(logo chiming) >> Presenter: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a cube conversation. >> Hi, welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. And I'm pleased to welcome back one of our cube alumni from Dell Technologies. Joining me right now is Jim Clancy, the SVP of Global Data Protection Solutions Dell. Jim, great to have you back on theCUBE. >> Hey, Lisa, thanks for having me. Looking forward to our conversation. >> Though we're nice. So we're very appropriately socially distance as you can tell California East Coast. So 2020 has been a quite a year, right? We're only about halfway through it, Jim. But some of the things that I noticed from Dell Technologies is these three big waves that Dell Technologies that we want to ride these in 2020. And those waves are Cloud, VMware, and Cyber Recovery. >> That's right. >> Talk to me about these three waves and what's happening with those currents in this pandemic time. >> Yeah, it's really interesting. So back in February we, we actually had Dave Volante had a video that we shared with our teams at FRS, which is the global sales organization meeting. And we were talking about some of the things that we're seeing from our customers and how they're picking up. And those are the key waves that our teams have been focused on. But most importantly, these are what our customers are asking us about. These are the things that are really important to them, that are allowing them to know modernize in, some of the challenges that that have really kind of taken off and gotten, quite frankly, worse in the current environment. So yeah, we, we kind of jumped on the wave that Dave kind of brought forward to us at FRS and now we've been riding those with our customers. And if you can imagine that they're pretty choppy with some of the change in the environment that we're in today, but they certainly allow someone like Dell DPS to be able to be really successful if you write them correctly. >> Alright, so let's break down those choppy waves right now from a cloud perspective. So many organizations in every industry globally, are living in a multicloud world, whether it's strategic, and some of it is or by acquisition. And they're running traditional workloads, they're running emerging workloads. How is cloud now even more important from a data protection perspective? And what is Dell Technologies doing to help them in this navigate this multicloud world? >> Yeah, well, I think a couple a couple of different things. First, is that before COVID, and before the pandemic, customers were obviously living in a multicloud world they were picking applications choosing. Is it easier, is it faster to deploy in the cloud. And now with with the situation that we're in, customers are accelerating their adoption. So if you look at some of the announcements that come out from like Microsoft. The Microsoft's cloud businesses is just exploding right now. And a lot of it has to do with our customers are not going back to the data center, they don't have access. And the world has changed that their focus so much on work from home, that the quickest way to get going is to adopt the cloud. And so we're seeing a massive uptick on that. It's good news for Dell Data Protection, because there's a couple of key things that happen. When customers take some of these applications and put them in the cloud. They certainly open themselves up for some challenges, or they certainly open up with a cost really takes off if they're not leveraging an efficient data protection solution. So the first, first and foremost customers are adopting and leveraging the cloud more and more. And then about I think the numbers around 70% of customers today are looking to optimize their cloud experience. So they want to use it more, but they definitely understand that they're spending a tremendous amount of dollars out there and they want to optimize it. So we've had an example with a customer that wanted to leverage the cloud more. But the challenge was the cost just wasn't working out for them. And 60% of that cost that they felt they needed to update was their backup and archive. And so we went in, worked with them talked about how we could optimize that environment, to the extent that we could cut their costs in half. So there's a there's definitely a need, customers are going to continue working and going to the cloud, but they need an optimized, efficient Data Protection Solution. And Dell is the only one that can deliver that. >> And speaking of cost for a second, let's pivot on that. Because these days, it seems like the financing for Data Protection Solutions is as important as protecting the data itself. So when your customers are coming to you guys say, hey help us out, we need to leverage out more but we need to do some cost effectively. What are some of the the flexible financing options or even incentives and offers that Dell Technologies is delivering to it's customers? >> Yes. So we've been offering a lot to our customers for years in terms of flexible financing, we have the best finance organization sales financing organization in the world which is our DFS group. And what we've been able to do is start to look at more about how can we offer a subscription pricing to our customers flex on demand. But then on top of that, is we announced another program, which allows customers to extend their payment terms, right? It allows them to, zero dollar finance. So as the customer are really kind of focused on preserving their cash. We are bringing to market solutions, not only with DFS, that makes it more flexible from a consumption standpoint. But we're also looking at how do we kind of bundle some of our solutions together. How do we become more aggressive and help our customers get through this because cash is king for a lot of our customers today. And if we can help them preserve that cash it gives them the flexibility, they're going to remember that. Right? They're going to, they're going to want to partner with us more, they're going to see that we're stepping up to help them get through this difficult time. So, flex on-demand subscription pricing, those are the big things that