(bright upbeat music)
>> Hey, everyone
and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage
of AWS re:Invent 2022 live
from The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas.
We're happy to be back.
This is first full day of coverage.
We were here last night,
we've got three full days of coverage
in addition to last night
and there's about 50,000 people here.
This event is ready,
people are ready to be back,
which is so exciting.
Lisa Martin here with Paul Gillen.
Paul, it's great to be back in person.
Great to be hosting with you.
>> And likewise with you, Lisa.
I think, the first time we have hosted together.
>> It is our first time!
>> Fantastic! >> Exactly!
>> And we come here to the biggest event
that theCUBE ever does during the year.
>> It's the Super Bowl of theCUBE.
>> It's elbow-to-elbow out there.
It's full-tackle football.
>> Totally.
(Rick laughs) >> On the the floor
of re:Invent.
And very exciting,
this, I've been to a lot of conferences,
going back 40 years
as long as I can remember,
been going to tech conferences,
this one, the intensity, the excitement around this,
is really unusual.
People are jazzed, they're excited to be here
and that's great to see,
particularly, coming back from two years of isolation.
>> Absolutely!
The energy is so palpable.
Even yesterday evening, afternoon when I was walking in,
you just feel it with all the people here.
We talk to so many different companies on the queue, Paul.
Every company, these days, has to be a data company.
The most important thing about data,
is making sure that it's backed up
and it's protected, that it's secure,
that it can be recovered if anything happens.
So, we're going to be having a great conversation next
about data resiliency with one of our alumni.
(Rick laughs)
>> And that would be Rick Scott,
Rick, excuse me,
Rick Scott.
>> Lisa: Rick Clark!
>> Paul: Rick Clark.
I was going to say, Rick Scott.
>> Lisa: SVP, cloud sales, Veritas.
Rick, welcome back to the program.
>> Oh, thank you so much.
It's a pleasure being here.
Thank you so much.
Definitely, very excited to myself
and 40,000 of my closest cousins and friends,
all in one place.
>> Lisa: Yep.
>> What could possibly go wrong, right?
>> Nothing! (Rick laughs)
Absolutely nothing.
So, Rick, so, Veritas has made some exciting announcements.
Talk to us about some of the new things
that you've unveiled.
>> Yeah, we've been incredibly busy
and the journey that we've been on,
one of the big announcement that we made
about three or four weeks ago,
is the introduction,
really, of a brand new Cloud-native data management platform
that we call Veritas Alta.
And this is a journey
that we've been on for the better part of seven years.
We, actually, started it with our Flex Appliances.
That was a containerization
of our traditional NetBackup business
into a highly secured appliance
that was loved by our customers.
And we continued that theme and that investment
into what we call a scale-out
and scale-up form-factor appliance,
as well, what we called Flex Scale.
And then, we continued on that investment theme,
basically, spending over a billion dollars
over that seven-year journey in our Cloud-native
and we call that, basically, the Veritas Alta platform
with our Cloud-native platform.
And I think, if you really look at what that is,
it truly is a data management platform.
And I emphasize the term, Cloud-native.
And so, our traditional technologies around data protection,
obviously, application resiliency
and digital compliance or data compliance and governance,
we're the only, the first and only company in the world
to provide, really, a Cloud-optimized,
Cloud-native platform, really, that addresses that.
So, it's been fun,
it's been a fun journey.
>> Talk a little bit about the customer experience.
I see over 85% of the Fortune,
100 trust Veritas with their data management.
That's a big number.
>> Yeah, it is incredible actually.
And it really comes back to the Veritas Alta platform.
We sort of built that with four tenants in mind,
all driving back to this,
very similar to AWS's customer obsession.
Everything we do,
each and every day of our waiting moments,
as a Veritas employee is really surrounds the customer.
So, it starts with the customer experience,
on how do they find us
to how do they procure our solutions
through things like AWS Marketplace
and how do they deploy it.
And the second thing is around, really, cost optimization.
As we know, to say that companies are going
through a digital transformation
and moving workloads to the Cloud,
I mean, I've got customers
that, literally, were 20% in Cloud a year ago
and 80% a year later,
we've never seen that kind of velocity.
And so, we've doubled down
on this notion of cost optimization.
You can only do that
with these huge investments that I talked about.
And so, we're a very profitable company.
We've been around,
got a great heritage of over 30 years
and we've really taken those investments in R&D
to provide that sort of Cloud-native technology
to, ultimately, make it elastic.
