space system so the skill set is is really really broad um our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into uh define designing uh and fielding offensive and destructive space cyber security weapons right they've repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit and the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that as i mentioned before peaceful uh global commons of space we really need all hands on deck if you're interested in helping in uniform if you're interested in helping uh not in uniform uh but as a government employee a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important uh or more cape more able to be developed for our space systems then we'd really love to uh to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems lieutenant general john thompson great insight thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too and motivation for the young next generation the united states space force approach of cyber security really amazing talk thank you for your time final parting question is as you look out and you had your magic wand what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish it's a super exciting time what do you hope for so um um first of all john thanks to you and and thanks to cal poly uh for the invitation and and thanks to everybody for uh for their interest in cyber security especially as it relates to space systems that's here at the conference um uh there's a quote and i'll read it here uh from uh bernard schriever who was the uh the founder if you will uh a legend in uh dod space the founder of the western development division which was a predecessor organization to space and missile systems center general shrever i think captures the essence of what how we see the next couple of years the world has an ample supply of people who can always come up with a dozen good reasons why new ideas will not work and should not be tried but the people who produce progress are breed apart they have the imagination the courage and the persistence to find solutions and so i think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cyber security innovation are going to be a pony ride at the county fair then perhaps you should look for another line of work because i think the next few years in space and cyber security innovation are going to be more like a rodeo um and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes it is a an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem it's really an honor for me to um to be able to play some small role uh in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it uh while i'm trying to improve the chances of uh of the united states of america in a uh in a space war fighting uh uh environment um and so i thank all of you for uh participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you thank you sir thank you for your leadership and thank you for the for the time for this awesome event space and cyber security symposium 2020 i'm john furrier on behalf of cal poly thanks for watching [Music]

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John F Thompson V1 FOR REVIEW


 

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering space in cybersecurity symposium 2020 hosted by Cal Poly. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to the space and cybersecurity symposium, 2020 hosted by Cal Poly where the intersection of space and security are coming together. I'm John Furrier, your host with theCUBE here in California. I want to welcome our featured guest, Lieutenant General, John F. Thompson with the United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. That's the topic of this session. And of course he's the commander of the space and missile system center in Los Angeles Air Force Base. Also heading up Space Force. General, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate to you kicking this off. Welcome to the symposium. >> Hey, so thank you very much, John, for that very kind introduction. Also very much thank you to Cal Poly for this opportunity to speak to this audience today. Also a special shout out to one of the organizers, Dustin Debrun, for all of his work, helping get us to this point. Ladies and gentlemen as a John mentioned, I'm JT Thompson. I lead the 6,000 men and women of the United States Space Force's Space and Missile System Center, which is headquartered here at Los Angeles Air Force Base and El Segundo. If you're not quite sure where that's at, it's about a mile and a half from LAX. This is our main operating location, but we do have a number of other operating locations around the country. We're about 500 people at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an about another 500 people on the front range of the Rockies between Colorado Springs and Denver plus a smattering of other much smaller operating locations nationwide. We're responsible for acquiring, developing and sustaining the United States Space Force's, critical space assets. That includes the satellites in the space layer and also on the ground layer our ground segments to operate those satellites. And we also are in charge of procuring launch services for the US Space Force and a number of our critical mission partners across the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. Just as a couple of examples of some of the things we do, if you're unfamiliar with our work we developed and currently sustain the 31 satellite GPS constellation that satellite constellation, while originally intended to help with global navigation, those GPS signals have provided trillions of dollars in unanticipated value to the global economy over the past three decades. GPS is everywhere. I think everybody realizes that. Agriculture, banking, the stock market, the airline industry, separate and distinct navigation systems. It's really pervasive across both capabilities for our Department of Defense and capabilities for our economy and individuals, billions of individuals across our country and the planet. Some of the other work we do for instance, in the communications sector, secure communications satellites that we designed and build that link America's sons and daughters serving in the military around the world and really enable real time support and comms for our deployed forces. And those of our allies. We also acquire infrared missile warning satellites that monitor the planet for missile launches that provide advanced warning to the US Homeland and to our allies in case some of those missile launches are nefarious. On a note, that's probably a lot closer to home, maybe a lot closer to home than many of us want to think about here in the state of California. In 2018, SMC jumped through a bunch of red tape and bureaucracy to partner with the US Forest Service during two of the largest wildfires in the state's history, the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern California. As those fires spread out of control, we created processes on the fly to share data from our missile warning satellites. Those are satellites that are systems that are purpose built to see heat sources from thousands of miles above the planet. And we collaborated with the US Forest Service so that firefighters on the ground could track those fires more in real time and better forecast fires and where they were spreading, thereby saving lives and property by identifying hotspots and flareups for firefighters. That data that we were able to working with our contractors pass to the US Forest Service and authorities here in California, was passed in less than an hour as it was collected to get it into the hands of the emergency responders, the first responders as quickly as possible and doing that in an hour greatly surpassed what was available from some of the other assets in the airborne and ground-based fire spotters. It was really instrumental in fighting those fires and stopping their spread. We've continued that involvement in recent years, using multiple systems to support firefighters across the Western US this fall, as they battled numerous wildfires that unfortunately continue. Working together with the US Forest Service and with other partners we'd like to think that we've made a difference here, but there's still a lot more work to go. And I think that we should always be asking ourselves what else can space data be used for and how can we more rapidly get that space data to stakeholders so that they can use it for purposes of good, if you will. How else can we protect our nation? How else can we protect our friends and allies? I think a major component of the discussion that we will have throughout this conference is that the space landscape has changed rapidly and continues to change rapidly. Just over the past few years, John and I were talking before we went live here and 80 nations now have space programs. Nearly 80 space faring nations on the planet. If you just look at one mission area that the Department of Defense is interested in, and that's small launch, there are currently over 100 different small launch companies within the US industrial base vying for commercial DoD and civil payload capabilities, mostly to lower earth orbit. It's truly a remarkable time. If you factor in those things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, where we're revolutionizing really, the ways that we generate process and use data. It's really remarkable. In 2016, so if you think about this four years ago, NASA estimated that there were 28 terabytes of information transiting their space network each day. And that was four years ago. Obviously we've got a lot of desire to work with a lot of the people in the audience in this conference, we need to work with big thinkers, like many of you to answer questions on how best we apply data analytics to extract value and meaning from that data. We need new generations of thinkers to help apply cutting edge theories of data mining, cyber behaviorism, and Internet of Things 2.0, it's just truly a remarkable time to be in the space business and the cyber aspects of the space business are truly, truly daunting and important to all of us. Integrating cyber security into our space systems, both commercial and government is a mandate. it's no longer just a nice to have as the US Space Force and Department of the Air Force leadership has said many times over the past couple of years, space is becoming congested and contested. And that contested aspect means that we've got to focus on cyber security in the same way that the banking industry and cyber commerce focus on cybersecurity day in and day out. The value of the data and services provided is really directly tied to the integrity and availability of that data and services from the space layer, from the ground control segments associated with it. And this value is not just military, it's also economic and it's not just American, it's also a value for the entire world, particularly our allies, as we all depend upon space and space systems. Your neighbors and friends here in California that are employed at the space and missile system center work with network defenders. We work with our commercial contractors and our systems developers, our international allies and partners to try and build as secure and resilient systems as we can from the ground up that keep the global comments of space free and open for exploration and for commerce as John and I were talking earlier, before we came online, there's an aspect of cybersecurity for space systems, especially for some of our legacy systems, that's more, how do we bolt this on? Cause we fielded those space systems a number of years ago, and the challenges of cybersecurity in the space domain have grown. So we have a part that we have to worry about, bolting it on, but then we have to worry about building it in as we field new systems and build in a flexibility that realizes that the cyber threat or the cybersecurity landscape will evolve over time. It's not just going to be stagnant. There will always be new vulnerabilities and new threat vectors that we all have to look at. Look, as Secretary Barrett, who is our secretary of the air force likes to say most Americans use space before they have their first cup of coffee in the morning. The American way of life really depends on space. And as part of the United States Space Force, we work with defense leaders, our Congress joint, and international military teammates and industry to ensure American leadership in space. I really thank you for this opportunity to address the audience today, John, and thanks so much to Cal Poly for letting me be one of the speakers at this event. I've really looked forward to this for several months. And so with that, I look forward to your questions as we kind of move along here. >> General, thank you very much for those awesome introductory statement. For the folks watching on the stream, Brigadier General Carthan's going to be in the chat, answering any questions, feel free to chat away. He's the vice commander of Space and Missile System Center, he'll be available. A couple of comments from your keynote before I get to my questions. Cause it just jumped into my head. You mentioned the benefits of say space with the fires in California. We're living that here. That's really realtime. That's a benefit. You also mentioned the ability for more people launching payloads into space. I'm only imagined Moore's law smaller, faster, cheaper applies to rockets too. So I'm imagining you have the benefits of space and you have now more potential objects flying out sanctioned and maybe unsanctioned. So is it going to be more rules around that? This is an interesting question cause it's exciting Space Force, but for all the good there is potentially bad out there. >> Yeah. So John, I think the basics of your question is as space becomes more congested and contested, is there a need for more international norms of how satellites fly in space? What kind of basic features satellites have to perhaps de orbit themselves? What kind of basic protections should all satellites be afforded as part of a peaceful global commons of space? I think those are all fantastic questions. And I know that US and many allied policy makers are looking very, very hard at those kinds of questions in terms of what are the norms of behavior and how we field, and field as the military term. But how we populate using civil or commercial terms that space layer at different altitudes, lower earth orbit, mid earth orbit, geosynchronous earth orbit, different kinds of orbits, what the kind of mission areas we accomplished from space. That's all things that need to be definitely taken into account as the place gets a little bit, not a little bit as the place gets increasingly more popular day in and day out. >> I'm super excited for Space Force. I know that a new generation of young folks are really interested in it's an emerging, changing great space. The focus here at this conference is space and cybersecurity, the intersection. I'd like to get your thoughts on the approach that a space force is taking to cybersecurity and how it impacts our national goals here in the United States. >> Yeah. So that's a great question John, let me talk about it in two basic ways. At number one is an and I know some people in the audience, this might make them a little bit uncomfortable, but I have to talk about the threat. And then relative to that threat, I really have to talk about the importance of cyber and specifically cyber security, as it relates to that threat. The threats that we face really represented a new era of warfare and that new era of warfare involves both space and cyber. We've seen a lot of action in recent months from certain countries, notably China and Russia that have threatened what I referred to earlier as the peaceful global commons of space. For example, it threw many unclassified sources and media sources. Everybody should understand that the Russians have been testing on orbit anti-satellite capabilities. It's been very clear if you were following just the week before last, the Department of Defense released its 2020 military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. And it was very clear that China is developing ASATs, electronic jammers, directed energy weapons, and most relevant to today's discussion, offensive cyber capabilities. There are kinetic threats that are very, very easy to see, but a cyber attack against a critical command and control site or against a particular spacecraft could be just as devastating to the system and our war fighters in the case of GPS and important to note that that GPS system also impacts many civilians who are dependent on those systems from a first response perspective and emergency services, a cyber attack against a ground control site could cause operators to lose control of a spacecraft or an attacker could feed spoofed data to assist them to mislead operators so that they sent emergency services personnel to the wrong address. Attacks on spacecraft on orbit, whether directly via a network intrusion or enabled through malware introduced during the system's production while we're building the satellite can cripple or corrupt the data. Denial-of-service type attacks on our global networks obviously would disrupt our data flow and interfere with ongoing operations and satellite control. If GPS went down, I hesitate to say it this way, cause we might elicit some screams from the audience. But if GPS went down a Starbucks, wouldn't be able to handle your mobile order, Uber drivers wouldn't be able to find you. And Domino's certainly wouldn't be able to get there in 30 minutes or less. So with a little bit of tongue in cheek there from a military operations perspective, it's dead serious. We have become accustomed in the commercial world to threats like ransomware and malware. And those things have unfortunately become commonplace in commercial terrestrial networks and computer systems. However, what we're seeing is that our adversaries with the increased competition in space these same techniques are being retooled, if you will, to use against our national security space systems day in and day out. As I said, during my opening remarks on the importance of cyber, the value of these systems is directly tied to their integrity. If commanders in the field, firefighters in California or baristas in Starbucks, can't trust the data they're receiving, then that really harms their decision making capabilities. One of the big trends we've recently seen is the move towards proliferated LEO constellations, obviously Space X's Starlink on the commercial side and on the military side, the work that DARPA and my organization SMC are doing on Blackjack and Casino, as well as some space transport layer constellation work that the space development agency is designing are all really, really important types of mesh network systems that will revolutionaries how we plan and field war fighting systems and commercial communications and internet providing systems. But they're also heavily reliant on cybersecurity. We've got to make sure that they are secured to avoid an accident or international damage. Loss of control of these constellations really could be catastrophic from both a mission perspective or from a satellites tumbling out of low earth orbit perspective. Another trend is introductions in artificial intelligence and machine learning, onboard spacecraft are at the edge. Our satellites are really not so much hardware systems with a little software anymore in the commercial sector and in the defense sector, they're basically flying boxes full of software. And we need to ensure that data that we're getting out of those flying boxes full of software are helping us base our decisions on accurate data and algorithms, governing the right actions and that those systems are impervious to the extent possible to nefarious modifications. So in summation, cybersecurity is a vital element of everything in our national security space goals. And I would argue for our national goals, writ large, including economic and information dimensions, the Space Force leadership at all levels from some of the brand new second lieutenants that general Raymond swore in to the space force this morning, ceremonially from the air force associations, airspace and cyberspace conference to the various highest levels, General Raymond, General DT Thompson, myself, and a number of other senior leaders in this enterprise. We've got to make sure that we're all working together to keep cyber security at the forefront of our space systems cause they absolutely depend on it. >> You mentioned hardware, software threats, opportunities, challenges. I want to ask you because you got me thinking of the minute they're around infrastructure. We've heard critical infrastructure, grids here on earth. You're talking about critical infrastructure, a redefinition of what critical infrastructure is, an extension of what we have. So I'd love to get your thoughts about Space Force's view of that critical infrastructure vis-a-vis the threat vectors, because the term threat vectors has been kicked around in the cyberspace. Oh you have threat vectors. They're always increasing the surface area. If the surface area is from space, it's an unlimited service area. So you got different vectors. So you've got new critical infrastructure developing real time, really fast. And you got an expanded threat vector landscape. Putting that in perspective for the folks that aren't really inside the ropes on these critical issues. How would you explain this and how would you talk about those two things? >> So I tell you, just like, I'm sure people in the security side or the cybersecurity side of the business in the banking industry feel, they feel like it's all possible threat vectors represent a dramatic and protect potentially existential threat to all of the dollars that they have in the banking system, to the financial sector. On the Department of Defense side, we've got to have sort of the same mindset. That threat vector from, to, and through space against critical space systems, ground segments, the launch enterprise, or transportation to orbit and the various different domains within space itself. Like I mentioned before, LEO, MEO and GEO based satellites with different orbits, all of the different mission areas that are accomplished from space that I mentioned earlier, some that I did mention like a weather tactical or wide band communications, various new features of space control. All of those are things that we have to worry about from a cyber security threat perspective. And it's a daunting challenge right now. >> Yeah, that's awesome. And one of the things we've been falling on the hardware side on the ground is the supply chain. We've seen, malware being, really put in a really obscure hardware. Who manufactures it? Is it being outsourced? Obviously government has restrictions, but with the private sector, you mentioned China and the US kind of working together across these peaceful areas. But you got to look at the supply chain. How does the supply chain in the security aspect impact the mission of the US space Force? >> Yeah. Yeah. So how about another, just in terms of an example, another kind of California based historical example. The very first US Satellite, Explorer 1, was built by the jet propulsion laboratory folks, not far from here in El Segundo, up in Pasadena, that satellite, when it was first built in the late 50s weighing a little bit, over 30 pounds. And I'm sure that each and every part was custom made and definitely made by US companies. Fast forward to today. The global supply chain is so tightly coupled, and frankly many industries are so specialized, almost specialized regionally around the planet. We focus every day to guarantee the integrity of every component that we put in our space systems is absolutely critical to the operations of those satellites and we're dependent upon them, but it becomes more difficult and more difficult to understand the heritage, if you will, of some of the parts that are used, the thousands of parts that are used in some of our satellites that are literally school bus sized. The space industry, especially national security space sector is relatively small compared to other commercial industries. And we're moving towards using more and more parts from non US companies. Cybersecurity and cyber awareness have to be baked in from the beginning if we're going to be using parts that maybe we don't necessarily understand 100% like an Explorer one, the lineage of that particular part. The environmental difficulties in space are well known. The radiation environment, the temperature extremes, the vacuum, those require specialized component. And the US military is not the only customer in that space. In fact, we're definitely not the dominant customer in space anymore. All those factors require us along with our other government partners and many different commercial space organizations to keep a very close eye on our supply chains, from a quality perspective, a security perspective and availability. There's open source reporting on supply training intrusions from many different breaches of commercial retailers to the infectious spread of compromised patches, if you will. And our adversaries are aware of these techniques. As I mentioned earlier, with other forms of attack, considering our supply chains and development networks really becomes fair game for our adversaries. So we have to take that threat seriously. Between the government and industry sectors here in the US. We're also working with our industry partners to enact stronger defenses and assess our own vulnerabilities. Last fall, we completed an extensive review of all of our major contracts here at Space and Missile System Center to determine the levels of cyber security requirements we've implemented across our portfolio. And it sounds really kind of businessy geeky, if you will. Hey, we looked at our contracts to make sure that we had the right clauses in our contracts to address cybersecurity as dynamically as we possibly could. And so we found ourselves having to add new language to our contracts, to require system developers, to implement some more advanced protective measures in this evolving cyber security environment. So that data handling and supply chain protections from contract inception to launch and operations were taken into account. Cyber security really is a key performance parameter for us now. Performance of the system, It's as important as cost, it's as important as schedule, because if we deliver the perfect system on time and on cost, it can perform that missile warning or that communications mission perfectly, but it's not cyber secure. If it's doesn't have cyber protections built into it, or the ability to implement mitigations against cyber threats, then we've essentially fielded a shoe box in space that doesn't do the CA the war fighter or the nation any good. Supply chain risk management is a major challenge for us. We're doing a lot to coordinate with our industry partners. We're all facing it head on to try and build secure and trusted components that keep our confidence as leaders, firefighters, and baristas as the case may be. But it is a challenge. And we're trying to rise to that challenge. >> This is so exciting this new area, because it really touches everything. Talk about geeking out on the tech, the hardware, the systems but also you put your kind of MBA hat on you go, what's the ROI of extra development and how things get built. Because the always the exciting thing for space geeks is like, if you're building cool stuff, it's exciting, but you still have to build. And cybersecurity has proven that security has to be baked in from the beginning and be thought as a system architecture. So you're still building things, which means you got to acquire things, you got to acquire parts, you got acquire build software and sustain it. How is security impacting the acquisition and the sustainment of these systems for space? >> Yeah. From initial development, through planning for the acquisition, design, development, our production fielding and sustainment, it impacts all aspects of the life cycle, John. We simply, especially from the concept of baking in cybersecurity, we can't wait until something is built and then try and figure out how to make it cyber secure. So we've moved way further towards working side by side with our system developers to strengthen cybersecurity from the very beginning of a systems development, cyber security, and the resilience associated with it really have to be treated as a key system attribute. As I mentioned earlier, equivalent with data rates or other metrics of performance. We like to talk in the space world about mission assurance and mission assurance has always sort of taken us as we technically geek out. Mission assurance has always taken us to the will this system work in space. Can it work in a vacuum? Can it work in as it transfers through the Van Allen radiation belt or through the Southern hemisphere's electromagnetic anomaly? Will it work out in space? And now from a resiliency perspective, yeah, it has to work in space. It's got to be functional in space, but it's also got to be resistant to these cybersecurity threats. It's not just, I think a General D.T Thompson quoted this term. It's not just widget assurance anymore. It's mission assurance. How does that satellite operator that ground control segment operate while under attack? So let me break your question a little bit, just for purposes of discussion into really two parts, cybersecurity, for systems that are new and cybersecurity for systems that are in sustainment are kind of old and legacy. Obviously there's cyber vulnerabilities that threatened both, and we really have to employ different strategies for defensive of each one. For new systems. We're desperately trying to implement across the Department of Defense and particularly in the space world, a kind of a dev sec ops methodology and practice to delivering software faster and with greater security for our space systems. Here at SMC, we have a program called enterprise ground services, which is a toolkit, basically a collection of tools for common command and control of different satellite systems, EGS as we call it has an integrated suite for defensive cyber capabilities. Network operators can use these tools to gain unprecedented insight to data flows and to monitor space network traffic for anomalies or other potential indicators of a bad behavior, malicious behavior, if you will, it's rudimentary at this point, but because we're using DevSecOps and that incremental development approach, as we scale it, it just becomes more and more capable. Every product increment that we feel. Here at LA Air Force Base, we have the United Space Force's West Coast Software Factory, which we've dubbed the Kobayashi Maru. They're using those agile DevOps software development practices to deliver a space awareness software to the combined space operations center. Affectionately called the CSpock that CSpock is just on the road from Cal Poly there in San Luis Obispo at Vandenberg Air Force Base. They've so securely linked the sea Spock with other space operation centers around the planet, our allies, Australia, Canada, and the UK. We're partnering with all of them to enable secure and enhanced combined space operations. So lots of new stuff going on as we bake in new development capabilities for our space systems. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got large constellations of satellites on orbit right now. Some of them are well in excess of a decade or more or old on orbit. And so the design aspects of those satellites are several decades old. But we still have to worry about them cause they're critical to our space capabilities. We've been working with an air force material command organization called CROWS, which stands for the Cyber Resiliency Office for Weapon Systems to assess all of those legacy platforms from a cyber security perspective and develop defensive strategies and potential hardware and software upgrades to those systems to better enable them to live through this increasingly cybersecurity concerned era that we currently live in. Our industry partners have been critical to both of those different avenues. Both new systems and legacy systems. We're working closely with them to defend and upgrade national assets and develop the capabilities to do similar with new national assets coming online. The vulnerabilities of our space systems really kind of threatened the way we've done business in the past, both militarily and in the case of GPS economically. The impacts of that cybersecurity risk are clear in our acquisition and sustainment processes, but I've got to tell you, as the threat vectors change, as the vulnerabilities change, we've got to be nimble enough, agile enough, to be able to bounce back and forth. We can't just say, many people in the audience are probably familiar with the RMF or the Risk Management Framework approach to reviewing the cyber security of a system. We can't have program managers and engineers just accomplish an RMF on a system. And then, hey, high five, we're all good. It's a journey, not a destination, that's cybersecurity. And it's a constant battle rhythm through our weapon systems lifecycle, not just a single event. >> I want to get to this commercial business needs and your needs on the next question. But before I go there, you mentioned agile. And I see that clearly because when you have accelerated innovation cycles, you've got to be faster. And we saw this in the computer industry, mainframes, mini computers, and then we started getting beyond maybe when the internet hit and PCs came out, you saw the big enterprises, the banks and government start to work with startups. And it used to be a joke in the entrepreneurial circles is that, there's no way if you are a startup you're ever going to get a contract with a big business enterprise. Now that used to be for public sector and certainly for you guys. So as you see startups out there and there's acquisition involved, I'm sure would love to have a contract with Space Force. There's an ROI calculation where if it's in space and you have a sustainment view and it's software, you might have a new kind of business model that could be attractive to startups. Could you share your thoughts on the folks who want to be a supplier to you, whether they're a startup or an existing business that wants to be agile, but they might not be that big company. >> John, that's a fantastic question. We're desperately trying to reach out to those new space advocates, to those startups, to those what we sometimes refer to, within the Department of Defense, those non traditional defense contractors. A couple of things just for thinking purposes on some of the things that we're trying to highlight. Three years ago, we created here at Space and Missile System Center, the Space Enterprise Consortium to provide a platform, a contractual vehicle, really to enable us to rapidly prototype, development of space systems and to collaborate between the US Space Force, traditional defense contractors, non traditional vendors like startups, and even some academic institutions. SPEC, as we call it, Space Enterprise Consortium uses a specialized contracting tool to get contracts awarded quickly. Many in the audience may be familiar with other transaction agreements. And that's what SPEC is based on. And so far in just three years, SPEC has awarded 75 different prototyping contracts worth over $800 million with a 36% reduction in time to award. And because it's a consortium based competition for these kinds of prototyping efforts, the barrier to entry for small and nontraditional, for startups, even for academic institutions to be able to compete for these kinds of prototyping has really lowered. These types of partnerships that we've been working through on spec have really helped us work with smaller companies who might not have the background or expertise in dealing with the government or in working with cyber security for their systems, both our developmental systems and the systems that they're designing and trying to build. We want to provide ways for companies large and small to partner together in support kind of mutually beneficial relationships between all. Recently at the Annual Air Force Association conference that I mentioned earlier, I moderated a panel with several space industry leaders, all from big traditional defense contractors, by the way. And they all stressed the importance of building bridges and partnerships between major contractors in the defense industry and new entrance. And that helps us capture the benefits of speed and agility that come with small companies and startups, as well as the expertise and specialized skill sets of some of those larger contractors that we rely on day in and day out. Advanced cyber security protections and utilization of secure facilities are just a couple of things that I think we could be prioritizing more so in those collaborations. As I mentioned earlier, the SPEC has been very successful in awarding a number of different prototyping contracts and large dollar values. And it's just going to get better. There's over 400 members of the space enterprise consortium, 80% of them are non traditional kinds of vendors. And we just love working with them. Another thing that many people in the audience may be familiar with in terms of our outreach to innovators, if you will, and innovators that include cyber security experts is our space pitch day events. So we held our first event last November in San Francisco, where we awarded over a two day period about $46 million to 30 different companies that had potentially game changing ideas. These were phase two small business innovative research efforts that we awarded with cash on the spot. We're planning on holding our second space pitch day in the spring of 2021. We're planning on doing it right here in Los Angeles, COVID-19 environment permitting. And we think that these are fantastic venues for identifying and working with high-speed startups, and small businesses who are interested in really, truly partnering with the US Air Force. It's, as I said before, it's a really exciting time to be a part of this business. And working with the innovation economy is something that the Department of Defense really needs to do in that the innovation that we used to think was ours. That 80% of the industrial base innovation that came from the Department of Defense, the script has been flipped there. And so now more than 70%, particularly in space innovation comes from the commercial sector, not from the defense business itself. And so that's a tsunami of investment and a tsunami of a capability. And I need to figure out how to get my surfboard out and ride it, you know what I mean? >> Yeah, It's one of those things where the script has been flipped, but it's exciting because it's impacting everything. When you're talking about systems architecture? You're talking about software, you're talking about a business model. You're talking about dev sec opsx from a technical perspective, but now you have a business model innovation. All the theaters are exploding in innovation, technical, business, personnel. This brings up the workforce challenge. You've got the cyber needs for the US Space Force, It's probably great ROI model for new kinds of software development that could be priced into contracts. That's a entrepreneurial innovation, you've got the business model theater, you've got the personnel. How does the industry adopt and change? You guys are clearly driving this. How does the industry adjust to you? >> Yeah. So I think a great way to answer that question is to just talk about the kind of people that we're trying to prioritize in the US Space Force from an acquisition perspective, and in this particular case from a cybersecurity perspective. As I mentioned earlier, it's the most exciting time to be in space programs, really since the days of Apollo. Just to put it in terms that maybe have an impact with the audience. From 1957 until today, approximately 9,000 satellites have been launched from the various space varying countries around the planet. Less than 2000 of those 9,000 are still up on orbit and operational. And yet in the new space regime players like Space X have plans to launch, 12,000 satellites for some of their constellations alone. It really is a remarkable time in terms of innovation and fielding of space capabilities and all of those space capabilities, whether they're commercial, civil, or defense are going to require appropriate cybersecurity protections. It's just a really exciting time to be working in stuff like this. And so folks like the folks in this audience who have a passion about space and a passion about cybersecurity are just the kind of people that we want to work with. Cause we need to make sure our systems are secure and resilient. We need folks that have technical and computing expertise, engineering skills to be able to design cyber secure systems that can detect and mitigate attacks. But we also, as you alluded to, we need people that have that business and business acumen, human networking background, so that we can launch the startups and work with the non traditional businesses. Help to bring them on board help, to secure both their data and our data and make sure our processes and systems are free as much as possible from attack. For preparation, for audience members who are young and maybe thinking about getting into this trade space, you got to be smart on digital networking. You got to understand basic internet protocols, concepts, programming languages, database design. Learn what you can for penetration or vulnerability testing and a risk assessment. I will tell you this, and I don't think he will, I know he will not mind me telling you this, but you got to be a lifelong learner and so two years ago, I'm at home evening and I get a phone call on my cell phone and it's my boss, the commander of Air Force Space command, General, J. Raymond, who is now currently the Chief of Space Operations. And he is on temporary duty, flying overseas. He lands where he's going and first thing he does when he lands is he calls me and he goes JT, while I was traveling, I noticed that there were eBooks available on the commercial airliner I was traveling on and there was an ebook on something called scrumming and agile DevSecOps. And I read it, have you read it? And I said, no, sir. But if you tell me what the title of the book is, I will read it. And so I got to go to my staff meeting, the very next week, the next time we had a staff meeting and tell everybody in the staff meeting, hey, if the four star and the three star can read the book about scrumming, then I'm pretty sure all of you around this table and all our lieutenants and our captains our GS13s, All of our government employees can get smart on the scrumming development process. And interestingly as another side, I had a telephone call with him last year during the holidays, where he was trying to take some leave. And I said, sir, what are you up to today? Are you making eggnog for the event tonight or whatever. And the Chief of Space Operations told me no, I'm trying to teach myself Python. I'm at lesson two, and it's not going so well, but I'm going to figure this out. And so that kind of thing, if the chief of staff or the Chief of Space Operations can prioritize scrumming and Python language and innovation in his daily schedule, then we're definitely looking for other people who can do that. And we'll just say, lower levels of rank throughout our entire space force enterprise. Look, we don't need people that can code a satellite from scratch, but we need to know, we need to have people that have a basic grasp of the programming basics and cybersecurity requirements. And that can turn those things into meaningful actions, obviously in the space domain, things like basic physics and orbital mechanics are also important spaces, not an intuitive domain. So under understanding how things survive on orbit is really critical to making the right design and operational decisions. And I know there's probably a lot, because of this conference. I know there's probably a whole lot of high speed cybersecurity experts out in the audience. And I need those people in the US Space Force. The country is counting on it, but I wouldn't discount having people that are just cyber aware or cyber savvy. I have contracting officers and logisticians and program managers, and they don't have to be high end cybersecurity experts, but they have to be aware enough about it to be able to implement cyber security protections into our space systems. So the skill set is really, really broad. Our adversaries are pouring billions of dollars into designing and fielding offensive and destructive space, cybersecurity weapons. They repeatedly shown really a blatant disregard of safety and international norms for good behavior on orbit. And the cyber security aspects of our space systems is really a key battleground going forward so that we can maintain that. As I mentioned before, peaceful global comments of space, we really need all hands on deck. If you're interested in helping in uniform, if you're interested in helping, not in uniform, but as a government employee, a commercial or civil employee to help us make cyber security more important or more able to be developed for our space systems. And we'd really love to work with you or have you on the team to build that safe and secure future for our space systems. >> Lieutenant General John Thompson, great insight. Thank you for sharing all that awesome stories too, and motivation for the young next generation. The United States Space Force approach to cybersecurity. Really amazing talk, thank you for your time. Final parting question is, as you look out and you have your magic wand, what's your view for the next few years in terms of things that we could accomplish? It's a super exciting time. What do you hope for? >> So first of all, John, thanks to you and thanks to Cal Poly for the invitation and thanks to everybody for their interest in cybersecurity, especially as it relates to space systems, that's here at the conference. There's a quote, and I'll read it here from Bernard Schriever, who was the founder, if you will, a legend in a DoD space, the founder of the Western development division, which was a predecessor organization to Space and Missile System Center, General Schriever, I think captures the essence of how we see the next couple of years. "The world has an ample supply of people "who can always come up with a dozen good reasons "why new ideas will not work and should not be tried, "but the people who produce progress are breed apart. "They have the imagination, "the courage and the persistence to find solutions." And so I think if you're hoping that the next few years of space innovation and cybersecurity innovation are going to be upon a pony ride at the County fair, then perhaps you should look for another line of work, because I think the next few years in space and cybersecurity innovation are going to be more like a rodeo and a very dynamic rodeo as it goes. It is an awesome privilege to be part of this ecosystem. It's really an honor for me to be able to play some small role in the space ecosystem and trying to improve it while I'm trying to improve the chances of the United States of America in a space war fighting environment. And so I thank all of you for participating today and for this little bit of time that you've allowed me to share with you. Thank you. >> Sir, thank you for your leadership and thank you for the time for this awesome event, Space and Cyber Cybersecurity Symposium 2020, I'm John Furrier on behalf of Cal Poly, thanks for watching. (mellow music)

