(upbeat music) >> From Tavern on the Green, in Central Park New York, it's theCUBE; covering Veritas Vision Solution Day. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Welcome to the heart of New York City. We're here in Central Park the Tavern on the Green. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. And we're covering the Veritas Solution Day; hashtag Vtasday. So, Scott Genereux is here as executivee president of world wide field ops for Veritas. Scott, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you good to see you. Thank you. >> So, I love the location. A lot of our crew, they've never been here before; I said wait until you see Tavern on the Green, it's sweet. Customers love it. So, why this location? What are you guys doing with the Solutions Days different than the big tent event? You guys have gone to a more intimate format, explain that. >> Yeah, so last year we did the big event. We also did regional events, and it was interesting. And when we looked at the regional events; the input from our customers was; they loved the idea of doing something local, a little bigger, so they didn't have to travel. You know it's just difficult to get somebody to come out fly across the country to spend a week. And so, we decided to do 20 of these around the world. We also found out last year that the number of people who were coming to the regional events; was very very large. I mean some of our events we had four, 500 people coming. So it just made a lot more sense to us is; how do we get close to our customers, make sure they didn't have to travel; and be able to touch 'em so. >> So, collectively you're probably hitting as many if not more people. >> A lot more. >> Probably a different type of audience too when you go. So, you're doing a bunch in the US and a bunch in overseas right? >> Correct, yeah, so we've got New York, Chicago, San Francisco, we got one in Washington D.C. focus on the Fed, and we have one up in Toronto in North America. And then we've got 'em in Latin America. >> So you've been a kind of customer success executive all your life; you spend a lot of time in New York City. A lot of customers down here. A lot of the more advanced and sophisticated customers here. So, what are you hearing as you see digital transformation, big data, cloud, multi cloud; people are changing the way in which they think about data, and protecting data and getting more value out of data. What are they telling you here; the challenges that they're facing and where do they want to go with Veritas? >> You know the exciting is that look, we're still the market leader, right? Well, people say what's going on with Veritas? We're the market leader, we have been for the last 15 plus years. And, the people we're doing data protection for today, are the largest of the largest. You know, 95% of the Fortune 100 use our technology. 85% of the Fortune 500 use our technology. So, we get a lot of information knowledge experience from what you would argue and I would too. The customers here; which are the toughest of the tough too, right? I mean, they're not always nice, they tell you what they think. And they're thinking you know, two three years out of what we have to go do to support those environments. So it's interesting; you know the big thing going into this year, there was a lot of conversation around compliance. You know, GDPR in Europe was huge. And really, I kind of narrow it down to P.I.I. Regardless if you're banking, healthcare, whoever. The whole question around how do you protect data? Where is my data located? Who's touching my data? Has just become a bigger and bigger issue. And then you throw in the word cloud and as you said multi clouds, no one's using one cloud. All of a sudden your data is spread out all over the place. So, how you focus on that, how do you have visibility on that, becomes more and more important. And obviously that makes data protection, center of what's going on with customers now. >> So there are a couple of vectors now there that I'd like to explore. One is the idea that we're now looking at data protection to get more value out of it. You talked about GDPR, privacy, things of that nature. So, I want to talk about that. But also, the last thing customers want that I talked to; they don't want yet another stove pipe of data protection. And as you go, every cloud has it's own back up approach. So, I'm curious what you guys are doing. Let's start there. Are you putting in some sort of a extraction layer to be able to service all of those different multi clouds. Which cloud companies are you working with? >> Yeah, so first of all we serve all major cloud providers. For us, we're very agnostic in the sense of we don't care where your data is located; it can be behind your Firewall, it can be in Amazon, it can be Microsoft, it can be in Google, it can be in a pseudo what we would call more of a regional, you know, a sass type cloud that you support based on something uniquely in your environment. So we don't really care on where it's located. And that's actually one of our big positives. But you're right, one of the big issues customers have today is okay they start out and they might use Amazon for test development. Amazon has their own way of moving data into the cloud. And what do you do and how do you protect it? And then you go all of a sudden Office 365 because that's the you know, the Microsoft way of getting into the cloud. And so now you've got two clouds. Oracle's pushing you to do clouds. So you've got an Oracle cloud probably right? And we can go down that whole list. So everyone is driving a cloud strategy. But the problem customers have today is; they don't want to have six or seven different ways of on boarding data applications into the cloud, and they also do not want to have different ways of moving data or protecting data. And I think, so for us what we do that's very different is that, we have software that allows you to move data and applications into any one of those clouds the exact same way. I mean, if you think about it today. When you think about data replication, or protecting data; a lot of customers use hardware replication to move data. Well, the problem you run into today, when you think about it, is that the traditional cloud vendors, we just listed who they were, they don't use traditional hardware. No one's using EMCSRDF in the Amazon cloud. No one's using Hitachi's products. So, you need a software based replication tool and a data mover I'll call it, to be able to do that. And that's an area we've invested a lot of time and money on to be able to do it. And more importantly, even