And so, everything
from, well, spin-up and spin-down services,
to optimize the Cloud Bill for our customers.
But we, also, provide the greatest workload support.
Obviously, on-prem workloads are very different
from Cloud workloads
and it's almost like turning the clock back 20 years
to see all of those new systems.
There's no standard API like SNMP on the network.
And so, we have to talk to every single PaaS service,
every single DB PaaS
and we capture that information and protect it.
So, it's, really, has been a phenomenal journey.
It's been great.
>> You said that Alta represents a shift
from Flex Scale to Cloud-native.
What is the difference there?
>> The main difference,
really, is we took, obviously, our traditional product
that you've known for many years, NetBackup.
It's got tens of millions of lines of code in that.
And we knew, if we lifted and shifted it up
into the Cloud, into an IaaS infrastructure,
it, obviously, would perform extremely well,
but it wasn't cost-optimized for our customer.
It was too expensive to run.
And so, what we did,
is we rewrote with microservices and containerization,
Kubernetes,
huge parts of that particular product,
to, really, optimize it for the Cloud.
And not only have we done it for that technology,
what we, now, call Alta Data Protection,
but we've done it across our entire portfolio.
That was really the main change
that we made as part of this particular transition.
>> And what have you done
to prepare customers for that shift?
Is this going to be a drop-in, simple upgrade for them?
>> Absolutely, yeah.
In fact, one of the things that we introduced,
is we invest, still, very heavily
with regards to on-prem solutions.
We're certainly not abandoning,
we're still innovating.
There's a lot of data still on-prem
that needs to move to the Cloud.
And so, we have a unique advantage
of all of the different workload supports
that we provide on-prem,
we continue that expansion into the Cloud.
So, we create it as part of the Veritas Alta vision,
a technology, we call it Alta View.
So, it's a single pane of glass
across both on-prem and Cloud for our customers.
And so, now,
they can, actually, see all of their data protection,
all their application availability
single, collect, all through that single, unified interface,
which is really game-changing in the industry.
>> It's game-changing for customers too,
because customers have, what,
generally, six to seven different backup technologies
in their environment
that they're having to individually manage and provision.
So, the workforce productivity improvements,
I can imagine, are huge with Veritas.
>> Yeah, you nailed it, right?
You must have seen my script.
(Rick laughs) (Lisa laughs)
But absolutely.
I mean, I look at the analogy,
if you think about airlines,
what's one of the first things airlines do with efficiency?
Southwest Airlines was the best example,
they standardized on the 737, right?
And so, all of their pilots, all of their mechanics,
all know how to operate the 737.
So, we are doing the same thing
with enterprise data protection.
So, whether, you're on-prem, at the Edge,
or in the Cloud, or even multicloud,
we can provide that single pane of glass.
We've done it for our customers for 30 plus years.
We'll continue to do it for another 30-something years.
And so, it's, really, the first time with Veritas Alta
that we are coming out with something
that we've invested for so long
and put such a huge investment on
that can create those changes and that compelling solution
for our customers.
So, as you can see,
we're pretty pumped and excited about it.
>> Yes, I can.
>> You use the term data management to describe Alta
and I want to ask about that term,
because I hear it a lot these days,
your data management used to be database,
now, data management is being applied
to all kinds of different functions
across the spectrum.
How do you define data management in Veritas' perspective?
>> Yeah, we see it as, really, three main pillars
across the environment.
So, one is protection
and we'll talk a little bit
about this notion of ransomware,
is, probably, the number one use case.
So, the ability to take the most complex
and the biggest, most vast applications,
SAP is an example,
with hundreds of different moving parts to it
and being able to protect that.
The second is application resiliency.
If you look at the Cloud,
there's this notion of responsibility,
shared responsibility in the Cloud.
You've heard it, right?
>> Lisa: Yep.
>> Every single one of the Cloud service providers,
certainly, AWS,
has up on their website,
"This is what we protect,
here's the demarcation line,
the line in the sand,
and you, the customer, are responsible
for that other level."
And so, we've had a technology,
you, previously, knew it as InfoScale,
we, now, call it Alta Application Resiliency.
And it can provide availability zone to availability zone,
real-time replication,
high availability
of your mission-critical applications, right?
So, not only do we do the traditional backups,
but we can also provide application resiliency
for mission-critical.
And then, the third thing,
really, from a data management standpoint,
is all around governance and compliance.
A lot of our customers need to keep data
for five, 10 years or forever.