Published Date : Sep 16 2020

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Narrator: From around the globe. And of course he's the and Department of the Air Force leadership but for all the good there and field as the military term. and cybersecurity, the intersection. in the case of GPS and important to note of the minute they're and the various different of the US space Force? or the ability to implement mitigations and the sustainment of and in the case of GPS economically. on the folks who want the barrier to entry How does the industry adjust to you? and they don't have to be high and motivation for the hoping that the next few years for the time for this awesome event,

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Amy Haworth, Citrix & Tamara McCleary, Thulium | CUBE Conversation, April 2020


 

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston. This is an episode in the remote works, Citrix virtual series. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're in our Palo Alto studio here on this ongoing leadership series that we've been doing, reaching out to people in the community to get their take on what's going on with the COVID situation, what are best practices, what can we learn and specifically today, really the whole new way to work, and working from home. And we're really excited to have two guests on for this segment. The first one is Amy Hayworth. She is the Chief of Staff for HR for Citrix, joining us from Florida. Amy, great to see. >> Great to see you, Jeff. >> And also Tamara McCleary, who's been on many, many times coming to us from Denver. She is a well respected speaker, you've probably seen her doing more speaking than anything else, and also the CEO of Thulium. Tamara, great to see you. >> Thank you, I'm so excited for this conversation. >> Well, let's just jump into it. So it's so funny and doing a little homework, Amy, I came across a Professional Change Management executive conference, 2015 and you were talking about building change management as a profession and working from home was part of that and that was like five years ago and things creep along and then we have a light switch moment where there's no time to plan, there's no time to think, there's no time to implement things, it's, everyone must now stay at home. And so, outside the human tragedy, that is the COVID situation, we're not going to really speak to that here. But from a business point of view, suddenly with no warning, everyone had to work from home. From someone who's been in the profession of trying to drive change management through a process over time, what does that do for you? How do you digest that suddenly oh my goodness, we've got this light switch moment which is a forcing function that may have never come, but now we have to go? I wonder what your take is. >> I think the thing that get me most excited about this light switch moment is it is showing all of us that we are capable beyond what we ever thought we were when it comes to change. We've been called to take a leap, and for much of my experience in the organizational change management field, we spend a lot of time talking about managing resistance and the pushback about change and there's even this thing that drives me crazy, which is change is hard. I don't know why we tell ourselves that message. And I think what this is showing us is that number one, change is inevitable, it's going to happen. There is very little control that we actually have, but also we are more resilient, more adaptable. We're capable of change than many of us knew that we were. And it is calling up for me, what do we need to put in place within organizations to cultivate resilience? Because one of the things I think this is making all of us very aware is how volatile the world actually is. And it's also laid bare where we are strong individually and able to cope and where we also may need to do a little bit of practice and some very intentional resilience building. Though I think the conversation around the whole change management field is about to change and my hope is that focus turns more to resilience than it is to managing change. >> It's interesting 'cause a lot of just the chatter that's out there, is about Zoom. Do I use Zoom? Do I not use Zoom? Is it secure? All this other, people like to jump into the technology piece. But really, we had your boss on the other day, Donna Kimmel, the EVP and Chief People Officer, Citrix and she broke it down into three buckets. Culture was number one, physical space is number two and digital space was number three. And I thought it was really interesting that she really leads with empathy and human factors and I think that it's easy to forget those, but bringing up simple things that not only are you working from home, but guess what, your kids are home too and your spouse is home too. And they have meetings and they have Zoom calls, they have to do it or the other dog is still running around and all the other kinds of distractions. So the human factors are so, so important. Tamara, one of your early keynotes about your early development was in your early career working with people who are at the end of their life. And I know it helped you develop an empathy and really a prioritization that I think a lot of people are probably getting today that maybe they haven't thought about, what is truly important, what is truly meaningful. And this again, is this forcing function to say let's pump the brakes a little bit, take a step back and think about what's really important and the human factors. Again, your take on this crazy situation. >> I think you're absolutely right Jeff, and the fact that really what this has done, to Amy's point, yes we are very capable of change, but we're mostly so resistant and unwilling to change. And it's not because we don't want to, it's because we fear what will happen if we do change. And sometimes it's like the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And right now what has been forced upon us is to really think about critical issues. So when you're faced with a lack of toilet paper and uncertainty about your survival rate, you start to think about things in terms of say Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You're looking at that base level, that safety piece. And when people go to safety, they have really left that area of self actualization in what do I want to be, what do I want to do? And it's more about, oh no, what have I done? Do I like my life? I'm stuck here at home, wherever you're sheltering in place and am I really enjoying my life? Am I experiencing my life? And what we really have experienced through being forced to get on to video conferencing, how many of you out there are doing video conferencing like a billion times a day? We're being forced to really see each other as human beings. And that means whether you're the CEO or you're the EVP of global blah, blah, it doesn't matter. What matters is your dog is still barking, your child is still running around and needs something from you in that moment when you happen to be on a call. Because as we all know, with kids, when you say, I can't be bothered for the next 30 minutes, what do you think is going to happen? That's exactly the time when they need more grapes. So I think that what it does is it levels the playing field and it shows us all how human we are. It shows us our strengths as Amy pointed out, and it also shows us our communal frailty. >> So let's get into some of the specifics about what people are feeling. Citrix just commissioned this report put on by one pole, pretty timely, comes out in April, 2020, about working from home. And I think there was really some interesting stuff, still connectivity and bandwidth, still the biggest challenge that people have. Can I even get online, was the number one problem. And when they do, their wifi is slow and there's single sign on. All these things that we've been talking about for years and years and years. I mean, why, why Amy, have we still not gotten it done? It's fascinating to me that in 2020, we still have internet connectivity issues and people don't know how to turn on their microphone on their Zoom call, we're so far behind. >> Yeah, Jeff, I think what we're seeing is number one, it takes practice, then the need to be familiar with all these tools. I also have talked to many parents who first day of homeschool, my son tells me I can't call it homeschool 'cause it's different, it's virtual school, he says it's very different. But that first day, especially families with multiple children trying to get onto a Zoom call with their class, Heron is trying to work, possibly two parents in the house are connected. Our home WiFi networks just haven't taken this kind of load before, but very quickly I think we needed to realize as an organization that this is not work from home, this is working at home during the global pandemic and it is very different. So you mentioned that need to lead with empathy and to really understand what's going on, and I think that's so true and just that the humanness of what we've experienced, that one full research really talked about a few epic moments of mishap, whether it's taking a call from the garage, I have a colleague who would take from the car on the street, still sheltering in place, but the only quiet place to go to take a call. We have a legend in our Singapore office. There's a salesperson who made record numbers working from his garage for a month. So there are all sorts of heroics taking place to balance than in the midst of that when technology isn't acting as we would hope it would under normal circumstances, having to adjust quickly, whether that means staggering schedules, working through accommodations, teachers, however it needs to happen but I think the reality and the acceptance, going back to that humanness and empathy is that we all have to shift our mindset about what work means and even are at work. We've built up a lot of these polishished buttoned up personas and when we are able to actually let some of that down, I think what we're starting to see is connection on a much deeper level amongst teams and among colleagues. >> I'm just looking at the survey at how few people think that this is going to roll over into a little bit more of a permanent form. Only 37% think my organization in general will be more relaxed about remote working. I think staff will be allowed to work from home more regularly, 36%. We had Marten Mickos on and he ran MySQL before it got bought by Sun many moons ago. He talked that he had a distributed team from day one and he laughed. He said, "It's so much easier to fake it at the office, "to look busy versus when you're remote." As you just said Amy, you're only judged by your deliverables. And I thought it was so funny in your blog posts from earlier this year that when managers start managing by outcome and deliverable rather than assuming as good work's getting done because someone showed up at the office, I mean this is ridiculous that people are still judging things based on activity, not outcome. And we're even seeing now all these new tools that people are introducing in the marketplace. I can tell you how often your people are on Zoom and how many hours on the VPN. What are we measuring? We should be measuring outcomes and the piece that comes up over and over is trust. And if I can't trust you to deliver outcomes, I probably have a bigger problem than managing your day to day. Tamara, you see this all the time in terms of the trust and how important this is to relationships. >> I do and in fact our workforce at Thulium has always been a remote workforce. And for the way that I've built our organization is treat everybody like an adult and get your work done. And we do base everything upon productivity versus FaceTime. And I think that the reason some of these larger organizations have had this concept of show up having that FaceTime means that whoever gets there the earliest and leaves the latest somehow has been a better employee, it's not true. It is about productivity. And I think those wise organizations that look at how much they can save with the costs of like AC heat, the building cost, having a brick and mortar for everyone to come into it is very costly. And it's an old paradigm that a lot of middle managers have, which is this control piece. And that if the people are there in the office, they've got more control. And actually what we find is you don't need that control, especially when you look at the younger generational cohort coming up, how they have a totally different view of work. And we've talked a lot about the future of work and the gig economy, and what this COVID pandemic has done for us is to show us that actually work does get done at home. And in fact in some respects, more work gets done at home because it's harder to stop working when your work is happening right there at home. And so it does blur the lines and the boundaries between the work life than the home life. And so I think you get a lot more out of your employees when they work from home. >> It's funny, when Donna was on, she brought up a really interesting topic. She said, "Every time somebody pushes back on that, "can't be done from home." This job, this person, this type of task can't be done from home. The question should always be like, why? It almost sounds like when you move the whole cloud conversation that we've been tracking, went from, when should I move stuff to cloud, to why shouldn't you move to cloud? And it's not, does it work on a mobile, it should be mobile first. And now this conversation is moving this to, why can't somebody do it from home, as opposed to it has to be done from the office? So I think even just the relative flip of the context of setting up the question seems to be changing. That's why it surprised me that so few people think that it's going to go back. It clearly, especially as this goes on for a while, new behaviors become habits and they become normalized and hopefully, the senior management pays attention to the outcome and again, not this activity which is really not, that's not what you want people to do, you want them to actually get stuff done. >> Jeff and Amy, the other thing I was going to say is, Amy, when you look at the report that Citrix has put out, how many people are even going to be able to go back to work when kids aren't going back to school? And then we have summer, piggybacking onto that, so now you've got parents who have kids at home, what is that outlook? To me, it's not just this simple, okay, it's over, let's get back to work guys, because the rest of our life has completely shifted as well. >> That was actually my conversation today, is starting to really think about holistically when it comes to policies, programs, what are we putting in place for the summer? And not only that, but even some of our employees who have been alone through this, I think at the beginning, there was a very large shift on those who had children or elder care to think about. And at some point, at least in this half of the world, about last week, we really started to hear, worried about this person who's been alone by themselves in their apartment sheltering for over a month. So I think if they start to look at the variety of experiences people are having, really being sensitive to different personas in the organization, different needs, different emotions that are happening and we even start to think about, what does that mean to come back to work? And I know countries and organizations are being very cognizant about doing that. safely, in a very gradual  way of thinking about it, but it starts to get very, very complex very quickly and also from just let's do this well because there's a whole new set. Jeff, you bring up all new set of questions of employees asking, I wasn't allowed to work from home prior, I would like to do that more often now, new conversations with managers about, well, how are we going to measure results? There's a lot of work to be done between now and then, whatever what then is, to really ensure that we help everyone be successful. And I think the conversation we're having, it's likely not going to be one or the other. The new normal is not the old normal and we're not sure what it is but most likely, there's going to be some sort of hybrid working arrangement. Right now, the playing field is leveled and that in and itself is a very different work from home experience. What happens when it's hybrid again and there are some who are remote, some who are in the office, how do we make sure that it's equitable and all the voices have equal opportunity to chime in? Because when people are in the office and their colleague or two is remote, it's not a level of conversation in an organization. So whether that's establishing norms or really just starting to create behaviors where if one person's remote, then everybody's remote no matter if you're in the office or not, you dial in via go to meeting or whatever collaboration tool you're , so all sorts of things to think about, but I guess that is our ecosystem of work is going to change for sure. >> It was so funny in your blog posts, you talked a little bit about that as well. And one of the little paragraphs was, who gets to do it? It's like this binary decision, you can either work from home or you can't. And there's this whole second order impacts that we see on infrastructure, there's nobody in the trains or there's nobody on the freeways. You think, wow, we actually have a lot of freeways if everyone is not on them at the same time. So, begs a lot of questions are why is everybody driving to work at 8:30 in the morning to work on their laptop? Now clearly if you're in construction or service trades and you've got a truck and you got to go do something on site, they have to be there. But I think hopefully what this will do is help people as you're discussing, look at those who can. And even if it's one day a week, two days a week, one day a week, every couple of weeks. The impact on infrastructure, the impact on traffic, the environment, mental health, Amy, you talked about mental health, sitting in a car for an hour each way, every day certainly is not helping anybody feel better about themselves or get more work done. So I think there are so many benefits if you just look at it in the right context, focused on who can, not who can't and the how and the why and the enabler. But it's really interesting, we've talked a lot about the physical space and the cultural space. Imagine if this happened in 2006, before the iPhone came out, the smartphone. Think of the crazy amount of tools that we do have. I mean right now, we're talking and we spread out all over the country. So we're actually in a really fortunate space in terms of the digital infrastructure that we have in place to enable these things. And I know Citrix, you guys have been in the lead of supporting this forever, now even have a whole set up of resources, what's it called, the Citrix Remote Work Hub for people to get resource to figure out everything from the mental health to the WiFi connectivity, to all these other little things as Tamara said, how do you manage the kids and the dog and your significant other that also has Zoom meetings that they have to attend? So it's so many resources that people need to use and not feel uncomfortable that they're alone and could use a little bit of an assist. >> Absolutely well said. When this quickly became a forced experiment to work remote, Citrix has 30 years of history helping enable successful remote work in a secure way and the first thing that we wanted to do was be of service. So pulling together these resources has been a big project and we're so glad to be able to provide this tool set and we truly do hope that it makes this transition stronger, better, it will continue to grow and to evolve even as our own experiences evolve, new challenges arise, but we definitely want to keep it fresh and keep meeting the need that's out there, both internal for Citrix as much as in as long as we've been doing, we don't have it all figured out, we are learning too, this is unchartered territory for everyone, but also to take what we are learning and put it out there in a very transparent way. >> Right, I want to-- >> You know, I was-- >> Go ahead, Tamara. >> Sorry, but there was just something so crazy, Jeff, about the study that Citrix put out. And Amy, I wanted to bring this up to you because you said they're coworkers like, well, so-and-so lives alone, I wonder if they're okay or if they're lonely. But in the study, barely a quarter of the individuals reported any loneliness. I find that to be pretty shocking. >> It is shocking and I think it really speaks to how quickly those happy hours, the Zoom Happy Hours or the gatherings and some of the creativity that started to pop up, but yeah, you made a great point, Tamara, that was surprising and I'm curious if that will continue to be the case. (murmurs) >> But I guess maybe some of us when we got home, we were like, wow, this isn't so bad after all. And then can you imagine? So Jeff, if only 28% of people experienced any loneliness, imagine when you can have peace and quiet in your home again and still work. I think that this really is a lot more delicious than a lot of us anticipated it would be. And, what a grand social science experiment this has been! It's phenomenal. >> The fact that everyone is experiencing it at the same time globally just blows my mind. I was here for the earthquake, I was in Portland for Mount Saint Helens, I've been through a few little things here and there, but those are still regional, there's still a safe space, there's still people that don't have that story. Everyone, six or 7 billion people will have a where were you in March, 2020 story, which is fascinating. And then as you said, it's not only the work from home, there's no time to plan and no time to put infrastructure and, oh by the way, the kids are home too, and school is also from home. So in terms of an accelerant, it's just gasoline on the fire. But I want to jump in a little bit about one of the things you talked about Amy and you'll take camera 'cause you're doing it in your own company, and is in terms of establishing norms. I think people are maybe not thinking about the fact that they either need to establish new norms or they need to be very clear on the communication of what the norms are so that everybody is as you said Amy, feels comfortable in this new space because we have norms at work and now we have to have these new norms and there's all kinds of funny stuff going on in terms of we talked about dogs and kids, that this and that dressed, you're not dressed, you put makeup on, it's funny in the survey, do you take a shower? Only 30 some odd people take a shower every day, which I thought was kind of-- unexpected >> What about the shoe comment? Did you believe that, Jeff, where people actually would wear their shoes to their death? Well, I'll tell you, they didn't ask the women because the women would not be wearing high heels at home if they didn't have. >> They didn't specify which shoes, Tamara, they just said shoes. So maybe the more comfortable flats were the ones that were coming out. But I'm just curious on establishing social norms. Tamara, I'll let you go first, how did you establish them? Was it hard to do? Did they self self-generate and as a leader, do you have to police it or is it self policing? How's that working? And then Amy, from your point in terms of formal communication in a much bigger organization and being part of the HR office, one might say, isn't that already part of HR's charter? But how's that different now? Tamara, I'll let you go first. >> Sure, it's a great question because since we do have a remote workforce, one of the most salient things that I found to be critically important for productivity and collaboration and even cohesion and decreasing those silos between business unit is making sure that we form a community. And so what I mean by that is we have and always have had, we've been using video conferencing since before the pandemic and we have video conferencing meetings where video is on, so that's one of the parameters, is everybody needs to see everyone else's faces, and we have a morning kickoff meeting, an all hands meeting and then we have an end of week one as well and part of that piece, we call a standup where people either share something that's either a challenge within their workplace or with a customer or even in their own personal life, and then they end on something to celebrate because I think it's really important for us to cultivate that. But it really helps the teams to get to know one another. So just because someone in this business unit doesn't work with someone in this business unit, they know one another because of these team meetings that we have. And so I think creating a culture of positivity and collaboration versus competition and creating a culture where people feel a part of a team and a part of something bigger and where they see that their contribution makes a difference to the whole, creates a really delicious community that helps people feel valued at work. And I think with a remote workforce, you have got to pay attention to how you are creating that community and that feeling and sense of value to each and every individual within the organization. >> It's a very different kind of a challenge. Amy, your thoughts on more of a formal approach to establishing social norms to some of these big organizations, or do you treat it differently as a big organization or is it just a bunch of small little clusters of people that work together? >> I have so many thoughts on this, so I would love to have a two hour dialogue with both of you on this topic. Couple thoughts, there's implicit norms that develop organically, and then there's the explicit ones which for whatever reason we seem more hesitant to have very explicit conversations about norms. I don't know if people think it's tedious or something like that, I'm not sure, I haven't done that research yet. But in times of transition, it's so incredibly important just even for efficiency to add certainty, to make sure that everyone has the same message, same expectation to lean a little more heavily on the exquisite norms. Talking about how do we want to begin our meeting, let's reserve the first 10 minutes and just catch up like we would in the hallway. Some of that is a shift to how those meetings probably were happening two months ago. So making sure that everyone understands is that expectation and even little bit more of a warmup question. How's everybody feeling today? And even getting more specific, there is a couple of organizational gurus who I have been following quite a bit lately, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans, Aaron wrote a book called "Brave New Work" and they also have a podcast, but they really talk about the organization as an operating system. And when we look at norms, the norms are so much a part of that operating system and getting really clear about who does what here. There're things like how are not taken, how are we following up, in our current climate, who's checking on who? And so having some of those explicit conversations I think are incredibly important. And also for me with some of the work that I've been doing over the last six weeks is trying to harness goodness across the globe. So we have a group of site leaders who meet twice a week, their charge is to look after their location. So every location in the Citrix ecosystem that has more than 20 employees has a designated site leader during this time. And in bigger sites, they have pulled together committees, they're doing things that are local level to keep that site engaged, but what we're also looking to do is harness the best of the best. Some really amazing things, I did a radio calisthenic last night with our team in Tokyo. So something very true and personal to the Japanese culture but other sites, they're doing coffee chats and having drop-ins, celebrity guests, organizational leaders that are pretty high profile just popping in and out actively to have a very authentic Q&A conversations. There's some really inventive ideas to keep people engaged and also possibly establish new norm and I think that the question for me is, what do people like so much that they decide that it stays in place? When we do have of that thing and people are in the office more often, what level of connectivity will we keep? Even, will people start showering every day again? Some of these things, who knows what's going to happen? >> You make me want to go down to a to RNB and look in the meeting rooms at Intel, they used to have a very defined meeting, culture meeting, process meeting establishment, super efficient just like they're making chips. I wonder if they've changed a little bit in light of what's going on, but final note in terms of frequency and variety of communications. Both of you now have mentioned in the communications with your people and what you're hearing about is one is, you got to increase the frequency just period. And in fact, you might actually be communicating more frequently 'cause you don't necessarily chat all the time in the hallways when you're physically together. And the other thing that strikes me is the variety. It's not just the meeting, it's not just information exchange, it's touching base with community, it's establishing deeper relationships, it's doing some social things that, kind of the variety and the frequency of direct communication person to person, just not necessarily closer than six feet within one another has to go up dramatically, and is, as you're seeing in best practices in this new world. Amy, why don't you go first? >> I'm seeing a lot more Slack usage, we are an organization that has a multitude of tools to choose from, Slack being one of them, but highly engaged Slack community. The other thing that's become very clear as an insight is the more authentic the communication, the better. So our CEO, David Henshall has been doing video pieces and they had become increasingly more personal about whether it's his space where he exercises what he's doing for exercise, and the employee response has been deep appreciation for feeling several degrees more connected to our senior leadership. Other senior leaders on the team have profiled their own work from home antic in a very humorous way and so just finding inventive ways to leverage the communication vehicles we have, but at a level that is very true to the situation we're in and very human at their core. >> So Tamara, let me ask you a followup on that. You're big on social, it's a big part of your business helping other companies do better at social and engage in social, and it strikes me, especially in the real senior leadership ranks, there are those who tweet just to pick a platform, like Michael Dell, Sanjay Poonen, some CUBE alumni that you know, and then there's some that don't. And again, we talked about the contrast of IBM now, Ginny didn't tweet now, the new CEO announces it on LinkedIn. When you talk to CEOs and leaders about getting involved in social, I'm sure a lot of them that don't do it, just say the risk reward is not there, why am I going to expose some little personal tidbit of myself when the potential harm is great? But as we just heard from Amy, people like to know who the person is, people want to relate to who the person is. That's kind of part of the whole CUBE thing that we figured out a long time ago, is people are interested in the people that are behind the technology in the companies in the implementation. So how do you advise people, what do you see to convince them that, hey, it's actually in your best interest to show a little vulnerability, to show a little humanity, to maybe be scared sometimes and not necessarily have the right answer? How do you help coach them that these are good things, not bad things? >> It's so brilliant you brought this up, Jeff, because with the pandemic, a lot of the executives that were not on social media all of a sudden wanted to be on social media, and how do I do this, and how do I set up my thought leadership? Because this was a very primary mode of communication. And I think what we're seeing is that you do see a lot of the progressive CEOs and executive members on social media and then what you've outlined is there was a hesitancy by a lot of the CEOs who come from a different paradigm in which the hierarchal structure was such that they got to this level and why do I need to be on social media? And what we're seeing is that this push from the younger generational cohorts, which is they don't really see that hierarchal structure at all, and they want to be able to communicate with their CEO as much as they want to communicate with their manager. And when they can't, there is this distrust and you brought up the trust piece, which is huge. And I do know that a lot of global business leaders in highly regulated industries have been afraid, like in the financial services industry because there are a lot of rules and regulations. So I can understand and appreciate their hesitancy to be on social media, which is like a bit of the wild West. And you see those that are really pretty insulated from anything that they do, you can see like Elon Musk can tweet whatever he wants to tweet, and a lot of executives don't feel that they have that same sort of freedom. And so how we work with them, we work in the B2B and enterprise space is about what is it that you want to be known for? What is it that you're passionate about that would, Amy's point, be uplifting to those who not only work internally, your internal stakeholders, but to even your customers or those on the external, and stick to that? So no, you don't need to tweet about your political feelings, you don't need to tweet about sensitive subjects. We always say stay away from politics and religion, but you can absolutely establish a very authentic transparent, vulnerable thought leadership about the things that you care about. And we say pick three things. What three things do you want people to think of when you're not in the room? Pick three adjectives and then construct your editorial calendar, what you're doing on social media around how those three things are going to come to life. Through all of your email? Through your videos that you share with your community? And also what you're talking about on LinkedIn, Twitter and no, I'm not advising any of the executives to get on TikTok, but I do advise them to be on LinkedIn and Twitter. >> Matt Eastwood is starting to play with TikTok, so I don't know if you follow him on that, but he's a budding Casey Neistat. So I think he's getting into the TikTok thing, or even just TikTok edits, it's great. We could go on and on and on, and I really appreciate the time and it's just interesting again, pulling from Amy's blog post about leadership and you lead with trust, accountability, vulnerability, inclusion and communication. I think those are all human things and I think are so important. So final word, assuming things are going to get better in let's just say a year from now, we get back together and talk about how the new way to work has changed in a post COVID world, what do you hope that we'll be talking about that's different a year from now than we are today? Beyond obviously the COVID itself? Amy, you first. >> Wow. To narrow that down, I hope we are talking about how organizations have invested in helping our people find their strengths and feed with resilience and to understand what it is that helps them operate at their best, no matter what situation that you're in. >> That's great. Tamara? >> Me, Jeff, I'm going to hope that we are talking about the technology that's available a year from now that's going to help us have a much more immersive experience remotely working. So we'll be talking about hopefully things like the haptic internet, well that haptic interface with tactile internet and how AR, VR and mixed reality settings will help us as remote authors to feel like we're actually in meetings and having the same sort of experience that oftentimes we think we get only when we're at the building with everybody else. So I hope we're talking about how technology is really moving the needle forward to helping our remote workforce have that same experience and camaraderie and team building that they do in the physical space. >> Great. Well and again, there's this digital is different than physical, we're not together physically and we can't be right now, but we're together digitally. And so it's not the same, it's different, but there's a lot of good things about it too. So thank you both for taking the time, this has been a really great conversation. Amy, I agree with you, we could go for another couple of hours, but I think the crew would start throwing things at me. So I think we'll have to cut it off here. Thanks again and stay safe and really appreciate the time. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> Thank you. >> All right, thank you for tuning in, thanks for watching theCUBE, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Apr 22 2020

SUMMARY :

This is an episode in the remote works, She is the Chief of and also the CEO of Thulium. for this conversation. And so, outside the human tragedy, that is and able to cope and where and the human factors. the devil you don't. of the specifics about and just that the humanness and how many hours on the VPN. And that if the people to why shouldn't you move to cloud? Jeff and Amy, the other in place for the summer? that they have to attend? and the first thing that we I find that to be pretty shocking. the creativity that started to And then can you imagine? not only the work from home, because the women would not of the HR office, one might that I found to be critically clusters of people that work together? Some of that is a shift to And the other thing that is the more authentic the that are behind the of the executives to get on about how the new way to work and to understand what it is That's great. and having the same And so it's not the same, it's different, All right, thank you for

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Ravi Srinivasan, Forcepoint & Rohit Gupta, AWS | AWS re:Invent 2019


 