though I don't hear this a lot from customers any more, there was a fear for a while of cloud lock in; I don't want to be too into one cloud. We could move data between clouds also. So, you know, you don't have to bring it back and bring it back forward. So, that also makes customers at ease of how do you manage it. But it just creates a whole different environment of what to do and how to do it. >> So you're not in a technical role at the company but when you're in this business and you talk to a lot of technology people, you have to be conversant in technology. So I'm curious, so you've mentioned the high speed data mover that's something that's always been fundamental to the Veritas architecture. But you've done some other things. I've got briefed and seen some of the videos of what you guys done on 8.1.2. There's components of that are really different. I mean, modern software, micro services based architecture. >> Yep. >> That have allowed you to actually create this multi cloud sort of affinity. Maybe talk about what's the conversation like with customers with regard to modernizing your platform. >> Right. I think two things; you know it's interesting, the two things that customers always have asked us for is a new U.I. interface. You know now it's interesting like anything, customers have used us for 10 years. There's customers who love the old interface right? >> Right. >> But today, when you think about cloud or think about particular work loads, which is probably more important. You know, it's no longer the back up administrator who might have to do everything. When it used to be just the back up person, you know, having the way we used to do it, made a lot of sense. But now, you're basically grabbing someone who could be the virtual machine administrator. It could be the cloud person administrator. It could be security. And those people don't have a background in data protection. So the question is, how do you give them an interface that makes it easy for them to understand and use to be able to administrate that. So now the back up administrator can actually create groups inside of net back up. And allow those organizations to be able to look at their environments and be able to manage it very differently. So, and it's the same thing with work loads. When you think about it today, most of the data growth that we're seeing, it's traditionally not, it's not the Oracle work load, SAP work loads. 60 70 plus percent of our largest customers are creating new data based applications on non sequel stuff. It's Mongo, it's Casandra. So the new 8.1.2, supports all those environments. We didn't do that before. So that's a great interface for us. Because those data bases don't natively do back up well. The Hadoop, data analytics; huge amount of data being created there. It used to be that it used to be a sandbox; a playground. But those applications have gotten to become you know important in these customers. And so it used to be you just used to take a snap shot of this stuff and you would have about 20 copies of peta bites of data. Now you can do point in time back ups using those types of products. So 8.1.2 has that type of support in it too. And we've done a lot of stuff around VM ware specifically, focused around new innovative things that we needed to do to modernize the products. >> So those emerging work loads like not only sequel but you know, Mongo, Hadoop, etc cetera. That's now native to your stack, correct? >> Completely, yup. >> Okay, that's different. Because you've hardened that. A lot of companies in your business; maybe the some of the newer guys have to go to a partner to find those capabilities. >> Right. >> So, that's I think, big. The other thing I heard was, cloud like I think I heard self-service essentially for some of the liza business folks. Or whomever that you don't want to send them necessarily back to the back up admin. Do it on your own. Here's some policies they'll make it kindergarten proof. >> Right. >> Okay, so that's a trend you're seeing as well. >> Yes, yes, completely. >> Okay. I want to come back to something you said before, this other vector, which is other uses for back up or the back up data then just insurance. Because people don't want to pay for insurance. >> Right. >> So, you've mentioned a compliance, GDPR. I would imagine as well; when you get things like ransom ware, there's also analytics. I know you guys are applying a lot of A.I. >> Correct. >> You've got the corpus of data, just so happens that the back up data contains the data of the company. >> Correct. >> So presuming we do other things with it. So what are some of the things the customers are doing? How are they getting additional value out of the investment that they are making at Veritas? >> I think, you know, it's a couple of areas. Before we leave compliance, let me focus on one thing that's been really important is the whole question about where my data is located. This whole visual-ness of data; who's touched it last, all of that has become a really really important thing for customers because even in the natural cloud, sometimes you don't know that maybe one of the cloud providers moved your second copy of data in to a data center that is a problem for you, right? >> Physically it's in a place it shouldn't be. >> Right, yeah. It shouldn't be in a data center. It moved out of a country boundary for compliance reasons right? So, you know, we've spent a lot of time and energy creating a software technology that gives you that visibility. And not just with net back up. We also plug in all the cloud providers; we also plug in Oracle, we also plug in box.net. You know I mean, so a lot of these other companies are also plugged in. So, back to your point, we've created this huge data repository of information that now allows us when you look at our future, and we talked about a little on this session earlier; data analytics, some capabilities that we should be able to go do because we have meta data to be able to give customers that visual capability. The other thing that's interesting is that visualization software, is it also tells, it finally gives customers a proof point of what we've always known. That probably roughly about 50% of their data. And I'm being kind when I say 50. Probably hasn't been touched in three, five, four, 10 plus years, right? And we've always known that. But now we actually show a customer. Hey, using this visualization software, that you're using for compliance has also now told you where the data is located and who's touched it last, and by the way it hasn't been touched forever. It allows the customer to have two