>> Live from Miami Beach, Florida,
it's theCUBE
covering VeeamON 2019.
Brought to you by Veeam.
>> Welcome back to Miami, everybody.
I think I just saw Don Johnson running by.
This is Dave Vellante with Peter Burris.
You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.
We're here at VeeamON 2019.
This is day one of our wall-to-wall coverage.
Ian McClarty is here.
He's the president of PhoenixNAP,
Ian thanks for coming on theCUBE.
>> Thank you.
>> So PhoenixNAP, service provider based in the southwest.
Tell us more about the company.
>> Yeah so we started on the Southwest,
hence the name Phoenix, and NAP stands for
network access point. So we focus on the connectivity side,
on the telecom. But we really have moved more to
infrastructure services, and that's been more of a
world wide deployment. Last year we did about
six global locations that were new to us,
so today we're at about on 15 locations.
>> So I always ask guys like you, you know,
the Cloud was suppose to put you out of business,
and then the Cloud has been this huge tail wind.
>> Yeah. >> Why, what was it
that everybody missed about the cloud
and how have you able to exploit it?
>> Yeah, so we come from a hosting background.
So the Cloud has been around for us forever, right?
Before it was termed Cloud, we believed in
OpEx model for infrastructure services.
That's what the Cloud is. Scalable, easy to absorb.
So for us, what the Cloud did was make us mainstream.
Because hosting was very boutique
back in the day, back in the 90's.
Now today we're a very mainstream brand,
very mainstream products. So Cloud has really
made our lives easier, actually.
>> So it opened up everybody's eyes.
>> Yeah. >> Sort of ...
The guys like Amazon and Azure did a lot of market
development for you. >> They did, a lot.
And a lot of market development that we ourselves cannot do
because we are smaller companies.
>> Right. So talk a little bit about
what your unique value proposition is,
how you guys, you know, compete in the market place.
Why PhoenixNAP?
>> Why PhoenixNAP? So its really about the
suite of infrastructure products.
So our spectrum really starts with co-location on one end
and it ends to bare metal dedicated Cloud systems.
And then in between we have all the virtual station
cloud platforms, more standard BMR deployments.
So really its about our spectrum of services that we cover
and we really are really good at that spectrum of services.
So we have developed a lot of depth
also around these different offerings.
>> And your facilities, as you say you started in the
Southwest, but where are you guys located?
Are you? ... >> Yeah, so we're,
So we own and operate out of Phoenix, Arizona,
120,000 square foot of facility.
With the I-T usable space, um, and we have expanded
now to other, with other partnerships with taking
on large location spaces to basically seed
our different locations and put us in point
we are building those locations.
Ashburn is one we are getting very close with actually.
>> Uh-huh. So you're data centered guys right?
I mean, you know - >> We're data,
We're hosting guys that went into the data center business,
and became infrastructure people.
>> Okay, so it sort of evolved, this is act 3 for you
>> Yes, this is act 3. >> We've been talking about
act 2 all day. So how have you evolved your,
you skillset, your customer base, talk about the
evolution of the, of the company and where you see it going.
>> Yeah so I mean, today we're focusing very much on
mid-market enterprise, that's where our, and again,
how do you define that? We define that by
$50 to $500 million in revenue
that's out definition of mid-market enterprise.
So we're not going after the Fortune 500,
and we're not going after S&B.
And we have really tapped into the space.
It's a very hard space for, for the, for the
public clouds to, um, to act in today.
>> So what's different? So obviously,
the difference between mid and large enterprises is
the mid-size guys, they're more generalists,
they don't have, you know, all kinds of specialists,
they don't have the resources,
>> They do not. >> That the large guys do.
But they're more advanced than the S.
>> Yes. >> S and M are different,
>> Yes, they are. >> Than the large.
So what are the unique attributes of M that really
uh, you try to focus on delivering?
>> So M has budget, but M doesn't want to outsource.
That's key.
They know enough, but they don't have expertise.
So what they're looking at, they're
looking for supplemental I-T, and really what we focus on.
>> So they don't want to outsource their
strategic jewel, the family jewels,
but they need help. >> They need supplemental help.
And they don't want to go to consultants either.
>> But M also wants to be L and I think that's the big issue,
M wants to be L, typically M wants to be L,
So they're looking for, they have budget,
they have plans, >> Yeah.
>> They want to scale, but they have to be very careful
about how they invest to get there.
>> And then like to (mumbles) still, they like (mumbles),
infrastructure, they want to know you,
they want to build a relationship.
That's what I'm saying, it's very hard for the public clouds
to tap into that space because of that.
It had a lot of nuances.
>> M wants to scale they want to act like a real business,
>> Yes. >> They want,
they want to know their suppliers, because they
want to know if they're going to be able to go with them.
>> (Ian) They want to have control over their
suppliers as well. >> Exactly.
But come back to that, because that becomes,
that becomes more increasingly a services play.
>> Yes. >> As M gets more experiences,
these medium-size companies get more experience,
they are starting to acknowledge and recognize
the new classes of services that they need
because they have that sophistication.
So how is your business changing?
And specifically thinking about what Veeam's doing here,
to become more of a service-provider, of,
at a higher level than just the underlying infrastructure.
>> So I'll tell you what we're doing right now.
On the surface-side, we're really focusing more
on manage-infrastructure, right?
That's the moniker we use.
But what infrastructure means is really changing.
So today we're (mumbles), right?
What are we going to do have a managed (mumbles) stack,
that is deliverable in an A-P-I model?