we're starting to see more and more from our customers and Dell is here to help them with stepping up and helping our customers when it comes to the financing. >> Then imagine that applies not just to the Cloud environment, but also the VMware environment. That's another wave. Talk to me a little bit more about that wave and how you're helping customers to be able to protect their VMware workloads across the entire VMware stack. >> Yeah, and just let me add one thing to, from a when I talk about the financing, it's, it's whether someone runs stuff on-prem or in the cloud. So I know you mentioned that it's it's flexible pricing options across on-prem or off-prem, it doesn't matter. For us, it's a multicloud world and wherever you want to run it, you want to have flexible consumption models. But the topic of VMware which is just an amazing opportunity that we're working together with VMware and the partnership could never be any stronger than it is today is that VMware is working and growing, in every one of our customer environments today. And as they grow, they really need a strong Data Protection Solution that's going to bring governance, that's going to have scale, that's going to have cyber, Cybersecurity on it, that's going to give them that flexibility to be able to protect these workloads. And VMware wants to continue to virtualize more and more workloads, databases. And to do that, you need to be able to say that you can protect them recover that data. So customers are really pressing VMware and VMware is coming to Dell Data Protection to say, look, we're becoming more and more critical, and they've always been critical in the data center. But we really need to partner with you to be able to deliver a full experience and offer that protection that is necessary for a customer's mission-critical environment. So VMware and Dell DPS, I mean, together, no one can compete with us. It's actually exciting where we are today. But most importantly, some of the things that we're doing moving forward. >> And one of the obvious advantages that Dell Technologies has with respect to VMware is joint VMware engineering and that deep integration. Tell me a little bit more about that, and how that is an advantage when you're talking and sell situations with your customers? >> Yeah, it's a. So I always say that probably about 18 months ago, we really started to put together this joint development start to get really tighter from a technology standpoint, because you can't just show up one day and say, Hey, I'm the best in this market, right? You really need to be building, something and get to a point and so about 18 months ago, I tell customers, that's when Dell and VMware really came together and started doing more in terms of strategic solutions. And it's paying off for us. So if you think about VMC, very critical, VMware Cloud, very very important for their future and their success. We were the first to market with that integration. If you think of Kubernetes, and the importance of Kubernetes. Moving forward, we were first integrated with that with VMware, so our engineering investments are paying off. And this is just the beginning of where that relationship is going to be. As we exit this year, our solutions together will be second to none in the market. And quite frankly, there'll be no one else left in the market that can compete with us from a technology and that's good, not just for our customers and our partners, and not just good for Dell DPS. But most importantly, that's really important to VMware right? They're scaling, they're growing tremendously. They're the leader in this market, and they want to continue to own more of a customer experience. And to do that they need a data protection partner that can help them and so we got a great relationship going right now and it's only getting better. >> That's good to hear. So in terms of data protection, let's let's dig into that third wave, which was Cyber Recovery because one of the things that we know is happening during the pandemic is that cybersecurity issues are on the rise. We know that as technology advances, and it's used for good applications. The bad actors also have access to it. I was reading from the FCC the other day that just since March, there are about 1000 new domain names registered every day with COVID-19. There's malware that's easily dropped on a suspecting persons a endpoint because maybe it has a really entirely enticing title from the World Health Organization. What are you seeing in your customer environments with respect to Cyber Recovery? And is it is security now even more of an important factor given that this work from home situation is probably going to continue for some businesses for quite some time? >> Yeah, I think, our customers have a lot of different challenges now with with COVID-19. And one of them was how do you get your workforce working remotely. And sometimes you have to cut corners to get that done. And what that does is open you up for more challenges, more security breaches. And on top of that, is we're seeing the I call them the bad guys, the bad guys are out there right now attacking our customers more than they ever had. So, before COVID-19 ransomware was a big problem. And now it's, it's even worse. And so I think the bad guys see that they have an opportunity to go out there and really hurt some of these companies hold them, hold them for ransom, get some money from them, which is very unfortunate, but at the same time, that's the reality that we're living in. So before COVID-19, we had a massive customer acceptance, so looking at what we delivered from a Cyber Recovery Solution. And now since COVID-19, is about a 4,000% increase in ransomware attacks, we're seeing every one of our customers really starting to adopt the Cyber Recovery Vault that we delivered to the market today. Now we it's this isn't something new, right? We we've been building on this since about 2016. And our solution has gotten better and better and better, to now where absolutely, we've always been the leader in this market. But now we have such an incredible lead with our customers in terms of how we can help them in the