from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host David on tape hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the cube insights powered by ETR this week cisco CEO Chuck Robbins has invited a number of analysts and press to San Francisco for an event to talk about the future of Cisco and no doubt the role of the company in the next decade and I will be there so in this breaking analysis I thought that I'd focus on Cisco and its prospects in this era of next-generation cloud of course last week we attended AWS reinvent and you can catch all our coverage on the cube net but the key takeaways are that we're entering a new era of cloud that is heavily emphasized emphasizing getting more value out of data with machine intelligence and things like sage maker now AWS was heavily focused on this notion of transformation putting forth the strong case that enterprises have to transform not just incrementally it was a clear message that CEOs really have to lead and AWS are striking directly at the heart of what a device had Andy Jesse calls the old guard namely IBM Dell Oracle HPE and many others including of course Cisco saying that you can't just transform incremental e CEOs you have to transform whole house so today I want to look at six areas and I'm showing them here on this on this slide but the first thing I want to do is just review the overall spending climate and then what I want to do is discuss Cisco in the context of industry leadership playing on Jesse's themes and then you know we'll look at the spending momentum in the latest ETR survey for those leaders next thing I want to do is I'm going to talk about the cloud and it's impacting everyone and I want to take a look specifically at how it's impacting Cisco and how Cisco is faring in the face of competent from the public cloud which we've talked about a lot across a number of vendors we're then going to look at Cisco's business overall from a spending perspective and then I'll wrap with some some comments on what I see is opportunities for Cisco like edge I want to talk specifically about multi cloud and of course cloud in general so let's start drilling into the spending climate overall now remember the EGR data tells us that spending on balance is reverting to pre 2018 levels but it's not falling off the cliff buyers member are narrowing their experimentation on new technologies and they're placing more focused bets as part of the digital transformations we're also seeing more replacements of redundant systems that buyers were running in parallel as a hedge on their bets and that is affecting overall spending and it's somewhat compressing spending so with that as a backdrop let's look at some of the the latest data from ETR and focus on the leaders from the latest survey so what I'm showing here is data from ETRS October 2019 Syria one thousand three hundred and thirty six IT buyers who responded and I've selected market share as the metric across all sectors as you can see here in number eight now remember market share is a measure of pervasiveness and it's calculated by dividing the total vendor Mensch mentions divided by the sector total so now the remember the ETR methodology allows for multiple responses by a vendor so you can see in the y-axis there can be more than a hundred percent okay because of those multiple responders respondents now note that Microsoft Cisco Oracle AWS and IBM have the highest shared ends or mentions and you can see the pervasiveness of Microsoft and its prominence which is not surprising but Cisco Oracle and IBM generally have held from again pervasiveness standpoint pretty well as you can see the steady rise as well in AWS is market share so cisco really the bottom line there is cisco is a clear leader in this industry and it's maintaining its leadership position and you can of course on that chart you can see the others who really didn't make the top five but they're prominently you know mentioned with the shared ends that's VMware Salesforce Adobe's up there and of course Dell EMC is the you know 90 to 100 billion dollar company now let's take a look specifically at spending momentum you know what we're showing here in this chart is the exact same cut except we've changed the metric from market share to net score now remember net score is a measure of spending momentum that's calculated by essentially subtracting the percent of customers that are spending less in a given survey from those that are spending more and that's the net score and you can see the picture changes pretty dramatically AWS jumps up to the top spot with a 62% you know net score over taking Microsoft but then look at Cisco it's very strong with the 36 about 34 percent net score you know not nearly as high as AWS and Microsoft but very respectable and holding you know fairly strongly and notably ahead of IBM and Oracle which are both in the red you see that red area which signals caution now what I want to do is address the question of how is the cloud affecting Cisco's business you've seen me do this with a number of other vendors let's drill into what it means for Cisco so if you've been following these breaking analysis segments you know we've been reporting that the the pace at which the cloud is eating away at a traditional on-prem data data data center business continues now here's a quote from an IT Pro that summarizes the situation for networking in general and then we'll come back and specifically talk about Cisco he says or she says as we migrate the data centers to AWS networking costs will decline over three years this is a director of tech strategy for a large telco so the question I have is does the et et our data back this up let's take a look so what this chart shows is a cut of cloud spenders there are 818 in the latest ETR survey and the net score within those accounts specifically for Cisco so it's spenders on AWS asier and Google cloud and you can see the steady decline post 2010 for Cisco so just as I've reported for Dell EMC HPE Oracle and others you can see that the clouds steady march continues to challenge the on-prem suppliers so each of these companies has really got to figure out how to respond now in the case of Cisco it's moving from owning the network market to really participating in the public cloud and interconnecting clouds so we've seen Cisco make many acquisitions that can allow them to work with AWS for example app D which is application performance management VIP teller which is SD win clicker which is orchestration duo in cloud security and then you've seen bets on kubernetes which are going to help them span hybrid you know as well you've seen them make partnerships with the leading cloud some suppliers and I'll make some comments later on when I talk about multi cloud so let's look at how these diversification moves have impacted Cisco overall because they've not sat still you can see that in this chart what it shows is Cisco's market share across all of its businesses including analytics security telephony and of course core networking but also servers storage video conferencing and virtualization so the point is that by diversifying its business the company has expanded its Tam its total available market and as I showed you before has maintained a leadership position in the data center is measured by market share now here's a deeper sector analysis of Cisco's business by various sectors and what we're showing here is Cisco's business across a number of sectors comparing the October 18 survey with July 19 and the October 19 surveys so this is net score view and you can see across all customers that Cisco's second-half net score for these sectors which are in the green are showing strong momentum relative to a year ago so here you go Meraki which includes Cisco's wireless business its telephony business parts of its security business core Cisco Networking they're all showing strength now parts of its security portfolio like Open DNS and Sourcefire which is intrusion detection which Cisco bought about six years ago and some at Cisco's voice and video assets are showing slower momentum but Cisco's overall spending momentum is holding on pretty well all right let me talk a moment about some of Cisco's opportunities they're trying to transform into more of a software company