conversations; one, do they need to save it? And if they do, do they move it into a glacier type environment? Or three, do they move it to a software defying storage on the customer's floor? We can help the customer migrate it after we showed them who hasn't touched it. But we also have a software defying storage solution. That Gardener just came out and said that we're number one in this space, right? So, it's one of our fastest growing pieces of our business. Because customers all the time say to me, Scott our data protection cost is going up. And the reality is, it isn't. The reality is data is growing dramatically. Storage is going up, and oh by the way I got to back up my data that sits on the storage, right? So it all kind of combines together. >> So data protection is the percentage on the spend is not necessarily increasing but everything is growing. >> Everything is growing, yes. >> So the other thing, just a couple of points that you made me think of, the other cloud that you support is on prime. >> Yes, yeah, it's still big by the way. >> So that's another piece of it. Because you got the three laws of the cloud right? It's the law of physics. You can't necessarily put everything into the public eye. Then you got the law of economics, and you got the law of the land, in which you were talking about before, >> Right. >> If you're not supposed to leave Germany, >> Correct. >> You can't leave Germany, okay. And then, so you're using analytics to help customers to determine this. And the other thing, some of the general counselors out there don't want to keep data forever. >> Correct. >> I hear a lot from vendors, oh you could now keep it forever and GC says no, we don't want to keep it forever. >> Exactly, right. >> Okay, so you're using analytics to sort of sift through that data and surface these clues. >> Yes. >> And actions to customers. >> Yes and the new thing also at 8.1.2 is we've come out with a smart meter type technology which will let customers know how much data they're using, where they're using the data? Any hot spots in the data. And it's very file based, you know, data focused. It obviously helps customers really understand who's using what where, you know. And to be fair, they can use that to help go drive costs, figure out you know maybe someone's using something they shouldn't, maybe people are storing stuff that they don't want to store. It's not just a benefit to figure what they're doing but it's also could help and drive cost out. >> Big customer base obviously, probably the largest in the business. >> Yup, over 50,000. >> 50,000 customers? >> Yup. >> You've modernized the software. Just rap it up, the competitive customer differentiation, a lot of noise in the market place. >> Yup. >> Where do you stand? What's your position relative to the competition? Why Veritas? >> Yeah, well, so for us, when we walk in to a large customer, as you can appreciate, they don't want three or four different products; back to the cloud conversation, they don't want three or four ways of moving data in to cloud, right? They really want one. And the other issue they all ran into is this compliance conversation. You, know not everybody does everything the same. And they don't all talk together. Having a single platform, to be able to give customers the capability of backing up everything from traditional work loads of Oracle, and SAP to Mongo DB, to Casandra, to Hadoop, to containers, to open source; we're the only company out there that can do all those work loads. There are start ups. And they may do one or two things really really well, or so they say they do, we don't think they do, but they say they do, and that's what they focus in on. That's not what a large enterprise customer wants. They want capabilities to be able to scale high performance, ease of use, and 8.1.2 gives that to them. And we do more work loads than any body else in the industry. >> Excellent, well Scott thanks for coming on. We are here in the heart of New York City, at Tavern on the Green. A lot of customers, I've been talking to some of those customers today, those customers, they're as tough as Yankee fans I could tell ya. (laughing) So Scott thanks agan, good to see you. >> Alright, thank you. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. Thank you for watching theCUBE from Veritas Solutions Days in New York, right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Midtown Manhattan it's theCUBE. Covering Big Data New York City 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem sponsors. >> Welcome back everyone live here in New York City this theCUBE's coverage of our fifth annual annual event that we put on ourselves in conjunction Strata Hadoop now called Strata Data. It's theCUBE and we're covering the scene here at Hadoop World going back to 2010, eight years of Coverage. I'm John Furrier co-host of theCUBE. Usually Dave Vellante is here but he's down covering the Splunk Conference and who was there yesterday was no other than Josh Rogers my next guest the CEO of Syncsort, you were with Dave Vellante yesterday and live on theCUBE in Washington, DC for the Splunk .conf kind of a Big Data Conference but it's a proprietary, branded event for themselves. This is a more industry even here at Big Data NYC that we put on. Welcome back glad you flew up on the on the Concord, the private jet. >> Early morning but it was was fine. >> No good to see you a CEO of Syncsort, you guys have been busy. For the folks watching in theCUBE community know that you've been on many times. The folks that are learning more about theCUBE every day, you guys had an interesting transformations as a company, take a minute to talk about where you've come from and where you are today. Certainly a ton of corporate development activity in your end it, as you guys are seeing the opportunities, you're moving on them. Take a minute to explain. >> So, you know it's been a great journey so far and there's a lot more work to do, but you know Syncsort is one of the first software companies, right. Founded in the late 60's today has a unparalleled franchise in the mainframe space. But over the last 10 years or so we branched out into open systems and delivered high performance data integration solutions. About 4 years ago really started to invest in the Big Data space we had a DNA around performance and scale we felt like that would be relevant in the Big Data space. We delivered a Hadoop focused product and today we focus around that product around helping customers ingest mainframe data assets into their into Hadoop clusters along with other types data. But a specific focus there. That has