They're audited,
there's regulations in different geographies
around the world.
And those regulations require them
to be able to really take control of their Cloud,
take control of their data.
And so, we have a whole portfolio of solutions
under that data compliance, data governance.
So, back to your question, Paul,
it's, really, the integration and the intersection
of those three main pillars.
We're not a one-trick pony.
We've been at this for a long time
and they're not just new products
that we invented a couple of months ago
and brought to market.
They're tried and tested with 80,000 customers
and the most complex, really, solutions on the planet
that we've been supporting.
>> I'm going to ask you,
we talked about those three pillars
and you talked about the shared responsibility model,
I think of that where you mentioned AWS, Salesforce,
Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, whatnot,
are you finding that most customers aren't aware of that
and haven't been protecting those workloads?
And then, come to you and saying, "Hey, guys, guess what?"
This is what they're responsible for,
the data is you.
>> Yeah, it's our, probably, biggest challenge,
is there's one of awareness with the Cloud.
I mean, how many times have you spoken to someone?
You just put it in the Cloud, your applications,
like the Cloud providers like AWS,
they'll protect everything.
Nothing will ever go down.
And it's kind of like unless your house was ever broken into,
you're probably not going to install that burglar alarm,
or that fire alarm, right?
Hopefully, that won't be an event
that you guys have to suffer through.
So, here,
it's definitely, it wasn't till the last year or so,
that the Cloud service providers really published jointly
as to where is their responsibility, right?
So, a great example is an attack vector
for a lot of corporations is their SaaS applications.
So, whether it's your traditional SaaS applications
that is available,
it's available on the web to their customers as a SaaS
and so, it's certainly available to the bad actors.
Where there's going to be a point,
they're going to try to get in.
And so, no matter what your resiliency plan is,
at the end of the day,
you really need to protect it.
And protection isn't just, for example, with M365,
having a snapshot or a recycle bin,
that's just not good enough.
And so, we, actually, have some pretty compelling technology
what we call Alta SaaS Protection,
which covers pretty much the gamut
of the major SaaS technologies
to protect those and make it available for our customers.
So, yeah, certainly, a big part of it is awareness.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Well, I understand the shared responsibility model.
I realize there's a lot of confusion about that still.
>> Mm-hmm (affirmative).
>> But in the SaaS world, that's somewhat different.
The responsibility of the SaaS provider
for protecting data is somewhat different.
What should customers know about that?
>> I think, related to that,
if you look at on-prem,
approximately,
35 to 40% of on-prem enterprise data is protected.
It's, kind of, been a long traditional problem.
Everyone's aware of it.
I remember going to a presentation from IBM,
20-something years ago
and someone held their hand up in the room
about the disk drives
and says, "You need to back it up."
And the IBM sales guy said,
"No, IBM disk drives never crash."
Right?
And so, fast forward to here, we are today,
things have changed. (Paul laughs)
So, we're going through almost a similar sort of changes
in culture in the Cloud.
8% of the data in the Cloud is protected today, 8%.
That's incredible!
>> Meaning that there is independent backup,
devoted to that data.
>> In some cases, not at all.
In many cases,
the customer just assumes that it's in the Cloud,
therefore, it's always available,
"I never have to worry about protecting it."
Right?
And so, that's a big problem
that we're, obviously, trying to solve.
And we do that all under the umbrella of ransomware.
That's a huge theme,
a huge investment that Veritas does
with regards to providing that resiliency for our customers.
>> Ransomware is scary.
It is becoming so prolific
that bad actors have access to technologies.
Obviously, companies are fighting them.
But now, ransomware has evolved
into, no longer, "Are we going to get hit?"
It's when.
>> Yeah.
>> It's how often, it's what's the damage going to be.
So, the ability to help customers recover from ransomware,
that resiliency is table stakes
for businesses in any industry these days.
Is that one of the primary pain points
that your customers are coming to you with?
>> It's the number one pain point.
(Rick laughs)
Yeah, it's incredible.
I mean, there's not a single briefing
that our teams are doing, customer meetings
where that term, ransomware doesn't come up
as their number one use case.
Just to give you something, a couple of statistics,
there's a ransomware attack that happens 11 times a second.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
Around the globe
and this isn't just minor stuff, right?
I've got friends that are executives at large company
that have been hit
that some multimillion-dollar ransom attack.
So, our play on this,
is when you think about it,
is data protection is the last line of defense.
>> Yes.