with assets like duo app dynamics and they want to focus less on selling boxes and ports and more on licenses and subscriptions so it's also got its got to use software also to unify its many platforms so I want to talk about for a moment about multi cloud hot new area right everybody's talking about it cisco recently made some organizational moves to take its separate cloud group and better align it with Cisco's core operations in a new group that they call cloud strategy and compute now cisco competes in multi cloud with vmware IBM curves Red Hat Microsoft and Google even though they partner with Microsoft and Google so here's some ETR data that looks at key Cloud sectors including the three did I pulled out cloud computing container orchestration and container platforms so these are buyers spending on these three areas so there's 937 in the latest survey you can't see that and because I'm hiding it with the pulldown but trust me but you can see the big players with spending momentum and while cisco doesn't you know show the momentum of an azure or a red hat or even a Google it's in that multi cloud game and my my premise is that cisco is coming at this opportunity from its strengths and networking and it's got more than a fighting chance why because cisco is in my view in the position to connect multiple clouds to on-prem and convince buyers that cisco is the best partner to make networks higher performance more secure and more cost-effective than the competition now let me wrap with some critical comments and then i'll end up on an opportunity with with some comments on edge so the first thing I want to say is well Cisco is dominant in a space it's missed a number of opportunities VMware has beaten Cisco to the punch in the initial move of course to virtual machines and then the nice Sara acquisition NSX as I've shown before is clearly has strong momentum in the market and is really eating into Cisco's core business Cisco's ACI does okay but it's definitely a sore spot Francisco and this represents a crack in the companies Armour containers the move to cloud native architectures is mostly a move to public cloud so it's a replacement or a displacement more so than a head-to-head competition that hurts Cisco here is John Fourier says you have you have cloud native and if you take the T out of cloud native you have cloud naive so cisco along with others must not beat cloud naive rather it has to remain relevant in the cloud as we discussed earlier in the multi cloud discussion now Cisco they were the king of converged infrastructure if you remember with the first wave of Vblock along with the Flex pod from NetApp and it you know changed the server game and drove UCS adoption and then guys like IBM and pure jumped in Cisco really became the standard now well hyper-converged infrastructure didn't really displace Cisco Networking you know Dell VMware with it with VX rail and Nutanix as well as HPE who's in the third position are posing a challenge that's so cisco cisco they everything they really don't play in the lucrative high margin external storage business but there's some challenges there that from a tam standpoint but I don't worry so much about that because despite all the rumors over the years specifically in storage that Cisco is going to buy a storage company and I think there are better opportunities in soft where in the end the edge and as I've said before storage right now is kind of on the back burner it's not it's a very difficult market for a company like Cisco to to enter so I want to talk more about the edge because they think it's a way better opportunity for Cisco Cisco among all the legacy tech vendors and my view could really compete for the edge and the reason I say this is because Cisco is the only legacy player in my opinion that is a solid solid developer strategy and it's because of dev net dev net is the initiative to make all Cisco products programmable we talk a lot about the API economy and infrastructure of code as code and what Cisco is doing is they're taking Cisco certified engineers like CC IES and all these people that they've trained over the years huge number of IT pros and they're retraining them and teaching them how to code on Cisco products to create new use cases new workloads and new applications specifically at the edge and Cisco products are designed to be programmable so they have a developer play and I've always said the edge is going to be won by developers this is why frankly I was so excited last week at reinvent about AWS outpost and the move they're making at the edge because they're essentially bringing their stack to the edge and making it programmable IBM failed to do this with bluemix they couldn't attract developers they they had to go by Red Hat for thirty four billion dollars you know Dell MC they have VMware and they have an opportunity with pivotal but that's got to come together they currently have very little developer synergy in my view specifically with Dell Hardware at least that I can see and there seems to be little or no effort to retrain storage admins and VM admins in the same way that cisco is is doing this with CC IES HPE essentially I see them like Dallin away throwing server boxes over the fence to the edge you know versus really attracting developers to identify sort of new workload new use cases so I like Cisco strategy in this regard and it's something that we're gonna continue to watch very closely and probe this week with Chuck Robbins okay this is date Volante sounding out from this episode of the cube insights powered by ETR thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering del Technologies. World twenty nineteen, brought to you by Del Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello. Welcome back to the Cube. At least a market with Dave Alonso. We are at Del Technologies World. This is our third day of coverage. As John has been saying, This is a cannon double cannon of Q content. We are pleased to welcome back a couple of alumni to keep. We've got Beth failing Presidents data Protection division from Italians. It's great to have you back. And Sherrod Rastogi also welcome back S VP of data protection product management Guys, Lots of news. The last three days, fifteen thousand or so people. Lot of partners. We've been hearing nothing but tremendous amount of positivity and also appreciation from your customers and partners for all of this collaboration within the Della Technologies company with partners. Some of the news, though, that you were on the keynote stage give us some anecdotes that you've heard from customers and partners the last few days about where Del Technologies is going. >> Yeah, I'm happy too. And you know, a big announcements this week. We're a power protect software and the power protect extra hundred appliance. And what we're hearing from customers is this is exactly what we needed to do because the demands on data protection are changing with more more. Brooke look being distributed with data being more more important and with the risks being more more prevalent that they were looking for us to take a bold step and introduce this next generation software to find platform. And so the feedback you're getting is you've done what you needed to do, and they're looking forward to learning more. >> So I wonder if we could sort of explore a little bit this concept of data management. So data management lead needs different things to different people. Sure, if your database person maybe maybe different from a person who's doing data protection, what does it mean in a data protection context? I think >> first of all, you know, having visibility off your data all across your infrastructure that resides in the edge. The court a cloud across multiple applications in physical virtual environments, right? So having full facility that I think is one component second is not the ability to move the data across seamlessly across any socially target but it is on track in the cloud. Robert Cloud. I think that sort of a second element, the third and probably the most important is how do you actually get value from the data, right? Already, Actually, not only unable to protect it, but make it available at the right time, right place for the right application and be able to use it because, as you