lead us into understanding a bigger market space that we call Big Iron to Big Data. And what we see in the marketplace is that customers are adapting. >> Just before you get in there I love that term, Big Iron Big Data you know I love Big Iron. Used to be a term for the mainframe for the younger generation out there. But you're really talking about you guys have leveraged experience with the installed base activity that scale call it batched, molded, single threaded, whatever you want to call it. But as you got into the game of Big Data you then saw other opportunities, did I get that right? You got into the game with some Hadoop, then you realize, whoa, I can do some large scale. What was that opportunity? >> The opportunity is that you know large enterprise is absolutely investing heavily in the next generation of analytic technologies in a new stack. Hadoop is a part of that, Spark is a part of that. And they're rapidly adopting these new infrastructures to drive deeper analytics to answer bigger questions and improve their business and in multiple dimensions. The opportunity we saw was that you know the ability for those enterprises to be able to integrate this new kind of architecture with the legacy architectures. So, the old architectures that were powering key applications impede key up producers of data was a challenge, there was multiple technology challenges, there's cultural challenges. And we had this kind of expertise on both sides of the house and and we found that to be unique in the marketplace. So we put a lot of effort into understanding, defining what are the challenges in that Big Iron to Big Data space that helped customers maximize their value out of these investments in next generation architectures. And we define the problem two ways, one is our two components. One is that people are generating more and more data more and more touch points and driving more and more transactions with their customers. And that's generating increased load on the compute environments and they want to figure out how do I run that, you know if I have a mainframe how to run as efficiently as possible contain my costs maximize availability and uptime. At the same time I've got all this new data that I can start to analyze but I got to get it from the area that it's produced into this next generation system. And there's a lot of challenges there. So we started to isolate, you know, what are the specific use cases the present customers challenge and deliver very different IT solutions. Overarching kind of messages around positioning is around solving the Big Iron to Big Data challenge. >> You guys had done some acquisitions and been successful, I want to talk a little bit about the ones that you like right now that happened the past year or two years. I think you've done five in the past two years. A couple key notable ones that set you up kind of give you pole position for some of these big markets, and then after we talk then I want to talk about your ecosystem opportunity. But some of the acquisitions and what's working for you? What's been the big deals? >> So the larger the larger we did in 2016 was a company called Trillium, leader in the data quality space. Long time leader in the data quality space and the opportunity we saw with Trillium was to complement our data movement integration capabilities. A natural complement, but to focus very specifically on how to drive value in this next generation architecture. Particularly in things like Hadoop. what I'd like to be able to do is apply best in class data quality routines directly in that environment. And so we, from our experience in delivering these Big Data solutions in the past, we knew that we could take a lot of technology and create really powerful solutions that were that leverage the native kind of capabilities of Hadoop but had it on a layer of you've proven technology for best in class day quality. Probably the biggest news of the last few weeks has been that we were acquired by a new private equity partner called Centerbridge Partners. In that acquisition actually acquired Syncsort and they acquired a company called Vision Solutions. And we've combined those organizations. >> John: When did that happen? >> The deal was announced July, early July and it closed in the middle of August. And vision solutions is a really interesting company. They're the leader in high availability for the IBM i market. IBM i was originally called AS/400 it's had a couple of different names and a dominant kind of market position. What we liked about that business was A. That market position four thousand customers generally large enterprise. And also you know market leading capability around data replication in real time. >> And we saw IBM. >> Migration data, disaster recovery kind of thing? >> It's DR it's high availability, it's migrations, it's also changed data capture actually. And leveraging all common technology elements there. But it also represents a market leading franchise in IBM i which is in many ways very similar to the mainframe. Run optimized for transactional systems, hard to kind of get at. >> Sounds like you're reconstructing the mainframe in the cloud. >> It's not so much that, it's the recognition that those compute systems still run the world. They still run all the transactions. >> Well, some say the cloud is a software mainframe. >> I think over time you'll see that, we don't see that our business today. There is a cloud aspect our business it's not to move this transactional applications running on those platforms into the cloud yet. Although I suspect that happens at some point. But our point, our interest was more these are the systems that are producing the world's data. And it's hard to to get. >> There are big, big power sources for data, they're not going anywhere. So we've got the expertise to source that data into these next generation systems. And that's a tricky problem for a lot of customers, and and not something. >> That a problem they have. And you guys basically cornered the market on that. >> So think about Big Iron and Big Data as these two components, being able to source data and make a productive using these next generation analytics systems, and also be able to run those existing systems as you know efficiently as possible. >> All right, so how do you talk to customers and I've asked this question before so I just ask again, oh, Syncsort now you got vision you guys are just a bunch of old mainframe guys. What do you know about cloud native? A lot of the hipsters and the young guns out there might not know about some of the things you're doing on the cutting edge, because