That's our vision for the company.
>> So, um, you're a platinum partner of Veeam, uh,
can you talk a little bit about
where they fit in your stack? I mean,
you've got a whole security layer.
>> (IAN) Yep. >> I think you were saying
to us earlier that, you know, the data protection piece,
the backup is sort of the last--
>> It's a lifeline. >> Resort, yeah.
So describe that infrastructure
and what you guys have built up.
>> Yeah so when we started the company,
we started at the edge, right?
Plus folks on the (mumbles), those folks on
network protection, let's start there,
and let's work our way down. And so now then we've
built a V-M-R stack that basically is, um,
it's third-party audited, it follows compliance rules.
When you go to the, um, (mumbles) it works on PCI,
when you go to the PCI website you can see PheonixNAP
listed as E-S-S provider there, and it abstractly outlines
what we protect on the cloud side.
So very clear in where we transferred on that side,
so it's been layered for us, a layered approach
of protecting services. But there will always be a breach,
and you have to count on that. It's unfortunate,
but it's a reality, right? And once you embrace that,
you can build products around that, and so really V-M-R
has become a very key part of that equation
with both backup and recovery services,
and then if there is a breach, then you need to be able to
recover those services somewhere, so the (mumbles)
recovery services for us is big.
So it really fills that missing piece
that we had in the equation.
>> Yeah I mean you've made that point Peter, many times,
is that the breach is inevitable, it's how you repsond
to that breach that's really critical.
>> Yes. >> And that's, I mean
not brand-new thinking, but it's certainly over the last
ten years has evolved, you know Peter--
>> (IAN) You've got to embrace it.
>> People used to not talk about breaches, oh no,
don't talk about it, now it's like at the board level,
yeah we acknowledge that it's going to happen,
and we're putting more and more resources into
our response, is that sort of what you're seeing?
>> Yes, that is exactly what I'm seeing.
And this year alone fifteen-thousand breaches
that were reported right?
And again, who reports those breaches?
It's not the S, not the M, it's the large enterprise
that reports those breaches. So those numbers are
even worse in the S and M market right?
>> (DAVE) Right, right.
>> Although the M guys have, are now getting large enough
When-- >> They have to report.
>> They have to start reporting.
You're coming back to this notion, that,
and it used to be that when there was a breach,
it was always discussed in terms of hardware,
it was discussed in terms of network.
>> Yeah. >> But now it's data!
>> It is. >> Because that's where the
asset is, and that's where people after,
>> Exactly. >> So again,
coming back to that notion of higher-level services,
backup used to be something that you kind of,
checked off as you were leaving the customer's location,
taken the order, has it become something that's increasingly
one of the reasons why customers are bringing you in?
>> I will tell you, the easiest way for us to (mumbles)
another part where Veeam falls into our equation,
is customer acquisition. Like Veeam to me is not
the highest revenue, product, period, right?
But from a customer acquisition perspective,
it's the best product that we have.
It's an easy conversation, because it is.
Historically it's been a checkbox,
but once the customer figures out, "hey,
okay so I've got backups, now how do I
recover these backups? How do I restore them?
Where do I go?" that's where we can have a much more
complex conversation with them.
>> A lot of these M customers, to become L,
are now realizing "I'm not going to get there,
if I don't use data in ways that the L guys
have hard time using it. So I need to focus on
data assets, I need to focus on my digital transformation",
which means it's essential that they start thinking about
how data protection is going to operate
within their business, because increasingly,
they're becoming digital businesses.
And data protection becomes digital business protection.
Are you having those conversations?
>> All the time. On day-to-day basis. That's the
bulk of our conversations now, for new customer acquisition.
>> (DAVE) Why Veeam? >> Yeah.
>> You know a lot of companies out there, a lot of new
startups entering the marketplace, you've got
big wheels like, you know, Dell EMC,
and some established companies like Veritas, IBM,
you got the big blue blanket, why Veeam?
>> Why Veeam for us? Well for us,
part of it is culture, right? That was very critical for us.
First, the technology piece, obviously solid, works right?
The "it does work" moniker that was used, it's true right?
And the simplicity of it, too. As a service provider,
we know what to expect with Veeam, so we built a lot of
competency around Veeam as a product line.
Obviously we've played, we've used other products,
but we always go back to Veeam.
Because, again, it's evolving in a place that we like.
We see where they're going for the recovery piece, right?
The restoration piece. We like that as a vision piece also,
that it's not talked about a lot. It's coming right?
It's always the upcoming. But for us it's good to (mumbles)
another vendor. The second that comes out, it's a (mumbles)
vendor for us. So we like the vision of the company,
we like where they're heading,
we also like from a corporate culture perspective,
what they're doing for channel-centric.
For us it helps us mature as an organization tremendously.
You know Ratmir hit the nail on the head when he said,
"Not the best product wins in the market", right?
You have to have, the company that has the best sales
and marketing along with that as well.
So for us you know, we have pretty decent sales.
Marketing we're weaker on, and Veeam has
really coached us along the way to make our
marketing efforts even stronger.
>> Yeah Veeam knows how to market!
>> Yeah they do, they are marketing geniuses.
And I love them for that, right?
And I have a lot of respect towards them for that, so.
>> Ian, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE,
it was great to have you. >> You as well.
>> All right keep it right there everybody,
this is Peter Burris and Dave Vellante, we're
live at Veeamon 2019 from Miami.
You're watching theCUBE, we'll be right back.
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