>>LA from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering AWS reinvent 2019 brought to you by Amazon web services and along with its ecosystem partners. >>Hey, welcome back to Vegas baby. This is the cubes coverage of AWS reinvent 19 this is day three. John Walls is my cohost Jay. Welcome back to Vegas baby Vegas. It's Vegas baby. And you know I'm looking out back. So this is not like a day three crowd. It's really not. Now you can kind of yell out in the hallway and your echo bounce around, but there are a lot of people still here, a lot of business still being done. There really are. There's no shortage of that. And because we're live on the queue, what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. So we're happy to welcome a couple of new guests to the queue that are going to share all these great things about security and teach us to, to my left is Robbie's sort of Austin VP of solutions and platform marketing from forest points and from AWS. >>Roe had gooped up global segment leader insecurity. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So we can't go to any event without talking about security. It's, it's one of those topics that I think every generation understand when there are big breaches like Capitol one that happened recently or Facebook, even the older generations who are still in the workforce today, they understand it to some degree. The security is so complex. And, and Ravi, one of the things I know that's most challenging about security, especially cyber, is humans are 90 plus percent of the problem. It's human errors, right? Talk to us about Forcepoint. I love the tagline, human centric cybersecurity. How can you help us humans fix all of the errors that we're causing? Or can you, Doug, good question. It's, it's the cat and mouse game, right? Uh, so Forcepoint is a purpose belt, a user and data protection company, right? >>And we're focused on the digital identities and the behavior of their cyber behavior to be able to understand that and then protect, um, data and the users as well. So that's what we refer to as human centric cybersecurity. And how long have you guys been working on this? Oh, we've been working on this for decades. It's the problem with traditional security was all infrastructure centric, guns, guards and Gates and magic will happen. And then turns out those bad actors figure out the guns, guards and Gates and always looking to compromise users and their access. And so independent of whether the attack is external or internal, it's that compromise that that's the focus. And so when you focus on the compromise, that's where we focused on in terms of how to help companies with security. So, so what, what does that connection between behavior in between operations? >>I mean, so what are you looking for in terms of what that user's doing correctly or incorrectly? I mean, what kind of markers do you have? What kind of signs do you get? And in what corrective measures can you put into the process that automatically will correct or at least address that? Yeah, so let me take an example. Right? Um, so if I'm a developer, I'm building using Amazon's awesome services, putting a lot of content in there. I use get hub as a storage. I put a lot of information in there and I'm doing that quickly to get my project done. Right. As I do that and I launched that application, then security comes along after after fact and says, well, let's put security design a day and then how do we protect the data? That model is breaking. Why is it breaking? Because companies are saying users are no longer coming just from the enterprise. >>They're working from home, they're working from the Starbucks and they're accessing the same data and bad actors follow that too. What do they do? They follow the users and go, I can then pretend to be Ravi and get access to the data. And that's how you see a lot of the breaches. So what we're looking at is the behavior of Ravi as an employee. I engage with my mobile device, with my laptop, I get access. I work from eight to five, I'm in Austin most of the times. So the markers are user related, device related, and also context. It's like, why am I logging in from Austin? And at the same time also seeing a login from China that doesn't look right. So that's, that's an example of a behavior. So what's the red flag that goes up there? And you mentioned China, that's an extreme example, but I'm sure there are some more subtle or some not quite as obvious. >>I mean, what exactly is that, that prophylactic measure that that comes in that's automated that says, wait a minute, I don't think this is Ravi, although it's in Denver or it's on this server, whatever month. You know what I mean? Absolutely. So again, the context is built out of three things, users, devices and the environment. Right? By triangulating on those three things, you can actually capture very subtle needle in the haystack of being able to say, look, this is Robbie's behavior. So we're going to let him access get hub. We're going to let him access all the resources on Amazon, but as soon as we see deviations from that, we're going to throw a yellow flag. We're going to ask them to login with a multifactor authentication or some, some other additional form of engaging. Then if we still see more deviations, then we say the word, I'm actually blocked that and I can safely block it because I know that this is not Ravi anymore. Right. And that's how we've seen a lot of organizations use behavior at the heart of their security posture. >>So Rohit, before we went live, you, you told John and me that you've been in security for a thousand years. So one of the biggest challenges though besides people is, is being reactive. And when companies have to be reactive to security events, whether they're ostensible or, or more subtle like John talked about, that can potentially be catastrophic. Can you just talk to us a little bit about some of the historical changes say in the last few years that you've seen where companies, there's no time to go from react to be reactive. How are companies leveraging technologies like Forcepoint and AWS to go from reactive to predictive to eventually prescriptive? >>Yes, that's a good question. And firstly, it's a dozen years, not a thousand years, but, uh, it feels like that sometimes. Uh, so what we have found is that the cloud actually has helped companies become more secure because security is about visibility and control. And what the cloud does is provide better visibility than was available before because you have things like cloud trail that are showing any event that is happening in the system that you could actually use to figure out what happened before and then you can learn from that quickly and take action to fix it. So that's where the control part comes in. Over time you will get better at understanding the signals, as Robbie was saying, and you can be more predictive or you can take action much faster. And even if you don't completely solve the problem right away, you are able to react much faster. So the damages is minimal. Right? And so we've seen that change happened over the years. Companies are using automation that the cloud brings and coupled with the visibility to really gain control back. >>You know, there, there's um, I don't know if you'd call it a natural tension, but there's certainly some friction. Speed. Security, right? I want to go, go, go, go, go. I want to stop, stop, stop. So I've stopped. Right? So I mean our, our, our, our, they to take years, you know, cat and mouse are the, are they natural enemies or friction or can they be complimentary now in such a way because of what you are developing are the tools that we do have at our disposal now, can you address both? It's very, very interesting. The, when you started with an infrastructure centric security, when you put guns, guards and Gates, they were that tension, right? But when you start to change the conversation about, look, we're not about stopping progress, we want the developers to use the data, but we want them to do use it securely, right? And as you start to think about that approach, then security can actually be an enabler for digital transformation. Just as Amazon is talking today or throughout the last three days about how you've lots of services and enabling digital transformation. That's really our focus too, is how to enable that securely. How to enable users to be able to touch the data wherever it is, but secure that along the value chain >>is security. Is this question for both of you and Rohit? Let's start with you. Where is security and terms of the conversation as Andy Jassy talked about on Tuesday when he was talking about business, true business transformation gotta start at the top, you to have that senior exec level initiative sponsorship that's pushed down into the organization is security at that. I imagine it is at that senior level. Talk to us about how you've seen that evolve and how it is really a cornerstone to digital transformation. >>Yeah. I think security used to be an afterthought. The developers were not concerned about it. They don't teach security or at least they didn't teach security in college and computer science courses. It was not even that important. It's gone from that to an hour board level and perhaps even a regulatory level of discussion where it is being addressed by much higher authorities then even the board of the company. Right. So yes, it has definitely gone from a backroom operation that people didn't care about to something that is really very important and as Ravi said, you can move fast and stay secure. You almost have no choice because you have to move fast, right? Figuring out how to be secure in that environment and you don't do not want to end up in the news ultimately. And so that is why it is a conversation that is elevated. Now to the board level. >>Do you see that, speaking of ending up in the news, and there's a couple of folks whose boobs are here that have been in the news recently for significant breaches, human caused, is that when that becomes a sensational story, is that a facilitator of more conversations of customers coming? And maybe, maybe Ravi, I'll start with you. Customers coming to Forcepoint going, gosh, you know what, here's another example of a breach that affected millions and millions. We need to get our hands around this in a better way so that we can really use that data for competitive advantage to those, those news breaking stories, good for business. >>So we get invited to a lot of board level conversations. Our leaders get invited to speak to boards and the two common questions they get asked is, am I going to be the next target? Right? And then most importantly, the second one is how am I doing against my peer group? Right? And so when it comes to that conversation, as you as rotors, there's describing it, organizations are saying, look, I've gotta be able to run my business and I need to run it securely in order to do that. If I can answer those two questions, I'm not going to worry about the threats and attacks and what happened to in the news. I'm more focused on how can I get this new project deployed, security connected? How do I do this new mobile application? Get that and to protect the data, right? So that's the conversation that boards want to know. >>So they do want the reference point, for sure. Can we, you know, at least it's talk about the headlines and we all see that almost to the point that we're kind of numb to it, right? We're almost desensitized. Another hack, another breach or whatever. So we've, in a way, our mindset is, or Facebook that it happens. Can we get to the different, flip that paradigm to where we almost take for granted that it won't happen, that that are our guide. Our guards are that good. I mean, what does it take to get to that point to where we don't accept preachers and we look at them as an anomaly rather than for kind of the cost of doing business. I mean that's, that's been the central focus for us with the human centric cybersecurity. We're saying if you take, uh, any breach and their story reads, breach happened and then you get all the other what they did after effect, right? >>And then they'd tell you a story that happened that the bad actor or the compromise was happened over some period of time, whether it was months to detecting bad things. Ex-post is hard. But what we are focused on when you look at human centric security as we're saying, the time to steal data is in minutes, but the indicators that it takes to steal that data has been building up. So we're saying if we can use behavior to show that buildup, then we could block it before a breach happens. So it's kind of like a slow drip in your ceiling, right? You see it there, go and go ahead. Don't wait for the ceiling to collapse. Right? You've got a ring that's growing there, so do something about it. Exactly how to identify it. >>Last question as we look at, one of the other things that Andy showed on Tuesday is that 97% of it spend is still on prem. We know that there's a lot of hybrid cloud out there in those types of environments which are becoming more and more the norm. How do you help customers manage all of that data regardless of what's on from what's in the cloud and how things are moving in a secure way. >>And that's where for us the partnership is critical and we see the partnership with Amazon to be very strategic in the fact that Amazon's building up awesome set of foundational controls. That's great. We'll let the developers use that, right? And now as enterprises connect with their data, data is on prem and in the cloud and everywhere in between. How do you then implement security that's closest to where the data sits? So we were leverage a lot of the security controls that Amazon provides. And in addition to that, we then offer more of a unified policy control to provide that control wherever the data sits, whether it's on the end point in line or in the cloud. >>Exciting stuff. Well guys, thank you for joining John and me on the program, giving us more information on, on cybersecurity and some of the opportunities that businesses have to actually use that as an advantage. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for the time for John Walls. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Q for Vegas. Re-invent 19 thanks for watching.

Published Date : Dec 6 2019

SUMMARY :

AWS reinvent 2019 brought to you by Amazon web services And you know I'm looking out back. How can you help us humans fix all of the errors that we're causing? And so when you focus on the compromise, that's where we I mean, so what are you looking for in terms of what that user's doing correctly or And that's how you see a lot of We're going to let him access all the resources on Amazon, but as soon as we see deviations So one of the biggest challenges though besides people is, is being reactive. that are showing any event that is happening in the system that you could actually use to So I mean our, our, our, our, they to take years, you know, it is really a cornerstone to digital transformation. care about to something that is really very important and as Ravi said, you can move fast and We need to get our hands around this in a better way so that we can really use that data for competitive advantage And so when it comes to that conversation, as you as rotors, there's describing it, I mean that's, that's been the central focus for us with the And then they'd tell you a story that happened that the bad actor or the compromise was happened How do you help customers manage all of that data regardless And in addition to that, we then offer more of a unified policy control to on cybersecurity and some of the opportunities that businesses have to actually use that as an advantage.

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Ben Di Qual, Microsoft | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, welcome back to the cube at Lisa Martin with Steve men and men and we are coming to you alive from combo go 19 please to welcome to the cube, a gent from Microsoft Azure. We've got Ben call principal program manager. Ben, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. So Microsoft combo, what's going on with the partnership? >>They wouldn't have have great storage pond is in data management space. We've been working with Convult for 20 years now in Microsoft and and they've been working with us on Azure for that as long as I can remember not being on that the Azure business for about seven years now. So just a long time in cloud terms like dog ears and it's sort of, they've been doing a huge amount there around getting customer data into the cloud, reducing costs, getting more resiliency and then also letting them do more with the data. So they're a pretty good partner to have and they make it much easy for their customers to to go and leverage cloud. >> So Ben, you know, in my career I've had lots of interactions with the Microsoft storage team. Things have changed a little bit when you're now talking about Azure compared to more, it was the interaction with the operating system or the business suite at had. >>So maybe bring us up to date as those people that might not have followed where kind of the storage positioning inside of Microsoft is now that when we talk about Azure and your title. Yeah, we, we sort of can just, just briefly, we worked very heavily with our own premises brethren, they are actually inside the O team is inside of the Azure engineering old male, which is kind of funny, but we do a load of things there. If he started looking at, firstly on that, that hybrid side, we have things like Azure files. It's a highly resilient as a service SMB NFS file Shafter a hundred terabytes, but that interacts directly with windows server to give you Azure file sync. So there is sort of synergies there as well. What I'm doing personally, my team, we work on scale storage. The big thing we have in there is owl is out blood storage technology, which really is the underpinning technology fault. >>Preapproval storage and Azure, which is an including our SAS offerings, which are hosted on Azure too. So disc is on blood storage of files on blood storage. You look at Xbox live, all these kind of stuff is a customer to us. So we build that out and we were doing work there and that's, that's really, really interesting. And how we do it. And that's not looking at going, we're gonna buy some compute, we're going to buy some storage, we're going to build it out, we're going to run windows or hyper V or maybe VM-ware with hoc with windows running on the VMware, whatever else. This is more a story about we're gonna provide you storage as a service. You didn't get a minimum of like 11 nines at your ability. And and be able to have that scale to petabytes of capacity in one logical namespace and give you multiple gigabytes, double digit gigabytes of throughput to that storage. >>And now we're even that about to multiple protocols. So rest API century. Today we've got Azure stack storage, EU API, she can go and use, but we give you that consistency of the actual backend storage and the objects and the data available via more than just one protocol. You can go and access that via HDFS API. We talk about data lakes all the time. For us, our blood storage is a data Lake. We turn on hierarchal namespace and you can go and access that via other protocols like as I mentioned HDFS as well. So that is a big story about what we want to do. We want to make that data available at crazy scale, have no limits in the end to the capacity or throughput or performance and over any protocol. That's kind of our lawn on the Hill about what we want to get to. >>And we've been talking to the Combolt team about some of the solutions that they are putting in the cloud. The new offering metallic that came out. They said if my customer has Azure storage or storage from that other cloud provider, you could just go ahead and use that. Maybe how familiar and how much I know you've been having about run metallic. >> We were working, we work pretty tightly with the product team over Convolt around this and my team as well around how do we design and how do we make it work the best and we're going to continue working to optimize as they get to beyond initial launch to go, wow, we've got data sets we we can analyze. We knew how to, we wanted out of tune it. Now really we love the solution particularly more because you know the default if you don't select the storage type where you want to go, you will run on Azure. >>So really sort of be cued off to the relationship there. They chose us as a first place we'll go to, but they've also done the choice for customers. So some customers may want to take it to another cloud. That's fine. It's reasonable. I mean we totally understand it's going to be a multicloud world and that's a reality for any large company. Our goal is to make sure we're growing faster than the competitors, not to knock out the competitors altogether because that just won't happen. So they've got that ability to go and, yeah, Hey, we'll use Azure as default because they feel we're offering the best support and the best solution there. But then if they have that customer, same customer wants to turn around and use a competitor of ours, fine as well. And I see people talking about that today where they may want to mitigate risks and say, I'm going to do, I'm doing off office three, six five on a, taken off this three 65 backup. It's cool. You use metallic, it'll take it maybe to a different region in Asia and they're backing up. They still going, well, I'm still all in on Microsoft. They may want to take it to another cloud or even take it back to on premise. So that does happen too because just in case of that moment we can get that data back in a different location. Something >>so metallic talking about that is this new venture is right. It's a Convolt venture and saw that the other day and thought that's interesting. So we dug into it a little bit yesterday and it's like a startup operating within a 20 year old company, which is very interesting. Not just from an incumbent customer perspective, but an incumbent partner perspective. How have you seen over the last few years and particularly bad in the last nine months with big leadership and GTM changes for condo? How has the partnership with Microsoft evolved as a result of those changes? >>Um, it's always been interesting. I guess when you start looking at adventure and everything seems to, things change a little bit. Priorities may change just to be fair, but we've had that tight relationship for a long time and a relationship level and an exec leadership level, nothing's really changed. But in the way they're building this platform, we, we sit down out of my team at the Azure engineering group and we'll sit down and do things like ideations. Like here's where we see gaps in the markets, here's what we believe could happen. And look back in July, we had inspire, which is our partner conference in Las Vegas and we sat down with their OT, our OT in a room, we'll talking about these kinds of things. And this is I think about two months after they may have started the initial development metallic from what I understand, but we're talking about exactly what they're doing with metallic offered as a service in Azure as, Hey, how about we do this? So we think it's really cool. It opens up a new market to convert I think too. I mean they're so strong in the enterprise, but they don't do much in the smaller businesses because with the full feature product, it also has inherent complexibility complexity around it. So by doing metallic, is it click, click, next done thing. They really opening I think new markets to them and also to us as a partner. >>I was going to add, you know, kind of click on that because they developed this very quickly. This is something that I think what student were here yesterday, metallic was kind of conceived, designed, built in about six months. So in terms of like acceleration, that's kind of a new area for Combolt. >>Yeah, and I think, I think they're really embracing the fact about let's release our code in production for, for products which are sort of getting the, getting to the, Hey, the product is at the viable stage now, not minimum viable, viable, let's release in production, let's find out how customers are using it and then let's keep optimizing and doing that constant iteration, taking that dev ops approach to let's get it out there, let's get it launched, and then let's do these small batches of changes based on customer need, based on tele telemetry. We can actually get in. We can't get the telemetry without having customers. So that's how it's going to keep working. So I think this initial product we see today, it's just going to keep evolving and improving as they get more data, as they get more information, more feedback, which is exactly what we want to see. >>Well, what will come to the cloud air or something you've been living in for a number of years. Ben, I'd love to hear you've been meeting with customers, they've been asking you questions, gives us some of the, you know, some of the things that, what's top of mind for some of the customers? What kinds of things did they come into Microsoft, Dawn, and how's that all fit together? >>There's many different conferences of interrelate, many different conversations and there'll be, we'll go from talking about, you know, Python machine learning or AI fits in PowerPoint. >>Yeah. >>It's a things like, you know, when are we gonna do incremental snapshots from the manage disks, get into the weeds on very infrastructure centric stuff. We're seeing range of conversations there. The big thing I think I see, keep seeing people call out and make assumptions of is that they're not going to be relevant because cloud, I don't know cloud yet. I don't know this whole coup cube thing, containers, I don't really understand that as well as I think I need to. And an AI, Oh my gosh, what do we even do there? Cause everyone's throwing the words and terms around. But to be honest, I think would still really evident is cloud is still is tiny fraction of enterprise workloads. So let's be honest, it's growing at a huge rate because it is that small fraction. So again, there's plenty of time for people to learn but they shouldn't go and try. >>And so it's not like you go and learn everything in the technology stack from networking to development to database management to, to running a data set of power and cooling. You learn the things that are applicable to what you're trying to do. And the same thing goes to cloud. Any of these technologies go and look at what you need to build for your business. Take it that step and then go and find out the details and levels you want to know. And as someone who's been on Azure for, like I said, almost seven years, which is crazy long. That was, that was literally like being in a startup instead of Microsoft when I joined and I wasn't sure if I wanted to join a licensing company. It's been very evident to me. I will not say I'm an Azure expert and I've been seven years in the platform. >>There are too many things for for me to be an expert in everything on, and I think people sort of just have to realize that anyone's saying that it's bravado. Nothing else. Oh, people. The goal is Microsoft as a platform provider. Hopefully you've got the software and the solution does make a lot of this easier for the customer, so hopefully they shouldn't need to become a Coobernetti's expert because it's baked into your platform. They shouldn't have to worry about some of these offerings because it's SAS. Most customers are there. Some things you need to learn between going from exchange to go into Oh three 65 absolutely. There's some nuances and things like that, but once you get over that initial hurdle, it should be a little easier. I think it's right and I think going back to that, sort of going back to bear principles going, what is the highest level of distraction that's viable for your business or that application or this workload has to always be done with everything. If it's like, well, class, not even viable, running on premises, don't, don't need to apologize for not running in cloud. If I as this, what's happening for you because of security, because of application architecture, run it that way. Don't feel the need and the pressure to have to push it that way. I think too many people get caught up in this shiny stuff up here, which is what you know 1% of people are doing versus the other 99% which is still happening in a lot of the areas we work and have challenges in today. >>That's a great point that you bring up because there is all the buzz words, right? AI, machine learning cloud. You've got to be cloud ready. You've got to be data-driven to customer. To your point going, I just need to make sure that what we have set up for our business is going to allow our business one to remain relevant, but to also be able to harness the power of the data that they have to extract new opportunities, new insights, and not get caught up with, shoot, should we be using automation? Should we be using AI? Everybody's talking about it. I liked that you brought up and I find it very respectfully, he said, Hey, I'm not an Azure expert. You'd been there seven, seven dog years like you said. And I think that's what customers probably gained confidence in is hearing the folks like you that they look to for that guidance and that leadership saying, no, I don't know everything to know. But giving them the confidence that their tribe, they're trusting you with that data and also helping look, trusting you to help them make the right decisions for their business. >>Yeah, and that's, we've got to do that. I mean, I as a tech guy, it's like I've, I've loved seeing the changes. When I joined Microsoft, I, I wasn't lying. I was almost there go enough. I really want to join this company. I was going to go join a startup instead and I got asked to one stage in an interview going, why do you want to join Microsoft? We see you've never applied to, I'd never wanted to. A friend told me to come in and it's just been amazing to see those changes and I'm pretty proud on that. So when we talk about those things we're doing, I mean, I think there is no shame going, I'm just going to lift and shift machines because cloud's about flexibility. If you're doing it just on cost, probably doing it for the wrong reason. It's about that flexibility to go and do something. >>Then change within months and slowly make steps to make things better and better as you find a need as you find the ability, whatever it may be. And some of the big things that we focus on right now with customers is we've got a product called Azure advisor. It'll go until people, when one, you don't build things in a resilient manner. Hey, do you know this has not ha because of this and you can do this. It's like, great. We'll also will tell you about security vulnerabilities that maybe should a gateway here for security. Maybe you should do this or this is not patched. But the big thing of that, it also goes and tells you, Hey, you're overspending. You don't need this much. It provisions, you provision like a Ferrari, you need a, you just need a Prius. Go and run a Prius because it's going to do what you need. >>I need a paler list and that's part of that trusted suit. Getting that understanding, and it's counterintuitive, but we're now like, it's coming out of mozzarella too, which is great. But seeing these guys were dropping contracts and licenses and basically, you know, once every three years I may call the customer, Hey, how about renewal? Now, go from that to now being focused on the customer's actual success. I've focused on their growth in Azure as a platform. Our services growth, like utilization not in sales has been a huge change. It scared some people away, but it's brought a lot more people in and and that sort of counterintuitive spend less money thing actually leads in the longterm to people using more. >>Absolutely. That's definitely not the shrink wrap software company of Microsoft that I remember from the 90s yeah. might be similar to, you know, just as to get Convolt to 2019 is not the same combo that many of us know from 15 years ago. A good >>mutual friend of ours, sort of Simon and myself before I took this job, he and I sat down, we're having a beer and discussing the merits, all not Yvette go to things like that. Same with Convolt there. They're changing such such a great deal with, you know, what they're putting in the cloud, what they're doing with the data, where they're trying to achieve with things like for data management across on premises and cloud with microservices applications and stuff going, Hey, this won't work like this anymore. When you now are doing it on premises and with containers, it's pretty good to see. I'm interested to see how they take that even further to their current audience, which is product predominantly. You know the it pro, the data center admin, storage manager. >>It's funny when you talked about just the choice that customers have and those saying, aye, we shouldn't be following the trends because they're the trends. We actually interviewed a couple of hours ago, one of customers that is all on prime healthcare company and said, he's like, I want to make a sticker that says no cloud and proud and it just what there was, we don't normally hear from them. We always talk about cloud, but for a company to sit down and look at what's best for our business, whether it's, you know, FedRAMP certification challenges or HIPAA or GDPR, other compelling requirements to keep it on prem, it was just refreshing to hear this customer say, >>yeah, I mean it's just appropriate for them. You do what's right for you. I, yeah, it's no shame in any of it. It's, I mean you don't, you definitely don't get fans by it by shaming people about not doing something right. And I mean I've, I'm personally very happy to fee fee, you know, see sort of hype around things like blockchain die down a little bit. So it's a slow database and we should use it for this specific case of that shared ledger. You know, things like that where people don't have to know blockchain. Now I have to know IOT. It's like, yeah, and that hype gets people there, but it also causes a lot of anxiety and it's good to see someone actually not be ashamed of it. And they agree the ones when they do take a step and use cloud citizen may be in the business already, they're probably going to do it appropriately because have a reason, not just because we think this would be cool, right? >>Well not. And how much inherit and complexity does that bring in if somebody is really feeling pressured to follow those trends. And maybe that's when you end up with this hodgepodge of technologies that don't work well together. You're spending way more in as as business it folks are consumers, you know, consumers in their personal lives, they expect things to be accessible, visible, but also cost efficient because they have so much choice. >>Yeah, the choice choice is hard. It's just a, just the conversation I was having recently, for example, just we'll take the storage cause of where we are, right? It's like I'm running something on Azure, I'm a, I'm using Souza, I want an NFS Mount point, which is available to me in Fs. Great, perfect. what do I use as like, well you can use any one of these seven options like that, but what's the right choice? And that's the thing about being a platform can be, we give you a lot of choices, but it's still up to you or up to app hotness. It can really help the customers as well to make the most appropriate choice. And, and I, I pushed back really hard in terms of best practices and things. I hate it because again, it's making the assumption this is the best thing to do. >>It's not. It's always about, you know, what are the patterns that have worked for other people? What are the anti-patterns and what's the appropriate path for me to take? And that's actually how we're building our docs now too. So we, we keep, we keep focusing on our Azure technology and we're bringing out some of the biggest things we've done is how we manage our documentation. It's all open sourced, it's all in markdown on get hub. So you can go in and read a document from someone like myself is doing product management going, this is how to use this product and you're actually, this bit's wrong, this bit needs to be like this and you can go in yourself even now, make a change and we can go, Oh yeah and take that committed in and dual this kind of stuff in that way. So we're constantly taking those documents in that way and getting realtime feedback from customers who are using it, not just ourself in an echo chamber. >>So you get this great insight and visibility that you never had before. Well, Ben, thank you, Georgie stew and me on the queue this afternoon. Excited to hear what's coming up next for Azure. Makes appreciate your time. Thank you for steam and event. I, Lisa Martin, you're watching the cue from Convault go 19.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. Hey, welcome back to the cube at Lisa Martin with Steve men and men and we are coming to you alive So they're a pretty good partner to have and they make it much easy for their So Ben, you know, in my career I've had lots of interactions but that interacts directly with windows server to give you Azure file sync. And and be able to have that scale to petabytes of capacity in one logical no limits in the end to the capacity or throughput or performance and over any you could just go ahead and use that. you know the default if you don't select the storage type where you want to go, you will run on Azure. So really sort of be cued off to the relationship there. How have you seen over the last few years and I guess when you start looking at adventure and everything seems to, I was going to add, you know, kind of click on that because they developed this very quickly. So that's how it's going to keep working. been meeting with customers, they've been asking you questions, gives us some of the, you know, some of the things that, we'll go from talking about, you know, Python machine learning or AI fits in PowerPoint. of is that they're not going to be relevant because cloud, You learn the things that are applicable to what you're trying to I think too many people get caught up in this shiny stuff up here, which is what you know 1% I liked that you brought up and I find asked to one stage in an interview going, why do you want to join Microsoft? Go and run a Prius because it's going to do what you need. from that to now being focused on the customer's actual success. might be similar to, you know, just as to get Convolt to 2019 is not the same combo that many of us you know, what they're putting in the cloud, what they're doing with the data, where they're trying to achieve with things like It's funny when you talked about just the choice that customers have and those saying, they're probably going to do it appropriately because have a reason, not just because we think this would be cool, And how much inherit and complexity does that bring in if somebody is really feeling pressured to And that's the thing about being a platform can be, we give you a lot of choices, So you can go in and read a document from someone like myself is doing product management going, So you get this great insight and visibility that you never had before.

