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>> Live from Miami Beach, Florida.
It's the CUBE.
Covering VeeamON 2019.
Brought to you by Veeam.
>> Hi everybody,
welcome back to Miami.
This is the CUBE the leader in Live
tech coverage. We go out to the events and
we extract the signal from the noise.
We're here at VeeamON day one, 2019
at the Fountain Blue hotel in Miami.
Danny Allen is here. He's the vice president
of product strategy at Veeam, welcome.
>> Thank you, I always love being here with you.
>> Good to see you.
>> Fresh off the Keynote we we're joking
that you're up against South Beach
and you had packed out room none the less.
People we're into it.
It was like the KoolAid injection of,
the firehose of feature announcements.
Eight demo's in about an hour, hour and a half.
So congratulations for getting that done.
>> Thank you.
>> Feels like a weight off your shoulders
I'm sure, you've been working on that
for a long long time as have your engineers.
Okay, well let's get into it.
Where do you want to start?
Veeam? Product strategy?
I mean it's an exciting time for you guys.
You know, dial back several years ago
there were a lot of nice incremental improvements.
But there's a lot of like,
really see changing things that are going on.
Your take?
>> So I would argue the last ten years
is all about modernizing the data center.
Even though, people have been talking about clouds
significantly, over the last ten years.
The adoption hasn't really been there.
So now were at this inflection point
where all these organizations are saying
okay, now I really have to do something
about cloud.
The fight for dominance in the cloud
management era is only really beginning now.
And will unfold over the next few years.
>> That's some interesting
competitive dynamics going on.
There's a lot of money
(clears throat)
pouring into the space.
Why do you think Veeam is in such
a good position to be as,
what Ratmir called the dominant player
in cloud data management?
>> So, two things really.
So we have this maniacal focus on
make it simple, make it realiable,
make it flexible.
But one of the other things, that I think
that really drives this, is--
so those are differentiators.
Simplicity, reliability, flexibility.
But we have an unfair advantage.
In that we have 350,000 customers
that are giving us guidance on
how to make it simple,
how to make it reliable,
how to be flexible.
>> You know one of the other things--
you've been at this like I said
since seven A.M this morning
>> (giggles)
>> We're at the Analyst
and the media briefing.
You just did the Keynote.
You talked about the five stages
the Veeam availability platform.
And it was refreshing, to actually hear
a company who's traditionally a back-up
software company. Say, start with backup.
Right?
>> Yes.
>> Everybody is sort of
running away from the term.
And you're saying start there.
Backup cloud mobility, visibility,
orchestration, automation.
So you sort of laid out this journey,
but the core of it, is back-up.
Because that's kind of what you guys are all about, right?
>> That's how you get your data.
Everyone wants to talk about
artificial intelligence, in power points.
And machine learning, more real of course.
And I want to talk about where we're goin',
but we're not there today.
I mean, we have customers that struggle with back-up.
And they struggle with back-up in
their data center and in the cloud.
So, I always
highlight to customers, yes,
we want to go there.
And we'll help you get there.
But start with back-up,
because that's about aggregating
you data into one place.
>> So, you're talkin' about the customers being
just sort of starting really, their
to really dig into the cloud.
I mean obviously, I don't know what the stat is
it's lke 20% of work loads are in the cloud.
80% to go, depending on who's data that
you're looking at.
And, typically you would think
the vendor community leads--
>> Mhm.
>> The user adoption. Okay,
that makes sense.
But so what are the specific things now
that we're I guess, let's see, 2006
it all started.
>> Yes.
>> 2010, we started really paying attention to it.
So, now that we're a
decade and change in,
what are the learnings on
how was that affecting your product strategy?
>> So, one of things,
the initial thought, 2010 to 2015 maybe,
people thought well I'll just pick up
my data center and move it over here
and drop it in the cloud.
What they quickly learned is,
I always say the cloud is not a charity, right?