know, data is the fuel of the modern visual economy. On making it available is really, really critical. And that to me. So you're combining all of that is what I would consider it at management to be. >> So double click on that. I mean, could you be more specific about the attributes of, you know, a modern data management system? So I >> would say, you know, any modern technology may be modular FBI driven, you know, it really sort of the automate scale performance coverage. All those attributes, I think are very important for any more than data protection product and be able to meet the needs of our customers. You know, high scale hi coverage and rapidly, >> and that gives you a cloud like experience presumably allows you to scale out many a performance. I've seen some of the conversations that start associating with that or scale in place Bath. You talked about that? Yeah, Well, yeah. I want to explore a little bit about your business because you know who knew? Who would have predicted a few years ago? The data protection would always because all of a sudden become this hot space veces diving in hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. And of course, you're the biggest player. So everybody wants a piece of your hide. And so and you got a portfolio. It goes back up llegado days. They have amar stuff data, domaine et cetera, et cetera. She had a sort of make sure that that was logical for your customers. Protect those customers that have made investment of you, but also shoma roadmap. Jeff Clark comes in, says, Okay, we're going to simplify, you know, marching orders. Your business in a very rapid time has transformed. Can you talk about that? What's what's taking place in your business? >> Absolutely, David, it's so interesting even comparing last year to this year, right? We're at this pivot point where we're building on the legacy of Trust and I T and knowledge and experience that we have. But we're now setting the foundation to be number one and data protection and data management for the next ten years. Introducing this new set of products were able to bring a customer's forward. We call it the path to power. So in addition to that, bring new customers into the family. We're looking for all those aspects of modern day to management, with simplicity, with multi cloud, with automation and with the new use cases where it's more than just back up. It's CCD are its analytics. It's testing toe. It's validation. So this is whole spectrum of things that we can expand into now that we have this new platform. It's really exciting. >> It is exciting. And yesterday the under Armour video was very cool, and one of the things that they set in there is that there they're leveraging data for brand reputation. I mean, they've got under Armour has incredible brand ambassadors Tom Brady, Steph Curry. But looking at it as not just a business ever. But this is actually tied to our brand reputation, did. It is so incredibly pivotal to the lifeblood of a business. It has to be protected. >> Yeah, and that's a big theme. And you probably something too. But, you know, in this day and time data is no longer something that maybe people in I'd worry about write It is now the lifeblood of most of our customers, corporations and at the same time list, like the threat of malware are very prevalent. And so things like what we've done with cyber recovery always were working with our customers to protect their data. In a survey we just did. With twenty two hundred I t professionals, twenty eight percent of them had had some data loss in the last twelve months. So the risk of data loss is real. And we take our responsibility very seriously to help our customers protect from that risk. >> So I like this message to any source. Any target, any s l a. I would I would had any workload and because on so talk about you're differentiation in the marketplace, that would be great, because it's hard sometimes, you know, squint through all the marketing. And so what makes you guys different specifically thinking >> about Delhi emcee Indiana production historically has its strength in dealing with complex work clothes at high scale, with high performance on having a wide coverage of work has been a strength and actually had very low cost, very efficient, right? So that string we sort of carry on into the future. And what we're adding on is I would say that the next degree off simplification and ease off ease off, install, upgrade use. Making those work was very, very simple, right? So I think that's another dimension. We are God. We're adding our dimension, what we call multi dimensional scale, which is both scale up and scale out the same time when you actually add more notes and more cubes, you are not only capacity, but he also improved performance, right? That's it, architecturally, a fundamentally different way in Harvey approach it. So I think that's an element of innovation, and I think on performance we're introducing our first all flash off Lions industry first, So we're super excited about that. And so I think it just helped our customers in terms of restore interactions store Do those work was a lot faster. Those are some other elements in which we continue innovating. >> That's great. Yeah, so you talk about the power protect X four hundred, which is your flesh. John Rose said something on stage. Beth, I want to ask you, Teo, sort of add some color. Hey, said this is not just secondary storage. It's protected. Managed infrastructure, >> huh? That's great face. >> What? What did he mean by that? And what should we take away? >> I mean, it shows how we're broadening the use cases that these products can help satisfy. And so much of what we're talking about Del Technologies is a simplified infrastructure across the board, not thinking about just point products, but giving the customer that experience of a seamless extendable infrastructure. So protected managed infrastructure means that your infrastructure, something you have, can confidence it's protected and that you also are not just dealing with all of these pieces and parts. But I can think of it has a managed whole. I think that that helps out and talk to John about that. But that's what I take away from what he's saying. >> If I can just add to that, I would say Like, you know, data management is sort of the perfect glue across the whole del technology infrastructure, but a server storage bm We're, you know, eighty, you know, infrastructure pivotal, right? Data management data productions are off, cuts across everything, and we can bring everything together. So >> I would like to add something to that if I make it. You know Beth on sure Art as well. Data protection Backup was always OK. We gotta back it up. Who's gonna? Okay, Bump bolted on. And what's happening is the lines are blurring. Primary storage, secondary storage. You're seeing back up in the e r. Use cases. You talked about analytics and, you know, so many new emerging. That's why it is so exciting. And so because those lines are blurring, you get more value out of the system. It goes beyond just insurance. And that means this could be a lot of money being made here >> if there is. And it is also a really important need, write one thing that we haven't touched on. But I also think it's really important is with our protect we're helping combine self service with centralized governance. So what I mean by that is, if you're a V a madman or Oracle Adnan or a sequel admin, you know, you could have control over protecting your data, but we pair that with a single, you know, governance model. So if I'm the person is responsible for my company's entire, you know, data set, I can still make sure that everything's happening is it should be. And there are no anomalies, so we're really making it as easy as possible, for the business is within our customers to protect and manage their data but not making it the Wild West. Because somebody in the end is accountable for saying I know where all the data is, and I know it's protected, so it's having both of those users. >> So as data protection has really elevated, the stay was saying to become its way beyond an insurance policy. This is absolutely table stakes because data has so much value and so much value that organisations haven't even been able to extract