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Miranda Foster, Commvault & Al Bunte, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, welcome back to the cubes coverage of combo go 19. Stu Miniman is here with me, Lisa Martin and we are wrapping up two days of really exciting wall to wall coverage of the new vault and we're very pleased to welcome a couple of special guests onto the program. To help us wrap up our two days, we have Miranda foster, the vice president of worldwide communications for comm vault and Al Bunty is here, the co founder, former COO and board member. Welcome Miranda and Al. Great to have you on the program. Thanks Lisa. So a lot of energy at this event and I don't think it has anything to do with our rarefied air here in the mile high city. Al, let's start with you. >>Well, there's other things in Colorado. >>There are, yeah, they don't talk about it. They talked about that on stage yesterday. So owl, you have been with convo ball as I mentioned, co-founder. What an evolution over the last 20 years. Can you take us back? >>Surely. So, um, yeah and it's been, it's, it's really kind of cool to see it coming together at this point. But if you go back 20 years when we started this, the whole idea was around data. And remember we walked into a company that was focused on optical storage. Um, we decided it would be a good company to invest in. Um, for two reasons. One, we thought they were really great people here, very creative and innovative and two, it was a great space. So if we believed we believe data would grow and that was a pretty decent thesis to go with. Yeah. And then, then it started moving from there. So I tell people I wasn't burdened with facts so I didn't understand why all these copies were being made of the same set of data. So we developed a platform and an architecture focused on indexing it so you just index at once and then could use it for many different purposes. >>And that just kept moving through the years with this very data centric approach to storage, management, backup protection, etc. It was all about the data. I happened to be lucky and said, you know, I think there's something to this thing called NAS and sand and storage networks and all those things. And I also said we have to plan for fur on scale on our solution of a million X. Now it was only off a magnitude of about a thousand on that, but it was the right idea. You know, you had to build something to scale and, and we came in and we wanted to build a company. We didn't want to just flip a company but we thought there is a longterm vision in it and if you take it all the way to the present here it's, it's really, um, it's, it feels really good to see where the company came from. It's a great foundation and now it will propel off this foundation, um, with a similar vision with great modern execution and management. >>Yeah. Al, when we had the chance to talk with you last year at the show in Nashville, it was setting up for that change. So I want to get your view there. There are some things that the company was working on and are being continued, but there's some things that, you know, Bob hammer would not have happened under his regime. So want to get your viewpoint as to the new Convolt, you know, what, what is, what are some of those new things that are moving forward with the company that might not have in the previous days? >>Yeah, that's a good questions. Do I think Mo, a lot of the innovation that you've seen here, um, would have happened maybe not as quickly. Um, we, the company obviously acquired Hedvig. Uh, we were on a very similar path but to do it ourselves. So you had kind of been a modern, we need to get to market quicker with some real pros. I think, um, the, the evolution of redoing sales management essentially was probably the biggest shift that needed to be under a new regime, if you will. Yeah. >>So Miranda, making these transitions can be really tricky from a marketing standpoint. Talk, talk us through a bit, some of the, how do you make sure trusted yet innovative and new that you've accomplished at this show? >>Well, trust it is obviously the most important because the Bob, the brand that Bob and Al built really embodies reliability for what we provide to our customers. I mean that's what gives them the peace of mind to sleep at night. But I'll tell you, Sanjay has been with us for just eight months now, February of 2019 and it's been busy. We've done a lot of things from a points on J transition with Bob and now to his point we've, we've acquired Hedvig, we've introduced this new SAS portfolio and you're exactly right. What we need to do is make sure that the reliability that customers have come to rely on Convolt for translates into what we're doing with the new Convolt and I think we've done a really good job. We've put a lot of muscle behind making sure, particularly with metallic that it was tried, it was trusted, it was beta tested, we got input from customers, partners, industry influencers. We really built it around the customer. So I think the brand that comm brings will translate well into the things that we've done with these, with these new shifts and movements within the company >>on, on that questions too as well. Um, I think Miranda is a good example of somebody that was with the company before a tremendous talent. She's got new opportunities here and she's run with it. So it's kinda that balance of some, uh, understood the fundamentals and the way we're trying to run the business. And she's grasped the new world as well. So, >>and Rob as well, right? Robin in his new, >>yeah, that's another good point. So that was all part of the transitioning here and Sanjay and the team had been very careful on trying to keep that balance. >>Change is really difficult anywhere, right? Dissect to any element of life. And you look at a business that's been very successful, has built a very strong, reliable brand for 20 years. Big leadership changes, not just with Sanjay, but all of the leadership changes. You know, analysts said, all right, you've got to upgrade your Salesforce. We're seeing a lot of movement in the area. You got to enhance your marketing. We're seeing metallic has the new routes to market, new partner focus, so PSI focuses. We're also seeing this expansion in the market, so what folks were saying, you know a year ago come on is answering in a big way and to your point in a fast way that's not easy to do. You've been here nine years since the beginning. Can you give us a little bit of a perspective, Miranda, about some of the things that were announced at the show? >>How excited everybody is, customers, partners, combo folks. How do you now extend the message and the communications from go globally after the show ends? That's an awesome question. I'm really passionate about this. So you know, Monday we announced metallic, we announced a new head of channels and alliances and Mercer Rowe, we had crazy technology innovation announcements with activate, with the acceleration of the integration with Hedvig with the momentum release that we put out today. We're also doing cool stuff with our corporate social responsibility in terms of sponsoring the new business Avengers coalition. That's something that Chris Powell is really championing here at, at the show and also within combo. So we're very excited about that. And then when you add people like yourselves, you know the tech field day folks, because not everybody can be here, right? Not everybody can be at go. So being able to extend the opportunity for, for folks to participate in combo, go through things like the cube through things like tech field day and using our social media tools and just getting all of the good vibes that are here. Because as Al says, this really is an intimate show, but we try to extend that to anybody who wants to follow us, to anybody who wants to be a part of it. And that's something that we've really focused on the last couple of years to make sure that folks who aren't here can, can get an embrace the environment here at Commonweal go. >>It's such an important piece that you're here helping with the transition I talked about. It's important that some of the existing >>get new roles and do responsibility going forward. What's your role going to be and what should we expect to see from you personally? Somebody has got to mow the lawn. >>Yeah. >>But yes, do I, I'll stay on the board. Um, we're talking through that. I think I'll be a very active board, not just the legal side of the equation. Um, try and stay involved with customers and, and strategies and, and even, uh, potential acquisitions, those kinds of things. Um, I'm also wandering off into the university environment. Uh, my Alma mater is a university of Iowa. I'm on the board there and uh, I'm involved in setting up innovation centers and entrepreneurial programs and that kind of thing. Um, I'll keep doing my farming thing and uh, actually have some ideas on that. There's a lot of technology as you guys know, attacking Nat space. So, and like I said, I'll try to keep a lot of things linked back into a combo. >>What Al can have confidence in is that I will keep him busy. So there's that. And then I will also put on the table, we agree to disagree with our college athletic loyalties. So I'm a big kid just because we don't compete really. Right. So I mean, but if I won Kansas wherever to play, then we would just politely disagree. Yeah. Well that's good that you have this agreement in place. I would love to get some anecdotal feedback from you of some of the things that you've heard over the last three days with all this news, all these changes. What are you hearing from customers and partners who you've had relationships with for a very long time? >>I think they're, I think they're all really excited, but, and maybe I'm biased, but they liked the idea that we're trying to not throw out all the old focus on customers, focus on technologies, continue the innovation. I'm pleased that we, Miranda and the team started taking this theme of what we do to a personal level, you know, recovery and those kinds of things. It isn't just the money in the business outages. It's a really a effect on a personal lives. And that resonates. I hear that a lot. Um, I asked our bigger customers and they've loved us for our support, how we take care of them. The, the intimacy of the partnership, you know, and I think they feel pleased that that's staying yet there's lot of modern Emity if that's a good word. I think fokai was what you, I think it's the blend of things and I think that really excites people. >>We've heard that a lot. You guys did a great job with having customers on stage and as a marketer who does customer marketing programs, I think there's nothing more validating than the voice of a customer. But suddenly today that I thought was a pivot on that convo, did well as Sonic healthcare was on main stage. And then he came onto the program and I really liked how he talked about some of the failures that they've been through. You know, we had the NASA talking yesterday, NASA, 60 years young, very infamous, probably for failure is not an option, but it is a very real possibility whether you're talking about space flight or you're talking about data protection and cyber attacks and the rise of that. And it was really, I'd say, refreshing to hear the voice of a customer say, these are the areas in which we failed. This is how come they've helped us recover and how much better and stronger are they? Not just as a company as Sonic healthcare, but even as an individual person responsible for that. That was a really great message that you guys were able to extend to the audience today and we wanted to get that out. >>I loved that as well. I think that was good. I have also back on driving innovation, I always felt one of my biggest jobs was to not punish people that failed. Yeah. I, you know, with the whole engineering team, the bright people in marketing, I, I would be very down on them if they didn't try, but I never wanted them to feel bad about trying and never punish them. >>And one of the things Matthew said on main stage, first of all, I love him. He's great. He's been a longtime CommonWell supporter. I love his sense of humor. He said, you know, combo came to me and said, can you identify, you know, your biggest disaster recovery moment? And he was like, no, because there's so many. Yes. Right? Like there's so many when you're responsible for this. It's just the unpredictability of it is crazy. And so he couldn't identify one, but he had a series of anecdotes that I think really helped the audience identify with and understand this is, these are big time challenges that we're up against today. And hearing his use case and how con ball is helping him solve his heart problems, I think was really cool. You're right. I loved that too. He said, I couldn't name one. There are so many. That's reality, right? As data proliferates, which every industry is experiencing, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. There's also great risk as technology advances for good. The bad actors also have access to that sort of technology. So his honesty, I thought was, was refreshing, but spot on. And what a great example for other customers to listen to the RA. To your point, I, if I punish people for failure, we're not going to learn from it. >>Yeah, you'll never move forward. >>Miranda. So much that we learn this week at the shows. Some, a lot of branding, a lot of customers, I know some people might be taking a couple of days off, but what should we expect to be seeing from con vault post go this year, >>continue to innovation. We're not letting our foot off the gas at all. Just continuing innovation as as as we integrate with Hedvig continued acceleration with metallic. I mean those guys are aggressive. They were built as a startup within an enterprise company built on Comvalt enterprise foundation. Those guys are often running, they are motivated, they're highly talented, highly skilled and they're going to market with a solution that is targeted at a specific market and those guys are really, really ready to go. So continued innovation with Hedvig integrate, sorry, integration with Hedvig with metallic. I think you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt in the future on the heels of what we consider humbled, proud leadership with the Gartner magic quadrant. You know the one two punch with the Forrester wave. I think that you're just going to be seeing a lot more from Combalt and in terms of how we're really getting out there and aggressive. And that's not to mention Al, you know what we do with our core solutions. I mean today we just announced a bunch of enhancements to the core technology, which is, which is the bread and butter of, of what we do. So we're not letting the foot off the gas to be sure >>the team stay in really, really aggressive too. And the other thing I'd add as a major investor that I'm expecting is sales. Now I'd love to just your, your final thoughts that the culture of Convolt because while there's some acceleration and there's some change, I think some of the fundamentals stay the same. Yeah, it's, it's right to, and again, that's why I feel we're at a good point on this transition process. You alluded to it earlier, but I feel really good about the leadership that's in, they've treated me terrifically. I'm almost almost part of the team. I love that they're, they're trying to leverage off all the assets that were created in his company. Technology, obviously platform architecture, support base, our support capabilities. I, I told Sandy today I wish she really would have nailed the part about, and by the way, support and our capabilities with customers as a huge differentiator and it was part of our original, Stu knows he's heard me forever. Our original DNA, we wanted to focus on two things. Great technology, keep the great technology lead and customer support and satisfaction. So those elements, now you blend that stew with really terrific Salesforce. As Ricardo says, have you guys talk with Ricardo soon? But anyway, the head of sales is hiring great athletes, particularly for the enterprise space. Then you take it with a real terrific marketing organization that's focused, Oh, had modern techniques and analytics on all those things. You know, it's, it's in my opinion, as an investor especially, I'm expecting really good things >>bar's been set well. I can't think of a better way for Sue and me to our coverage owl veranda. Thank you. This has been fantastic. You've got to go. You get a lawn to mow, you've got a vacation to get onto and you need some wordsmithing would focus your rights. You have a flight ticket. They do five hours. Hi guys. Thank you. This has been awesome. Hashtag new comm vault for our guests and I, Lisa Martin, you've been watching the cubes coverage of Convault go and 19 we will see you next time.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. So a lot of energy at this event and I don't think it has anything to do with our rarefied air here So owl, you have been with convo ball as I mentioned, co-founder. So I tell people I wasn't burdened with facts And I also said we have to plan for but there's some things that, you know, Bob hammer would not have happened under So you had kind of been a modern, we need to get to market quicker with some real pros. Talk, talk us through a bit, some of the, how do you make sure trusted yet innovative and new that the reliability that customers have come to rely on Convolt for translates into what example of somebody that was with the company before a tremendous So that was all part of the transitioning here and has the new routes to market, new partner focus, so PSI focuses. So you know, Monday we announced metallic, It's important that some of the existing going to be and what should we expect to see from you personally? There's a lot of technology as you guys know, I would love to get some anecdotal feedback from you of some of the things that you've heard over the last three days we do to a personal level, you know, recovery and those kinds of things. That was a really great message that you guys were able to extend to the audience today and we wanted I think that was good. And one of the things Matthew said on main stage, first of all, I love him. So much that we learn this week at the shows. on the heels of what we consider humbled, proud leadership with the Gartner magic So those elements, now you blend I can't think of a better way for Sue and me to our coverage owl

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Tim Carben, Mitchell International | Commvault GO 2019


 

>> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault Go 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we're wrapping up close-- Wrapping up our coverage of two days at Commvault Go in Colorado and we're excited to welcome a new gust to theCUBE. We have Tim Carben, Principle Systems Engineer for Storage and Data Protection at Mitchell, a Commvault customer. Tim, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: First question. >> Yes. >> Are you ready for the interview? (Tim shows off his shirt) >> I came ready. >> Lisa: You were born ready! >> Yes. (Lisa laughs) >> So for those of you who weren't here, the get ready, be ready is a big theme of the event. So, Tim, first of all, before we get into what Mitchell is doing with Commvault, tell our audience who Mitchell is, what types of products and services do you deliver? >> Well, Mitchell is a little known name, but we are a technology company that provides smart solutions, or smart insurance solutions. (Tim sighs) I'm sorry, we provide smart technology solutions for insurance companies in the area of property and casualty. >> Okay. That's a big, that's a-- >> That's a mouth full. >> It is a mouth full, but you did really well. So based here in the US? >> Tim: Yes in San Diego. >> Oh, that's right, Sunny San Diego. We were just talking about the scooter problem. How could I forget? So, you came onboard there, you said around five or so years ago? >> Tim: Yes, about five and a half years. >> If I think of like, insurance. (Lisa cringes) The data volume growing, right, must be, you're wincing, exponential. Talk to us about the data strategy and the importance of data to Mitchell and what you're doing with Commvault to protect it, get that visibility and use it to deliver stellar services. >> Well that's exactly it. It's, we see growth and, year over year and making sure that we keep that data protected is the most important thing. We have to be able to provide that back to our customers, in an instant and keep it available. That's number one is keeping everything available. So, of course I'm going to choose Commvault. I always look into everything that's in the market and I talk with everyone. I mean, I've had conversations with everyone from Rupert to Veritas and I agree with Forrester in saying that Commvault's the best product for the data protection. >> Lisa: Why? >> Mainly, because we're seeing them move forward faster than anyone else. They're able to-- Or I'm able to, I guess I should say, utilizing Commvault, microtune my environment to be able to provide the fastest level of backup and recovery. Rather than buying blocks and putting these blocks together. And even when it comes to the hyperscale product, it's a Red Hat server cluster. So it's not a black box you can't see inside of, you understand what's going on underneath it and it is a tried and true methodology for doing what you're trying to do and it's... I guess for lack of better words, just really resilient, I love it. >> Great, so Tim, you said you've looked at a lot of solutions, you've been on Commvault for quite a while. Talk to us a little bit about that usability of the product, you know? Some of the questions we have is, you know how simple it actually is to use, you know how much your team needs to study up and get on it and just, kind of, the cadence of change that you're seeing coming from Commvault. >> Now, my team's really good. You know we've been-- They've been with Commvault since version six they know how to use the Java console. So, it's not so much as, they are learning something new, but what's happening and what I've noticed with Commvault, from within the Java console to the command center, is they're making everything else a lot easier. So, they're not changing the way I'm doing my mature backups of, say Oracle, or, you know file system, things like that, but they are making it a lot easier for me to start and recover and I guess, change configuration of the VMware backups. They're making it easier of me to manage my storage and with the command center or with the web console, I should say, they're making it so much easier to report. Anyone that's utilized the CommNet from back in the day, the old reporting tool, versus the new centralized metrics reporting tool, knows that there's no comparison whatsoever. And I can point all of my CommCells to one reporting system and provide reports that go over everything from storage utilization to, you know, just resource utilization all the way down to chargeback, based upon any given criteria I want. >> You have full visibility? >> Full visibility. >> You mentioned that you've been a Commvault customer for a while, not just at Mitchell, but your previous company, you also said before we started that you've done a lot of speaking on behalf of Commvault, your use case, other challenges that you had, the business outcomes. I would love to get your perspective on being one of those customer champions, what are some of the things that you're hearing from prospective Commvault customers? Are they asking you for your advice, like hey, we had this kind of compelling event, Tim, what would you recommendation be? >> A lot of it is specifics and I think that's, you know, they'll be asking questions based upon who they're talking to and I'm the guy that you talk to when you want to talk the details. So they'll come to me and say hey, what about this hyperscale configuration and I'll say, well rather than go with the larger environment, go with the smaller nodes and spread it wider, that way you can transfer more data in. But... It's a lot of just how is it working for you? And even into the newer environments where we're looking at the, you know, 0365 being backed up by SaaS is, how easy is it to configure? And that is quite possibly the easiest thing to configure that I've ever run across. >> Wow. Ever? >> Ever. Well, like I said, they keep making things better and in the past I've used, you know, Veritas backup Exec, as everyone has back in the day. I mean, we've done data transfer on tapes, I've used TSM for seven years, so everything's going to be easier than that and even a lot of testing of different backup applications and when you look at what we're doing with cloud configuration and Commvault SaaS model, Commvault really takes a lot of the configuration out that you would need to do and they have their own CommCell administrator that takes care of it. I was talking with Justin not too long back, he's here I was so happy to get to meet him and he manages all that for us. We enter in the specifics as far as configuration and it's done. >> So you guys-- Oh, go ahead, Stu. >> So, Tim, you know, what I'm curious about is the feedback loop that you have with Commvault. Obviously you're quite happy with the product, you've seen the maturation over time. Are there things you're asking for, or things that you're seeing on their roadmap or maybe things that were announced this week, that are exciting you or things that you would love to help be doing things even better than what you're doing today? >> I don't know, this may be the thing that the sales people don't like about me. Is I don't hold back when I see something that I want to see different and I've done this with different storage manufacturers that I've worked with, as well as, of course with Commvault and the one things that I always come back to and this is one thing I joked with my previous sales person on is, if you're going to call it Commvault Complete, why doesn't it include orchestrate and activate? You could just call it Commvault and then give us another Commvault Complete that actually contains everything in it, because, I wish I could run the activate in-house. The problem is, is I've priced it out, I've provided that data to my upper management and they just will not buy off on it. >> And what was Commvault's response to that feedback? 'Cause they're very pro-listening to their customers, we've heard that resoundingly. >> They are and there really wasn't anything. They said they're hand things up the channel and what's interesting about it is in talking to the activate people today, or, yes, either way. During the show, I found out that they added another plan that would allow you to buy activate by the terabyte and not by the user. So that may be something that could help drop the price if we isolate specific environments to what we would use the activate for and that would be (Tim nods) workable, I guess I should say. >> So, speaking of activate, data governance, insights, the California Consumer Privacy Act, CCPA is around the corner. >> Yes. >> You're based in San Diego. Where is Mitchell in terms of its readiness for that and how is Commvault, ar they part of that solution to get ready? >> As far as-- I can speak to the data protection side of it, because that's where I'm at. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> And I have everything in place for us to be ready by the time everything comes through. And it is utilizing Commvault. I mean, that's the backbone of being able to keep us protected. At that level and all levels, I should say. >> Tim, as we mentioned before, you've been speaking, you've been quite busy at the show, give us, you know, some of the highlights that you've had and, you know, what brings you to Go and how many of them have you been to? >> Well, I went to the first two Florida and DC. I skipped out on the last one, I wanted to send my coworkers there. So my coworkers that I work with, I made it a point I said I'm staying at the office, I'll take care of everything, go and-- No pun intended. >> Lisa: I was going to say that was good. >> Yes. (Lisa and Tim laughing) And then I came back to this one. The big thing is learning. This is an opportunity for me to talk to industry experts, to talk to customers who have done things that I'm planning on doing in the future, to help out customers who haven't done things that I've already done and let 'em know hey look out for this or look out for that. But, with this one a big part of it is looking at the workflows, looking at the automation. Utilizing or being able to utilize all the other features that I have available to me that I'm not using right now. >> Last question in the last few seconds of the time we have left, lots of announcements from Commvault in the last nine months a lot of change, a lot of leadership change, reps to market change, new ventures. Some of your perspective of what you're seeing with this new Commvault? >> Well, it's exciting when you look at it. At first I wondered about the Hedvig acquisition. I mean, it's a step into the primary storage market and some people say that a lot of the companies that are partners with Commvault could see that as overstepping boundaries, but when I learn what they're doing and what they're planning on doing and utilizing it as more of a data protection multicloud strategy, this really could push them a little bit further along than anyone else than the data protection market is. So, the changes look to be, for lack of better words, really good for the company and in turn really good for us, the consumer. And making sure that we can do everything that we need to do and we're ready to move forward. >> 'Course you are, you have the shirt. >> Tim: That's right, we're ready >> Well Tim, Tim thank you for joining Stu and me on theCUBE this afternoon. Sharing with us what's going on at Mitchell and you perspectives on knowing Commvault as long as you have. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you for having me. >> Our pleasure. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19. (upbeat tune)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Commvault. a new gust to theCUBE. Yes. of the event. for insurance companies in the area That's a big, that's a-- So based here in the US? So, you came onboard there, and the importance of data to Mitchell and making sure that we keep that data protected So it's not a black box you can't see inside of, I guess for lack of better words, Some of the questions we have is, you know I guess, change configuration of the VMware backups. Are they asking you for your advice, and I'm the guy that you talk to and in the past I've used, you know, So you guys-- is the feedback loop that you have with Commvault. and the one things that I always come back to And what was Commvault's response to that feedback? and not by the user. CCPA is around the corner. ar they part of that solution to get ready? I can speak to the data protection side of it, I mean, that's the backbone of being able to I skipped out on the last one, all the other features that I have available to me of the time we have left, a lot of the companies that are partners with Commvault and you perspectives on knowing Commvault and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19.

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Tom Broderick, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO 19, from Colorado. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. Stu and I are pleased to welcome somebody new to theCUBE and to Commvault. We've got Tom Broderick, VP of Strategy and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Commvault. Tom, welcome to the program. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, I like you're on brand, the new Commvault venture, >> Yeah, I got to sport the colors, right? >> Metallic, very nice. >> That's right, I had the big jacket on yesterday, so. >> Oh wow, all right. So lots of change at Commvault. You're new as well, you've worked with Sanjay, now this is your third different company working with Sanjay Mirchandani, the CEO. Talk to us a little bit about your short time here at Commvault. There's been so much change that he's driving, cultural change, Metallic was something that was conceived, designed, built in a very short time period, a lot of acceleration. Your first few months here, what's it's been like? >> It's been, obviously, a ton of activity. And, one of the things that we know, and I think it's obvious, Commvault as a company has been in this state of transition. You bring a new CEO on, and we've got a new leadership team, that is merging well with the core leadership team of people that have a lot experience at the company and it's working really well. From the beginning we knew that we needed to focus on three areas, inside the company and outside. It's really around, as we talk to folks, around simplifying our business. And when we say that, normally in an event like this it goes towards how do we simplify working with our partners, how do we simplify working with our customers, how do we simplify our products, that kind of thing. But, from my perspective, one of the things that I focus on, is also, how we focus on simplifying ourselves on the inside, because this is an area where we can be much more efficient in how we bring our technology to the marketplace. So I'm focused on breaking down silos, I'm focused on driving effective communication in the business, so that we can deliver that technology to our partners and our customers. So, simplifying the business. Innovation is the next big key. So, obviously, our technology, and this is one of the things before coming on, I did a lot of research on Commvault technology, I've been out of this part of the market for quite some time, and the core technology is super solid. But we needed to innovate further, and shoulder out into different areas, and that's where you see things like Metallic come into play, the acquisition of Hedvig, where we're using our balance sheet, in a way that's very different for the company. This is our first acquisition as a company. And then of course all the new features and functions that we put into SP17, which was just released in the core product. And then lastly, it's around execution. So, simplify, innovate, execute. And when we talk about execution, a lot of that falls on the go-to-market side so this feeds right into some of those leadership changes that we announced this week, and that we announced earlier, bringing folks like Riccardo Di Blasio on, and that's how we think about things. So that's been a structure that's allowed us to do so much change in such a little amount of time. >> So Tom, I'd love to dig into that a little bit, so we've talked of Commvault traditionally has done a decent job of trying to move a little faster, so if you talk about the core product, it's on a 90 day release cycle, it's not the nine to 18 months train that many of us that have been in the industry a long time was like, okay, we got to get on the train, jam everything into it, hope we go and when we get to the end that we actually release something that we're happy with and it's supported and it works. Your last stop with Sanjay was at Puppet. Very different mindset, I'm curious what you learned there, and how that is really permeating the whole industry and what changes need to happen in Commvault to live in this new sass role like Metallic's going to offer, you know, if you're not delivering code, what are you doing. >> Yeah, it's a great question Stu, and the thing is, obviously we're living a different world than what we were 20 years ago, agile methodologies have sped everything up, and people are used to faster release cycles, how do we get new features out to customers in a much more expeditious way. The challenge though, and I'll bet if folks are watching this, the challenge internally is how you do that effectively. So one of the things that we did at Puppet was we had to get better at bringing the technology to the market, end to end across the business, so inside the business. It's not enough for the developers to say, "Okay, code's ready", and just throw it out there. Is the field enabled, is the pricing right, is the packaging right, is the documentation right, is marketing activated, all those elements of it. So again, this is a little bit inside baseball, from a Commvault perspective we're institutionalizing this as one of the core processes that helps us operate the business. I talk a lot about inside, I talk about how sometimes you have to go slow to go fast, and what I mean by that is the cross-functional elements of the business need to get together sooner in the process to make sure that everybody's on the same page, aligned, they know the key dependencies and they know when they can make their deliverables, so that when we're ready to go to market with the new technology, or new product, or a new service pack release, that everybody is ready to go with that because it does nobody any good if the code's ready, you throw it over the wall and then it just kind of falls down because people outside weren't ready. >> But operational simplification, as you describe it, that's really challenging to do, number one. Number two, doing it at a company that's been in business for 20 years, where you have different functions, you probably have some incumbent folks in there. Lot of change, how have you been able to accomplish that in such a short time period, it seems like, one of the things that Stu and I've been hearing is that there was a lot of receptiveness, within the incumbency internally at Commvault, but operational simplification it's no simple feat. >> No, it's really easy when you write it down on a piece of paper, it's hard once you get the humans involved. But the thing is, and this is one of the things that I've noticed at Commvault, it's been tremendously refreshing to me, is that, you know we have about 2,500 people in the organization and if I was going to give a massive generalization, we have 2,500 people that want to do the right thing, and they truly want to do the right thing for our customers. The issue in the past is that they haven't been aligned in all the same direction, or set of directions. So we were a little bit haphazard in certain ways. But people want to do the right thing, and once I started talking about these concepts and once we started implementing them, and now that we're actually seeing results, it's amazing, I have so many people coming up to me saying, "Wow, I didn't really get it at first, but now that we're actually implementing these kind of processes inside the company, it's amazing, the transformation that we're seeing, and we're so glad that we're doing it." >> Can you talk to us about the decisions for the Commvault ventures, that's one of the things that struck me when I saw some of the press releases earlier in the week, Metallic, a Commvault venture. The Hedvig acquisition, a Commvault venture. Some of the conversations that Stu and I have had this week, it's like a startup mentality within Commvault. Talk to us about the strategic decision to go that venture inside Commvault route. >> Yeah sure, absolutely. So obviously, Hedvig is indeed a venture, I mean, via acquiring a company that were a startup. But as we looked at bringing them into the Commvault folds, internally, inside the company, we had some guiding principles that we created straight away. And the number one guiding principle was don't break the business. Meaning, we're not going to come in and overwhelm them with Commvault. Because they created a successful entity amongst themselves, and a great technology that we think fits really well into our portfolio. But we do want to create some degree of separation because, we might be talking to different customers, this I why, I think I saw David Wigglesworth on a little bit earlier, and he's setting up the emerging technologies sales unit because they're going to be taking this to market a little bit different way. The development team is not being merged right into our core development team, they're remaining a unit amongst themselves reporting to Sanjay, right directly to Sanjay. On the Metallic side we did take the startup approach from the beginning, and we said look, it's easy for organizations to say, hey, we want to build this new thing to serve this new part of the market, and we're going to invest resources into it, let's put the plans together and go get it done. But especially for public companies too, it's easy on your 90 day cycles, to all of a sudden say, you know what, we have to rebound, or take those funds that we were going to put there, and move them elsewhere. And we said, no, we can't do this, this is super strategic to us, we have to ring fence it, and we have to let them build this product in a different way. So, I was talking about business readiness before, in terms of the process that we institute, they were actually the first group to implement it within their small team, and it created a great proof point for the rest of the organization to see how it works. >> So Tom, we've had some great conversations with a lot of the new leadership this week, you mentioned we had the conversation with Wiggs, he's starting to hire some of those sales people. We know there's always change going on in an environment, but is Commvault mostly through with the strategic leadership hires and now it's down to the next layer as to things like the overlays in some of the new initiatives, or is there still more work to be done on the structural piece of things? >> Good question Stu. You know, our work is never done. I think it's the same with any organization. I think most of the major parts and pieces are put in place, like where we want them. One of the things that you mentioned earlier, that this is my third tour of duty with Sanjay, and I say one of the really powerful things that he brings to an organization is the ability to build a strong, well-functioning leadership team. And I say well-functioning. And he did it at EMC, he did it at Puppet, and he's doing it here. And now we've got that senior leadership team in place, that is going to be continuing down this path of positive momentum that we've got. >> One of the challenges making through this big move, we said that the team definitely was receptive, we know that they're ready, but clear communication, just without getting into too many proprietary things that you've done, what tips can you have to make sure that an organization of this experience and this size isn't just going to get like, "Oh my God, whiplash, "they're changing management, I don't know where I fit." Or anything like that, how do we make sure that you get everybody pointing towards the true north, and, ready is I think the word we've heard over and over, so making sure that everybody in Commvault is ready to move forward? >> It's hard and it takes a lot of discipline. I do think you need to be as transparent as you can be, with the workforce and with your employees. They need to understand where we're going with this because if it's just a bunch of change for change's sake, that's difficult environment to live in. And we're certainly not that, we have objectives and goals, and we know what we want to get to. Obviously there are strategic elements of it that we can't necessarily discuss all the time, but at least directionally we have to be able to explain the moves that we're making in such a way that makes sense to people. If we believe it, and we've done our diligence, then it should be transferrable and we should be able to make it so that it's clear to everybody on the Commvault team. And we are focused on making that happen. Internally we do a lot of communication. Sanjay writes a lot of blogs internally. Sandy Hamilton writes a lot of blogs, Riccardo is constantly talking to the teams, and that just permeates down. We need to continue to get better at it, it's hard, organizational communications are hard. But we need to lead from the top as well, make sure that as we demonstrate what it means to communicate that all throughout the organization, we're creating that sort of culture. >> In the last few seconds here Tom, I would love to get your perspectives. What's the biggest thing that you're going to take away of the last three days of your first Commvault GO? >> Tom: Wow. >> Too many to count? >> (laughs) It's exciting, I'll say that, very specifically, walking through the Metallic booth and the Hedvig booth is inspiring to me, the amount of traffic going through those two booths, that's exactly-- >> That's probably what that applause is for right now, in fact it is, I see it. >> That is, they invited me over at 4 o'clock, I said I couldn't make it. It's been truly inspiring, and I think people are excited. And for me it's, obviously you want your customers excited, you want your partners to be excited, but for me too, it's just as important to have our employees excited, and that's a major takeaway that I'm bringing from this conference. >> I think we would echo that we've heard a lot of excited folks. Well Tom, thank you for joining Stu and me on the program, we look forward to Commvault GO 2020 already. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> Excellent. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE from Commvault GO 19. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Commvault. Talk to us a little bit about And, one of the things that we know, and how that is really permeating the whole industry So one of the things that we did at Puppet one of the things that Stu and I've been hearing But the thing is, and this is one of the things that's one of the things that struck me in terms of the process that we institute, and now it's down to the next layer is the ability to build a strong, One of the challenges making through this big move, and we should be able to make it of the last three days of your first Commvault GO? in fact it is, I see it. And for me it's, obviously you want your customers excited, I think we would echo that you're watching theCUBE from Commvault GO 19.