They layer in margin, and so
just picking up infrastructure
and moving it somewhere else
doesn't necessarily leverage the cloud for what
it's good at.
And so, I don't --
Sometimes what we actually see
is reprioritization, like
the data goes back on premises
after it moves to the cloud.
But we are beginning to see,
cloud native applications that are
designed for cloud.
And that's where I think it's really interesting.
Looking at Kubernetes
looking at functions as a service.
That is where I think the cloud,
is really going to find it's legs
over the next few years.
>> Yeah, you talked about that in your Keynote
That you're going to
need backup for things like
Lambda and functions in the service.
You're going to need back up for containers.
And that's a whole new world.
It's not just back-up,
as we were talkin' earlier,
about data assurance.
Spitting down containers, spitting them up.
Making it harder for the bad guys
to sort of figure out
where the vulnerabilities are.
So, that's clearly part of the
I don't want to say road map
'cause Ratmir said
well we don't really have these strict roadmaps.
>> Yes. >> But part of the vision.
>> Yes, absolute part of the vision and strategies.
So what we do is,
we keep our finger in the pulse
of what is happening.
Like I say, we have an unfair advantage.
350,000 customers.
How many of them are actually moving to the cloud?
What are they moving to the cloud?
Are they building in the cloud?
So, having that visibility into how this cloud
adoption is taking place, is giving us
an advantage that frankly other companies don't have.
So, we invest in
understanding that and then
being ready when the scale actually tips.
>> Mhm.
>> So, one of the things that I find
particularly interesting, is that
back-up, and restore, we've said it a couple times today
has historically been a bolt on.
Something, that you do as an afterthought.
Something you do once a system's been built.
But it's this transformation,
this move to digital business,
puts data at the center of a companies strategy
and value proposition.
It means that now,
this whole notion, this whole--
what back-up does,
and why it's now important,
is because it comes,
it becomes for the first time,
central to what a companies strategic business
capabilities are.
How is that shifting, as a product guy?
How is is that shifting, how you balance
and how you get information about features
and functions,
and no road maps,
but what you do next?
>> We always look at how we can
enable that next generation of activities.
So, you made and interesting comment there.
You said people always bolt on back-up after the fact.
And I look back, I come out of the security industry.
People will bolt security on,
after they've built the system.
We only really became better as an industry,
when we built security into the applications, rather than--
>> Something we're still learning to do.
>> Yes. And we're only now
so people are still bolting on back-up
I would argue that we're now going through this phase
of building data management into our platforms.
Building data management in is more than just back-up
it's an insuring that all of the data
you have the visibility across it,
that you can unlock it,
that you can distribute it.
Because if we're only looking at data in a reactive way
we're missing the greater opportunity to make
our businesses run faster.
>> Yeah well, faster and better,
we're diminishing the value of
the options that we have on
how we use our data.
>> Yes.
>> And that's not what you want to do
in digital business setting.
We talk about assurance.
>> Mhm.
>> Data assurance, so data protection is one thing.
But that seems kind of like
what's already happened.
Whereas, data assurances,
ensure that your data
is in the right place,
at the right time,
with the right set of services
and the right set of meta data,
so that you can spin up that Kubernetes cluster
if that's where you need it.
>> Yes.
>> How does that notion, that
kind of forward reaching, turning data
into asset, generating new strategic value streams
out of your data, from a platform
like Veeam, how does that comport
with this notion of assurance?
>> Good question, and--
a challenge that we have frankly as Veeam,
is that our typical buyer
has been the back-up data center assurance buyer.
And as you begin to look at how do we expand
beyond this to unlock data
and build systems in
all of sudden there's new constituent in play.
It's not the IT administrator anymore.
It's the compliance team,
it's the security team.
It's whatever team happens to be involved.
So, we operate this in a few different ways.
One is certainly at a marketing level.
Just the messaging around Ransome,
where the messaging around compliance, and GDPR,
the messaging around
how you can do more with data.
But frankly one of the big things that we do
is events like this.