it right, how the conversation within the customer base changed. It's not just to the admin girl or guy anymore. Rightness is Are you saying this really leveled up Tio? Maybe a senior level C level challenge as our business imperative that the state of must be protected and readily accessible at any time. Who are you talking to? >> So answer quickly that I lied to you when we're talking to the eye to decision makers. So seo no, that level data protection strategy has become something that they have in their priority list, right? It's not really in any way what it was maybe five or ten years ago. Now it's something that there's cord of what they hold as their responsibilities, executives and and that's great. It's great to have those kind of conversations because it's strategic. >> Another conversation. Just an example from yesterday, while speaking with one of the chief architects at a major company, they're really talking about cyber security on How do you use Extend? You know what we offer into a full solution across their technology. Do address, you know, doesn't use case right. So I think it's expanding beyond just back up and protection to true protection off the data. Very most mission critical data is available and not just protected. They also want to talk about how can you recover that real quickly in very quick time, so that your operation, when you do have that cyber, if and when you have that attack So I think it's just expanding toe touch. A lot more customers, I would say Our people buying, buying decision makers across >> so that when I talk to people in division I sense a renewed energy. A renewed focus. I mean, GMC before Del. Tell'Em Steve always been really good. Taking engineering resource is to getting products out to the market. But But I I see again more focused effort here and one of the exam to keep pushing on. Is this notion of cloud model so beyond? Just okay, there's a target. How do we now get to that? You know, data protection is a service small. I know that you're working toward that. I know it's, you know, a lot of it's It's early days there, but you've got to be a leader in that, I presume. So. I want to keep watching that pushing that I won if you guys could comment on what coming >> on, both things that you said. First of all, there's absolutely a level of excitement and focus and confidence in what we're doing in the product groups. I'm really changing the way we're developing software so that we have a new customer value coming out every quarter. And they were having clarity between the top level strategies. White downs, what individual engineers are working on. So that's fun and excited because we're truly transforming the way we're developing Product says point one. And the second one, absolutely here, that theme throughout all of what we're talking about. You heard a nun day one, No, giving people that cloud that experience infrastructure has a service which certainly includes data management and data protection so they can consume it in a way that fit step business that scales with business That's automated, that doesn't require, you know, massive manual steps and is more what people expect today was a cloud like experience, even for them on from data centers. Clearly, that's where we're moving. And this one more point is you know, people really want automation they don't wanna have to think about. Did I remember to protect everything? They want the system to do that for them. So you'LL see more of that from us as well. You know how we helping them with machine learning? An A I an automation so they can have confidence that all of the assets are protected even if they haven't remember to do it all. >> I mean, I just add to it. I've bean at Delhi emcee for about a year. >> It >> has been a fantastic journey waiting. It's exciting. It's been awesome. Awesome experience. I totally see the >> focus. And I think that renewed focus the cloud like a model and the innovation. They all go hand in hand because the old waterfall model of okay, we're gonna develop properties shipment every year, eighteen months. Whatever it is that doesn't fly anymore. People want innovations, and now they want to push code every day. Right? So our baby, every quarter at least. >> Yeah. Yeah. Facing new energy to the engineers as well. >> So I mean, I understand that many of your team, if not your entire engineering team, has been trained in agile. Is that my getting it right? Is that right? >> Yeah, yeah, >> not just not just like internal train. You guys brought in outside people and really took him through some formal training. Right >> way have in multiple different kinds of training. And we have lots of communications inside to get people coaching. And it's not just a process book that we're following its really a different way of thinking about how you bring customer value in small increments, staying in a good known stay and making sure that we're maximizing our engineering capacity. >> That's big. And I wish we had more time cause that's cultural train. Yeah, yeah, that you guys are really driving. And we also didn't have time to touch on partners, but it can imagine there's a lot of excitement and your huge partner community about what you guys are doing This. Congratulations on all the announcement is gonna have to have you back because there's just so much more to dig into. But back Sherrod, Thank you for joining David me this afternoon on the you go. >> Thank you so much >> for our pleasure. For Dave Volonte and Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube live from Day three of Del Technologies, World twenty nineteen on the Cube. Thanks for watching

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante of theCUBE on our second day of wall-to-wall coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019, and we're welcoming one our guests back to theCUBE. We've got Rüya Barrett, VP of product marketing from the Data Protection Division. Rüya, it's great to have you back on the program. >> Great to be here, thank you for having us. >> And from Under Armor, a brand everybody knows, Nick Hennessy, Senior Manager, Compute and Storage. Nick, welcome, it's great to have you here. >> Great, thank you guys very much. >> So Rüya, we'll start with you. We've had, this is, you can hear all the energy behind us. And if you can hear dogs barking, by the way, that's normal. We've got some dogs next to our-- Lots of energy yesterday and today. Everything about data as this asset, and I think Michael said yesterday, that it's inexhaustible. You guys did an interesting recent survey with over 2,000 IT decision makers. With respect to data and getting their hands on it, what are some of the really interesting things that you've learned about that? >> Yeah, there were some really great takeaways. Great question. One, it's not a surprise to anyone, People have more data than ever to manage. There was over 586% growth in the last two years in terms of how much data on the average customers are managing. So that's a given, not a big surprise. One of the key things that we saw was that they value data. These people surveyed value data more than ever. So it was 96% value data more than they ever did, and 36% of them have already started monetizing data. So it's critical for accounts now, and one of the issues that they brought up for not being able to recover data, around data protection, was that if they can't recover data, they have new concerns now. Loss of opportunity, loss of bringing products to market, loss of competitive advantage, which are issues that we have never heard before because this is the third time we did the survey. We did it first in 2014, 2016, and we just did the 2018 survey. So those were some of the key really big takeaways for me from that survey that we did. >> So if they value it, they've got to protect it. >> Yeah. >> Alright, so Nick, Under Armour, a brand I mentioned everybody knows and wears. You guys have a great brand reputation. And you have some great brand ambassadors. I've got to mention Steph Curry. We have established Nick as a Lakers fan. And I have to point out, Dave, that you're wearing a Warriors colored tie today. Just got to say. >> I won't be if the Celtics make it to the finals though. >> But also Tom Brady's a brand ambassador. We've got Tommy boy covered, Lindsey Vonn. So you've got this great brand of reputation. How does Under Armour, to Rüya's point, value that data and leverage that data to keep and grow that brand reputation? >> Well, you know one of the things about data is, at Under Armour, we call the data is the new gold. So to us, it's very important, especially to our consumers, stuff that we're gathering at the retail stores, and kind of tracking all that stuff. So in order for us to protect that data, we're using Dell Technologies as sweeter products. And it's been working out great for us. >> So paint a picture, Nick, what are you protecting? What's the infrastructure look like, the applications, I know big SAP shop. But what's it look like, what are you protecting? >> So in terms of data, we're protecting over a thousand virtual machines, Two plus petabytes of data, everything in our five regional hubs. So it's quite a bit, it's quite a chore, especially for a small team like we have. >> So you mentioned data is the new gold. I have this idea that it's even more valuable than gold 'cause you can only use gold once. You can't spend it multiple places, data. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but Under Armour's ascendancy really coincided with strong technology ethos, very strong use of data, understanding of customers, and technology of sports clothing. So how are you using data to drive competitive advantage? >> Yeah, so very interesting. The brand and the culture is very infectious. So it's like, rah rah, let's go out and get it. That works into how we work IT in our everyday lives. So we kind of take that and kind of run with it. >> So what were you doing before you guys started working with Dell EMC? Talk to us about some of the challenges that you faced before you were using a different solution, so some of those opportunity costs that Rüya mentioned, in terms of if we can't monetize this, we're going to miss opportunities to identify new products our customers want, bring it to market. Walk us through your journey. >> Yeah, so I joined Under Armour about four years ago. And we really set the foundation with our three-year road map. Year one, build the foundation. It was really aligning what we were going to do, right, aligning with Dell Technologies, we're using all of your products. Year two was really architecting the future. And that's where things such as data protection really helped us out. We needed stuff that was easy to deploy, things that, for a small team to manage, that we don't have to think about it. We can sleep easy at night. It really aligned with our road map. >> So historically, data protection has been insurance. Rüya, you and I have talked about this for a long long time. Nobody likes to buy insurance, but you got to do it. Are you trying to move beyond that sort of one use case equation into new areas of value, whether it's compliance, whether it's data analytics. Are you able to use the corpus of data that you're protecting, and the management of that data in new ways? And if so, how? >> Yeah, in terms of the management for our small teams, we need something really easy. But security always comes to mind, so that's built into the product as well. But things moving to the cloud, scalability, things that we want to do in the future, we're really setting that up now. And us doing a huge storage refresh a couple months ago, we really flattened out, and we're using all brand new products. Now we're ready to scale the cloud. >> Rüya, you say that in the customer base, that people are trying to move beyond just straight back-up. >> Definitely. >> It's becoming increasingly new world, digital transformation, hybrid clouds. What are you seeing? >> Oh my god, yeah there's a ton of demand right now for customers to be able to leverage data, regardless of where it lives. So primary data, secondary data, tertiary copies, cloud data. How do you really start gaining business insights regardless of where data is? And how do you make sure that it's constantly recoverable under any circumstance. So one of the other things that we found in that study, again, is that there's new threats. So cyber recovery has become, and ransomware, and cyber recovery has become such a foundational consideration for customers. Being able to also spin up VMs regardless instantly. We just announced the X400 PowerProtect, which is very exciting and was part of today's announcement. It's all flash, and the reason it's all flash is because the use cases such as data reuse, app test and development, being able to test disaster recovery scenarios or cyber recovery scenarios real time, these are all critical use cases that you couldn't imagine doing years ago on your protection data. So we're really excited about both the PowerProtect announcement, as well as the Integrated Data Protection Appliance announcement. So you and I, Dave, have talked a lot about the Integrated Data Protection Appliance and simplicity and efficiency and breadth of coverage and cloud capabilities. Under Armour actually is a big proponent. They use cloud very prolifically, in terms of their IT environment. And IDPA really fit that need for them, in terms of being able to really drive costs out of their environment through efficiency, have that protection performance, just the foundational capabilities, yet still be able to offer some of those new innovation and the cloud capabilities, as well as automation. >> Alright, so we've heard from the marketing pro. Nick, now we got to hear from the customer. I heard simple, efficient, so how simple, how efficient, how do you measure these things? How does it compare with other products that you've looked at? >> Well, the product that we had before, we used Avamar Data Domain, and the problem that we had with it, it was decentralized. So we were managing a regional hub separately. So by refreshing, as we did, it got very simple. Now we have a centralized management. We were able to reduce 40 to 1 ratio. We're getting reductions, before we were getting 92 to 93%. Now we're getting 98, 99%. More importantly, for me, reporting. So able to produce those reports, we didn't have that before, so it's been really great. >> And how do those internal benefits that you talked about manifest out through the organization and really drive, like we talked about earlier, brand reputation or Under Armour being able to use that valuable data to identify new insights and act on the new product streams to delight, say, Tom Brady, for example. >> Well not only does it make-- >> You know he cares. (laughing) >> We certainly care about Tom Brady. >> I know! >> It makes my life a lot easier, right? So I'm able to take this data, it allows me to think, it allows the teams to be agile. Can you use that data to promote other projects, other ideas, things that we really want to do in the future to kind of push the brand even farther. >> When you guys meet privately, what kind of things, Nick, do you ask Rüya and her team at Dell EMC to do that will make your life easier? >> Quite honestly, the Dell team that we work with is wonderful. Really, we ask for a partner, someone that works with us, someone that understands us, understands our pain and is in there with us, so that we can really work on solutions together. >> Okay, obvious question, is that why you work with these guys? 