challenges that are exacerbating in their install base. We're really in the right place at the right time. It's unfortunate for our customers, but at the same time, they have to protect their assets. They always have to be able to recover their their their assets or the business won't continue. So it's an unfortunate thing for them, but Dell is here to help take care of one of these problems that they have which is protecting their mission-critical assets. >> Right. And this mission-critical assets are on devices. They're in Cloud applications like office 365, or Salesforce business-critical, revenue-critical data. They're in a data center, they're in VMs. How are you helping customers kind of evaluate if they're in a situation now where they realize maybe we haven't put the emphasis into data protection that we need to? How do you help a customer sort of stack rank and prioritize knowing that the threat vectors are fairly holistic and get a solution from Dell Technologies implemented, and securing them as fast as possible? >> Yeah, it's a good it's a good question. It's kind of a hard one to answer because our customers have data everywhere. So it's a hard one for our customers to kind of figure it out. But what we can do is we can start in different places for them so we can work with them on assets that things that absolutely for them to restart their business, we have a solution that allows them or a way that we say look for you to get your business back up and running there's a critical rebuild there's things that absolutely need to be able to lay down your foundation before you even consider dropping assets, or any applications back out there. So that's like a first step of hey, let's at least size out how you get your critical rebuild up and running. But then there's other companies like big banks that say, well, I need all my customer information no matter what, and I need to recover that. So it's it can get a little complicated. Sometimes we have customers, because they have to figure out what assets they want to put in the vault and how do they want to recover that data. And what's the RPO RTO time but for us, we can work with them and say here's the critical rebuild. Here's the first step of getting your information back from the bad guys or back from wherever you're storing it today. But then on top of that, we can start to expand with them. And they can start to protect more and more things and add to the ball more and more the critical applications that they have out there. And, no one understands this better than us. And so it's good because we can help our clients size where they are today, we can help take a snapshot of their environment today. And then we can recommend what we think is step one, and depending on their appetite, depending on their urgency, we could take them from step one to step done, right? We can, we can cover all their assets, so we can start with their mission-critical and move down to other applications. So the good news for our customers, we have the only secure vault in the market. And we also have the expertise and the people to be able to help them understand how they can get going. >> Last question, Jim, for you in terms of the choices of the technologies that Dell Technologies offers to your customers, Dell has been the leader in the purpose-built backup of plan market. Since IDC invented that category, but the market is bifurcating, and we're seeing Integrated Data Protection Appliances IDPA, even though it's a smaller term, that market is growing faster. Talk to me about the different choices of technologies that you deliver to your customers? >> Yeah, I guess there's a couple ways to look at there's a traditional way of a customer building out their solution and that would be the traditional purpose-built backup appliance Data Domain with our software. And so they would kind of build that build on their own, they put the software in the hardware together, and that would be their solution. What we are seeing more and more is that customers are looking for that integrated appliance. And I'm happy to say that, our IDPA solution, which was a little bit behind getting to the market is now right in the center of the market and picking share right? We are easily outgrowing the market. This is something that we're putting our shoulder behind. We're pushing really high with our customers. Our customers are extremely happy. So thank you to the engineering team, the services team, the product management team that, really helped us get from where we were, say three years ago to where we are now. Now our customers are really pushing for that integrated experience, because they're flying to quality. There's a flight to quality right now, someone that might have multiple backup applications might have multiple hardware solutions. They're trying to get to one vendor, they're trying to get to one partner, they are trying to make this a simpler experience. And so from Dell, because we cover all the use cases that our customers have out there, they're looking at us as that one provider, that one vendor that can deliver on the full experience across their whole environment, not just maybe the VMware solution, maybe not just a couple of databases, maybe not just their Cloud applications. They want a vendor that can provide solutions. Across all of their workloads across all of their use cases, and no matter where the data sits in a remote office, on-prem in a data center or in the cloud, and that's where IDPA comes in, we can deliver a solution that covers all customers use cases, with the same experience from Dell, which is second to none. So that's where IDPA is exciting. That's where IDPA is growing up place in the market. And that's where teams have to really spend time helping customers understand how they can consolidate down to one vendor, which is Dell, and be able to cover all of their requirements. So it's pretty exciting time on what we're delivering from an IDPA standpoint. And we are clearly taking share on that market right now. >> Well Jim, thank you for joining me on theCUBE today talking about those three waves, Cloud, VMware, Cyber Recovery and how Dell is really helping your customers rapidly pivot in these turbulent waters to capitalize on some of the new opportunities that are clearly there, we appreciate your time, Jim. >> Yeah, thanks for having me and we're going to continue to ride the waves and be really successful. >> All right, for Jim Clancy, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBES conversation with Dell Technologies. (soft music)