We have CIO's and administrator's of IT
I was speaking with CIO last night,
he started out as an administrator of Veeam,
sorry VMware ten years ago,
and now he's a CIO.
And so,
these events are what enable us to get
the message out, about what Veeam
is actually capable of.
>> That's not an uncommon profile by the way.
>> (giggles) Yes.
>> One more question if I may,
that you got a strong security background
and now your in data protection.
Those two,
groups,
are looking at many of the same problems.
>> Mhm.
>> And if you think about where the security guys
are going, they're increasingly looking at
what they can do with data from a services standpoint
that goes beyond security.
And you look at what data protection is doing,
you're looking at how you can start to add more data
security attributes to the platform that you have.
Where does this--
where does security and data protection intersect?
And come together?
And when do you think?
>> Well, frankly, I believe that Veeam
is at the intersection of that now.
>> Okay.
>> And to take it one step further,
I think it's not only data protection, data security
but also data privacy.
So the advent of GDPR and regulatory
around users ownership of data.
And I think it's going to get worse,
before it gets better.
I'll be honest on that
because we have this patchwork of regulations
with no central
model and if I was a CIO I would be
pulling my hair out.
But I believe that Veeam
is well positioned
because we're at the intersection
and we can see all of this data.
That's why visibility is the center stage
in that five stage journey.
Because you move from being reactive
to being proactive with the data.
And proactive in terms in of security, and
proactive in terms of data privacy.
>> You know it's like a three sides coin,
if that's even such a thing.
>> (giggles)
>> We've talked about security,
has shifted from one of pure defensive
to responsive.
How do I respond?
How quickly can I respond?
You know, data protection
has always been about recovery.
>> Mhm.
>> I think two of you're firehose,
demo's today were about fast recovery.
From backups and
>> Yes.
>> And then recovery to (mumbles).
And I feel like I kind of agree.
It could get worse, before it gets better.
When you think about privacy,
it sort of reminds me of the early days
of the federal rules of civil procedure
and you're trying to plug holes
with email archiving.
And it was just a band aid.
>> Mhm.
>> You mention GDPR, a couple of times.
How have you seen,
GDPR sort of affect the way in which people
think about data protection
and data management?
Has it been a real up-tick?
In awareness?
Is it still, sort of like
the email archiving,
plugging the finger in the dike,
what's your take?
>> Well, I just wrote an article on this actually
because May 25th is the one year anniversary
of the implementation of GDPR.
But its done a few different things.
One is, its raised user awareness
and organizational awareness
of the issue of data privacy as opposed to security.
That the users have some ownership over their data.
So if nothing else,
its just raised awareness for the users
and the organizations.
The second thing though,
that its done, its actually put,
there's legal teeth to this.
There's been hefty fines
associated with it.
And I think those are
only going to increase.
The market is only really getting started.
We're going to see how it plays out
over the next five years.
But I expect to see more GDPR compliance
issues and more fines associated with it.
But ultimately it's better for the end user
because they get the ownership
that frankly they deserve with their data.
>> So this right to be forgotten,
is sort of central to GDPR.
So, how can the backup corpus, you know
be a linch pin of the right to be forgotten.
Or,
potentially the smoking gun
if it's not found.
>> (giggles)
>> Thoughts on that.
>> So, we've introduced specific capabilities for this.
So, around GDPR, we have
simple things.
When I say simple things, complex.
But we've made it simple for customers to tag data.
Does this belong in this country, versus
this country, this country.
Because actually when you recover
forget about whether it's privacy data,
are you even allowed to do that.
But secondly, we introduced a step and update for
this was back in January that when you recover data
you can actually say, I want to run this script
to eliminate that user's data from being recovered.
Because if they exercise the right to be forgotten,
after the database is in archive, and
then you recover it, their data is back all of a sudden.
So we introduce,
a sandbox environment.
Where you could run all of the same GDPR
right to be forgotten scripts, so when it's recovered
that's eliminated.