'Cause of the strong partnership? Two part question, and what about the product? Is the product in your opinion, based on what you've evaluated, best of breed relative to other competitive products that are out there. >> Yeah, we did look at some other competitor products. We believe that it is best of breed. And that's why we chose to partner with Dell Technologies. >> So a lot of news yesterday and today, everything around multi-cloud. Customers are in this multi-cloud world for a variety of reasons. With the partnership that you've established with Dell Technologies and Rüya's group, what are some of the things that you've heard from Michael, from Pat, from John, Jeff, that really resonated with you that, ah, Dell Technologies is listening to customers like Under Armour and others as they're developing, helping you to really tackle this multi-cloud world with a lot of success. >> Yeah, so one of the things that was really exciting was part of the keynote yesterday with the SDDC. You can spin up a data center at the click of a button nowadays, and that resonates with us because it's going to make our lives really easy. We're going to be more agile. We can speed up and really take the brand farther. >> So you mentioned cloud before. I think Rüya said you've got multiple clouds. You have multiple clouds, is that right? >> We have a hybrid cloud infrastructure. >> So you've got multiple public clouds, is that correct? Obviously. >> Yes. >> You've got SAS, you've got on-prem stuff, and you try to make them all look the same, substantially similar from a control plan standpoint? >> We try. (laughs) >> It's a journey. >> Yes. >> I get that. But there's also the operating model. And I want to follow up with, are you enabling, whether it's DBAs or application owners, to do their own back-ups, do their own recoveries, do their own analytics, et cetera. Is that where you're headed, are you there today? Is it something that you don't want to do? Can you elaborate? >> That's the idea is to try and make everyone's life a lot easier. And being part of the Compute and Storage team, we're really stuck in the middle of all teams. Applications teams come to us. Sequel teams come to us, networking teams. So we really have a lot of responsibility on our plate. In order to make our lives simpler, we have to enable all these teams to do it themselves, and that's really where we're headed. >> Well, great stuff guys. Nick, Rüya, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program this afternoon. And go Warriors. >> Ahh. >> I said it. (laughs) >> For Dave Vellante, who again is wearing a Warriors colored tie. I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from Las Vegas. Okay. >> I do. >> Alright. >> I like the Warriors. >> Alright, good, see and I mentioned Tom Brady-- >> I like them a lot better than the Lakers, sorry Nick. I can't get over that. >> I'm not sorry. I was saying, we're at VM (laughs). No, we're not at VM World, we're at Dell Technologies World. Oh my goodness, Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

(spirited music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are in the Palo Alto Studios for a CUBE Conversation. Part of our Western Digital Data Makes Possible Series, really looking at a lot of cool applications. At the end of the day, data's underneath everything. There's infrastructure and storage that's holding that, but it's much more exciting to talk about the applications. We're excited to have somebody who's kind of on the cutting edge of a next chapter of something you're probably familiar with. He's Steven Webster, and he is the founder and CEO of Asensei. Steven, great to see you. >> Likewise, likewise. >> So, you guys are taking, I think everyone's familiar with Fitbits, as probably one of the earliest iterations of a biometric feedback, for getting more steps. At the end of the day, get more steps. And you guys are really taking it to the next level, which is, I think you call it connected coaching, so I wondered if you could give everyone a quick overview, and then we'll dig into it a little bit. >> Yeah, I think we're all very familiar now with connected fitness in hindsight, as a category that appeared and emerged, as, like you say, first it was activity trackers. We saw those trackers primarily move into smartwatches, and the category's got life in it, life in it left. I see companies like Flywheel and Peloton, we all know Peloton now. >> [Jeff] Right. >> We're starting to make the fitness equipment itself, the treadmill, the bike, connected. So, there's plenty of growth in that category. But our view is that tracking isn't teaching, and counting and cheering isn't coaching. And so we see this opportunity for this new category that's emerging alongside connected fitness, and that's what we call connected coaching. >> Connected coaching. So the biggest word, obviously, instead of fitness tracker, to the connected coaching, is coaching. >> Yeah. >> So, you guys really think that the coaching piece of it is core. And are you targeting high-end athletes, or is this for the person that just wants to take a step up from their fitness tracker? Where in the coaching spectrum are you guys targeting? >> I saw your shoe dog, Phil Knight, founder of Nike, a book on the shelf behind you there, and his co-founder, Bill Bowerman, has a great quote that's immortalized in Nike offices and stores around the world: "If you have a body, you're an athlete." So, that's how we think about our audience. Our customer base is anyone that wants to unlock their athletic potential. I think if you look at elite sports, and elite athletes, and Olympic athletes, they've had access to this kind of technology going back to the Sydney Olympics, so we're really trying to consumerize that technology and make it available to the people that want to be those athletes, but aren't those athletes yet. You might call it the weekend warrior, or just the committed athlete, that would identify, identify themselves according to a sport that they play. >> So, there's different parts of coaching, right? One, is kind of knowing the techniques, so that you've got the best practices by which to try to practice. >> [Steven] Yep. >> And then there's actually coaching to those techniques, so people practice, right? Practice doesn't make perfect. It's perfect practice that makes perfect. >> [Steven] You stole our line, which we stole from someone else. >> So, what are you doing? How do you observe the athlete? How do you communicate with the athlete? How do you make course corrections to the athlete to move it from simply tracking to coaching? >> [Steven] I mean, it starts with, you have to see everything and miss nothing. So, you need to have eyes on the athlete, and there's really two ways we think you can do that. One is, you're using cameras and computer vision. I think most of us are familiar with technologies like Microsoft Connect, where an external camera can allow you to see the skeleton and the biomechanics of the athlete. And that's a big thing for us. We talk about the from to being from just measuring biometrics: how's your heart rate, how much exertion are you making, how much power are you laying down. We need to move from biometrics to biomechanics, and that means looking at technique, and posture, and movement, and timing. So, we're all familiar with cameras, but we think the more important innovation is the emergence of smart clothing, or smart apparel, and the ability to take sensors that would have been discrete, hard components, and infuse those sensors into smart apparel. We've actually created a reference design for a motion capture sensor, and a network of those sensors infused in your apparel allows us to recover your skeleton, but as easily as pulling on a shirt or shorts. >> [Jeff] So you've actually come up with a reference design. So, obviously, begs a question: you're not working with any one particular apparel manufacturer. You really want to come up with a standard and publish the standard by which anyone could really define, capture, and record body movements, and to convert those movements from the clothing into a model. >> No, that's exactly it. We have no desire to be in the apparel industry. We have no desire to unseat Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour. We're actually licensing our technology royalty-free. We just want to accelerate the adoption of smart apparel. And I think the thing about smart apparel is, no one's going to walk into Niketown and say, "Where's the smart apparel department? "I don't want dumb apparel anymore." There needs to be a compelling reason to buy digitally enhanced apparel, and we think one of the most compelling reasons to buy that is so that we can be coached in the sport of our choice. >> [Jeff] So, then you're starting out with rowing, I believe, is your first sport, right? >> [Steven] That's correct, yeah. >> And so the other really important piece of it, is if people don't have smart apparel, or the smart apparel's not there yet, or maybe when they have smart apparel, there's a lot of opportunities to bring in other data sources beyond just that single set. >> [Steven] And that's absolutely key. When I think about biomechanics, that's what