>> Announcer: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. It's theCUBE's coverage here in Miami Beach, Florida at the Fontainebleau Hotel for Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019's inaugural event with cyber protection, the new category that's emerging. It's been really exciting, it's a platform to really protect the data, protect cyber. Data protection's evolving to cyber protection. This is part of the Cloud 2.0 coverage that we've been covering on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. Over the past year we're seeing more and more modernization of IT and systems. We're here with Ryan Davis, director of enterprise sales for Acronis. He's out on the front lines. This company has a great platform and a great field team out pushing the envelope, educating customers, having great success. I thought it would be great to have you on. Ryan, welcome to theCUBE. >> Ryan: Thank you for having me. >> So one of the things that I've observed and noticed with you guys is that you have a very strong field customer presence, you guys do a great job across the board on a direct touch basis, but also a huge channel operation, so you guys sell a lot through the channel, which is all good stuff, but you still got to talk to the big companies, still got to go to the large enterprises where you're having success. So you're doing that. What are some of the things that you're seeing when you're out pitching clients on Acronis, what are some of the concerns that you're hearing, what are the patterns, what's going on in the general broader market that's teasing out the Acronis value proposition? >> Sure, absolutely. So really where a lot of the focus and a lot of the attention is is on the edge. Five years ago, all the data was generated, produced, and analyzed in the core, in the data centers, whereas now, with the IoT devices, the proliferation of smart devices generating the data, they can't send it all to one central location. So networks are springing up out there in a distributed manner, and they have to be able to secure those smart devices and those edge networks. And that's where Acronis has a really compelling story, especially for enterprise. Because while they have a lot of consistency in the core, there's a lot of diversity on the edge. So it creates challenges for their IT teams to be able to manage it. So we can work with their field teams to provide a platform that can actually secure the devices in place and then protect them as well. >> So what's the pitch? Give us the pitch on that problem that you've just addressed, because that is legit. The edge is springing up, you're seen more and more edge cases and there's the outer edges, wearables, right? But the industrial edge, the company's edge, where you guys have a solution, that's challenging. The surface area for attacks are high, you have data as a challenge, you move compute to the data, you move data across the network, these are all costs, so costs are going up too. So with that problem, what is the pitch? >> Sure, well it really depends on who you're talking to, but there's two levels to it, right? So when you're talking industrial networks, the cost of downtime is huge, you know? You have 1,200 employees, at an automotive plant and you have a key industrial controller goes down, and that plant stops production, the cost is enormous. So at the plant level, they feel that pain, so they recognize the need for disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities. But when you start moving up a level at the executive level, it's what's really compelling and what's sexy for them. And that's really enabling digital transformation. And so I mentioned the concept of diversity a little bit earlier today. It's really hard for IT teams to do things on the edge when they may have 20,000, 40,000 edge devices that are going to run from NT, XP up to the most modern operating systems. It's difficult to implement a solution that's going to touch all of those devices. And backup and disaster recovery is critical for that, because if you're going to touch that many devices, you need the rollback capability. So being able to communicate a path forward to digital transformation on the edge is what is really exciting a lot of our executive customers. >> All right, so pretend I'm a customer for a minute, I'm like, hey Ryan, so hey, love the pitch, but I had XYZ data recovery company just came in earlier, they said they got an amazing platform. Why are you different, why should I not go with them? Why should I go with you? >> Sure, absolutely. Well all the competing vendors, all they know is the data center, right? So Acronis, part of our unique value proposition is not just the technology, it's really people, processes, and technology. So our experience working with industrial companies, pharmaceutical companies, working in compliant GXP, NERC CIP, this allowed us to develop expertise to come in not just with our product and the tech, but with people that know their environments and processes for successful implementation that other vendors can't bring. And our relationship with key automation vendors, we have our partners Honeywell, Emerson that embed our product, these are leading automation vendors that touch thousands of enterprises, and again, those experiences give us an understanding of these environments that other companies don't have. >> All right, so now I can come back and say, okay, well Ryan, you know, I like what you're saying, but I don't want to boil the ocean over. I don't see a path from what you're saying to execution. How can you help me figure this out? What do you offer me, as a client, if I'm the client, how do I get started? Is there a methodology, land, adopt, expand, how do