even though you have the power base of these old big systems, we're just throwing off massive amounts of data that aren't going anywhere. You still are integrated into some cutting edge. Talk about that, that narrative, and how you. >> So I mean the folks that we target. >> I used cloud only as an example. Shiny, cool, new toys. >> Organizations we target and our customers and prospects, and generally we we serve large enterprise. You know large complex global enterprises. They are making significant investments in Hadoop and Splunk and these next generation environments. We approach them and say we believe to get full value out of your investments in these next generation technologies, it would be helpful if you had your most critical data assets available. And that's hard, and we can help you do that. And we can help you do that in a number of ways that you won't be able to find anywhere else. That includes features in our products, it includes experts on the ground. And what we're seeing is there's a huge demand because, you know, Hadoop is really kind of you can see it in the Cloudera and Hortonworks results and the scale of revenue. This is a you know a real foundational component data management this point. Enterprises are embracing it. If they can't solve that integration challenge between the systems that produce all the data and, you know, where they want to analyze the data There's a there's a big value gap. And we think we're uniquely positioned to be able to do that, one because we've got the technical expertise, two, they're all our customers at this point, we have six thousand customers. >> You guys have executed very well. I just got to say you guys are just slowly taking territory down you and you got a great strategy, get into a business, you don't overplay your hand or get over your skis, whatever you want to call it. And you figure it out and see if was a fit. If it is, grab it, if not, you move on. So also you guys have relationships so we're talking about your ecosystem. What is your ecosystem and what is your partner strategy? >> I'll talk a little bit about the overall strategy and I'll talk about how partners fit into that. Our strategy is to identify specific use cases that are common and challenging in our customer set, that fall within this Big Iron to Big Data umbrella. It's then to deliver a solution that is highly differentiated. Now, the third piece of that is to partner very closely with you know the emerging platform vendors in the in the Big Data space. And the reason for that is we're solving an integration challenge for them. Like Cloudera, like Hortonworks, like Splunk. We launched a relationship with Calibra in the middle the year. We just announced our relationship. >> Yeah, for them the benefits of them is they don't do the heavy lifting you've got that covered. >> We can we can solve a lot of pain points they have getting their platforms setup. >> That's hard to replicate on their end, it's not like they're going to go build it. >> Cloudera and Hortonworks, they don't have mainframe skills. They don't understand how to go access >> Classic partnering example. >> But that the other pieces is we do real engineering work with these partnerships. So we build, we write code to integrate and add value to platforms. >> It's not a Barney deal, it's not an optical deal. >> Absolutely. >> Any jazz is critical in the VM world of some of the deals he's been done in the industry referring to his deal, that's seems to be back in vogue thank God, that people going to say they're going to do a deal and they back it with actually following through. What about other partnerships, how else, how you looking at partnering? So, pretty much, where it fits in your business, are people coming to you, are you going to them? >> We certainly have people coming to us. The the key thing, the number one driver is customers. You know, as we understand use cases, as customers introduce us to new challenges that they are facing, we will not just look at how do we solve it, but and what are the other platforms that we're integrating with, and if we believe we can add unique value to that partner we'll approach that partner. >> Let's talk customers, give me some customer use cases that you're working on right now, that you think are notable worth highlighting. >> Sure so we do a lot in the in the financial services space. You know we have a number of customers >> Where there's mainframes. >> Where there's a lot of mainframes, but it's not just in financial services. Here's an interesting one, was insurance company and they were looking at how to transition their mainframe archive strategy. So they have regulations around how long they have to keep data, they had been using traditional mainframe archive technology, very expensive on annual basis and also unflexible. They didn't have access to. >> And performance too. At the end of the day don't forget performance >> They want performance, this was more of an archive use case and what they really wanted was an ability both access the data and also lower the cost of storing the data for the required time from a regulation perspective. And so they made the decision that they wanted to store it in the cloud, they want to store it in S3. There's a complicated data movement there, there's a complicated data translation process there and you need to understand the mainframe and you need to understand AWS and S3 and all those components, and we had all those pieces and all that expertise and were able to solve that. So we're doing that with a few different customers now. But that's just an example of, you know, there's a great ROI, there's a lot more business flexibility then there's a modernization aspect to it that's very attractive. >> Well, great to hear from you today. I'm glad you made it up here, again you were in DC yesterday thanks for coming in, checking out to shows you're certainly pounding the pavement as they say in New York, to quote New Yorker phrase. What's new for you guys, what's coming out? More acquisitions happening? what's the outlook for Syncsort? >> So were were always active on the M&A front. We certainly have a pipeline of activities and there's a lot of different you know interesting spaces, adjacencies that we're exploring right now. There's nothing that I can really talk about there >> Can you talk about the categories you're looking at? >> Sure you know, things around metadata management, things around real-time data movement, cloud opportunities. There's there's some interesting opportunities in the artificial intelligence, machine learning space. Those are all >> Deep