goes in, but there's also what comes out. Good form isn't just aesthetic. Good form is in any given sport. Good form and good technique is about organizing yourself so that you perform most efficiently and perform most effectively. Yeah, so you corrected a point in that we've chosen rowing as one of the sports. Rowing is all about technique. It's all about posture. It's all about form. If you've got two rowers who, essentially, have the same strength, the same cardiovascular capability, the one with the best technique will make the boat move faster. But for the sport of rowing, we also get a tremendous amount of telemetry coming off the rowing machine itself. A force curve weakened on every single pull of that handle. We can see how you're laying down that force, and we can read those force curves. We can look at them and tell things like, are you using your legs enough? Are you opening your back too late or too early? Are you dominant on your arms, where you shouldn't be? Is your technique breaking down at higher stroke rates, but is good at lower stroke rates? So it's a good place for us to start. We can take all of that knowledge and information and coach the athlete. And then when we get down to more marginal gains, we can start to look at their posture and form through that technology like smart apparel. >> There's the understanding what they're doing, and understanding the effort relative to best practices, but there's also, within their journey. Maybe today, they're working on cardio, and tomorrow, they're working on form. The next day, they're working on sprints. So the actual best practices in coaching a sport or particular activity, how are you addressing that? How are you bringing in that expertise beyond just the biometric information? >> [Steven] So yeah, we don't think technology is replacing coaches. We just think that coaches that use technology will replace coaches that don't. It's not an algorithm that's trying to coach you. We're taking the knowledge and the expertise of world-class coaches in the sport, that athletes want to follow, and we're taking that coaching, and essentially, think of it as putting it into a learning management system. And then for any given athlete, Just think of it the way a coach coaches. If you walked into a rowing club, I don't know if you've ever rowed before or not, but a coach will look at you, they'll sit you on a rowing machine or sit you on a boat, and just look at you and decide, what's the one next thing that I'm going to teach you that's going to make you better? And really, that's the art of coaching right there. It's looking for that next improvement, that next marginal gain. It's not just about being able to look at the athlete, but then decide where's the improvement that we want to coach the athlete? And then the whole sports psychology of, how do you coach his improvements? >> Because there's the whole hammer versus carrot. That's another thing. You need to learn how the individual athlete responds, what types of things do they respond better to? Do they like to get yelled? Do they like to be encouraged? Did they like it at the beginning? Did they like it at the end? So, do you guys incorporate some of these softer coaching techniques into the application? >> Our team have all coached sport at university-level typically. We care a lot and we think a lot about the role of the coach. The coach's job is to attach technique to the athlete's body. It's to take what's in your head and what you've seen done before, and give that to the athlete, so absolutely, we're thinking about how do you establish the correct coaching cues. How do you positively reinforce, not just negatively reinforce? Is that person a kinesthetic learner, where they need to feel how to do it correctly? Are they a more visual learner, where they respond better to metaphor? Now, one of the really interesting things with a digital coach is the more people we teach, the better we can get at teaching, because we can start to use some of the techniques of enlarged datasets, and looking at what's working and what's not working. In fact, it's the same technology we would use in marketing or advertising, to segment an audience, and target content. >> Right. >> [Steven] We can take that same technology and apply it how we think about coaching sports. >> So is your initial target to help active coaches that are looking for an edge? Or are you trying to go for the weakend warrior, if you will? Where's your initial market? >> For rowing, we've actually zeroed in on three athletes, where we have a point of view that Asensei can be of help. I'll tell you who the three are. First, is the high school athlete who wants to go to college and get recruited. So, we're selling to the parent as much as we're selling to the student. >> [Jeff] That's an easy one. Just show up and be tall. >> Well, show up, be tall, but also what's your 2k time? How fast can you row 2,000 meters? That's a pretty important benchmark. So for that high school athlete, that's a very specific audience where we're bringing very specific coaches. In fact, the coach that we're launching with to that market, his story is one of, high school to college to national team, and he just came back from the Olympics in Rio. The second athlete that we're looking at is the person who never wants to go on the water, but likes that indoor rowing machine, so it's that CrossFit athlete or it's an indoor rower. And again, we have a very specific coach who coaches indoor rowing. And then the third target customer is-- >> What's that person's motivation, just to get a better time? >> Interesting, in that community, there's a lot of competitiveness, so yeah, it's about I want to get good at this, I want to get better at this. Maybe enter local competitions, either inside your gym or your box. This weekend, in Boston, we have just had one of the largest indoor world, it was the World Indoor Rowing Championships, the C.R.A.S.H B's. There's these huge indoor rowing competitions, so that's a very competitive athlete. And then finally we have, what would be the master's rower or the person for whom rowing is. There's lots of people who don't identify themselves as a rower, but they'll get on a rowing machine two or three times a week, whether it's in their gym or whether it's at home. Your focus is strength, conditioning, working out, but staying injury-free, and just fun and fitness. I think Palaton validated the existence of that market, and we see a lot of people wanting to do that with a rowing machine, and not with a bike. >> I think most of these people will or will not have access to a primary coach, and this augments it, or does this become their primary coach based on where they are in their athletic life? >> [Steven] I think it's both, and certainly, and certainly, we're able to support both. I think when you're that high school rower that wants to make college, you're probably a member of either your school rowing crew or you're a member of a club, but you spend a tremendous amount of time on an erg, the indoor rowing machine, and your practice is unsupervised. Even though you know what you should be doing, there's nobody there in that moment watching you log those 10,000 meters. One of our advisors is, actually, a two-times Olympic world medalist from team Great Britain, Helen Glover. And Helen, I have a great quote from Helen, where she calculated for the Rio Olympics, in the final of the Rio Olympics, every stroke she took in the final, she'd taken 16,000 strokes in practice, which talks to the importance of the quality of that practice, and making sure it's supervised. >> The bigger take on the old 10,000 reps, right? 