you guys do that? >> Absolutely. Well, again, every customer's going to be different, right? But we don't like to boil the ocean either. What we're talking about is a path to digital transformation. We're not talking about the end result, right? So the first piece, the land, is always backup, right? When you backup the system, that provides a rollback mechanism so that provides an opportunity for you to do a lot more things with the computer. But the first piece is always just an assessment. You have to do an assessment, take stock of what you have, and Acronis is building technologies around discovery to help customers wrap their arms around these environments to make decisions on what they should do. >> So what's in it for me when I hear a platform, I hear about maybe complexity, is the platform really going to be the silver bullet? How do you manage that concern? >> Sure, sure. Well, most enterprises have at least five to seven different data protection solutions out there. So when you start talking about platform, you start talking kind of jargon words like unifying, consolidating their data protection suite. And that's really what Acronis is trying to do but not just in backup, but also offering more services through a single platform, so reducing the overall stack of tools that they're using to manage these environments. And again, going back to the edge, they don't have their big IT team that is versed in managing complex applications, right? You have controls engineers, plant engineers, scientists, that are interacting with these devices just enough to be dangerous. Think of it like a mechanic, so he's been working on cars his whole life, is very familiar with carburetors and brakes but now he gets a Tesla that's got sensors all over the place, and infotainment systems that run diagnostics, that doesn't make him an expert in that computer. So what Acronis is trying to do is provide you an easy-to-use platform that can solve multiple problems so that way a non-IT expert can service their compute infrastructure on the edge. >> So you guys have a good story for the edge. Also one story that's coming up here is ransomware. >> Correct. >> Ransomware is one of those disruptions that wasn't factored into the design of, you know, old-school legacy data protection and recovery systems. Those disruptions were hurricane, floods, some sort of mechanical failure, not a logical vector, in this case, security, which is going up high frequency. More and more every day, ransomware, malware, ZeroDay, others, incidents are on the rise. So more disruption. >> Correct. >> You guys are coming from that angle. >> Well, we're building security first into the platform. And that's a pivot that we made over the last 12 to 24 months. The first piece of that has already been released, which is called Active Protection, which is a module that actually monitors for changes and can prevent unauthorized changes to the file system like encryption. And so we're the only backup application that creates that proactive layer of protection. Everybody else is only going to be able to recover and be reactive. So we're trying to create a layered approach there and improve our customer security posture through an agent that's-- They would need to do the backup anyways. >> All right, so final track I want to chat with you about is take us through the real-life use case of an ideal sales process motion that encapsulates this modern era challenges and opportunities. You don't have to name the customer's name, you can use an anonymized case, but take use through what is a typical motion for you guys where you're successful, and what does it look like? >> Sure, absolutely. So it's pretty consistent, and I would say a pretty simple sales motion. The first piece is you have to do an assessment and a basic inventory in terms of what platforms are you going to have out there, and then, you're going to assess the sites that you have 'cause you need to create a deployment plan. And edge environments, it's not like the data center where you're just going to login to SCCM and push this out to your thousands of devices. They got to go to 40, 60 different plants. So you have to build, typically, a 12-month deployment plan where you're going to hit all of these different sites, build change windows, build maintenance windows. But before you can get to that, we do a POC on-site, where you touch, make sure that you have compatibility with the automation vendors, make sure you have compatibility with these networks, which are, again, very diverse and customized at each plant. Once you have a validated deployment process, you build out a timeline where you go site to site to site to deploy it. >> Take us through a POC. What does that look like, what's a typical POC for you guys? >> Sure, it's very simple based on what the ultimate objectives are. Most of our customers on the edge are primarily interested in business continuity, which would be backup, system recovery, application restore, right? On the edge it's not as much about the data, it's about securing the application that's performing the work, and so we protect the system, allow them to roll it back, once you validate that on the different platforms that they have, they're ready to move forward. >> And workloads are key criteria in all of this, that's a key factor. >> Absolutely, distributed control systems, R and D systems, lab systems, they have a lot of different types of applications you're not going to see in the data center, and we just want to get validated. >> John: So you hit your number? >> Absolutely, every year! (laughs) >> Over quota? >> Every year! >> All right. Ryan, thanks for coming on and sharing stories from the field, really appreciate it. >> Appreciate it, have a great one. >> CUBE Coverage here in Miami Beach, not a bad venue for a conference. This is the first conference that Acronis is putting on around cyber protection, Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019. Cyber protection new category emerging from the data protection world, this is the big story here. TheCUBE's covering two days, we'll be back with more after this short break. (electronic music)