learning. >> Deep learning, those are all interesting spaces for us to think about. Security and other space is interesting. So we're pretty active in a lot of adjacencies >> Classic adjacent markets that you're looking at. So you take one step at a time, slow. >> But then we try to innovate on, you know, after the catch, so we did three announcements this week. Transaction tracing for Ironstream and a kind of refresh of data quality for Hadoop approach. So we'll continue to innovate on the organic setup as well. >> Final question the whole private equity thing. So that's done, so they put a big bag of money in there and brought the two companies together. Is there structural changes, management changes, you're the Syncsort CEO is there a new co name? >> The combined companies will operate under the Syncsort name, I'll serve as the CEO. >> Syncsort is the remaining name and you guys now have another company under it. >> Yes, that's right. >> And cash they put in, probably a boatload of cash for corporate development. >> The announcement the announced deal value was $1.2 billion a little over $1.2 billion. >> So you get a checkbook and looking to buy companies? >> We are we're going to continue, as I said yesterday, to Dave, you know I like to believe that we proved the hypothesis were in about the second inning. Can't wait to keep playing the game. >> It's interesting just, real quick while I got you in here, we got a break coming up for the guys. Private equity move is a good move in this transitional markets, you and I have talked about this in the past off-camera. It's a great thing to do, is take, if you're public and you're not really knocking it out of the park. Kill the 90 day shot clock, go private, there seems to be a lot of movement there. Retool and then re-emerge stronger. >> We've never been public, but I will say, the Centerbridge team has been terrific. A lot of resources there and certainly we do talk we're still very quarterly focused, but I think we've got a great partner and look forward to continue. >> The waves are coming, the big waves are coming so get your big surfboard out, we say in California. Josh, thanks for spending the time. Josh Rogers, CEO Syncsort here on theCUBE. More live coverage in New York after this break. Stay with us for our day two of three days of coverage of Big Data NYC 2017. Our event that we hold every year here in conjunction with Hadoop World right around the corner. I'm John Furrier, we'll be right back.

>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Dotcom 2017. Brought to you by Splunk. >> And welcome back to the nation's capital. The Cube, continuing our coverage of Dotcom 2017. At Splunk's annual get together and coming to Washington D.C. for the first time. Huge success, 7,000 plus attendees, 65 countries. I forget the millions of miles. Was it three million miles traveling? >> Let's see, was it three million? It was 30 million. >> Maybe 30 million. >> Yeah. It's a big number. >> 30 million miles. Dave Vellante and John Walls here on theCUBE. I'd say off to a roaring start here, to say the least. Josh Rogers joins us, he's the CEO of Syncsort. And Josh, good to have you on theCUBE. Good to you see sir. >> Thanks sir. Thanks for having me. >> Good week for you, big week for you. Couple of announcements that you made here recently. Go ahead and share with us a little bit about those. >> Sure, so we made two announcements yesterday. The first is a new product, it's called Transaction Tracing, it's an add on to our Ironstream product. Ironstream is a solution that delivers mainframe machine data to Splunk Enterprise, and has integration points on the security and on the IT service intelligence components within Splunk. What Transaction Tracing does, the new product introduction, is it adds additional capabilities to understand and trace a transaction that could begin on a mobile device and follow it all the way through the multiple hops it will take to ultimately transact against a mainframe. And when that transaction hits the mainframe, there's several things that you want to understand. One is, you want to understand how is is performing, how is it affecting my mainframe environment. Is it causing problems in other places? And you want to be able to look at that transaction, or that application, as a service. And so you want to be able to track that whole service end to end. And so what we've done with Transaction Tracing is created an ability for Splunk customers to be able to surface all of that data, collate it together, and get a unified view of both how the service is behaving, the performance that characteristics it's delivering to the customers that are utilizing the service, and then the impacts that it's having on the mainframe. All of which are, core components of understanding how you're IT operations are performing. And kind of all about what Splunk is supporting. We're just adding on additional capabilities for Splunk customers. >> So I wonder if I could follow up on Transaction Tracing. So I remember about 20 years ago, David Floyer did a piece of research, when we were working together at a former company, and I was struck at the time by the number of subsequent transactions that had to occur just to get an outcome of a check process. >> Right, right, right. >> I mean it was like some orders of magnitude >> Right. >> greater. Add to that mobile transactions, I can't imagine with all the internet traffic and other activities going on, now add to that big data, and security, and fraud detection, and all the other things that we're doing with the data. The number of ancillary transactions >> Right. >> has got to be enormous. Hence the need presumably for Transaction Tracing. >> Absolutely. >> So maybe talk about the market need, and why Syncsort? You would think doesn't the mainframe have all this stuff integrated into it? Maybe talk about that. >> Yeah sure, so I think one of the things to understand is that the mainframe compute volumes continue to go up. I think people just tend to think about mainframes as a environment that perhaps isn't growing, but in fact, it is growing. And one of the key drivers is this new transaction workload that is driven in part my mobile, and other devices. And so what you have if you're running a mainframe is I'm experiencing increase in my transaction workloads, I need to figure out how to kind of support that. But I also have a lot more characteristics I care about, security, performance, et cetera. And so I need deeper analytics. And of course, they are difficult systems. You need to understand the mainframe, you need to understand how KICKS and