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Andrew Cochrane, Softcat | Commvault GO 2019


 

>> Announcer: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault GO, 2019. Brought to you Commvault. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO '19 from Colorado. Lisa Martin here, with Stu Miniman. Stu and I are pleased to welcome, somebody who knows a lot about Commvault from a couple of different angles, we have Andrew Cochrane, Solutions Architect at Softcat. Andrew, welcome to the program. >> Hi Lisa and Stu, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. >> So you have familiarity, more than familiarity, with Commvault for a long time. You are at Softcat now, you've been there since the beginning part of this year. But you've been working with Commvault on the customer's side for a long time. Let's start there which just giving us your history of what your guys do, what you were doing with Commvault on the customer's side, before we get into the partnership with SoftCat. >> Yes, I started working with Commvault about five years ago. I was working for a large global company, headquarters in the UK, around research and development. We had a lot of different siloed backup technologies. We had big problems with data growth. So I ran a project there, to find a solution that will help us with that in the day that we were doing it, but then also as we grew. As we had big plans to grow, our data we were growing about six or seven average year on year. So we had a major challenge with that data boom. So I started working with Commvault, we selected that as a tool set. And we implemented it and so, were able to reduce our backup down to a much more controlled environment, much more automated, and increase our backup success, and our restore success dramatically from sort of, our SLA was, we didn't have one actually, but it was probably more around 50% up to sort of then 99% success rate. And then, we started that journey and it was definitely a partnership with Commvault then from a customer angle. Because we saw backup as day one, and then it was really how can we progress that, and move from data redaction to data management. So we started looking at what we now refer to as Orchestrate and Activate. So Orchestrate really looking at how can we move workloads, initially it was between sites or it might be for recovery scenarios, and then obviously now the cloud. And then, we started looking at Activate, because we realize we had a challenge of our data's growing more and more. We can protect, which is great. We can move it, but we didn't really know what it was. We knew we had stuff, we know we had a lot of it. But, when you start drilling down beyond the file types, or the sizes of, is it sensitive, is it person identifiable, is there a risk with this data, do we need it, can we delete it, we didn't know. So that's where we started looking at Activate. So that's kind of where my journey start to end as a customer, when we started to get involved with Activate. I sort of left that when we were sort of end of the POC phase, so we knew it could do what we wanted it to do. It's then a matter of scaling that. And then yeah, I joined Softcat beginning of this year to take on a new challenge as a partner. >> All right, so it's great learning you had as the user now you can relate with your customers even more. Just give us a thumbnail sketch of Softcat, and how the Commvault partnership you have, fits into the overall business. >> Yeah, so Softcat, our UK partner, we were around infrastructure services. We're one of the leading UK partners. We cover a broad ranges across hybrid cloud, network, security, digital working space, so we cover a wide gander of different technologies. And Commvault are one of our key vendors that we work with and really one that we work a lot with around the data management piece, and discuss with customers the challenge I had as a customer. And we share that with them and discuss Commvault and how that can help them in their challenges. >> The role that you now have with Softcat what part of your experience with Commvault on the customer side attracted you to shift over to Softcat and partner, and be a partner with Commvault? >> Yeah, yes, I mean my whole career up to this point about 20 years has always been from a customer side, in different organizations, different sectors. And I kind of, I got to the point where I've done a lot different roles, I'd been different infrastructure roles, different end-user compute roles, and I've been on service desks, into the architecture world, and I've kind of had a good round of experience, but I thought I've never experienced the channel of a vendor. So I wanted a new challenge, and Softcat has this Solution Architect role, which is ideal, and I thought actually sitting in the channel, I suppose, still being close to the customer, and being able to understand their challenges and what they're trying to do, because that's been my whole career to that point. But then also, sign to form, relationships with the vendors that were different. So having that closer relationship, that being able to, I suppose amplify almost my voice, 'cause I can having one voice as single customer, but now I see even in 10 months, I think, I'm into triple digits of customers, so I can start to amplify that voice of saying it's not just one, it's all of the customers that I represent and almost starting to be that go-between between the customer and the vendor. And I thought that was really interesting challenges, it's something that I'd be good at hopefully. And it really attracts me to start to sort of sit in that space and start to meet more customers, see their environments, their challenges to see was my experience unique or is everybody having the same sort of challenges and aspirations and start to work together to try and help solution design around those. >> Great so Andrew, I'd love you to bring us inside some of those conversations you're having. >> Yeah. >> We've been having conversations this whole week about the new Commvault, they've got some new products, like Metallic, very much partner driven activity. Which of the product in the Commvault portfolio are resonating most with your customers and what you have heard this week that you want to make sure that you're bringing back to your users? >> Yeah, as far as before this week, the two that really resonated were Complete and Activate. Complete obviously for that almost the stuff that we have to do. We need to protect that data, we need to recover it. So it's always going to been, I think a conversation in any organization. The Activate one is a really interesting discussion point actually, and something which, from my experience before as a customer, I bring into a lot of the conversations I have with my customers. And it's really trying to understand, yes, you might protect it, but do you understand the, like I said the challenge I had as a customer, and quite a lot organizations don't, they don't have the understanding or that ability to automate things, or they might be early on that journey, so it's really, I try and take a slightly difference attack of trying to understand the business. Work with not only, our infrastructure contacts, but also trying to say actually, can we speak to Legal, to Compliance, to Governance, to HR, because data securing are considering things like GDPR and other regulatory bodies. It's not an IT problem, this is the whole organization. Actually we find that Activate is a good way to start to have that discussion with customers. I suppose that was up to this point, and then obviously, now, last couple of days, I think, the one that I'm looking forward to will be Metallic. It's not yet, outside of the US, but I'm waiting for that time because we definitely see a space with SMBs where they want the power of something like Commvault but they also want the simplicity to deploy it and to operate it. And I think Metallic has a really great play there. I've seen it over the last couple of days a few times and I think it's looking real powerful. >> Andrew, I'm curious, you've talked about the products that are resonating with your customers. How many of them are really on the defensive when it comes to data? You know, I'm worry about protecting, I'm worry about government, versus those that are saying okay, I want to be data driven, I'm going through digital transformation, and therefore, understanding and leveraging my data is a key part of that? >> Yeah, I think it's a mix. I've seen so far and it really sort of comes down to the sector they're in. I've find out the sectors that are more governed tend to be more around that security and that protection side. Also like, sort of government, healthcare, any things sort of federal anything like that they seemed to be much more protection oriented. Anything more in the private sector is definitely that transformation, and that's where we have a lot of discussions whether it be digital transmission, a hybrid cloud, it's definitely more data driven. It's interesting seeing those two different perspectives. But I think, at some point, they all start to merge so I think it's just where those sectors are at the moment. >> Where would you say, customers, you said you were working with triple digits. >> Yeah. >> So 30 plus or no, hundred of customers. >> Yeah, hundreds yeah. >> Actually wait. >> It's been a busy time 10 months. (laughs) >> Lisa: That's a lot, that's a lot businesses. Where would you guesstimate they are with respect to readiness for GDPR? I heard some stats recently 70% of organizations are still, aren't ready ready or really fully able to address that. Your take from the UK's stand point. >> Yeah, I think, I'm not sure of the stats from what I've seen, you're right, it's probably high percentage on complying or ready for it. I think the main thing is to address that, and I suppose be aware that you're not ready, and to start on that journey. Because a lot of the regulatory things is about being on that journey, and starting it, and knowing that you got a roadmap to get to, to be, there is no real Nirvana of being compliant it's a constant rolling. And it's a matter of start that journey, identifying the processes, building a virtual team, of like I said, all those different people within the organization, finding out what data you have, but almost that comes after you've almost identified the problem. And the technology will come afterwards to try and help you to go through that. And yeah, I found a lot of the organizations that I've met so far, they're not really ready for that. I think there's still a little bit of a way to go. With all the difference, cause you got GDPR, you've got CCPA, that's going to come-- >> Yeah, yes, yup. >> any day now. >> Which, yeah I don't think a lot of organizations are ready for it. But it's a matter of starting that journey. >> Is that part of the advisory services that Softcat delivers, is to help them understand, there's no recipe for how to get ready, but obviously, you mentioned CCPA, that's probably the tip of the iceberg of more privacy. Laws that are >> Yeah. >> going to be enacted. So looking at the fines that are there, how do you advise customers, I'm sure depends right on how ready or not they are, but what's Softcat's sort of prescription for helping customers, like hey you've got to get, here's the place to start, because GDPR has been around for a while, other things are coming and if you're not compliant and a complying event happens, there's a tremendous risks to the business. >> There is yeah. I mean there's a financial risk, but it's also that impact actually of if you get audited and not compliant, that can have a really detrimental effect especially on a brand. So I mean yeah really we go in and try and first of all identify where an organization is, and that's across the board, we try and identify the problem, where are you, what do we need to do, what are, are there any sort of business challenges that it might have, any objectives, anything that we're trying to do as well as just getting compliant. And then, really it's trying to help formulate a plan. The first place that we start is building a team, of different people, of identifying, even if we do not where it is, by identifying the types of data you'll have, where it might be stored, what we think are the risky points. And starting to work from there really we're trying to formulate a plan of where you need to start actioning things, because some organizations, even if they can't put their finger on it they'll have an idea where it might be. So it's starting to help formulate that plan, formulate the teams that can bring different perspectives, because IT can bring in the technology side, but they might not be, as okay with the legal aspects. So therefore, you need legal, you might need HR, because they'll understand the employee side, you might have customers, so you might need customer relations, to understand who are the customers, what data do keep with them, so you need all these different aspects trying to get them round the table to start to understand almost, what the problem is, within each organization. There's somethings which are common, but organization has this like unique part, they might be more sort of experience in one area, less in others so it's about balancing out that risk of where they need to then focus on. >> So Andrew, I heard at the partner keynote on Monday, they talked about some new initiatives, some new incentives, especially going after new logos, you've only been on the partner side a relatively short time, but curious you're reaction, in your organization, thinking about some of the changes that are happening in the go-to-market from the Commvault standpoint. >> Yeah, yeah, the partner exchange day was a great day. I think a lot of good announcements for the partner world. I mean really there's ways to engage with Commvault better, I think the marketing that's been talked about, is a really a big thing. I think making Commvault stand out from everything else on the market. Showing those brands that we can go talk to other customers about. Sanjay's mentioned it, I think, a couple of times as well is about debunking some myths, about Commvault being complex. That's one that I have to address many times when I go into organizations. So it's great from a partner aspect to see that Commvault gained those things head on really. Because that will help Commvault, but also the partners and also it's customers, because more costumers can enjoy their great technology. So yeah, I think they're doing a lot of great work for the partner on the channel. >> I'm sure your perspective as a long time Commvault customer and now partner are going to be invaluable to the relationship. So we thank you Andrew for coming by theCUBE, and talking with Stu and me about Commvault and Softcat. Lots of exiting things are on the horizon I'm sure. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, it's been great to be at GO, it's been a great event. >> Lisa: It's a great event, isn't it? >> Yeah. >> Excellent, thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Commvault GO '19.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you Commvault. Stu and I are pleased to welcome, It's great to be here. before we get into the partnership with SoftCat. in the day that we were doing it, and how the Commvault partnership you have, and really one that we work a lot with and almost starting to be that go-between Great so Andrew, I'd love you to bring us inside and what you have heard this week the one that I'm looking forward to will be Metallic. that are resonating with your customers. But I think, at some point, they all start to merge Where would you say, customers, hundred of customers. It's been a busy time 10 months. aren't ready ready or really fully able to address that. and knowing that you got a roadmap to get to, But it's a matter of starting that journey. that Softcat delivers, is to help them understand, here's the place to start, So it's starting to help formulate that plan, that are happening in the go-to-market That's one that I have to address many times and now partner are going to be invaluable it's been great to be at GO, it's been a great event. thank you so much. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin.

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David Wigglesworth, Commvault & Don Foster, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>> Narrator: Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault Go 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. (upbeat electronic music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are covering Commvault Go '19 from Colorado and Stu and I are pleased to welcome a couple of guys back to theCUBE. We've got David Wigglesworth, a VP, now VP of Global Sales and Emerging Technologies at Commvault for what, a couple weeks now David? >> About a month and five days. >> About a month, and look who's back, it's Don Foster, VP of Storage Solutions, >> Great to be back. from the Keynote stage, welcome back Don. >> Thank you very much. >> Don, and we appreciate you bringing your own personal makeup artist, Sanjay Merchandandi, >> Yeah. >> A man of many skills. >> Indeed. (laughing) >> He really is. So if this whole, like, CEO thing doesn't work, he's clearly got a career in, you know, touch-up makeup. >> In makeup. >> Yeah, all right, so Wigs we'll start with you, you've got a cool nickname, so I got to use it. You've been here for about a month or so. This is a new Commvault. We've heard a lot in the last two days. A lot of news, a lot of leadership changes, obviously, go-to-market changes, new partner offerings, lots of stuff. Tell us first, before we dig in, what attracted you to Commvault? >> That's a pretty easy question to answer, it's the leadership. So, obviously I'm very familiar with Commvault. I've competed with them in my past career. Always been a very formidable competitor. When you walked into an account in my previous life and they said they had Commvault, you usually kind-of wiped your brow, and thought 'Oh okay, I've got to find something else here to talk about' but in all seriousness, for me it was, you know, when I first noticed in the News that Sanjay had come onboard. That peaked my interest, because obviously I knew Sanjay in my previous life at EMC and at VMware. And then when I watched Ricardo join the company, I was like, okay, this is something I really need to dig into. And so when I had the opportunity to meet with them and understand the direction of where they want to take the company, which was also already just a phenomenal IT organization, just a pillar in the IT community, with what the founders were able to do in relatively short amount of time. I was really excited to be able to come over and be a part of it. >> Wigs, you've got a emerging tech under your purview, tell us a little bit about what that's going to mean in your role. >> Right now it means I'm head big, right? So, by now, everyone's heard of the acquisition that was made. That was the other thing also that really interested me, was that technology because I really think that's where the market is going and I just felt like it was a great addition to the Commvault family of products. But it's a different technology. It's calling on a different set of folks with inside of an account and it's primarily an enterprise play. It can be a go-down-market a little bit, and enterprise's is kind of where I spent the last several years of my career, the last 20 or so (laughs) and so what we've decided to do is, because it's so different, we've decided for the time being, that we were going to create a special aid organization globally to go sell that solution so that our existing core sellers can focus on our existing set of products, right? That we can be a specialist organization that can help them with their customers, selling all of the additional emerging tech, right? And so, here at the show, we've obviously spent time talking about Hedvig. Metallic is another new technology for us. Now Metallic is going to handled differently, but as we continue to grow our emerging technologies from the traditional core Commvault family of products, that's what I'm going to be focused on. So it'll begin with Hedvig. >> So for the role that you're in now, you said about a month or so, are you bringing in a brand-new sales overlay team? Are you guys hiring like crazy or are some of the Commvault OG sales-guys-or-girls shifting up, we'll say? >> For the most part, we're bringing in new talent. We're looking for people that have a broad spectrum of the experience, right. Obviously someone with strong storage background, but also people that know virtualization code, people that understand containers. Those skillsets are really important to us. And so we're busy building out both an America sales team and also building out a Nemea sales team. And then my partner, I call him my partner-in-crime, Ediz. Ediz is building out our SE organization for the same two theaters. We'll start in those two theaters and then once we get the product fully integrated, which is part of what this guy is doing, once we get the product fully integrated, then I think you'll see us start to move into some other theaters. But right now we're going to focus on those. So yes, we're hiring. Right now my LinkedIn says, "David Wigglesworth, we're hiring." >> I think I saw that actually (laughing). >> So Don, we got to dig into some of the technology with you and Avinash yesterday. >> Absolutely. >> So we're now getting most of the way through the conference, bring us inside some of the conversations you're having. I know it was one of the biggest question, we had coming in was: 'All right The Hedvig that we knew, what's going to change, how does that fit?' Blurring the lines between primary and secondary and all those discussions we had with Sanjay. So take us to how people, are they kind of getting it at this point? And we know it's a journey for the integration and where it will ultimately end. >> Here's the real interesting thing, is probably in the first, I don't know, maybe 24 hours of having conversations with people from partner exchange all the way through to basically day one of actual Commvault Go, I probably had about four, maybe five if you count one of the service providers from Customers' Partners, come up and say, "Okay look, we looked at this tech about 18, 12 months ago and it was top of our list for what we wanted to do for building out this initiative, but there was a little bit too much risk." Going okay, do we really want to invest that much on a company that is maybe not the largest, most, I wouldn't want to say, reputable, but substantial in the marketplace. Will they be there in the future? And they're like, "Now that we know you've legitimized that business "and you want to keep that technology going forward, "this is fantastic. "We totally want to go and take a re-look back at this "and see how we can apply "that back into our infrastructure." So that's a great feedback to hear, and only serves as validation that when we look at the tech and say "This is good stuff," that we know it's good stuff and then of course the next piece is always, "All right, so now when can I start using this for Commvault and?" >> Right. >> That's when we start getting into the conversations of all right, we've got some integration work to do, the partners are asking when they can start to get access to sell it and again, we've got some work to do just to industrialize what we're doing and make the experience similar and then we'll start to roll it out in a considered fashion. >> I'm curious about the education piece. One of the customers that was onstage this morning, Sonic Healthcare, one of the things he said, on main stage and when he stopped by theCUBE a couple of hours ago, was, he said: "I wouldn't be in my job," and he runs disaster recovery and business continuity for Sonic Healthcare, "I wouldn't be in my job without Commvault's support." And I really appreciated and respected how he talked about some of the failures that they had. I always think failure is a good F-word if you leverage it in that way, (agreement) failure can mean success, if you learn from it. But the support organization and the training he talked about have been instrumental. Talk to us, guys, about how you're going to be partnering together to not just enable the big partners for those large enterprise accounts but maybe even the new sales-guys-and-girls that are coming, David, to your team to help everybody really understand how best to delivery a really stellar customer experience with something as exciting now as Hedvig is. >> You want to start, since you've been working on the integration. >> Yes, absolutely. First and foremost, I've been working with Avinash and his brother, Srinivas, and a lot of their engineering team. You really start to lock in things that are repeatable and scalable in nature, right? So that if we are going to open this up to more people, we do need to have repeatable nature of the building blocks for different use cases. So there's some core work we're doing on outlining, positioning, criteria, success, what the outcome needs to be, how that ties back in to hardware. Making sure as well that we understand how the messaging really does resonate and make sure that we're following and being focused on what our core targets are. Because a solution like what Hedvig offers, you can quickly start talking about a lot of different things that could be all things to many people, and we know that that's probably the worst decision to make, because you go super wide and don't go very deep at all and you end up losing the value prop. So identifying what the real core use cases are, getting deep in how it works, one with what the structure of it looks like, making it repeatable, that's the first and foremost thing, I think, for how we can help both Ediz and Wigs' sales team, and on the support side, doing very similar things but also doing some of the programmatic work of the integration and the experience. I talk about experience, like the sending of logs, the things that Matthew Magby from Sonic Healthcare was talking about how we really helped him. We want that same level of experience tied into where the software storage platform works as well. So there's some work to be done there. But as we get it done, the enablement on the support side, as you know, we deal with storage everyday anyway, so it's not like it's a big leap, but we do have to bring them into the mix of how the actual technology works, where it breaks, why it breaks, and those are all the things that we're really focused on in the next 90 days. >> Yeah, I think the real key for me as we talk to customers and also employees is I want them all to have the same experience with the new Hedvig solution that they experience with Commvault, right? And that goes from training our employees, really getting our SEs up to speed, so they can have a meaningful conversation to be able to get a customer to say, "Yeah, I think I'd like to speak with the Special Aid team. "Please have them give me a call." And also on the enablement for the clients, and having the customer understand that you can dial to 1-800 number for support, you can talk to somebody that can lead you down a path and give you the same quality of support you've been used to whether you're calling about a Hedvig solution or whether you're calling about a Commvault solution. >> Yeah, we talked about it a little yesterday, but the scale of the offering is a little bit different. >> It is. >> And therefore, that has some challenges on the support. And something that I'm sure Commvault is going to work on making that, it's not identical for every customer but a little bit more repeatable to be able to scale out that offering. >> I would agree, I would agree. The hardest thing to do is when you have a product that has so much functionality as Hedvig is to not lose focus and try to talk way too broad. What you've really got to do is, you've got to drill down with the client try to understand where their pinpoints are and because, quite frankly, the Hedvig product can do a lot of things. >> Don: Yeah, it can. >> Who's the ideal target customers, we talked about the theaters in which you're going to be launching first. Enterprise, we talked about that. Commvault has a significant presence in the Fortune 500, I think I read about three quarters of Commvault's revenue today comes from the Fortune 500, and Stu was saying yesterday about 80% of the revenue comes from the channel. So we look at Hedvig and the enterprise for a second, customers that are new to Commvault, those existing enterprise customers, GTM both? >> Yeah, I would say, the primary focus is going to be calling on the existent customer set. It's much easier to have a conversation with someone who knows who you are, even though you may be selling a new solution, at least they know who you are and they have a positive experience with us. So that, number one, we're going to focus on our probably our top 300 global accounts to start, as well as our top enterprise accounts. So there's probably, I would say, in the two theaters I mentioned earlier, there's probably about 35 hundred accounts that we're really going to focus on, and really try to make sure that we get in front of as many as we can and tell the story. I think that's where we have to start. Now, will there be greenfield opportunities? Yeah, I think quite frankly, that the Hedvig offering is different enough that it will enable us to go call on some of accounts that aren't doing business with Commvault today, maybe doing business with some of our competitors. So hopefully we can use that to actually win more traditional Commvault business. That's the plan. >> And the reason the enterprise really makes sense, the global accounts, is most larger companies have figured out how try solve the CapEx problem, right? >> David: Yeah. >> They've figured out just the economies of scale and how they grow and move, they can kind of handle that. What really still becomes a challenging piece is the operational efficiency. So, can I get the right solution at the right cost, but do it in a way that I'm actually making things more simplified? I'm not actually exploding more complexity into my environment. That's really where the Commvault data management platform and the Hedvig solution together really make a really solid story. >> All right, so Wigs, Don's team's really got their work cut out for them with all the integration work and know they've got a cadence and a roadmap. For you, obviously, new logos, there's got to be revenue goals. What are some of the key KPIs to measure how this becomes a successful acquisition? >> Well if my CEO is standing close by, he may be in earshot of this, right now it's trying to drive as much revenue as we can. But we also have to realize that we also have to build a pipeline, right? So right now my main focus here is I got to get a team in place that can go articulate the value of this solution to a client, right, number one, both technically and then working with Ediz to get the SE team in place, so that's number one. Number two, while we're doing that, we need to build a pipeline, right? When you make an investment, as you guys know, you're expected to start getting a return on that pretty quickly. And, it's nice, we inherited some nice pipeline with the acquisition. But with opportunity comes responsibility and so we've got to build that pipeline up and really get out in front of customers and find some opportunities that we can not only try to finish for this second half so we can hit all of our financial metrics, but really build pipeline for FY21, for us which starts in April. >> So the voice of the customer is, really can be really powerful. We've heard from a number of Commvault customers on our program yesterday, today on main stage. Is there a plan, Wigs, from your perspective, to get customers into some sort of data so that you have proof in the pudding to show those large enterprises and those theaters to help build that pipeline. Look at someone who's been an existing Commvault customer for five, 10 years or so, here's the, I don't want to say migration path, but maybe upgrade path to expand footprint in there. Here's how we did it, here's why this was ideal for this customer. Plans to get those early adopters to help you dial up the pipeline? >> So have you been reading my 'Go to market strategy' (laughing) 'cause you kind of you basically just read it. So yes, listen we are inheriting some nice accounts with Hedvig. They have some nice logos out there which is really good. And it's a good foundation for us to build upon. But we're very fortunate in that our core sellers have some really good relationships with some pretty large customers really in all different industries. And so, what we're doing right now is we're trying to identify probably about 10 accounts that make sense. That are really strong partners. They don't have to necessarily be really big customers, but just really strong partners that want to work together with us. And exactly what you just said, let's get in front of them, let's give them an opportunity to play with the technology and have them help us figure out, we think we have a pretty good idea what the go-to-marketing messaging should be for our existing customer base but certainly don't assume that we know everything. So have them help us build that strategy. So that is absolutely the plan. >> We've been hearing a lot about the last couple of days, of just, the openness of Commvault. Whether it's, I really thought it was cool with Metallic that the telemetry that partners can get to help customers, maybe even before a customer knows of an issue or an opportunity, but this telemetry, this 'let's learn from our customers,' couldn't agree as a marketer with you more about, we might think we have a great tagline, great messaging, but it's the users who need to validate that. What I'm hearing a lot over the last day and a half is how receptive Commvault is. We're listening to our customers, whether it's existing and comeback customers that Sanjay's team are dealing with, or even through partners. That message is loud and clear, and that's pretty important. >> Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I'll be honest with you, what's it's also been able to give us an opportunity to do is where we've had some relationships, quite frankly, that maybe we need to work a little harder on. Hedvig has given us that opportunity to kind of start those conversations as well. I think there's a lot of value, both on the existing opportunities as well as growing the business overall. >> Guys, nothing short of a lot of work ahead. But, pretty exciting stuff. We thank you both. Wigs, welcome again to Commvault. >> Thank you. >> Can't wait for next year. Going to bring some cool customers on the program. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Looking forward. The buzz is so amazing this year. So many customers have said, "I know you weren't here last year, but wow," and that's what they've said. I can't wait to see what this is going to be like next year. Thank you for having us on here. >> You've got to come back. >> Absolutely we will. >> Yeah? >> Yeah. >> All right, guys, thank you for joining Stu and I. >> Thank you both very much. >> Thank you. >> For Stu Miniman, I am Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19. (upbeat electronic music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Commvault. and Stu and I are pleased to welcome from the Keynote stage, welcome back Don. he's clearly got a career in, you know, touch-up makeup. We've heard a lot in the last two days. I really need to dig into. what that's going to mean in your role. of the acquisition that was made. and then once we get the product fully integrated, So Don, we got to dig into some of the technology with you and all those discussions we had with Sanjay. and say "This is good stuff," that we know it's good stuff and make the experience similar and the training he talked about on the integration. and on the support side, doing very similar things and having the customer understand but the scale of the offering is a little bit different. And something that I'm sure Commvault is going to work on and because, quite frankly, the Hedvig product about 80% of the revenue comes from the channel. and tell the story. and the Hedvig solution together What are some of the key KPIs to measure that can go articulate the value to help you dial up the pipeline? So that is absolutely the plan. that the telemetry that partners can get to help customers, that maybe we need to work a little harder on. We thank you both. Going to bring some cool customers on the program. and that's what they've said. and you're watching theCUBE from Commvault Go '19.