And our focus has always been
make those types of processes really simple
for our end customers.
>> So I got excited this morning
when you were talking about the
fast recovery from back-up.
>> Mhm.
>> And you talked about replication
and where that fits.
But being able to have the architecture
and the meta data access, to be able to do
a fast recovery from back-up is
pretty profound.
>> Yes.
>> It seems like your architecture
is designed in a way
that it's not a do-over.
As a product guy that's probably quite helpful.
But I wonder if you could just describe
sort of the--
the tenants of the architecture.
Just in terms of what it means for Veeams future,
future proofing, however, you know
buzzword we want to throw at it.
But there's an architectural component
that was my takeaway from this mornings conversation,
that's fundamental.
>> Yeah, one of the fundamental components
is our data is self-describing.
If you have WinZip and I have 7-Zip
I can send you a file,
and you can open it.
And we did that with different programs entirely.
So when we do a backup, there's no dependency on a central
server, or central management environment.
And that's really important when you move things
from the cloud, to on premises
to another cloud, to different environments
because otherwise they all need to talk to one another.
In order to understand , what the data is that they receive.
Another problem with that model,
is that if that central management environment goes down
you've lost everything.
With a self-describing format,
what it means is
even if the Veeam Software blows up and goes away
if I have that VBK file, I can recover
all of the data in it.
And that is very unique to us.
Because if you do your data protection
in the cloud,
you just need to move the data on premises
and I can open it
on premises with a completely different software
stack if you will.
If you acquire a new company
I can open their back-ups even
assuming I have the keys, and permissions
and security and all of that.
Even though it was managed or backed up
with completely different management stack.
>> So, your saying if a competitor
loses their catalog.
>> Yes.
>> They're screwed.
>> Yes.
>> And that's not the case with you guys.
>> We actually had this happen just recently
in a (mumbles).
Customer had both a competitor
and our software.
And they were hit with Ransomware.
The Ransomware hit the meta data catalog
and they lost everything in the competitors software.
Now, because they were following the 3-2-1 rule
and they had one data offsite with Veeam,
they were able to recover 100% of the Veeam back-ups,
and 0% of the competitors back-ups.
>> Well, that's story.
>> (giggles)
>> Yeah but--
>> Case study in the making.
>> But that is actually,
it's fundamental to the model.
And it's not only fundamental for block storage back-ups
but also the way we introduce object storage,
and cloud object storage models as well.
That it's completely self describing
even if your Veeam software goes away
and your ten years down the road.
You can still get that data back.
>> Okay. We got to give you the final word here.
Day one, we're wrapping up day one with Danny Allen.
Head of Product Strategy at Veeam.
Your Keynote, the Analyst Feedback,
Customer Feedback, summarize it all
into a bumper sticker.
You know, take as much time as you like.
>> (laughter) Well, this is an exciting year for us.
So we've, we have a really strong focus on cloud.
You probably see that all over.
Cloud data management we're talking about
over and over again.
>> It's on the wall.
It's on the pins that we wear.
It's everywhere.
So cloud data management,
and another thing that you,
I don't know whether people have noticed
but we've put the focus back on
our buyer. Who is the technical decision maker.
So rather than talking about
the environment ten years from now,
and artificial intelligence,
and machine learning.
While we get excited about those things,
we've brought it back to our core buyer.
Because the budget today is for back-up.
The budget is not for artificial intelligence.
There is a budget for back-up.
So we've done two things.
Focus on cloud, and focus on that technical decision maker
and it seems to be resonating.
Customers all day long, great, great conversations.
>> Well, it's pragmatic.
You guys are pragmatic company, always have been.
Danny Allen, thanks so much for coming on the CUBE.
It was great to see you. >> Thank you very much .
>> All right and thank you.
That's a wrap for day one.
Peter Buress and I will be back tomorrow
again wall to wall coverage.
This is the CUBE, and
we're here at VeeamON 2019, in Miami.
We'll see you tomorrow.
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