DB2 interact and support a transaction. But you also need to understand kind of this next generation analytic environment, how can I leverage that to actually get the insight I want. And that's really what we call, it's an example of, a big iron to big data challenge. And so what Syncsort's been incredibly focused on is helping customers understand the very specific use cases that are included in that big iron to big data space, and providing very differentiated solutions with very deep differentiation to solve those specific use cases. And Transaction Tracing is a good example of that. It sounds fairly narrow, but it's incredibly important if you're a bank and you want to give your customers an ability to kind of check account balances, interact with you in a way that they haven't in the past. >> Well, it's one of those things that we talk about you know depth apps, in depth apps, this is a depth app. >> Right. >> Alright, okay. And then in terms of the Splunk relationship, where does that fit in, and what are the swim lanes between you and Splunk? >> Well we view Splunk as a key platform in the world today for kind of understanding IT operations and security. We view them as incredibly powerful from a platform perspective. And we also view them as a partner that we can add value to. That we can provide access to data that enrich their platform and allows their customers to get more value of it, and that we can do that in a unique way. And so we have a very close relationship with Splunk. And that's not just at a go to market level, it's also at a product management and engineering level. We work very closely to make sure that our products integrate well with Splunk. So we've got deep integration with IT service intelligence, we've got deep integration with enterprise security, and we'll continue to drive deeper integration into the Splunk platform. So when a customer comes across a scenario where they want to ingest mainframe data, they can be assured that they will get no better product on the marketplace than Syncsort Ironstream and associated modules, in terms of both how it will perform on its own, but also how it will integrate with Splunk. >> So that deep integration something that's always interesting to us on theCUBE. Lot of times you see Barney deals. Barney, I love you, you love me, let's do a press release. And so one of the ways in which we measure, or try to measure, the intensity of the integration is the engineering that's involved. So I wonder if you could, sort of double click on that. >> Sure. >> Is it kind of just making sure you're familiar with the APIs? Are you actually doing integration and engineering on both sides? Maybe you could talk about that. >> Well, so I'll talk about our integration with enterprise, security, and IT service intelligence. >> Dave: Great. >> And those are, you can think of those as specific applications to support deep analytics. And these are Splunk offerings. Deep analytics around those two areas of confidence. Such that a user can rapidly build a set of dashboards that would allow them to answer the questions you want to answer if you're focused on IT service intelligence or understanding security. Fundamentally they're data models. They've gone out and mapped what are all the data elements that you need, what's the structure that you need of that data model, to be able to answer the questions that a security minded analyst would want to answer. That allows you to, if you map the data sources into those data models, that would allow you to rapidly build those to that dashboards that support those types of roles on the enterprise. What we've done is taken the very large amount of mainframe machine data that gets produced, generally it's an SMF record, so there's 260 types of SMF records, each one has its subtype. We've mapped it into those two data models that Splunk has created. Nobody else has done that. And what that does is it allows those customers to get a complete end to end view of how can I rapidly enhance my IT service intelligence application, or my enterprise security application with mainframe data. Which just happens to run my most sensitive applications and most voluminous applications, from a transaction perspective in my enterprise. So we thing that deep integration is a really powerful capability, and it's just an example of where we like to go deeper with our partners than what we see other companies doing. >> You know when you talked about the mobile environment a little while ago, and complexities and that, I'm always just kind of curious. With everybody talk about what that does in terms of when you're harvesting data and now you're in a non-stationary environment. And that comes with it a whole different set of characteristics and challenges. I mean, what layer of complexity do you take on when you all of a sudden you can be anywhere and feeding data at any time from any machine. >> Sure, well I mean what it creates is a lot more interaction points. So I probably interact with my bank a lot more today than I did 10 years ago, 'cause I don't have to find an ATM, or go by a branch, >> John: You never walk into a branch. >> And I did this over the weekend. I had to kind of transfer some money, right. So I just transferred it and I was in Colorado hiking, and I transferred funds between accounts. And then later on the golf course I did a wire, literally. >> John: You didn't have to transfer money on the golf course for a reason, did you? >> No, no, no, those were unrelated events. >> Just making sure. >> Lost a few, Josh? >> But that type of interaction. So you get more frequent interaction, which creates an operational challenge. Particularly when you think about the mainframe and how customers pay for that, right. They pay for it based on how much CPU they use on a monthly basis. And so what we want to do is help customers run that system as efficiently as possible. It also creates a massive analytic opportunity, because now I have a lot more data that I can start to analyze to understand trends, because I have more touchpoints. But the trick is I've got to get that data into a repository and into an analytic environment that can handle that data. And that's where I think Splunk creates such an interesting opportunity. And what we're trying to do is just add value to that, make it easy for customers to leverage all of their data. Does that make sense? >> Yeah. >> It does. How 'about the government marketplace? We're here in the District. You guys have an announcement around new partners. >> Yes. >> Maybe talk about the importance of government, and what you do in there. >> Sure, so we