16,000 per stroke. >> Right? >> Kind of looking forward, right, what were some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome? And then, as you looked forward, right, since the beginning, were ubiquitous, and there's 3D goggles, and there'll be outside-in centers for that whole world. How do you see this world evolving in the immediate short-term for you guys to have success, and then, just down the road a year or two? >> That's a really good question. I think in the short-term, I think it's incumbent on us to just stay really focused in a single community, and get that product right for them. It's more about introducing people to the idea. This is a category creation exercise, so we need to go through that adoption curve of find the early adopters, find the early majority, and before we take that technology anywhere towards our mass market, we need to nail the experience for that early majority. And we think that it's largely going to be in the sport of rowing or with rowers. The cross participation studies in rowing are pretty strong for other sports. Typically, somewhere between 60-80% of rowers weight lift, bike, run, and take part in yoga, whether yoga for mobility and flexibility. There's immediately adjacent markets available to us where the rowers are already in those markets. We're going to stick there for awhile, and really just nail the experience down. >> And is it a big reach to go from tracking to coaching? I mean, these people are all super data focused, right? The beauty of rowing, as you mentioned, it's all about your 2k period. It's one single metric. And they're running, and they're biking, and they're doing all kinds of data-based things, but you're trying to get them to think really more on terms of the coaching versus just the tracking. Has that been hard for them to accept? Do you have any kind of feel for the adoption or the other thing, I would imagine, I spent all this money for these expensive clothing. Is this a killer app that I can now justify having? >> Right, right, right. >> Maybe fancier connected clothes, rather than just simply tracking my time? >> I mean, I think, talking about pricing in the first instance. What we're finding with consumers that we've been testing with, is if you can compare the price of a shirt to the price of shirt without sensors, it's really the wrong value proposition. The question we ask is, How much money are you spending on your CrossFit box membership or your Equinox gym membership? The cost of a personal trainer is easily upwards of $75-100 for an hour. Now, we can give you 24/7 access to that personal coaching. You'll pay the same in a year as you would pay in an hour for coaching. I think for price, it's someone who's already thinking about paying for personal coaching and personal training, that's really where the pricing market is. >> That's interesting, we see that time and time again. We did an interview with Knightscope, and they have security robots, and basically, it's the same thing. They're priced comparisons was the hourly rate for a human counterpart, or we can give it to you for a much less hourly rate. And now, you don't just get it for an hour, you get it for as long as you want to use it. Well, it's exciting times. You guys in the market in terms of when you're going G80? Have a feel for-- >> Any minute now. >> Any minute now? >> We have people using the product, giving us feedback. My phone's switched off. That's the quietest it's been for awhile. But we have people using the product right now, giving us feedback on the product. We're really excited. One in three people, when we ask, the metric that matters for us is net promoter score. How likely would someone recommend asensei to someone else? One in three athletes are giving us a 10 out of 10, so we feel really good about the experience. Now, we're just focused on making sure we have enough content in place from our coaches. General availability is anytime soon. >> [Jeff] Good. Very exciting. >> Yeah, we're excited. >> Thanks for taking a few minutes of your day, and I actually know some rowers, so we'll have to look into the application. >> Right, introduce us. Good stuff. >> He's Steven Webster, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We're having a CUBE Conversation in our Palo Alto Studios. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

I see a number of hands in in Orlando so it will come over there right there yeah I John far is SiliconANGLE thanks for having us again guys appreciate it one of the things and that last question was some of my question about the database and one of things we're finding here in the cube this week is extracting out that there's a misconception and it's not just a database on us there's more to it so the question is and the other thing that we found out is it's not just for large SI p companies that have your stuff it's maybe new business opportunities so can you guys elaborate on those new business opportunities may be getting competitive displacements around say Oracle or and then just greenfield new opportunities because analytics is capturing the world by storm big data is is mainstream you guys have been kind of hiding behind that not putting that out forward enough in my opinion but want to get your take on new opportunities so I think that's a great question and I think the biggest misperception at the beginning was that Hannah is for AP stuff and you just mentioned that as well the first customers using Hana we're using Hannah for data that would never go in an essay p system like DNA data in healthcare or seismic data and oil and gas exploration this is not typical erp stuff and how to proved its value and and these examples we have we have customers who proved a hundred thousand times faster response times on Hannah they are all in the category of non SI p big problems to solve now solvable and i see three applications for this there is the traditional SI p where we can radically accelerate and reduce costs of ownership at the same time then you have these optimization opportunities which is all about business predictive analytics big data and then i think there's a third category chiz about solving problems that so far were unsolvable and we are pursuing all three of them so you're right Hannah is much more than a database I try to argue it's a unified next generation platform for business and can do all these three things yesterday my keynote I had a company by name under armour on the panel and he went from 281 million to you know a few billion because he could expand on a common platform globally and when he adds new categories of business it simply snaps on to a common platform and everybody knows what to do in its scales I had a meeting with the CEO yesterday and this is a very common conversation he grew his business by acquisition and now he's got a Federation of a whole bunch of companies and he feels like a holding company what he wants to do is consolidate these businesses onto a common platform he won't do it overnight because you can't shut down businesses but the vision over the next few years is consolidate everything onto one common SI p platform and take all the databases out and standardize everything on Hana because he loves the vision of not just transactional information that's great but it's the wisdom of the crowds that he's going to get from social and the predictive analytics that's built right into Hana so now he's got a real time business he can get it on a common platform everybody will have a common mobile architecture and the vision is to put it into the Hana Enterprise Cloud and let s ap run it that is a very common conversation that we're having right now and they're very disillusioned out there by the alternatives because they may you know have been best to breed in their day but now they figured out years later they may be best but they never breed it the mclaren story is similar right they start with the business we'd they're running their company but then we do a Formula One Hana based app that's not a typical enterprise application it takes data from 140 sensors on the car and gives you the ability to change outcomes during a one and a half hour race now for that you need real-time pneus and and and the decision they made now is to say okay I'm running my business on SI p a Formula One car changes its bill a material in average every 20 minutes that's how fast they change the engineering of every car otherwise they cannot keep up with competition and so you run that complexity on ASAP on Hannah and now you just extend that Hannah to include all this other data from the cars and you build new apps on top that solve different problems one platform all problems solved for company and by the way they brought that into the Hana Enterprise Cloud right because they don't want to deal with infrastructure they want to deal with cars and competition in Formula One races