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Ben Di Qual, Microsoft | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, welcome back to the Q but Lisa Martin with men and men and we are coming to you alive from Conn logo 19 please to welcome to the cube, a gent from Microsoft Azure. We've got Ben Nichol, principal program manager. Ben, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming on. So Microsoft combo, what's going on with the partnership? >>They wouldn't have have great storage pond is in data management space. We've been working with Convolt for 20 years now in Microsoft and and they've been working with us on Azure for about as long as I can remember not being on that the Azure business RET seven years now. So just a long time in cloud terms like doggies and it sort of, they'd been doing a huge amount of their around getting customer data into the cloud, reducing costs, getting more resiliency and then also letting them do more with the data. So they were a pretty good partner to have and they make it much easy for their customers to to go and leverage cloud. So Ben, you know, in my career I've had lots of interactions with the Microsoft storage team. Things have changed a little bit when you're now talking about Azure compared to, you know, more. >>It was the interaction with the operating system or the business suite had. So maybe bring us up to date as those people that might not have followed. You know, we're kind of the storage positioning inside of Microsoft is now that when we talk about Azure and your title. Yeah, we, we sort of look and just just briefly, we worked very heavily with our on premises brethren. They actually inside the O S team is inside of the Azure engineering old male, which is kind of funny, but we do a lot of things there. If he started looking at, firstly on that hybrid side, we have things like Azure files. It's a highly resilient as a service SMB NFS file share up to a hundred terabytes but that interacts directly with windows server to give you Azure file sync. So there is sort of synergies there as well. When I'm doing personally my team, we work on scale storage. >>The big thing we have in there is Al is out blood storage technology, which really is the underpinning technology, full Priya tool storage and Azure which is including our SAS offerings which are hosted on Azure too. So disc is on blood storage, our files on blood storage, you look at Xbox live, all these kinds of stuff is a customer to us. So we build that out and we, we are doing work there and that's really, really interesting and how we do it and that's not looking at going we're going to buy some compute, we're going to buy some storage, we're going to build it out, we're going to run windows or hyper V or maybe VMware with windows running on the VMware, whatever else. This is more a story about wigging to provide you storage as a service. You didn't get a minimum of like 11 nines at your ability and and be able to have that scale to petabytes of capacity in one logical namespace and give you multiple gigabytes, double digit gigabytes of throughput to that storage. >>And now we're even moving about to model multiple protocols. So rest API century today we've got Azure stack storage, you pay API, she can go and use, but we give me that consistency of the actual back end storage and the objects and the data available via more than just one protocol. You can go and access that via HDFS API. As we talk about data lakes all the time. For us, our blood storage is a data Lake. We turn on hierarchal namespace and you can go and access that via our other protocols like as I mentioned HDFS as well. So that is a big story about what we want to do. We want to make that data available at crazy scale, have no limits in the end to the capacity or throughput or performance and over any protocol. That's kind of our line in the Hill about what we want to get to. >>And we've been talking to vault team about some of the solutions that they are putting in the cloud. The new offering metallic that came out. They said if my customer has Azure storage or storage from that other cloud provider, you could just go ahead and use that. Maybe how familiar and how much, I know you've been having a run metallic. We were working, we were pretty tightly with the product team over Convolt around this and my team as well around how do we design and how do we make it work the best and we're going to continue working to optimize as they get beyond initial launch to go, wow, we've got data sets we can analyze, we know how to, we wanted out of tune it. Now really we love the solution particularly more because the default, if you don't select the storage type where you want to go, you will run on Azure. >>So really sort of be kudos to the relationship there. They chose us as a first place we'll go to, but they've also done the choice for customers. Say some customers may want to take it to another cloud. That's fine. It's reasonable. I mean, we totally understand it's going to be a multi-cloud world and that's a reality for any large company. Our goal is to make sure we're growing faster than the competitors, not to knock out the competitors all together because that just won't happen. So they've got that ability to go and yet, Hey, we'll use Azure as default because they feel that way, offering the best support and the best solution there. But then if they have that customer, same customer wants to turn around and use a competitor, Val's fine as well. And I see people talking about that today where they may want to mitigate risks and say, I'm going to do, I'm doing all of office three, six, five on a taken office, three, six, five backup. It's cool. Use metallic, it'll take it maybe to a different region in Asia and they're backing up and they still going, well I'm still all in on Microsoft. They may want to take it to another cloud or even take it back to on premises. So that does happen too because just in case of that moment we can get that data back in a different location. Something happens. >>So metallic talking about that is this new venture is right. It's a Combolt venture and saw that the other day and thought that's interesting. So we dug into it a little bit yesterday and it's like a startup operating within a 20 year old company, which is very interesting. Not just from an incumbent customer perspective, but an incumbent partner perspective. How have you seen over the last few years and particularly bad in the last nine months with big leadership and GTM changes for combo? How has the partnership with Microsoft evolved as a result of those changes? >>Um, it's always been interesting. I guess when you start looking at adventure and everything, since things change a little bit, priorities may change just to be fair, but we've had that tight relationship for a long time. At a relationship level and an exec leadership level, nothing's really changed. But in the way they're building this platform, we sit down out of my team, out of the Azure engineering group and we'll sit down and do things like ideations, like here's where we see gaps in the markets, here's what we believe could happen. And look back in July, we had inspire, which is our partner conference in Las Vegas. When we sat down with their OT, our OT in a room, we'll talking about these kinds of things and this is I think about two months after they may have started the initial development metallic from what I understand, but we will talking about exactly what they're doing with metallic offered as a service in Azure is, Hey, how bout we do this? So we think it's really cool. It opens up a new market to Convolt I think too. I mean they're so strong in the enterprise, but they don't do much in smaller businesses because with a full feature product, it also has inherent complexibility complexity around it. So by doing metallic, is it click, click, next done thing. They're really opening, I think, new markets to them and also to us as a partner. >>I was going to ask, you know, kind of click on that because they developed this very quickly. This is something that I think what student were here yesterday, metallic was kind of conceived design built in about six months. So in terms of like acceleration, that's kind of a new area for Combalt. >>Yeah, and I think, I think they're really embracing the fact about um, let's release our code in production for products, which are sort of getting, getting to the, Hey that product is at the viable stage now, not minimum viable, viable, let's release in production, let's find out how customers are using Atlin, let's keep optimizing and doing that constant iteration, taking that dev ops approach to let's get it out there, let's get it launched. And then let's do these small batches of changes based on customer need, based on tele telemetry. We can actually get in. We can't get the telemetry without having customers. So that's how it's going to keep working. So I think this initial product we see today, it's just going to keep evolving and improving as they get more data, as they get more information, more feedback. Which is exactly what we want to see. >>Well, what will come to the cloud air or something you've been living in for a number of years. Ben, I'd love to hear you've been meeting with customers. They've been asking you questions, gives us some of the, you know, some of the things that, what's top of mind for some of the customers? What kinds of things did they come into Microsoft, Dawn, and how's that all fit together? >>There's many different conferences of interrelate, many different conversations and they'll, we will go from talking about, you know, Python machine learning or AI PowerPoint. >>Yeah. >>It's a things like, you know, when are we going to do incremental snapshots from a manage disks? Get into the weeds on very infrastructure century staff. We're seeing range of conversations there. The big thing I think I see, keep seeing people call out and make assumptions of is that they're not going to be relevant because cloud, I don't know cloud yet. I don't know this whole coup cube thing. Containers. I don't, I don't really understand that as well as I think I need to. And an AI, Oh my gosh, what do I even do there? Because everyone's throwing the words and terms around. But to be honest, I think what's still really evident is cloud is still is tiny fraction of enterprise workloads. Let's be honest, it's growing at a huge rate because it is that small fraction. So again, there's plenty of time for people to learn, but they shouldn't go and try and slip. >>It's not like you're going to learn everything in a technology stack, from networking to development to database management to, to running a data set of power and cooling. You learn the things that are applicable to what you're trying to do. And the same thing goes to cloud. Any of these technologies, go and look at what you need to build for your business. Take it to that step and then go and find out the details and levels you want to know. And as someone who's been on Azure for like a cinema seven years, which is crazy long. That was a, that was literally like being in a startup instead of Microsoft when I joined and I wasn't sure if I wanted to join a licensing company. It's been very evident to me. I will not say I'm an Azure expert and I've been seven years in the platform. >>There are too many things throughout my for me to be an expert in everything on and I think people sort of just have to realize that anyone saying that it's bravado, nothing else. The goal is Microsoft as a platform provider. Hopefully you've got the software and the solution to make a lot of this easier for the customer, so hopefully they shouldn't need to become a Kubernetes expert because it's baked into your platform. They shouldn't have to worry about some of these offerings because it's SAS. Most customers are there some things you need to learn between going from, you know, exchange to go into oath bricks, these five. Absolutely. There are some nuances and things like that, but once you get over that initial hurdle, it should be a little easier. I think it's right and I think going back to that, sort of going back to bare principles going, what is the highest level of distraction that's viable for your business or that application or this workload has to always be done with everything. >>If it's like, well, class, not even viable, run it on premises. Don't, don't need to apologize for not running in cloud. If I as is what's happening for you because of security, because of application architecture, run it that way. Don't feel the need and the pressure to have to push it that way. I think too many people get caught up in the shiny stuff up here, which is what you know 1% of people are doing versus the other 99% which is still happening in a lot of the areas we work and have challenges in today. >>That's a great point that you bring up because there is all the buzz words, right? AI, machine learning cloud. You've got to be cloud ready. You've gotta be data-driven to customer, to your point going, I just need to make sure that what we have set up for our business is going to allow our business one to remain relevant, but to also be able to harness the power of the data that they have to extract new opportunities, new insights, and not get caught up with, shoot, should we be using automation? Should we be using AI? Everybody's talking about it. I liked that you brought up and I find it very respectfully, he said, Hey, I'm not an Azure expert. You'd been there seven, seven dog years like you said. And I think that's what customers probably gained confidence in is hearing the folks like you that they look to for that guidance and that leadership saying, no, I don't know everything. To know that giving them the confidence that they're true, they're trusting you with that data and also helping trusting you to help them make the right decisions for their business. >>Yeah. And that that's, we've got to do that. I mean, I, as a tech guy, it's like I've, I've loved seeing the changes. When I joined Microsoft, I, I wasn't lying. I was almost there go inf I really want to join this company. I was going to go join a startup instead. And I got asked to one stage in an interview going, why do you want to join Microsoft? We see you've never applied to that. I never wanted to, a friend told me to come in and it's just been amazing to see those changes and I'm pretty proud on that. Um, so when we talk about, you know, those, the things we're doing, I mean I think there is no shame going, I'm just going to lift and shift machines because cloud is about flexibility. If you're doing it just on cost, probably doing it for the wrong reason, it's about that flexibility to go and do something. >>Then change within months of slowly make steps to make things better and better as you find a need as you find the ability, whatever it may be. And some of the big things that we focus on right now with customers is we've got a product called Azure advisor. It'll go until people want one. You know, you don't build things in a resilient manner. Hey, do you know this is not ha because of this and you can do this. It's like great. Also will tell you about security vulnerabilities that maybe she had a gateway here for security. Maybe you should do this or this is not patched. But the big thing is that it also goes and tells you, Hey, you're overspending. You don't need this much. It provisions, you provision like a Ferrari, you need a, you just need a Prius, go and run a Prius because it's going to do what you need and need to pay a lot less. >>And that's part of that trust. Getting that understanding. And it's counterintuitive that we're now like it's coming out of my team a lot too, which is great. But seeing these guys were dropping contracts and licenses and basically, you know, once every three years I may call the customer, Hey, how bout a renewal now go from that to now being focused on the customer's actual success and focused on their growth in Azure as a platform of our vast services growth like utilization not in sales has been a huge change. It scared some people away but it's brought a lot more people in and and that sort of counterintuitive spin less money thing actually leads in the longterm to people using more. >>Absolutely. That's definitely not the shrink wrap software company of Microsoft that I remember from the 90s yeah, very might be similar to you know, just as volt to 2019 is not the same combo, but many of us know from with 15 >>years and a good mutual friend of ours, sort of Simon and myself before I took this job, he and I sat down, we're having a beer and discussing the merits, all the not evacuate and things like that. Same with. They are changing such, such a great deal with, you know, what they're putting in the cloud, what they're doing with the data, where they're trying to achieve with things like Hedvig for data management across on premises and cloud with microservices applications and stuff going, Hey, this won't work like this anymore. When you now are doing an on premises and we containers, it's pretty good to see. I'm interested to see how they take that even further to their current audience, which is product predominantly, you know, the it pro, the data center admin, storage manager. >>It's funny when you talked about, um, just the choice that customers have and those saying I, we shouldn't be following the trends because they're the trends. We actually interviewed a couple of hours ago, one of Combolt's customers that is all on prime healthcare company and said, he's like, I want to make a secret that says no cloud and proud and it just, what that was, we don't normally hear from them. We always talk about cloud, but for a company to sit down and look at what's best for our business, whether it's, you know, FedRAMP certification challenges or HIPAA or GDPR or other compelling requirements to keep it on prem, it was just refreshing to hear this customer say, >>yeah, I mean it's, it's appropriate for the do what's right for you. I, yeah, it's no shame in any of them. It's, I mean, you don't, you definitely don't get fans by, by shaming people and not doing something right. And I mean, I, I'm personally very happy with the feet, you know, see sort of hype around things like blockchain died down a little bit. So it's a slow database unless you're using for the specific case of that shared ledger, you know, things like that where people don't have to know blockchain. Now I have to know IOT. It's like, yeah. And that hype gets people there, but it also causes a lot of anxiety and it's good to see someone actually not be ashamed of and like, and they grade the ones when they do take a step and use cloud citizen may be in the business already. They're probably going to do it appropriately because have a reason, not just because we think this would be cool. >>Well not and how much inherent and complexity does that bring in if somebody is really feeling pressured to follow those trends and maybe that's when you end up with this hodgepodge of technologies that don't work well together, you're spending way more in as as business it folks are consumers, you know, consumers in their personal lives, they expect things to be accessible, visible, but also cost efficient because they have so much choice. >>Yeah, the choice choice is hard. It's just a, just the conversation is having recently, for example, just we'll take the storage cause of where we are, right? It's like I'm running something on Azure. I'm a, I'm using Souza. I want an office Mount point, which is available to me in Fs. Great. Perfect. what do I use? It's like, well you use any one of these seven options, like what's the right choice? And that's the thing about being a platform company. We give you a lot of choices but it's still up to you or up to harness. It can really help the customers as well to make the most appropriate choice. And I pushed back really hard on terms like best practices and things. I hate it because again, it's making the assumption this is the best thing to do. It's not. It's always about, you know, what are the patterns that have worked for other people, what are the anti-patterns and the appropriate path for me to take. >>And that's actually how we're building our docs now too. So we keep, we keep focusing at our Azure technology and we're bringing out some of the biggest things we've done is how we manage our documentation. It's all open sourced. It's all in markdown on get hub. So you can go and read a document from someone like myself is doing product management going, this is how to use this product and you're actually this bits wrong. This bit needs to be like this, and you can go in yourself, even now, make a change and we can go, Oh yeah, and take that committed in and do all this kind of stuff in that way. So we're constantly taking those documents in that way, in getting real time feedback from customers who are using it, not just ourself and an echo chamber. >>So you get this great insight and visibility that you never had before. Well, Ben, thank you, Georgie stew and me on the Q this afternoon. Excited to hear what's coming up next for Azure. May appreciate your time. Thank you for streaming event. I, Lisa Martin, you're watching the cue from convo. Go 19.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. Hey, welcome back to the Q but Lisa Martin with men and men and we are coming to you alive So Ben, you know, in my career I've had lots of interactions interacts directly with windows server to give you Azure file sync. and and be able to have that scale to petabytes of capacity in one no limits in the end to the capacity or throughput or performance and over any default, if you don't select the storage type where you want to go, you will run on Azure. So really sort of be kudos to the relationship there. So metallic talking about that is this new venture is right. I guess when you start looking at adventure and everything, since things change I was going to ask, you know, kind of click on that because they developed this very quickly. So that's how it's going to keep working. They've been asking you questions, gives us some of the, you know, some of the things that, we will go from talking about, you know, Python machine learning or AI PowerPoint. It's a things like, you know, when are we going to do incremental snapshots from a manage disks? Take it to that step and then go and find out the details and levels you want to know. I think it's right and I think going back to that, Don't feel the need and the pressure to have to push it that way. I liked that you brought up and I find And I got asked to run a Prius because it's going to do what you need and need to pay a lot less. Hey, how bout a renewal now go from that to now being focused on the very might be similar to you know, just as volt to 2019 is not the same combo, audience, which is product predominantly, you know, the it pro, the data center admin, storage manager. best for our business, whether it's, you know, FedRAMP certification challenges They're probably going to do it appropriately because have a reason, not just because we think this would be cool. you know, consumers in their personal lives, they expect things to be accessible, I hate it because again, it's making the assumption this is the best thing to do. This bit needs to be like this, and you can go in yourself, even now, make a change and we can go, So you get this great insight and visibility that you never had before.

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Kevin Haro, Quad & Matt Tyrer, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>> Narrator: Live, from Denver, Colorado. It's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2019. Brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we are at Commvault GO '19 in Colorado. Stu and I are pleased to welcome a couple of guests joining us this next segment we have Kevin Haro, Infrastructure from Quad, and Matt Tyrer, Senior Manager, Solutions Marketing from Commvault. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. >> Oh, it's great to finally be here! >> Yeah, exciting stuff in the last couple days. So Kevin, let's start with you. Give our audience an understanding of Quad, what kind of business you're in, what services and products you deliver. >> Quad is first and foremost a printer so we do large-scale, long-run printing. We've got locations across the country and Latin America and Europe. So from a data perspective we have our own internal apps and stuff, obviously, but for the most part our large chunks of data come straight from our customers, so. >> Lisa: And what kind of customers are we talking about? >> Customers, magazines, books, anything of that nature. Anybody who needs long-run signs, we do it all, packaging. >> Okay, so talk to us about kind of your role and from a data perspective how it's exploding. (Kevin & Matt laugh) >> It seems to be growing every day, that's true. So the data that comes in from our customers we treat it, we improve it, we add to it and then we have to get it back to them, make sure everything's okay, and then it goes to the printers and then it needs to be saved. So you can imagine that piles up pretty quickly. >> Now is it just that the actual images themselves are getting bigger? Like the content that's coming towards? Or is it also that your customer base is growing and expanding too? So it's the individual customers are getting bigger but also you're getting bigger as well from a Quad perspective. >> Yes, both, all three actually. So you can imagine just the amount of images that go into a catalog and how every single one of those came in. Even though it might be an inch or two big on your page it came in full-res, so it adds up quick. >> All right, Kevin why don't you walk us through what led you down the path to Commvault. If you can give us a little bit of the before, and the process that led to choosing Commvault. >> The initial reason we came into Commvault was actually partially backup related, but we were actually in the middle of a site lifecycle so we were looking to upgrade the hardware at 12 different sites and we wanted to switch the hypervisors at those sites and Commvault provided us the means to do that quickly and easily without us having to rebuild all of those systems. So that was our first introduction to it. That went very well for us. We're doing another round coming up here very soon. And so we've done all that, and now actually we're taking a step back and actually going with a Commvault backup solution itself. >> And what was the hypervisor before and now? >> Those were VMware to HyperView. >> Okay, yeah, Matt, maybe walk us through is that a typical use case that you see out there? Migrations are often one of the most challenging things for infrastructure people. We used to say it was the four-letter word when you're told to migrate something. (Matt laughs) But yeah, take us inside. >> Well I mean, you see, it doesn't have to be just a hypervisor to hypervisor migration. You see it just every day with people shifting workloads into the cloud. And in this case here, it's not a same-for-same movement necessarily. So it could be VMware on one site like what you guys were doing, changing into HyperV. Or it could be simply moving from VMware maybe on-premises to native AMIs in AWS. So you're seeing a lot of people kind of decoupling from that hypervisor layer or at least abstracting it, because it's more about the data itself, and less where the data happens to reside. So I think that's going to continue to be something that we see more and more of, as people continue to move into that multiple cloud environment. Did you guys also move in to the cloud too, as part of this? Or this is just in on-prem? >> Kevin: We have not made a huge on-cloud investment at this point in time. But the story that we've been hearing on the cloud the multicloud and the avoiding the lock-in holds true for us, just at the hypervisor level. We don't want to be kept to decisions that were made five, 10 years ago just because it's hard to get off of a specific hypervisor or piece of software. >> Matt: Yeah. >> So it gives us the flexibility to do what we're looking to do. >> So we talked a little bit about the proliferation of data, both from the actual images and the files getting larger and larger and larger, then growth in the Quad customer base. Talk to us about what you were doing to backup data before because you were using somebody else before you decided to make the move over to Commvault. >> We have been using somebody else. We've actually been using four somebody elses. >> Lisa: Can you tell us who those four somebody elses are? >> Our primary one's were EMC, but aside from that, in smaller offices we had other solutions as well. So we've heard the complexity of Commvault is an issue and we were afraid of it as well but that complexity really doesn't stand up to teaching someone how to restore off of four potentially different systems and four different architectures in general. So getting everything under that one pane of glass is an end goal for sure. >> Was it really the compelling event? or was there maybe an issue like we were hearing on stage this morning with one of the Commvault customers saying "Hey, we had a big failure"? Was there a compelling event or was it, we've got four different solutions in here. We need that single pane of glass 'cause the data has so much value but if we can't see it. >> Kevin: It's really the single pane of glass. I mean, in order to maintain that interconnected web of backups we actually had to home grow our own system just to be able to look up where the backup was to begin with. And while that works, it's effective, it's an extra step that has to be taken in the middle of a recovery process. >> Well, Matt, you started your time at Commvault in the field so bring us a little bit, some of the competitive landscape that you see out there. Consolidating onto a single vendor, obviously, is something we see all the time when there's M&A activity or you've got branch offices and the like. >> Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not uncommon to come across customers in Quad's situation where they've got one product over here one product over there. And I think a lot of it stems from IT was in such a reactive mode for so long that it's almost trying to play catch up. It's like, well we have to address protecting the virtual machines. Okay, we'll draw up a solution in for that. We have to protect the data at the remote site. Well, I can't get my enterprise solution there so I'll drop another band-aid solution in out there. And we're finally getting to that maturity where people are able to go back and re-examine some of those infrastructure decisions made five, 10 years ago and starting to rectify it by being able to bring that data together and consolidate. And so that's kind of what I've always liked about from a Commvault perspective, is that comprehensive coverage Pretty much whatever it is, wherever it is you can get that single pane of glass. And there's a lot of stuff that we can do and data environments are certainly not getting less complex (laughs). >> Well, talk to us about the complexity, Kevin, 'cause at all the shows that we go to complexity is always a topic that we hear for every technology and every customer is looking to reduce complexity, increase agility, all the buzz words right, flexibility, simplicity. You said, very candidly, that when you were looking at the hypervisor switch and when it came time to evaluate the backup solutions, you were concerned about Commvault's complexity. We've heard a lot in the last day and a half about simplicity, reduced complexity. How have you found this implementation in terms of the previous complexity concerns and do you have that single pane of glass that you were looking for? >> Kevin: The complexity, the problem didn't really occur to us. I mean, we were walked through by our vendor very nicely. They got us through, they got us our SOP's built. We've been able to roll it out successfully. We started with some of our hardest sites after that migration product. We started with the ones that were behind double nets and are actually at customer locations behind fire walls we don't own. The ones that have been a problem for us for years to secure those backups and those were where we started and that's where we've actually had some pretty decent success. I mean there is obviously a lot of settings and stuff to be worked through and to have a guide sit there and walk us through and make sure we're getting the backup and the retention that we need. At the end of the day, we've got the backups going and they're working well. >> And that's kind of what we were striving to do when we introduced the Commvault command center was for the customers that don't need to go to that level of detail provide a much more streamlined interface with a lot of the heavy automation elements in it. So customers that don't need those deep controls and customizations can work within that command center. But the ones that do, and actually what's entertaining is a lot of our long-term customers prefer working in that deeper complexity. Because it's like "Oh, I like how I can tune it like this "or I can flip it like that." So it's nice that our customers have the option of working where they feel most comfortable. >> And Matt, I'd love to get your perspective you've been with Commvault for 12 years. >> Matt: Almost, yeah. >> We feel like the last day and a half and we'll say Sanjay really kicked this off yesterday by saying #newCommvault. (Matt laughs) And it does feel like that with the changes to the leadership, the changes to the partner organization and partner programs, the focus on mid market with Metallic, with the Hedvig acquisition. Your perspective on being at Commvault for quite a long time, how do you see the company now? >> It's refreshing when you've been with a company for a long time just to see how we're able to shift how we're talking about ourselves, and it's almost like a brand new level of confidence. You see the smash of color everywhere and just the way that we talk about the solutions, the way we talk about the company as well. It's been a lot of change going on, but it's been exciting to kind of see that next evolution of the company in terms of taking that company to the next step and see what the future holds. So I've been really excited to see all of these changes over the past year and continue to see. (laughs) >> So Kevin you've walked us through from the migration that you did initially to the solutions that you're using today. Where are you looking forward for what you might use with Commvault? And any of the new things that were announced this week catch your eye that you might want to be looking into further when you get back to the office? >> Obviously Kubernetes has been floating around for a while so there's solutions here that we've been looking at, but we really want to get our fundamental backup and retention system to the point where it is no longer consuming whole days of FTEs. So where there's a report that comes out, we can check it, we know that it's good. We don't have to babysit that product, and we can get on to some other larger projects, things of that nature. We can get on to worrying about some of the bigger issues making sure that we're ready for a cyber event, things of that nature. >> All right, you did mention Kubernetes. Where are you as a company with that? Data protection, obviously you need to-- >> Matt: I knew you were going to go there (laughs) >> Worry about, even multicloud. I'll be at KubeCon, maybe see you there. (laughs) >> The first ones have just been rolled out recently they're in, they're up, that's about where that is. >> Matt: Just starting, baby steps. >> Baby steps, yes. But we'd like to do the baby steps correctly so technologies that make sense. >> That's great that you're kind of shifting or it looks like anyway to getting a lot more automated in terms of what you're doing within the Commvault. I met with or I was manning a customer panel yesterday with just a bunch of customers sharing what they were doing from moving towards that self-driving backup or at least backup or managing by exception where the less hands-on you can be, the more time that you've got back into your day to focus on other projects, so yeah. >> Exactly. So yeah, I mean, we're at a point right now where we are obviously switching, so we want to look ahead and make sure that we're set and ready to go for the future. >> So Kevin, last question for you, in the last nine months there's been some pretty big changes at Commvault the new leadership, new focus on routes to market, how do you internalize that, in terms of this direction, this Commvault 2.0, this new Commvault as an existing customer? >> Well, we're a new customer to them so to see the energy that's coming at us is refreshing. To see them placed in the upper quadrants obviously helps sell the product to us for management to back our decisions up, so in general the whole range seems to be getting met and we're not having to say this does everything except X, Y, and Z. >> Excellent, well, Kevin, Matt, thank you for joining Stu and me on the program this afternoon at GO we appreciate your time. >> Thanks. >> Thanks for having us. >> Lisa: Our pleasure >> Take care >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Commvault GO '19 (upbeat music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Commvault. Stu and I are pleased to welcome a couple of guests Yeah, exciting stuff in the last couple days. but for the most part our large chunks of data Customers, magazines, books, anything of that nature. Okay, so talk to us about kind of your role and then it goes to the printers Now is it just that the actual images So you can imagine just the amount of images and the process that led to choosing Commvault. and we wanted to switch the hypervisors at those sites is that a typical use case that you see out there? So I think that's going to continue to be something But the story that we've been hearing on the cloud to do what we're looking to do. Talk to us about what you were doing to backup data before We have been using somebody else. and we were afraid of it as well 'cause the data has so much value but if we can't see it. it's an extra step that has to be taken that you see out there. We have to protect the data at the remote site. 'cause at all the shows that we go to and the retention that we need. for the customers that don't need to go And Matt, I'd love to get your perspective the changes to the partner organization and just the way that we talk about the solutions, from the migration that you did initially and retention system to the point where Where are you as a company with that? I'll be at KubeCon, maybe see you there. they're in, they're up, that's about where that is. so technologies that make sense. where the less hands-on you can be, and ready to go for the future. the new leadership, new focus on routes to market, obviously helps sell the product to us on the program this afternoon at GO For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin.

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Matthew Magbee, Sonic Healthcare | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by. >>Hey, welcome back to the cube Lisa Martin with Steven and Amanda. We are covering combo go 19 in Colorado day two of our coverage and we're excited to welcome a successful comm vault customer to the cube. We have from the main stage this morning, Matthew mag meet data center, director of Sonic healthcare. Matthew, welcome. Thank you for having me. This is so exciting. Oh good. We're excited to have you. So you got to, you are, you're, as your pen says, a combo customer champion. >>I am a customer champion a, I've kind of prided myself on that for the last few years. Uh, I like to get involved in the community and kind of help the other newcomers to come volt as well. As better my understanding and try to give the guys on the other end of the support line and break. >>So before we dig into Sonic and what you guys are doing and how you're working with combo, give our audience an overview of Sonic healthcare, what you guys do, where you're based, all that good background stuff. Okay. >>So I worked for a Sonic healthcare USA, so that's obviously in the United States. Uh, we are an anatomical and clinical pathology laboratory company. Um, we are based, uh, West coast central and East coast of the United States and we work with hospitals, doctor's office to provide, you know, quick and reliable laboratory results. >>So this is patient data. Yes. We think of, we think of data as I'm sure you do as well. It's the lifeblood. It's the new oil. It's all the things, right? That you hear the new bacon. It's the new bacon is that was like your quote? I saw that combo last year. >>Yeah, they had, they had teachers last year with that data. Yeah. Data is the new bacon. >>Well it's, it's critical, you know, regardless of if you're for Kim comparing it to bacon, I do like that. But it's also, there's the proliferation of it is hard to manage. Tell us a little bit about the it environment at Sonic. You guys have been using combo for about four years, but give us an overview of what you were working with before and how, what may be some of the compelling events were. >>So coming on board with Sonic, uh, the combo rollout was relatively new. We didn't, I didn't really come into a preexisting environment. It was like, okay, this is, this is what we're going to use. I need you to learn it and run with it, make sure that it works. Right. And um, you know, coming from other companies that had different software applications, I was always in charge of the disaster recovery. That's always been kind of like a, a beating heart for me. >>You're the Dr. Guy. It is apparently, >>it's really hard to find someone who's excited about backups. So I've put, it's like, yes, please take it. So I'm coming in and being able to mold this application to kind of how I wanted it was a little like touch and go at first because we had people out of our, um, overseas office that were, uh, handling already and is, they kind of set the stage of how they wanted it to go. But, you know, things change. We've got to kind of move things as we go, but I kind of owe a lot to them to kind of really introducing me to combo. >> So Matthew, one of the things that we've really enjoyed talking about at this show is everybody's ready. They're born ready, they know what they're doing, what it's preparing for when things do fail. So you talked a little bit on stage about some of those times when things fail and how today you're able to be here and you're, the other person in the D R group is here and you don't have to worry about walking away from the office and you know, having, you know, I guess not a Pedro anymore, but getting that call. >>Yeah, they need to be there. So my cell phone. But yeah, so bring us through some of those, you know, failure scenarios. We are always trying different things. You know, combo does offer a wide array of different solutions they have for plans and one of them is their active directory plan. And I'm leaning towards this cause this is my most recent failure is, you know, we were just, I've always had issues with active directory testing. The fail over and my first attempt at it was a failure. But I learned so much off the bat that I'm actually comfortable now that there might be a few tweaks that we have to do. By worst case scenario, we'd definitely be able to get it back online without any issue. But if we would've gone into it without testing, without that failure, who knows what could have happened. It could've been just a resume generating event, you know? >>Well, so you, you Stu alluded to it and what you mentioned in the keynote was, Hey, my other only other Dr. Guy is here in the audience. So I actually, I have >>team a data center team and we're all in charge. It's eight, eight people and we're, we're in charge of the disaster recovery. But, uh, the old gentleman who's with me is the only other one who's, uh, uh, done a lot of the combo training. He comes to Kai, he's been to all three combos, goes with me and uh, he's, he's probably the, if I'm not around, he's the next in line to take that. So if there's a major issue it would be one of us that they would contact by. We're both here >> and you're both here. Well that actually speaks volumes. It does. And we're comfortable and you know, we've been checking email for things but you know, everything's smooth sailing so far. >>I think I saw a quote from you, I think it was in a video where you said before it was like having a newborn. >>Absolutely, absolutely. I used to check like sign in. It's like 10 o'clock every single night for the first year that I worked for sign cause I was petrified cause you know, I knew that I was backing stuff up but I don't know, was it still running with it still being backed up? Did it pause? Was it causing performance issues on the other end? There were so many what ifs and I just, I was, I was a mess. I was a nervous wreck constantly, you know, working till one or two in the morning and then go to bed and then eagerly get up and start checking stuff even before I left the house, you know? And I'm like, Oh, okay, that's finished. But now it's like, yeah, I know I finished not worried about Matthew. I think back to early in my career it was the dreaded backup window is, you know, when am I going to be able to get that in there? >>Can I finish the backup in the window that I have? And we've mostly gotten beyond that. But you know, there's so many new now we were just talking with Sandy Hamilton who was on stage before you about some of that automation. Really great automation sounds good, but there's gotta be a little bit of fear. It's like shit, you know, talking about like texting, I said like we've all texted the wrong thing or the wrong person or you had the wrong person. So tell us your thoughts about how automation is impacting your world and how calm voltage. >> I actually have very little automation workflow running through comm vault right now. A lot of the stuff that we do automation wise lies on the VMware side. Um, so that's, that's been good. I haven't really implemented a lot just because I personally am not comfortable with it yet. >>I'm not against it. It's just something that I haven't really trained myself enough to say I'm going to leave and let this run by itself. I'm still like, Oh no, this could be better. This could be better. This can be better. So until I'm 100% comfortable with that, I think we'll just leave it at a semiautomated task of just, sorry, you said something down the road that you're absolutely even even sitting in keynote yesterday and listening about the Alexa automation and SMS tax, I like writing in a piece of paper to test that because it's something that I've always wanted and ever since combo go last year when they were using Alexa to check SLA and RPO and RTO, I'm like, I want to be able to do that. So that's definitely down the road, but it's on the back burner right now. >>So give us a landscape view distributed organization. You talked about your base in the U S but all of the different clinics and organizations that you work with, are you living in this multi-cloud world? >>So, uh, we are pretty much zero cloud initiative company. Yeah. I'm actually trying to work on a slogan, Oh no, cloud zero cloud and proud or something like that. But I'm not 100% sure. It's definitely not out of the question. But with FedRAMP co compliancy and HIPAA, there's just a lot of regulation between the data that we have for the U S that transmits back and forth, let's say Australia or Ireland or something like that. There's certain regulations that we have to deal with and uh, in the cloud there's, there's very few options of where you can actually have those servers. So it's right now, you know, on prem is kind of, it's kind of our jam. >>So as a lot of organizations are going through FedRAMP certification, I was just at one of Dell's events the other week. They're going through it. I know some other like e-signature companies are doing, a lot of companies are, are you paying attention to that? Is that something that you think in the future might provide more confidence? >>Completely transparent. It's something I should be paying more attention to that I'm, I've just, I really haven't really done as much research as I should have and you know, I take full responsibility for that. But at the same time, you know, there's, there's a lot of other things going on in the U S that until we implement something of that nature, I don't really think that I'm really too concerned about it. So Matthew, you've been to a few of these events. Last one, last year there was a lot of talk about the coming change in this year. Lot of new faces, new Hedvig metallic. Yeah. So what we'll want to get your impression on the executive changes, some of the, you know, are you seeing any indications of organizational changes and the products? What I'm seeing is I'm seeing new life to a product that I've always been told is a dinosaur, which I kind of laugh cause I'm like, well if this dinosaur is doing things that, you know, the greatest and latest and greatest things aren't or aren't really doing. So to see this new life, the new rebranding of the logo, the new leadership, the new acquisitions and everything is just like feeding fuel to the fire. That is combo. And, and I'm, I'm pretty excited. I will say that I'm a little bit more excited about the new additions to like orchestrate and activate since stuff like metallic. I won't really be implementing just because of our business practices. But yeah. >>Let's talk about in our last few minutes here, cause they actually talked about some of the new technologies with orchestrate activate yesterday and today, but in terms of support we just had as to mention, we just interviewed Sandy Hamilton and she's come on board in the last, I think she said four and a half months. Owning professional services systems, engineering support, customer success throughout the entire life cycle. Tell us a little bit in, in our closing minute or so about the support and training that you've gotten from combat that give you the confidence for you and one of your other guys to be here and not tied to your phone. >>I don't think I'd still be with combo if it wasn't for their support. I, I owe so much to their support. They've brought me through some pretty dark times with deployment, with troubleshooting, with failures where I thought that I had things right and it just didn't work. I've called in at one in the morning, got great support, I've caught any 10 in the morning and got great support, phenomenal follow up. Um, their, their community impact, like their forums and their customer champion. So much. Just additional information that helps you not have to call in and not make you feel like that, Oh, that failure. So I owe a lot to their support and their training because without a, like I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be on stage. I'm, I'm wonder if you could put a point on that, the, the forums in your participation as a customer champion, you're spending your own time, you're working with your PBM. >>Why is that so important and how is this the vibrancy of this community, you know, it belongs to the worlds, you know, naming the things that you learn. Somebody taught me, so why shouldn't I teach somebody else? And if that makes someone else be able to go out and ride mountain bikes or cook with their daughter or do anything like that, then I'm all for it because it got me, it got me through all that. So I mean I have 10 15 minutes on the customer forum to answer you. Oh yeah, I know that. I've seen that. I had a gentleman the first morning at breakfast, like I've had a ticket open for two weeks and they can't figure it out. And we worked together and actually got his problem solved, you know? And it was like the only reason is because I've seen that and I worked with combat and they showed me how to fix it and I retain that knowledge. >>That's awesome. DOE takes paying it forward to a whole new level. And it also volumes about how you followed Jimmy chin this morning and nailed it. I tried. It was very difficult, you know, I'm sure that you know why he was filming that solo climber. He was sweaty palms. I was definitely sweaty phone calls. It was, well, Matthew, what a pleasure to have you on the program. So much fun. Thank you. Congratulations on your success and we look forward to hearing it. Many more great things out of Sonic. Thank you. All right. First to a minimum I and Lisa Martin, you're watching the cube from combo go 19.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Go 2019 brought to you by. So you got to, you are, you're, as your pen says, I am a customer champion a, I've kind of prided myself on that for the last few years. So before we dig into Sonic and what you guys are doing and how you're working with combo, give our audience an overview we work with hospitals, doctor's office to provide, you know, quick and reliable laboratory results. It's the new bacon is that was like your quote? Data is the new bacon. Well it's, it's critical, you know, regardless of if you're for Kim comparing it to bacon, And um, you know, coming from other companies that had different software applications, But, you know, things change. away from the office and you know, having, you know, I guess not a Pedro anymore, this is my most recent failure is, you know, we were just, I've always had is here in the audience. the old gentleman who's with me is the only other one who's, uh, uh, done a lot of the combo training. And we're comfortable and you know, we've been checking email for I think I saw a quote from you, I think it was in a video where you said before it was like having career it was the dreaded backup window is, you know, when am I going to be able to get that in there? It's like shit, you know, talking about like texting, I said like we've all A lot of the stuff that we do automation wise lies on the VMware side. task of just, sorry, you said something down the road that you're absolutely but all of the different clinics and organizations that you work with, are you living in this multi-cloud world? So it's right now, you know, on prem is kind like e-signature companies are doing, a lot of companies are, are you paying attention to that? But at the same time, you know, there's, there's a lot of other things going on in the U S tied to your phone. have to call in and not make you feel like that, Oh, that failure. Why is that so important and how is this the vibrancy of this community, you know, it belongs to the worlds, you know, I'm sure that you know why he was filming that solo climber.