signed a distribution relationship with Carahsoft, also a big Splunk partner. And that is going to allow government customers to more easily take advantage of Ironstream and Transaction Tracing in these used cases. The federal government is a enormous market opportunity, it's also a big mainframe environment. There's a lot of government core, government applications, that still run on mainframe environments. In fact, I would tell you most do. IRS, Social Security, CIA, and other agencies. And so we think giving ourselves an easy route to market for these customers is a great opportunity for us, it's also a good opportunity for Splunk's customers who are in the government, 'cause they can go and buy additional capabilities that are relevant to their environment through the same partners that they've been working with Splunk. >> But is there a difference with how you deal with public and private sector then? I mean, governance and compliance, and all those things. I would assume you have different hurdles. >> They're different contract vehicles, which have different kind of requirements in them. And that's one of the values that we get with the Carahsoft relationship, is just giving us access to those various contract vehicles. Yeah. >> Talk to me a little bit about life. I mean, you've always been a private company. But you're you don't have the 90 day shot clock, you have new owners, what's the objective, maybe talk about that sort of the patience of the capital, what your priorities are with regard to these owners. Maybe discuss that a little bit. >> Yeah, sure. So just to give a little background in early July we announced and in mid August we closed a transaction whereby Centerbridge Partners acquired Syncsort and another company, Vision Solutions, from our previous owner, Clearlake Capital. And we combined the companies under the Syncsort umbrella, and myself and our leadership team is going to take the company forward. So the 90 day shot clock, I would say definitely we still care about the 90 day shot clock. We are very focused on growing this business and doing that in a consistent way on a quarterly basis. I guess the difference is I get to talk to my investors every day rather than once a quarter. But they've been great partners. The Centerbridge guys have a lot of resources, they've been incredibly helpful in helping us start to think through kind of the strategies, some of the integration work we're doing with Vision. But we think there's an opportunity to build a big business. We employed a dual strategy of organic growth focused largely in the big iron to big data spaces, as described earlier, combined with MNA. And you know, over the last 24 months we've tripled the size of Syncsort. So it's grown 3X-- >> So you are growing, that was one of my questions, were you growing. >> And in revenue, >> Substantially. >> we've doubled in employees. >> So, say that again. >> We've tripled revenue. >> You've tripled revenue. Double head count. >> And double head count. >> Okay, so you've increased profitability in theory then. >> So, and we will continue to run the same play. We're seeing acceleration in our organic place, but focus on the big iron to big data market. And we also believe there are additional data management capabilities that are relevant to our customers, that we can acquire and help point towards that big iron to big data play. And so we'll continue to look at various spaces that are interesting adjacencies that are relevant to our customers. >> And some of that revenue growth obviously is through acquisition. >> Josh: Right. >> Right, and so when you think about, you know it used to be the classic private equity play was to suck all the money out of the company, leave the carcass for somebody else to deal with. It seems like there's a new thinking. Not seems like, there is a new thinking here. Invest, acquire, increase the value, the money guys are realizing wow this, there's a lot more money to be made. >> Absolutely. I definitely-- >> The technology business. >> We have an eye towards profitable growth. But we are absolutely making investments. And as you get larger scale you can make meaningful investments in these specific areas that can help deliver really great innovation to customers. And Transaction Tracing is an example of that. And certainly I can give you others. But for sure, we are trying to build value. This is not a traditional kind of private equity play. And I also think that private equity is generally understanding there's an opportunity to create value after the catch, if you will, in the tech industry. And I was looking at an analysis last week that financial investors, private equity, for the first time ever will do more deals in technology than strategics, in 2017. And so I think that's a statement that says that there's certainly an opportunity to create long term sustained value in a private equity backed kind of model. And I think to some extent, Syncsort's been pioneering that. With a dual approach on organic growth, and on additional acquisitions. >> Well, and you've seen it, coming out of the down turn, or sort of in the down turn, a lot of these public companies were struggling. >> Right. >> I mean you certainly saw with Dell, BMC, Riverbed, Infor, all examples of private equity where there's investment going on and I think a longer term vision. >> Right. >> With some, as a I call, patient capital. Syncsort is obviously part of that. Syncsort, actually interesting, when it spun out its storage business, you know as a successful company. Catalogic is doing its thing. So Syncsort was able to monetize that. And then really focus on the core knitting. >> Yeah. >> And then figure out where in the big data space that you can make money. Which, not a lot of people were making money in the big data space. So, that's good, congratulations on that. >> I like to tell folks that we've had a really good run, but it's really the first couple of innings. The Centerbridge team is going to be incredibly supportive, and I can't wait to get started on the next leg of the journey. I think there's going to be a lot more innovation to come and I'm looking forward to it. >> Dave: Great. >> So, you're in the middle of the game. We appreciate the time here. Good luck with that, the long term plan down the road. I hope the show's going well for you. >> It's going great. >> And it's good seeing you. >> Great, thanks John. >> Thanks, Josh. >> See you Dave. >> Josh Rogers from Syncsort with us today here. Syncsort, rather, here on theCUBE. Back with more Washington D.C., theCUBE live at Dotcom 2017, right after this. (upbeat music)