>> And so, if they break through,
it's not a case, Lisa, as you mentioned,
of if, it's a case of when.
>> Lisa: Yeah.
>> And so, it's going to happen.
So, one of the most important things,
is knowing how do you know you have a gold copy,
a clean copy
and you can recover at speed?
In some cases,
we're talking about tens of thousands of systems
to do that at speed.
That's in our DNA.
We've been doing it for many, many years.
And we spoke to a lot of the cyber insurance companies
on this particular topic as well.
And what, really, came back from that,
is that they're, actually, now, demanding things,
like immutable storage, malware detection,
air-gapping, right, anomaly detection,
is sort of core technologies, tick the box
that they, literally, won't ensure you,
unless you have those core components.
And so, what we've done,
is we've doubled down on that investment.
We use AI and ML technologies,
particularly, around the anomaly detection.
One of the unique differentiators that Veritas provides,
is a Ransomware Resiliency Scorecard.
>> Lisa: Hmm?
>> Imagine the ability
to say, if you ran a corporation,
we can come in and run our analytics on your environment
and kind of give you a grade, right?
Wouldn't you prefer that,
than waiting for the event to take place
to see where your vulnerability really is?
And so, these are some of the advantages
that we can actually provide for our customers.
>> Lisa: Nice.
It's really (indistinct).
>> Just a final, quick question.
There is a common perception, I believe,
that ransomware is an on-premise problem.
In fact, it is also a Cloud problem.
Is that not right?
>> Oh, absolutely.
I think,
that, probably, the biggest attack vector is in the Cloud.
If it's on-prem,
you've certainly got a certain line of defense,
it's trying to break through.
But you're in the open world there.
Obviously, with SaaS applications in the Cloud.
It's not a case of if, but when
and it's going to continue to get more and more prevalent
within corporations.
There's always going to be those attack vectors that they find,
the flesh wounds that they can attack and break through.
What we are concentrating on, is that resiliency,
that ability for customers to recover at speed.
We've done that with our traditional appliances
from our heritage, on-prem.
We continue to do that with regards to resiliency at speed
with our customers in the Cloud
with partners like AWS for sure.
>> Almost done.
Give me your 30 seconds on AWS and Veritas.
>> We've had a partnership for the better part of 10 years.
It's incredible.
When you think about AWS,
where they released the Elastic Compute back in 2006, right,
we've been delivering data protection
and data management solutions, Paul,
for the better part of 30 years, right?
So, we're juggernauts in our space.
We're the leader in data protection
and enterprise data protection.
We were on-prem,
we continue to be in the Cloud
as AWS was with the Cloud service provided.
So, the synergies are incredible.
About 80 to 85% of our joint customers are the same.
We take core unique superpowers of AWS,
like AWS Outposts
and AWS Glacier Instant Retrieval, for example,
those core technologies
and incorporate them into our products as we go to market.
And so, we released a core technology a few months ago,
we call it Alta Recovery Vault.
And it's an air-gapped, immutable storage, WORM storage,
right ones, right?
You can't change it, even when the bad actors try to get in,
they're independent from the customer's tenant and AWS.
So, we manage it as a managed backup service
for our customers.
>> Got it.
>> And so, our customers are using that
to, really, help them with their ransomware.
So, it's been a tremendous partnership with AWS.
>> Outstanding!
10 years and counting.
Last question for you, Rick.
You got a billboard on the 101 in Santa Clara,
right by the fancy Veritas building.
>> Rick: I love 101, yeah.
>> Right?
(Rick laughs) (Lisa laughs)
When there's no traffic.
What does that billboard say?
What's that bumper sticker about Veritas?
>> I think, the billboard would say,
"Welcome to the new Veritas.
This is not your grandfather's Oldsmobile."
(Lisa laughs)
We've done a phenomenal job,
particularly, in the last three or four years
to, really, reinvent ourselves in the Cloud
and the investments that we made are really paying off
for our customers today.
So, I'm excited to be part of this journey
and excited to talk to you guys today.
>> Love it.
Not your grandfather's Veritas.
Rick, thank you so much
for joining Paul and me on the (indistinct),
talking about what you guys are doing,
how you're helping customers really establish
that cyber resiliency,
which is absolutely critical these days.
We appreciate your time.
>> My pleasure.
Thank you so much.
>> All Right, for our guest and Paul Gillen,
I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE,
which, as you know, is the leader in live enterprise
and emerging tech coverage.
(Rick giggles)
(bright electronic music)