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Keynote Analysis, Day Two | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Hey, good morning. Welcome to the cubes coverage of combo go 19 I'm Lisa Martin and it was stupid man. Hey Sue. Hey Lisa. Are you ready? I was going to ask you. Yes. Are you ready? >>I believe the statement this morning was, we're born ready. >>We are born ready? Yes. That was a big theme this morning. It's the theme of the event here at con Volvo 19 in Colorado and great parody this morning of all these old video clips of all these actors including the Lego movie stars from saying I'm ready. Even SpongeBob. That one got me, so we had a great day. Yesterday's to love some news came out Monday and Tuesdays a lots of great stuff to talk about. We had there a lot of their C level execs and let a new changes a call yesterday. Really got the vibe of, Hey, this is a new Combalt. >>It's interesting Lisa, because one of the things we've been talking about is the 20 years of pedigree that the company has. This Andre Mirchandani said yet they're doing some new items. I was talking to some of the partners in there like how come metallics like a separate brand, don't you worry about brand spread? We knew a thing about having too many brands on the program so it is the history, the experience, the lessons learned, the war chest as they said of all of the things that have gone wrong over the years and I sure know that from my time living on the vendor side is there's no compression algorithm for all the experience you've had and like, Oh we fixed something in that stays in the code as opposed to there's something brand new might need to work through things over time but metallic a separate brand but leveraging the partnerships and the go to market and the experience of Convolt overall. >>So if you want, my quick take is, you know metallic. I definitely, I think coming out of here is the thing we will be talking the most about their SAS plus model. I want to see how that plays in the marketplace. As I probed Rob, when we interviewed him, customers, when you think about SAS, it should just be, I worry about my data and I get up and running and they said they have a very fast up and running less than 15 minutes. That's great. But some of that optionality that they built in, Oh well I can bring this along or I can add this and do this. It's always worried that a wait, do I have to remember my thing? And as it changes down the road, do I have everything set up right? Those are things that we're trying to get away from when we go to a SAS or cloud model. >>And to your point, another theme of the show has been about operational simplification, not just what Combolt is doing internally to simplify their operations, but what they need to deliver to customers. Customers want simplicity rates. Do we, we talk about that at every show regardless of industry, but there is this, this line, and maybe it's blurring, >>like we talked a lot about blurred lines yesterday of too much choice versus simplification. Where's the line there? >> Yeah and a great point Lisa, so one of the items Sandra Mirchandani said yesterday in his keynote was that blurring the line between primary and secondary storage and I probed him on our interview is Convolt going into the primary storage market with Hedvig. Hedvig has got a, you know, a nice offering, strong IP, good engineering team. I think they want to make sure that customers that have bought head vigor want to keep buying Hedvig we'll do it, but it really, I think two years from now when you look back at is that core IP, how does that get baked into the solution? That's why they bought it. That's where it's going to be there. I don't think we're going to be looking two years from now and saying, Oh wow know Convolt they're going up against all the storage star Walton competing a bit gets HCI and everything. >>They have a strong partnership, so I think I got clarity on that for the most part, even though the messaging will will move over time on that, it will move over time on that. >> That's a good point that the song blurred lines kept popping into my head yesterday as we were talking about that. But one of the things that was clear was when we spoke with Rob Kalusi and about metallic, we spoke with Avinash Lakshman about Hedvig Sanjay as well as Don foster. They're already working on the technical integration of of this solutions and we even spoke with their VP of pricing. So from a customer, from a current Hedvig customer perspective, there is focus on that from Combolt's perspective. It's not just about integrating the technologies and obviously that has to be done really well, but it's also about giving customers that consistency and really for combo kind of a new era of transparency with respect to pricing. >>And another thing we talked about some of that transformation of the channel and Mercer row came on board only a couple of days officially on the job. He's helped a number of companies get ready for multicloud and absolutely we've seen that change in the channel over the last five to 10 years. Know back in his days when he was at VM world at VMware there the channel was, Oh my gosh, you know, when Amazon wins we all lose and today we understand it as much more nuance there. The channel that is successful partners with the hyperscale cloud environments, they have practices built around it. The office three 65 and Microsoft practices are an area that Convolt in their partners should be able to do well with and the metallic will tie into as well as of course AWS. The 800 pound gorilla in this space will be there. Combolt plays into that and you know, setting the channel up for that next generation with the SAS, with the software and living in a broader multicloud environment is definitely something to watch you a lot of news about the channel, not just from a leadership standpoint but also so metallic for the mid market >>really delivered exclusively through the channel but also the new initiative that they have. And we talked a little bit about this yesterday about going after and really a big focus with global systems integrators on the largest global enterprises. And when we spoke with their GTM chief of staff yesterday along with Mercer with Carmen, what they're doing, cause I said, you know, channel partners, all the channel partners that they work with work with their competitors. So you have to really deliver differentiation and it can't just be about pricing or marketing messaging goes all the way into getting those feet on the street. And that's another area in which we heard yesterday Combolt making strategic improvements on more feet on the street co-selling with partners, really pulling them deeper into enablement and trainings and to them that's one of the key differentiators that they are delivering to their partners. Yeah >>and Lisa, he, we got to speak to a number, a couple of customers we have more coming on today. It's a little bit telling that you know the average customer you talk to, they have five 10 years of experience there. They are excited about some of the new offerings, but as we've said many times metallic, the new Hedvig we want to talk to the new logos that they're going to get on board. That is something that for the partners has been an incentive. There were new incentives put in place to help capture those new logos because as we know, revenue was actually down in the last fiscal year a bit and Convolt feels that they have turned the corner, they're all ready to go. And one other note I'd like to make, the analogy I used last year is we knew a CEO was canoe CEO search was happening, a lot of things were in motion and it's almost as if you were getting the body ready for an organ transplant and you make sure that the antibodies aren't going to reject it. And in conversation with Sanjay, he was very cognizant of that. His background is dev offs and he was a CIO. We went for it, he was the CEO of puppet. So he's going to make things move even faster. And the pace of change of the last nine months is just the beginning of the change. And for the most part I'm not hearing grumbling underneath the customer seem fully on board. The employees are energized and definitely there was good energy last year, but a raise of the enthusiasm this year. >>Well Stu, first of all, you have just been on fire the last two days comparing their CEO transition to getting a body ready for a transplant. It's probably one of the best things I've heard in a long time. That was awesome. But you're right, we've heard a lot of positivity. Cultural change is incredibly difficult. You talked a minute ago about this as a 20 year old company and as we all have all experience and the industries in which we're in, you know, one of the things that's important is, is messaging that experience and talking about the things that that worked well, but also the things that didn't work well, that they've learned from that message was carried through the keynote this morning. That three customers on stage that we saw before we had to come to the side. And I, I had, my favorite was from Sonic healthcare. Matthew McCabe's coming on in shortly with us and I always appreciate, you know, I think the voice of the customer is the best brand validation that you can get. However, what's even better is a customer talking about when the technologies that they're using fail because it does happen. How are they positioned with the support and the training and the education that is giving them to make those repairs quickly to ensure business continuity and ensure disaster recovery. I think that to me that speaks volumes about the legacy, the 20 years of experience that combo has. >>Yeah, no, Lisa, you're absolutely right. There's certain products out there that we talk about uptime in 100% in this space. You, I believe the stat was about 94% success rate and we had NASA in the keynote yesterday talking about success versus partial success versus failures and Convolt really embraces that and has customers that we'll talk about that because there are times that things will happen and there are things that you need to be able to recover from ransomware. Often it is not a question of if, when it is going to be happened, at least. The other thing I want to get your comment on Jimmy chin who is the director and one of the, the cameraman of the free solo Oscar-winning free solo documentary definitely gave me a little bit of, Oh my gosh, look at some of the Heights and I was nervous just looking at some of this stuff they're doing. I like a little bit of lightweight hiking. I'm not a mountain climber, nothing like that. But he talked about when the camera goes on, there's that added pressure that goes on and it's sitting there. It's like, yeah, you know, we sit here live all day doing that. There's that, that energy to perform. But you know, we all appreciate the everybody watching and understanding that we're all human here and every time, every once in awhile a word or a mistake gets in there, but we keep going summit. Yeah, >>that's life. But also Jimmy chin, phenomenal. I think at 2018 they just won the Oscar just earlier this year for free. Solo. I have to watch that this weekend. But a couple of things that he talked about is that failure is a huge part of preparation. Couldn't agree more. What a simplified statement for somebody that not only has has skied Everest, the climbed Meru, I think they call it the shark fin of India, but what you talked about with what he documented with free solo and all of the thousands of sequences and he talked about that, Alex, I'm forgetting his last name, the guy who closed, who free soloed, El Capitan, all of these different failure scenarios that he rehearsed over and over again in case he encountered any of them, he would immediately be to remedy that situation and get himself back on track. I thought that message to me, failure is a good F-word if you use it properly. You know NASA, you mentioned yesterday and NASA was famous for coining in the 60s failure is not an option and I always say onto that cause I used to work for NASA, but it's a distinct possibility. And so what Jimmy chin shared this morning was electrified, but it also was a great understatement of what Combolt is helping their customers. We have to help you prepare for this. We can't help you prepare for all of it. As you mentioned, ransomware, it's not if but when. >>Well, right and both NASA and when the climbing is understanding where something could go wrong and therefore what the failures scenarios are. So you know rockets today you can't have a failure and by failure they mean look, if the rocket isn't going to work or something goes wrong, we need to make sure we don't have loss of life. That is something that if you look at blue origin and SpaceX that is pre eminent in there is we can't have another challenger disaster. We can't have some of these environments where we have the loss of human life. So that is number one. Some of the other ones, sometimes we know that the unknown happens or things don't go quite right. So being prepared to understand if something goes wrong, how do we recover from that? And that brings us back to the whole data protection and recovery of the environment because the best laid architecture, eventually something will happen and therefore we need to make sure that that data, the lifeblood of the company is able to be recovered and used and that the business can go forward even if some piece of infrastructure or some attack got through. >>There are, and there's inherent risk in every industry, whether you're talking about healthcare data, we talked with AstraZeneca yesterday, you know, genetics, clinical data, or you're talking about a retailer, doesn't matter. There's an inherent risks with every business and one of the most important things that I got out of the NASA talk yesterday, Jimmy Chin's talked today, some of the customers, is that preparation is key. You can't be over prepared. You really can't act fact. He said that you can't be overprepared in his line of work, but I think it applies to the inherent risks that any business has. Managing data. As we talk about Sue all the time, it's the lifeblood. It's the new oil. It is. It has to be available, accessible 24 by seven if it isn't and can't be. Businesses are massive risk in this day and age. Competitive competitors who have maybe better risk fault tolerance scenario in play. >>So that risk that they have to mitigate comes a preparation. We're going to be talking with Sandra Hamilton in just a few minutes about who leads customer success for combo. Really want to dig into the training, the support. We've heard that articulated from customers on stage that I don't wake up in the middle of the night anymore because I have this support from my trusted vendor combo and that is critical to any business staying up. Absolutely. We're going to hear from number of customers. I'm sure they're ready and we are ready for day two. We are ready. See, let's have a great day. Yeah, thanks. All right, so Sue and I will be right back with our first guest on day two of our coverage of comm Volkow for Stu. I'm Lisa Martin. We'll be right back.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. Are you ready? It's the theme of the event here at con Volvo 19 in Colorado all of the things that have gone wrong over the years and I sure know that from my time living on the vendor side is And as it changes down the road, do I have everything set up right? And to your point, another theme of the show has been about operational simplification, Where's the line there? him on our interview is Convolt going into the primary storage market with They have a strong partnership, so I think I got clarity on that for the most part, But one of the things that was clear was when we spoke with Rob Kalusi and about the last five to 10 years. that's one of the key differentiators that they are delivering to their partners. That is something that for the partners has been an incentive. have all experience and the industries in which we're in, you know, one of the things that's important is, look at some of the Heights and I was nervous just looking at some of this stuff they're doing. We have to help you prepare for this. Some of the other ones, sometimes we know that the we talked with AstraZeneca yesterday, you know, genetics, clinical data, So that risk that they have to mitigate comes a preparation.

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Sandra Hamilton, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. Hey, >>I'll come back to the cube date to have our coverage of Combalt go. 19 Lisa Martin with Stu. Met a man. We are in Colorado. Please welcome to the cube Sandy Hamilton, the VP of customer success. Been a convo four and a half months. So welcome to the Q book and the call. Sandy, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit here with you this morning and share a little bit about what's going on at Commonwealth and it's been great. You guys are here. It's been fantastic. We had a great day yesterday. We got to speak with Sanjay, with Rob, Don foster, Mercer, a whole bunch of your customers. Well exactly the vibe, the positivity from the channel to the customer to the course. Even the OJI calm ball guys that I worked a couple of 10 years ago that are still here, it does really feel like a new combo and you're part of that on. >>Sanjay probably brought you in and the spring of 2019 and we've seen a lot of progress and a lot of momentum from comm vault in terms of leadership changes, sills structured new programs for channel. Exciting stuff. You kicked off this morning's keynote and you had the opportunity to introduce Jimmy Chen who if you haven't seen free solo, I haven't seen it. I'm watching it as soon as they get home from us. Amazing. But what a great way to introduce failure and why it's important to be prepared because it is going to happen. I just thought that was a great tone. Especially talking with you. Who leads customer success. >> Absolutely. Thank you Lisa very much and good morning Sue. Appreciate it. You know it's interesting cause when I think about customer success here at Comvalt, there's so many different facets to it. There really is all about engaging with our customers across everything that they do and we want to make sure our customers are prepared for something that will likely happen to them someday. >>Right. We have one of our customers talking about a cyber attack down there on their environment and how we were actually able to help them recover. So it's also that preparedness that Jimmy talked about, right? And making sure that you are training as much as you can, being prepared for what may come and knowing how to recover from that as he, as he talked about. I also think one of the things that we do really well is we listened to our customers when they give us feedback. So it's about how did those customers use what we did differently or how did they try it? And it wasn't exactly what they thought. And so how do we continue to innovate with the feedback from our customers? >>Sandy, one of the things we're hearing loud and clear from your customers is they're not alone. They're ready. I love, we have, Matthew is coming on a little bit later talking about, he's like, I'm here and my other person that does disaster, he's here too. So you know, I'm doing my own free solo. We've been talking about in tech, it's the technology and the people working together. You talked a little bit in your keynote about automated workflows, machine learning, talk about some of those pieces as to how the innovation that Combolt's bringing out is going to enable and simplify the lives of, >>yeah, I mean I think it, I think it does come down to how are we really taking care of the backend, if you will, from a technology perspective and what can we make more automated, you know, more secure. You know, you think about things like, I was even talking about new automated workflows around scheduling, even your backup windows, right? And if you think about, you know, the complexity that goes into scheduling all of that across all of your environments, we have the ability to actually have you just set what your windows should be and we'll manage all the complexities in the background, which allows you to go do things like this for customers to come to do things like this. >>So Sandy, I tell you, some of us, there's that little bit of nervousness around automation and even customers talking about, Oh well I can just do it over text. And I'm just thinking back to the how many times have I responded to the wrong text thread and Oh my gosh, what if that was my, you know, data that I did the wrong thing with. >>Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that I love about this company, and again I've been here for a short period of time, but our worldwide customer support organization is just, you know, one of the hallmarks I think of this company, right? And how we're actually there for those customers at any point in time whenever they need any type of um, you know, help and support. And it isn't just the, you know, when you actually need that, when something goes wrong, it's also proactively we have professional services people, you know, we have all kinds of folks in between. Our partners play a huge role in making sure that our customers are successful with what they have going on. Let's dig into and dissect the customer life cycle. Help us understand what that's like for one and existing combo customer. Cause we talked to a couple of yesterday who've been combo customers for you know, a decade. >>So walk us through a customer life cycle for an incumbent customer as well as a new customer who is like Sanjay said yesterday, one of the things that surprised him is that a lot of customers don't know Combolt so what's the life cycle like for the existing customers and those new ones? >> Yeah, so you know, our fantastic install base of customers that we have today, one of the things that we are striving to continue to do is to make sure we're engaged with them from the beginning to the end. And the end isn't when they end, it's when you know, we're then fully deployed helping them do what they need to go in their environment. I think one of the great things about where we are with Comvalt right now is we actually have new products, new technologies, right? Have you guys had been exposed to, how are we making sure that the customers that we've had for a while are truly understanding what those new capabilities are? >>So if you think about it for us, it's how are we helping them to actually do more with their existing Convolt investment and potentially leverage us in other ways across their environment. Um, so we have, you know, our team of, you know, great, uh, you know, sales reps as well as our fantastic, you know, sales engineers, um, all the way through. Again, you know, PS and support, those people are always in contact with our customers, helping them to understand what we can really do across that life cycle and if they need to make changes along the way, we're here to help them, you know, do that as well. For a newer customer. One of the things that we're really focused on right now is that initial sort of onboarding for them and what set experience like for those customers. So having more of a, of a programmatic touch with those customers to make sure that we're more consistent in what we're doing. So they are actually receiving a lot of the same information at the same time and we're able to actually help them actually frankly in a more accelerated fashion, which is I think really important for them to get up and running as well. >>And when we talked about metallic yesterday with Rob and some other folks and I think a gentleman from Sirius, one of your launch partners, yes, Michael Gump. And you know the fact that that technology has the ability for partners to evaluate exactly what is going on with their customers so that they can potentially be even predictive to customers in terms of whether they're backing up end points or O three 65 I thought that was a really interesting capability that Colombo now has. It's giving that insights and the intelligence even to the partners to be able to help those customers make better decisions before they even know what to do makes exactly. >>They and their son, our partners are such a key part here to everything that we're really trying to do. And especially with the metallic, it's all through partners, right? And so we're really trying to drive that behavior and that means we've really have to ensure that we are bringing all of those partners into the same fold. They should have the same, you know, capabilities that we do. It's one of the, one of the also things that I'm trying to work on right now is how are we making sure our partners are better enabled around the things that we have in the capability. So we're working on, as part of those partner programs that you mentioned is do they have the right tools, if you will, and knowledge to go do what they need to go do to help our customers as well because it really is a partnership. >>Yeah. So Sandy, we've been looking at various different aspects of the change required to deliver metallic, which is now a SAS offering from a services and from a support standpoint, I think of a different experience from SAS as opposed to enterprise software. So bring, bring us, bring us your perspective. Yeah. This >>comes back a little bit to the onboarding experience, right? Where it's got to be much more digital touch. It's gotta be much more hands off cause that's the way the are thinking about buying metallic in the first place. Right? They don't have to have a sales rep, they can go by metallic, you know, frankly on their website right now, metallic.io, you know, you can go there, you can get everything you need to get started. Um, and so we want to make sure that the customers have different ways of engaging. And so some of that could very much be digital. Some of that can be, you know, different avenues of how they're working. They're wanting to work with us. But when you also then think about that type of a model, you start to think about consumption matters, right? And how much they're using and are they using everything that they purchased. >>And so we actually have a small team of customer success managers right now in the organization that are working with all of the new customers that we have in the SAS world to say, how are you doing? How's that going? You know, how's your touch? Is there anything that's presenting a challenge for you? Making sure they really do fully understand the capabilities end to end of that technology so that we can really get them onboarded super quick. As you probably know from talking to those guys, we're not having any services really around metallic cause it's not designed to need those services, which is huge. You know, I think in not only the SAS space but for Convolt as well. I think it's a new era and it also provides, frankly an opportunity for our partners to continue to engage with those customers going forward as well. >>One of the first things that I reacted to when I saw metallic, a Combalt venture was venture. I wanted to understand that. And so as we were talking yesterday with some of the gentlemen I mentioned, it's a startup within Combalt. Yeah. So coming from puppet but shoot dead in which Sonjay Mirchandani ran very successfully. Got puppet global. Your take on going from a startup like puppet to an incumbent like convo and now having this venture within it. Yeah. You know, I think it's one of the brilliant things that Sanjay and the team did very early on to recognize what Rob Calu, Ian and the rest of the folks were doing around this idea of what is now metallic. And they had been noodling it and Sanjay's like, that's got a really good opportunity. However we got to go capitalize on that now and bring that to market for our customers now. >>And if we had continued on in the way that we were, which is where it was night jobs and we didn't necessarily have all the dedicated people to go do it, you know, we may not have metallic right now. And so it was, it was really a great thing within the company to really go pull those resources out of what they were doing and say, you guys are a little startup, you know, here you go do it. And we actually had a little celebratory toast the other night with that team because of what, just a fantastic job that they've done. And one of the common threads in something everybody said was the collaboration that it really brought, not only within that team but across Combalt because there's a singular goal in bringing this to market for our customers. So it's been a great experience. I think we're going to leverage it and do more. So Sandy, >>before we let you go, need to talk a little bit about the. >>Fabulous. If I had one here I would, but I don't. So, um, a couple of months ago at VMworld, I don't know if you guys were there, you guys were probably there. Um, we actually started this thing called the D data therapy dog park. And there we had a number of puppies and they were outside. Folks came by, you know, visited. They stopped, they distressed, they got to pet a puppy. I mean, the social media was just out of this world, right? And we had San Francisco policemen there. It was, it was, it was great. Even competitors, I will say even competitors were there. It was, it was pretty funny. But, um, by the end of it, over 50% of the dogs that were there actually got adopted out, um, you know, into homes where they otherwise wouldn't have. Um, since then there've been a couple of people that have actually copied this little idea and you know, P places are springing up. >>So we have a, what we call it, data therapy dog park here where you can go in and get your puppy fix, you know, sit with the dogs and relax for a bit. But you know, we're super excited about it as well because, you know, it's sort of a fun play on what we do, but, but it's also, I think, you know, a great thing for the community and something that is near and dear to my heart. I have four dogs. Um, and so I'm not planning on taking another one home, but I'm doing my best to get some of these adopted. So if anybody out there is interested, just let me know. >>Oh, that was adoptable. All of them cheese. I'm picking up a new puppy and about eight days. So other ones of friends. I've got to have dogs enough for you. Do you need a third? We'll have a friend that has two puppies at the same time and said it's not that much more. I have had one before. You're good to go. We can, we can hook you up. Oh no. But one of the great things is it also, first of all, imitation is the highest form of flattery or for other competitors that are doing something similar, but you also just speak to the fact that we're all people, right? We are. We're traveling, especially for people that go to a lot of conferences and it's just one of those nice human elements that similar with the stories that customers share about, Hey, this is a failure that we had and this is how it helped us to recover from that. It's the same thing with, you can't be in a bad mood with, I think puppies, cupcakes and balloons. So if there were, I know that I could finish a show today >>that's like I took one of the little puppies when I was rehearsing yesterday on main stage. I took one of them with me out there and I was just holding it the whole time, you know? It was really, >>this was great. I'm afraid to venture back into the data therapy document. You're proud taking another one home OU was. Andy. It's been a pleasure to have very much. I appreciate it. Appreciate the time. Thank you and hope you have a great rest of the event. If you need anything, let us know. I'm sure we will and I can't wait to talk to you next year when you've been a comm vault for a whole like 16 months and hearing some great stories we do as well. All right. Take care. First two men, a man, Sandy Hamilton, the puppies, and I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cue from Convault go and 19 thanks for watching.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. here with you this morning and share a little bit about what's going on at Commonwealth and it's been great. morning's keynote and you had the opportunity to introduce Jimmy Chen who success here at Comvalt, there's so many different facets to it. And making sure that you are training So you know, I'm doing my own free solo. to actually have you just set what your windows should be and we'll manage all the complexities in the background, what if that was my, you know, data that I did the wrong thing with. And it isn't just the, you know, when you actually need that, it's when you know, we're then fully deployed helping them do what they need to go in that life cycle and if they need to make changes along the way, we're here to help them, you know, do that as well. fact that that technology has the ability for partners to evaluate exactly what is They should have the same, you know, capabilities that we do. to enterprise software. They don't have to have a sales rep, they can go by metallic, you know, frankly on As you probably know from talking to those guys, we're not having any services really around metallic cause One of the first things that I reacted to when I saw metallic, a Combalt venture was venture. have all the dedicated people to go do it, you know, we may not have metallic right now. Um, since then there've been a couple of people that have actually copied this little idea and you know, So we have a, what we call it, data therapy dog park here where you can go in and get your puppy fix, for other competitors that are doing something similar, but you also just speak to the fact that we're all people, just holding it the whole time, you know? I'm sure we will and I can't wait to talk to you next year when you've been a comm vault for a whole like 16

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Archana Venkatraman, IDC | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering com vault go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of day one of convo go and 19 from Colorado. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu minimum and we have a cube alumni back with us. Arch, not van Venkatraman. You are the research manager for storage and data center for IDC. Welcome back. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Likewise, so here we are. Day one of con BOGO, lots of stuff. Nutrition's I stopped coming out in the last day and a half or so, but also lots of momentum that really kind of the dust kicked up when Sanjay Mirchandani took over the home from Bob hammer just about nine months ago. You've been covering combo for about three years. Just love to get your perspective on the last three years and what you've seen particularly in the last nine months. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. I've been tracking them for three years and they've been slowly making that pivot to the cloud world to changing how they're pricing to, you know, to really break free from that perception that they're very traditional, they're very cumbersome, they're expensive, they're trying to break through that and hiring Sanjay was kind of validation that Hey we are committed to the future and Sanjay comes from this very agile DevOps seed, open sores, containerized property worlds. >>So he, he is new culture and Sandra came in and he started, I think he started making a lot more changes. We saw that their journey to the cloud was a lot more accelerated and they're starting to talk this new language that is attracting developers. So they talk about cloud native technologies. They're talking about database and data as the bottleneck in development life cycle, which is all new music to develop us ears. And then that means you're going to bring in data management, which is a huge issue right to the developer strategy, right to the boardroom strategy. That's where it needs to be because data is actually at the heart of what companies are doing. And we keep talking about speed of fins, speed of development and speed of applications. I think it's time we start talking about speed of intelligence and speed of insights because that's what's going to give companies a competitive difference. >>And that's what Sanjay brought in in the last nine months. And I was tracking the Hedwig acquisition as well and a lot of companies, a lot of people who I spoke to here were extremely excited about what Hedwig brings into the table and there was a lot of interest in what they bring in. So I think Sanjay brought in a new culture to come ball and he cemented that new culture with Hedwig because with Hedwig they acquired that new startup culture as well. So it's really coming together of a lot of new culture and that's going to overpower the old culture and going to bring a lot transformation within. >>So as arch and I, but I'd love to get your insights into how that that changed and you said, right. Do you know Sandra came from puppet? We talked to them earlier today about moving faster and CIC D and all this wonderful things. But how that aligned with customers. We talked to customers that are seven or 10 years working with convolve inside the organization. You know the person that owned the backup and recovery process, you know, how familiar are they with their developer team and how that's coming together in an organization. So is Convolt meeting the customers where they are? Are they skating to the puck? How does that alignment? >>Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, it's imperative that come moved and a lot of traditional data protection vendors move because customers are moving as well and they are forced to move because they are seeing lot of onslaught of data. Data's corporate data is growing 50 to 60% every year. That's just business data. So they're grappling with data growth and they're expected to do more with less and data is fragmented everywhere. So they are forced to make that change as well. So they are employing data protection officers, but at the same time they're also employing data scientists and newer data model architects to do new things with data because they are under pressure to deliver that better customer experiences. So companies are going through that change and we, in August we did a research and asked organizations, are you happy with your existing data protection tools and are you going to change it? >>And interestingly, 60% of those who are operating in multicloud environments want to change their data protection environment. And that shows because until now there was this huge power of incumbency, right? I will, I'm okay with this, I'll probably buy the next version of this and try and do iterative improvements. But now companies realize that this data growth and fragmentation and multicloud environment represents a new frontier and they need to move from this thinking that they've had and they're willing to change and work with the newer kind of companies that provide them what they want around unification and simplification. >>Yeah, I think you brought up some great points there. We've found when we talked to customers, they seem to be more open than ever to try something new. I kind of wonder if that's why metallic almost has a separate brand, a separate web website. It is a Convult venture because you know Combalt has incumbency and it has a pedigree. But if I'm trying something new, Convolt might not be the first one that I think of. >>Yeah. So today was the first time I heard about metallic and there is some, I love the branding and there's so much of gloss and shines, I need to get behind the gloss and shine. But I've seen that was one of the busiest places that we have seen today in the exhibition. And that shows commitment to the, it's, it's, it's, it's, they're entering the SAS world and they're talking that cloud likes scalability and it's also more than applications. They're talking about the pricing is a like consumption base, that cloud language and it's going to propel them along the way. And your perspective as customers that you talk to in any industry have so much choice. You're saying, Hey, the customers are recognizing in this multicloud world in which they find themselves operating. We've gotta be able to change our data protection strategy. I imagine things like the rise in cyber attacks or GDPR or the new law in California. >>That's coming are some compelling events. But when customers look at the landscape, and as was saying, they're so much more open to maybe trying new vendors, for example, how does Combalt part, you know, significant part and combat maybe new part with Hedvig and with metallic as a sort of this startup within combo. How did they elevate and differentiate themselves in your opinion, in a competitive landscape? Interesting. Yep. So when you look at startups, they have a lot of agility, but they're not able to bring that enterprise grade skill. Excuse me. And if you look at a lot of traditional vendors, they have that scale and enterprise grade guarantees, but they don't have that agility. But with this initiative, they've done some clever things and brought agility and skill together. That's their differentiator to see no, grab some water, we'll talk for a second. You probably even taught all day. >>That's the hazard, right, of going to these events is your voice, especially with the altitude. But, but as, as we've seen other large incumbents do the same thing. Absolutely. Everyone's pivoting to the same. It is. But also integration of technologies is not easy. Right. And that's sort of the table stakes is how are they, for example, going to integrate Hedvig such that one had bigs installed. ACE has a smooth, seamless transition and this opens up more opportunity for them and vice versa that that Combolt's install base now has more opportunity. Talk to us about what you've seen. They talked a little bit yesterday about some of the integration connections that they've made so far, but that's really key because a lot of companies don't do integrations. Well yeah, there've been some big acquisitions and they do integrations for years and years, right? It's been just 13 days since the acquisition closed. >>So it's still early days, but they need to keep that momentum up and I see a lot of synergy. So bringing storage and data management together is a good idea. But at the same time, I heard Sanjay alluded to it on the stage as well, where they're talking about application and data and moving away from that infrastructure. Right. And that that view is very important because companies need to move from protecting data centers to protecting centers of data. That's what they need to think about. So they need to abstract from infrastructure, but which is why when you look at it all though it's software defined storage. The language that they use is very clever. They're talking about APIs, they're talking about newer workflows, they're talking about changing business processes, they're talking about enabling data, they're talking about controlling data and using it data, using data for insights. >>So they're putting in a lot of newer perspective to this infrastructure view and taking a software defined container defined API defined view, and that's kind of very, very modern. I think that's going to bring a huge amount of difference. So thinking about some of the customers that you've spoken to will say in the last year that are either using Combolt or evaluating combo, some of the positioning that you just talked about to kind of very interesting, but I presume quite strategic with how they're talking about protect, use, manage control data. Are you hear from Comvalt are you hearing and seeing this is what I've been hearing from customers, is there an alignment? Are you hearing from custom what you heard from customers? I'll start over like in the last year, what combat is now delivering and the messaging that they're articulating. Are you now, are you seeing alignment like they're going in the direction that I'm hearing with what customers are wanting. >>He has, the customers are grappling with multicloud data services, so it's not just data protection but they need to get visibility of data across their, all the data sets across the board that they're challenged not just with structured data but growth in unstructured and semi-structured data as well. So they need to look at newer kinds of storage like object storage and all that. So they are grappling with newer kinds of challenges and that's why this new language is going to be hugely useful. And that's why this coming together of storage and data management can actually make a big difference because together they can paint a picture for the organization and tell them these are the challenges you're grappling. You don't need to buying different solutions from different places and buy it and bring it all together. We have deeper level of integration and we can solve it and convert. >>We'll be able to get to the customer at the storage level before they hit the customer, hits the data management problem and then starts hunting for a newer solution. So they're getting in early before the problem actually becomes an operational issue and that the Hey red, they are ready with the solution when the customer gets there. You might, you mentioned data visibility a minute ago and that's critical, right? For organizations that are, whether it's a smaller organization or one that's heavily matrix, if you don't have, and a lot of them don't have visibility into all of the data. Something that you talked about in the very beginning of the interview, that speed of intelligence and speed of insights, it can't take advantage of that. Yeah, yeah. Yes. So companies are investing into a lot of data scientists. But then so, so I was talking to actually three, I was doing a CIO executive dinner on this whole topic about data driven. >>And then so some of organizations, some of the CIS put their hands up and said, Hey, we have actually employed new data scientists. These data engineers and data scientists don't come cheap, right? They're very heavily skilled, talented, talented professionals. So you employ them. And now we're working backwards. Now we are trying to do what we can do with the data models and there's so much problem we are facing. We don't know what data is good data to be analyzed, what data we can delete, what data is cold data that we can send to archives and what do we need to, what are the use cases that we need big data analytics for? So they're working backwards and they're not able to leverage and capitalize on all the resources that they've spent on hiring these kinds of data scientists and data engineers. So I think they need to start that. Organizations need to get a hygiene about their data first and then take the next step around analytics and hiring these kind of data scientists is the first step. Sorry >>are tryna just, I was curious if you could comment on a statement that Sanjay Mirchandani made this morning. He says we need to rethink the kind of the lines and into definitions between primary and secondary storage. What do you think of that statement and where do you think vault ultimately will fit in the broader marketplace? >>You's quite aligned with what I see when I talk to customers as well. So, so companies, data is growing and it's fragmented, but at the same time the lines between primary storage and secondary storage are blurring as well. So the data that's cold today may be hot data tomorrow. So they need to understand, get visibility into data. Just 10% of data is hard data today. So that data needs to sit in the most expensive storage environments. They can leverage it and the rest needs to be, needs to go into tiered, into other colder storage, cheaper alternatives. But at the same time, when you want to access that data, it should not be difficult because now when you push it to a cloud archive your, that's your archive and be damned, right? You're not going to get that data back on in the format you want at the time you want, at the cost you want. So you need to make sure that you invest in storage technologies and you make that data tiering in such a way that when that called data is suddenly becoming warm data or hot data, you need to have access to it instantly in the format you like. Archna thank you for sharing your insights and recommendations and just your view on the industry and combat. We appreciate your time. No problem at all. Thank you very much. First, zoom and a man. I am Lisa Martin and you're watching the cube from combat go 19.

Published Date : Oct 15 2019

SUMMARY :

It's the cube covering that really kind of the dust kicked up when Sanjay Mirchandani took over the home from Bob We saw that their journey to the cloud was a lot more accelerated So I think Sanjay brought in a new culture to come So as arch and I, but I'd love to get your insights into how that that changed and you said, So they are forced to make that change as well. environment represents a new frontier and they need to move from this thinking that they seem to be more open than ever to try something new. And that shows commitment to the, it's, it's, it's, they have a lot of agility, but they're not able to bring that enterprise grade skill. And that's sort of the table stakes is how are they, for example, going to integrate So it's still early days, but they need to keep that momentum up and I see So they're putting in a lot of newer perspective to this infrastructure view So they need to look at newer kinds of storage and that the Hey red, they are ready with the solution when the customer gets there. So I think they need to start that. are tryna just, I was curious if you could comment on a statement that Sanjay Mirchandani You're not going to get that data back on in the format you want at the time you want,

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Mercer Rowe, Commvault & Carmen Sorice III, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>> Narrator: Live from Denver, CO, it's theCUBE, covering Commvault GO 2019, brought to you by Commvault. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault GO '19 from Colorado this year. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, and we are excited to welcome a couple of new guests to theCUBE. One of them brand new to Commvault. We have Mercer Rowe, VP of Global Channels and Alliances. Mercer, welcome to Commvault and TheCUBE. >> Thanks so much. >> Lisa: And we've got Carmen Sorice III, pinky out, GTM Chief of Staff for Commvault. You're the veteran here. You've been there for a year. >> A whole year, yes. >> Lisa: Exactly. Guys, so much excitement in the last, you know, nine months since Sanjay Mirchandani took over. Analysts saying, hey Commvault, you've got to upgrade your sales. You've got to upgrade your marketing. You've got to shift gears and expand the market share, and we're seeing a lot of movement in all three of those directions. The channel is really critical for Commvault, Mercer. It's responsible for a significant portion of revenue. You guys have made some strategic changes there with respect to channels and alliances. First of all, before we get into that, you're brand new, brand, brand new to Commvault. What attracted you to this company that's 20 years old that, as Sanjay was telling us, it's like the new Commvault. >> So, if I look back at my career in the last 10 years or so, I've been in IT for about 20 years, for the last 10 years or so, I've been a part of launching cloud businesses for a number of some upcoming and some new vendors, such as VMware, IBM, SoftBank and others. And a lot of that, in that process, what I've been working on is helping existing customers to move their workloads into the Cloud. We know that the market is evolving to a hybrid Cloud type of deployment model. I mean we can see that across the board with the way our customers are behaving, with the way that the Cloud vendors are behaving. But that's been a challenge because of the technology matching, right? Figuring out how to essentially put the same technology stack in the Cloud as you do on-prem to be able to move those apps over. I really started to look for companies that could bridge that gap and it could really operate in a hybrid Cloud scenario. Commvault is absolutely positioned perfectly for that in my mind, and so it's such an opportunity as we shift from our kind of act one as a great data protection company to a true hybrid Cloud data platform or data plane. >> Yeah, Carmen, maybe give us a little bit of your insight as to some of those change in roles as Mercer was just saying. Cloud is having a huge impact. You know, we've watched, you know, for years the shifting role of the traditional VAR or SI or the like, so bring us a little bit of insight as to what, today, is important to your go-to-market. >> Yeah, so what's important to our partners, especially the VARS is continuing to be relevant with our customers, right? Change is the only constant, and it's, the rate of change is just accelerating. So partners are looking for vendor partners like us to help them be relevant, to come out with the solutions that are going to be more relevant, even tomorrow. And, from a Commvault perspective, if you think about everything we've done from a data backup and a data management perspective, we've been the best in the industry, as we've just seen with Gartner and Forrester. All right, so we're proud of that. But what our partners were looking for is, where are we taking this next? Where's the innovation going to come from? So when you weave in things like Metallic that now gives our partners a consumption option. So if they have customers that want to buy software as a service, they now have that option. And then when you add software-defined storage, it takes us in to a completely different area, and you had asked Stewart about the Cloud, when you think of Cloud native applications and you think of containerization, that's changing the way backup data and primary storage data is being managed and the lines are blurring. Now with Hedvig software-defined storage, we have an opportunity to come out with integrated offers to help our partners be even more successful. >> So from a go-to-market perspective, in the last year, there's been a lot transformation, right? Not just in terms of leadership changes, but this big focus on ensuring that, as customers' environments change in this hybrid multicloud world that they are living in whether it's by design or its by acquisition or different types of growth, right? Talk to us a little bit about how Commvault foundationally is set up to really make some big shifts and big bets in new routes to market. >> Yeah, I can take that from where we were a year ago 'til now and then feel free to expand. So when you look at, we've always been a partner business, a partner friendly business. A significant percentage of our revenue, like north of 90% goes through our partners. What our partners were asking for is, hey, you guys are partner friendly, but we need you to be partner driven. So, when you come up with solutions, make sure they're channel ready, make sure they're partner ready, make sure we have our eyes on the market so that we're not just trying to sell software to our partners. We need to better understand their go-to-market models, how can we help them grow their business by offering a different variety, a variety of different services. So I think the evolution you've seen is a year ago the company made significant investments on becoming partner-first. So we've invested in channel leadership, partner leadership, not only at the corporate level but also in the field, and since Sanjay came on board, as you referenced, in February, that change is just continuing. So we're making our next level of investment in channel executives, in executives period, who have context about what channel is. And when you've lived in the channel, you've dealt with channel conflict, you bring that to the table, you bring that experience to the table. So I think you're seeing an evolution of us in our next phase of investments, helping our partners be successful, and becoming partner-first, and we've done a lot of new things with our programs that I can get in to. Financial incentives, rebates, making it easier on our partner portal to interface with us. And we're going to continue to do that, so that's we're not only just the right product choice, we're the right financial choice for our partners going forward. >> And I think, to add to that, if you look at our Metallic launch, obviously the reason we work with partners is in service of our customers. Right, that's the whole reason we partner, it's 'cause we want to great a better value proposition for our customers. And when we launched that product, a little tid bit, the company did a lot of research. Went out and talked to non, not-current Commvault customers, so potentially new greenfield customers and consistently got the feedback that they wanted to buy softwares and service applications that like that through a partner, because they could have a conversation about their entire IT environment. So it's really exciting to be in a spot where we are not only partner-first, partner-led but we're in a position where we know that this is the way our customers want to interact with us. That's number one. Number two is as we start to make some of these transitions into SaaS as we move into adjacencies like we're doing with Hedvig, it's so important to have our partners be the tip of the spear to help our customers through that journey. You know, innovation is great, but innovation also creates complexity. That's where partners help us move our customers through that journey and be successful. >> You know, we were talking to one of your launch partners earlier today and they were very excited about Metallic. On the same hide they did recognize that there is a significant change as to how they have to engage, you know, what part of the organization. You know, it's a good thing they have a Microsoft practice that this plugs into for the O365. So, bring us a little bit as to how you're helping the channel transform. >> Oh, absolutely. So, as you can see, a lot of the partners, you can see a lot of them that are here today, have moved from being pure, say in the solution of outer space, just to use as an example have moved from pure solution providers to also having MSP offerings, or other kind of services offerings, because they realize that customers want the flexibility of consumption economics while also, you know, being able to work with their trusted partner. So whether it's them, whether it's service providers who we want to drive into more of a, as a service model, and obviously we're planning to release all of this technology to our service providers to allow them to offer Commvault-based or Commvault-powered services in the market, or whether it's our great alliance partners. Companies like Nedap and Hitachi, where we have OEM relationships or other kind of very deep, collaborative relationships in the market. Adding some of these features and functions and capabilities as we move, as we help our customers to move into the Cloud, as we help them to give them more options for these multicloud or hybrid deployment models. This opens up additional apertures, additional opportunities for services, for wholistic end-to-end solutions from these partners that actually increase their ability to be relevant with the customers but also the share wallet. >> I want to get your perspective, Mercer, on differentiation, because partners, your partners work with a lot of your competitors. We know that there's a lot of coopetition, right, in technology but what is it about some of the things that Commvault is putting in place or some ideas that you have to really differentiate how you're enabling partners, whether we're talking about a VAR or a Disty or all the way up to a global services systems integrator that can deliver massive enterprise scale. >> Yeah, I can start with that if you're okay. So, it's all about listening to partners, right? Listening to what they need and what they're asking you for. Because many times a vendor becomes vendor-arrogant, right? And you're not listening to the partners. So our partners have been clear. They said we want a predictable financial model with Commvault. What translates to a program that's a full year program that gives them financial incentives so they don't have to guess what we're going to do in any given month or any given quarter with some kind of SPIF. So we've delivered on that. They've asked, number two, they said, they've said to me, and you're going to be hearing this, is you've always had great products, please, that has to continue. That's like a ticket for entry. And we've seen that we continue to lead in that space. And then I mentioned earlier about innovation. They want to know that we're going to take them into the future. So those three things are really critical for our partners. And then the last thing they ask for, which is basically a foundation across that, is field engagement. We need to be more tightly engaged with your sellers, so that we go in on joint sales calls. That we're bringing each other opportunities, and I think with the new sales leadership we have, Riccardo Di Blasio, our new CRO, our boss knows full well how to grow businesses with partners and through partners and it's by engaging in the field. And that's why we're going to have more people in the field, so that we can engage with partners and create opportunities together. So those are kind of the four foundational elements that we see. >> Mercer, I was wondering if I could get your viewpoint just in general about the channel. There was a lot of fear for a number of years about, you know, the Cloud, coming in and that readjustment. How do you think it's going? What's the general, you know, feel of the channel today, and how their interaction is with, you know, that ever-changing interaction with the big public clouds. >> You know, it's a great question, and I remember when we were first launching the cloud business as VMware. I used to go to, I built our channel model but I would introduce myself in the partner meetings with, Hey, I'm from VMware Cloud. We're here to kill your business. (laughter) Because there was a fear. And that fear, I think, in a certain way, has kind of dissipated as the market has realized as partners and mostly from the customers have realized that there is not a one size fits all strategy. The Cloud is not the solution to all IT needs. It is certainly an important part of most customer's strategy, in fact, I don't think that there are many customers that don't have Cloud as a part of their overall IT strategy, however, it's not the entire environment, and it certainly doesn't solve all needs. So, from a general perspective, the savvy partners have embraced the Cloud, they've embraced services, and they've look at it as a wholistic part of how they do business with their end customers. 'Cause as we think about, you know, to the last question, as we think about partner profitability, I think about it in two main vectors. There's margin, field engagement, revenue, and so forth, which is very, you know, this is the financial element of working with a partner like Commvault to make money. And that's obviously a very important part and that's something we will continue to invest in. Programs, and so forth, to support our partners to be profitable working with Commvault. But the other is in the practices, in how they build services, in how they build end-to-end solutions. Which, another tidbit on Metallic that some people picked up on was that we've released the telemetry APIs. Meaning that partners who are working with Metallic can see exactly what their customers are using. How are they growing? Oh, they've all of a sudden backed up a new workload. Hey, maybe they have a new project. Maybe I should call them, so I'm not waiting until renewals. I'm not waiting until the sort of forcing events to have an opportunity to place a call into my customer and say, hey, I noticed you're doing something new. How can I help? >> That insight, and sorry Carmen, we were talking about that a little bit earlier, I think with maybe with Rob Kaloustian. That was really interesting, because it really it changes the word partner, right? It can't. Because if they're actually able to follow along and maybe even make some educated predictions or suggestions to the customer, then the customer feels like, okay, you're not only selling me this, you're actively helping me optimize my deployment, learn from it and plan for what's next. So that definition of partner changes for the better. >> And I think the whole SaaS model is like the next step beyond Cloud. So you were asking me about Cloud. Very briefly, the way I've seen it over the last probably seven to nine years is, I had billion dollar VARS tell me nine years ago, don't ever try to come in here and sell me a multi tenant cloud service, 'cause I'm selling hardware. That moved to, hey, you know what? We see the customers changing. I was with a service provider. Why don't you come help us? And then a couple of years later they said, you know what? We're kind of building our own service now, so we don't need your services anymore. So, in a few, you know, three to five years, they went from stay out, I'm never going to sell a multi tenant service to quickly, well maybe not so quickly, some not as quick as others, realize that they have to get there. I think SaaS is like the next step beyond that. >> Well in this business I think if that teaches anybody anything it's never say never. Right? >> That's right. >> Well guys, thank you so much for joining Stu and me, sharing with us how things are really transforming here, but also what you're doing for global alliances and channel to really catalyze Commvault's business. We appreciate it, and we say best of luck as you enter week three? >> Yes. >> Lisa: Or day three? >> Day three, day three. >> Lisa: Gentleman, thank you for your time. >> Great, thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watchin' theCUBE from Commvault GO '19. (fast tempo music)

Published Date : Oct 15 2019

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Commvault. One of them brand new to Commvault. You're the veteran here. Guys, so much excitement in the last, you know, We know that the market is evolving to a hybrid Cloud is important to your go-to-market. especially the VARS is continuing to be relevant in new routes to market. making it easier on our partner portal to interface with us. be the tip of the spear to help our customers significant change as to how they have to engage, you know, to be relevant with the customers but also the share wallet. Commvault is putting in place or some ideas that you have Listening to what they need and what they're asking you for. What's the general, you know, feel of the channel today, The Cloud is not the solution to all IT needs. So that definition of partner changes for the better. realize that they have to get there. Well in this business I think if that teaches as you enter week three? You're watchin' theCUBE from Commvault GO '19.

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Matt Chiott, Commvault | Commvault GO 2019


 

>>Live from Denver, Colorado. It's the cube covering comm vault. Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. >>Welcome to the cube Lisa Martin, the stupid a man live on day one of Combalt go 19 we're in Colorado this year and we're excited to welcome to the Cape for the first time we have Matt Shai, VP of strategic pricing at Combalt. Matt, welcome. Thanks for having me here. So lots of news coming out yesterday and today. You know in the last student, I've had a number of conversations today already about just how much evolution has happened with Convault in this calendar year alone and list came in, you know when Sanjay took over con ball, you've got to upgrade your sales force. We've seen the sales leadership changes, I said enhance your marketing. We've seen new routes to market partner focus expansion into, you know, really expanding the Tamworth Hedvig acquisition. Talk to us a little bit about from a pricing perspective, a strategic perspective. What are you guys doing? What's new this year that you guys are really saying, Hey, we're listening to our customers, we're listening to our partners. >>So there's two parts to it. The first is really just making things simpler and easier for everybody. So we started that journey last year. Sanjay came in and said keep it going, so we need to continue to go to market simplification, make it easier for people. So we've tried to do that as much as possible. We're going to continue to do that. Whether it's packaging related pricing related, make it quicker for customers and partners to get access to the software. The second part to that is when we release new products like activate, we've talked a lot about activate over the last couple of days. We have new packaging for that, which is exciting, but we need to make sure that's accessible. So making that easy for our partners to get to it, cross selling and upselling, that kind of thing for everybody to have access to. So that's really the direction that we've gotten from Sanjay and as we get into the future, it's continuing that with things like vague and metallic and and all that. >>Anything particular about activate a, you know, what differentiates, how that pricing package versus how come might've done to that stuff in the back. It's the granularity of it is what it is. So come fall. One of the great things that we can do here is we can be flexible and Sanjay talked a lot about that in his main stage presentation this morning. And we can give a customer the ability to do what they want, when they want and how they want. So they've purchased from comm vault in the past. Likely they have different routes that they bought from and activate gives them the ability to buy in that same manner. So it's granular, it gives them the ability to get software when they need it, the type of software they need, but in the manner they want to buy it as well. So that's the exciting parts of it. >>So we had a chat with Rob earlier talking about metallic and your how, how that sass product was put together. Well customers have a lot of experience now with, with sass. So tell us from a pricing and packaging standpoint, your involvement and what customers they're going to see when it comes to metallic. Yes, we're directly involved with the pricing. We wanted to make sure that it aligns with everything we stand for as a pricing organization at con vault. And I'm excited about it because we've never really had a straight SAS product that's like go to the website, get the price, download it, good to go. Right. It's exciting. I'm, I'm, I can't wait to have it out there. I can't wait for customers to go get it and download it. The booth has been really, really slammed today from what I've heard. So I'm excited about the pricing. >>All right. And there's a couple of different pricing models depending on how they're doing. Maybe you could walk us through that. Yeah, sure. So you have three different options that you can buy. Each one gives you a different use case. So you have backup endpoint, mailbox, all that O three 65 different things you can buy. They all start at one particular price point and they're tiered. So the bigger you get, the more of a discount you get. The other cool thing that we can do here, because we do different use cases, which is sometimes different than competitors, is that you get a family discount with Convault. So if you buy one and you get to a high enough level, you can go into another one and into another one and get that same discount. So we're really trying to get customers to use as much as they can, get them accessible and we hope they like it. >>Where were customers in terms of when this was being conceived? You know, just not just metallic from a product and a technology perspective, but from a consumption subscription perspective where they actively, I would imagine certain customers like maybe part of an advisory board helping you guys determine this is kind of a new direction for calm ball, where they talked to us about the influence that some of these key customers had and really enabling this pricing to be so transparent. >>We had, it was, it wasn't even just customers. There was a lot of people who had influence into that. So industry, influencers, financial and flood, a lot of people had a lot of influence and a lot of input into how we do it because obviously everybody has a way that they like to buy. Customers had a big input cause as we started this, one of the first things we came through was how do we make sure that the packaging looks good. And that was one of the first core deliverables cause everything sort of runs off that. Make sure that it looks right, make sure it's accessible to customers and easy. So that was one of the first things we did was go out surveys, customer surveys, input data points, all that really started the process. And Matt metallic is 100% through the channels. So tell us a little bit about how that works for a SAS offering. >>Yeah. So through the channel for us is going to be fantastic because we want to make sure that our partners can sell it to folks. That was one of the biggest things our customers came back with was we like to buy through our, our partner. Like, we don't have to go do all bunch of different things, so great, you should go out and buy from your partner. They have access to it. It's easy to understand. It's easy to price, easy to package, and there really shouldn't be a whole lot of worrying about it from a customer standpoint. Quicken, painless. Yeah. And the other thing I understand if it's core, it's by capacity. If it's the O three 65 for endpoint on, it's based on your number of users. There's that piece in there that if I have my own cloud storage, I can leverage that. >>So is that just a different pricing, cause I didn't see that piece on the website. How does that impact thing? Yeah, so it really is about flexibility. Like if you want to use ours, you can and that's fine. If you have your own and you want to go use that, that's fine too. Like we're not really, we don't want to lock anybody into something that they may not need or want. So if you already have a contract with one of the cloud providers, you're free to go and use that. And we're not gonna worry about it. If you want to go do it through us and that's great, we'll, we'll work with you on that. So metallic focused on the mid market, but combo has a really good percentage of revenue that comes from a large global enterprise accounts. You guys had made some leadership changes there, new initiatives on these large global enterprises and some that are going to be fulfilled and delivered exclusively through I think global systems integrators. >>We do have a GSI program that from a, from a strategic perspective, knowing so much business comes through the channel for those really large enterprise accounts. What's that strategic pricing conversation concept all about? Yes, so that one's a little bit different. That's, we have so many different things that we do. We have metallic, we have Hedvig obviously that we just acquired. We have Comvalt complete and all the different things we do. So from an enterprise standpoint, it's how do we get the right go to market for them, which is potentially a systems integrator if they, if they go that route. Larger partners, potentially. Some of our Alliance partners are key to that as well. And then there's the, how do we make it easy for them to buy all that technology in one so that they don't have to have five different things that they're buying from comm vault. >>So that is the roadmap discussion. So how do we get from here to there and make sure that they have easy access to that. So that's part of the conversation we're having now. But it's the first thing that's on my mind every morning and my team works on it every day. So as we, as we integrate Hedvig, as Metalla comes into market, obviously we have appliances and different routes there. Those all have to be easy. So if you're a customer and you want to buy five of them, it's like quick and painless for you to buy all five. And it's a, it's an easy model for an enterprise. So that's how we like that to go. How does it work with, say, let's look at the Hedvig acquisition as an example. They come and bring in customers. They announced the acquisition in September, it's closed. You're already working on integrations touches a little bit about from a strategic perspective when, when there's an acquisition, there's customers that are on certain, you know they've got certain contracts. >>How do you take all of that past experience from the incoming company and start kind of massaging those pricing, pricing, the structure to now fit and be delivered through a combo? Yeah, it's a great question. That's one of the things that we're starting to work on now, which is how do we take all those different price points and packaging and work them in? We've done a little bit of it, so we've integrated what had vague guys into our portfolio in terms of it's there through con vaults, so there they're the same BS, the same support. They'll say maintenance the same everything in that respect, which is great. They're going to align to combat and that way, but really the next step is going to be exactly what you said, which is how do we put those two together so we don't want to keep them apart. >>We don't want to. You can buy Hedvig and then you can buy combo all. We want them to be the same and so the longterm vision for that will be to do that. We haven't gotten there yet. That's the next plan with Hedvig integration is to take those customers and say, how did you buy it? What did you like, what didn't you like? And then we can take that feedback and really use it to package up a solution. I'm curious how the changes in the public cloud have been impacting your line of work. You know, for example, we watched the AWS marketplace and they have more and more customers buying through them. Last year they came out with the, I forget what they call it, just like the private buying so that you can, even if you have a special arrangement, you can still buy it through the AWS marketplace. >>Is that, are you seeing that as a trend or customer's interest in that is Combalt looking down that path? Yeah, they're interested in it and certainly will enable people to go do it. It hasn't been a huge focus yet in terms of price. Right? Because a lot of the things that we have that are priced are already aligned to how they should be in the cloud. So when we sell something like a VM for example, it's kind of aligned to how they buy it anyway. So we haven't seen a huge change in how people would do that. It's more as we get more into the cloud and multi-cloud with Sanjay's vision, we'll start to see some more go to market perspectives that are like that. And the routes to market will change a little bit, but we're set up for it already from a pricing standpoint. So it's not going to be a big change. >>So as we look at the momentum that Combalt carries into their fourth annual go with how much leadership change, we talked about that the routes to market and things, what are some of you think the bar has been set? Like, all right, we've got to figure this out. For example, the, the, the simplification of the Hedvig combat structure. Is there kind of an expectation that as fast as there no iterating and delivering on technology, you've gotta be able to do the same from a pricing standpoint. Yep. >>Everything you won't need to do on technology. I need to be just as fast on pricing. Yeah, there's definitely that expectation and that's a great expectation. I mean, we can't have the technology lag, we can't have the pricing like it has to be, it has to go at the same time. And that's, so we're, we're tight with all the folks who were doing that had big integration, making sure that we're aligned to it. There's absolutely that expectation. But I loved that expectation because what we have to get it out at the same time and that's great. >>It does. Will it? Well, it, it makes things interesting and exciting. The customers are demanding this transparency because if we think about it in our consumer lives, we have transparency. I mean, think about buying a car these days as the consumer, you're so empowered with whatever you want to buy. And there's this expectation, right as as an it buyer that they have the same type of transparency and the same type of simplified pricing structure. So you've got to be able to deliver to meet that too, right? >>We do. And there's no black box anymore. Like when I first started doing this a long time ago, it was like here's a product, here's a black box, here's, you'll buy it from your partner that's gone. Like they need to know exactly what goes into that. So transparency, we talk a lot about it from a pricing standpoint. It used to be like, don't talk about pricing, right? Cause that nobody knew. We should really know what happens in there. Everybody knows what happens in there now and they should, I mean it's their money. So we need to make sure that they understand how they're spending it, why they should be spending it with one vendor versus another, and then what's going to be good for them in the longterm. So we talk a lot about that from a strategy standpoint. >>Well that's actually something that could be a competitive differentiator for cobalt. Right? Compare if there are others who are saying, you know, secret sauce, talk to sales. That can be with how quickly things change. A new these days, that transparency can be a real game changer in the customer's experience. >>It can be. And one of the, so I came from a background of competitive intelligence when I did, I worked at a firm for a long time and CII and so I was told by my boss at the time, he said, don't be the department of Rob, Rob. He's a department of facts, right? And so as a pricing person, it's the department of facts. I'll tell you as a customer, this is good, this is coming, this is where we are now. All that stuff. And it's up to you to make a decision. Like it's, you know, it's there, the facts are there. The pricing we think is structured in a way that helps you and support you, but you're free to make a decision. I don't want to force anything on you. And so that's for me and my group, that's where our transparency kind of lives. As we know customers have to buy. We know they have options. They're not always going to choose Convolt. We'd like them to, but they're not going to, and we just try to make that as easy as possible and make it a painless problem. Make it a painless solution. >>Right. Easy and painless. I'll take it now. Thank you for joining Stu and me and talking to us about what you're doing and how quickly things are iterating all the way from the technologies to the pricing structure. We appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. All right. Firstly, men and men, I N Lisa Martin, and you're watching the cube vault go in 19.

Published Date : Oct 15 2019

SUMMARY :

Go 2019 brought to you by Combolt. So lots of news coming out yesterday and today. So making that easy for our partners to get to it, One of the great things that we can do here is we can be flexible and Sanjay talked a lot about that in his main stage So we had a chat with Rob earlier talking about metallic and your how, how that sass product So the bigger you get, the more of a discount you get. that some of these key customers had and really enabling this pricing to be so transparent. So that was one of the first things we did was go out surveys, we don't have to go do all bunch of different things, so great, you should go out and buy from your partner. So is that just a different pricing, cause I didn't see that piece on the website. So from an enterprise standpoint, it's how do we get the right go to market for them, which is potentially a systems integrator So that's how we like that to go. but really the next step is going to be exactly what you said, which is how do we put those two together so we don't want to keep And then we can take that feedback and really use it to package up Because a lot of the things that we have that are priced are already aligned to how they should much leadership change, we talked about that the routes to market and things, what are some of you think I mean, we can't have the technology lag, we can't have the pricing like it has to be, So you've got to be able to deliver to meet that too, right? So we need to make sure that they understand how they're spending it, why they should be spending it with one you know, secret sauce, talk to sales. The pricing we think is structured in a way that helps you and support you, to us about what you're doing and how quickly things are iterating all the way from the technologies

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