>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE
with coverage of KubeCon
and CloudNativeCon North America 2020 Virtual.
Brought to you by Red Hat,
the Cloud Native Computing Foundation
and Ecosystem Partners.
>> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage
of KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2020 Virtual.
I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE.
We are theCUBE Virtual.
Normally, we're in person.
This year with the pandemic,
we have to do the remote interviews
and wish we could be there.
But it's going to be a great conference.
A lot of learning, a lot of great conversations,
a lot of great community.
A lot of great companies who are riding
the cloud native wave and doing it right.
One company I'm pleased to have the GM here on
from Commvault venture, Metallic.io,
Manoj Nair GM, Metallic.io Commvault Ventures.
As it a spin out... Manoj, it is great to see you.
First, welcome back to theCUBE, great to see you.
>> Thank you.
Good to be here, good to be back with you guys.
>> So you're a CUBE alumni.
You've been on many times,
you now heading up this Venture Metallic.io,
which is doing extremely well good,
case of great timing and good savvy business planning
and strategic vision and execution.
But I want to just kind of get something straight real quick.
Is it a spin-out of Commvault?
Is it a separate company?
What's the relationship with Metallic.io
and Commvault?
>> Yeah, so it's set up as a complete startup.
It's incubated and fully owned by Commvault
but we have our full company
just like running my separate startup.
Metallic is set up as a startup
and some people joke it's like one of those millennial kids
and I get to have a deep pocketed parent Commvault
and the access to a lot of IP
and great customers,
at the same time be a startup and drive fast
in this cloud native SaaS world.
We also have the Microsoft deep partnerships.
So that's the other angle
with Metallic having a deep strategic partnership
with Microsoft.
>> The theme this year and all the shows specifically KubeCon
in particular is modern applications with speed.
Speed and relevance, right?
That's critical, congratulations.
Good to have a boss Sanjay over there
looking over your shoulder, but you've got freedom.
You're running hard as a startup
and you've got a good track record.
Take me through real quick, give a quick business update
before we get into some of the container conversations.
You guys really caught the tailwind of COVID,
kind of like the Zoom caught a big tail
'cause everyone's doing video.
Now, cloud endpoint protection,
I mean, come on, everyone's at home.
Everyone's at the edge, edge point protection.
I mean, tell us, give us quick updates.
>> Absolutely, a year plus since we launched it,
I think initially the company was thinking Metallic
would be really good fit for the mid-market,
and maybe the low-end enterprise,
was always built to be enterprise grade.
And come March,
all of us get stunned by what's happening in the world.
We decided to make our end point available free
for our customers jointly with Microsoft.
And it was not mid-market.
I mean, I had Fortune 50 companies signing up,
we had the biggest of the big.
Several of them have now become paying customers of us.
One of the world's largest insurance company
came in that way and signed up for all their users
to end up being paying customers.
And you think about like protecting end points,
like that's...
All the bad things kind of happened in drove.
So you have COVID happening, people going remote
and ransomware and cyber attacks taking off 400%,
that's the FBI saying.
And that kind of becomes a very high risk point.
So to be able to have not just data protection,
but ransomware detection on those edge devices,
I think companies are really starting to see
the value of having that kind of a data protection
as a service model.
>> Manoj, well, congratulations on the timing on that.
I'll say there's no such thing as luck,
is "Preparation meets opportunity" as the expression goes.
But I get why it makes sense with the pandemic,
but can you explain why cloud-based container protection
is good for customers beyond the obvious you just mentioned,
what else is there?
What are some of the downstream benefits
as people come out of COVID?
>> Things that people are asking,
It's okay, we've got to take care of the basics,
we talked about end point.
Then it's cloud adoption,
productivity suites like O 365, at Teams took off
as you were talking about Zoom
and how do you protect that?
How do you protect all that data being created now
in a platform that you were not protecting?
So that was kind of that next immediate way.
And now what we're seeing is the hybrid cloud adoption
is taking off.
Now, containers in my mind are intricately linked
with in this hybrid cloud journey.
These are the apps that people build.
This is your sensitive, most important IP.
And as enterprises adopt containers,
it's one of the paths to the cloud.
And it is really the most recommended paths.
You can take microservices, you re-platform, re-architect,
use containers to deliver microservices.
And these are enterprise applications,
so they have state.
And so is stateful applications,
how do you make sure that you have
a cloud native data protection available for them.
The second issue is the developers are adopting
and deploying containers in production.
They don't want to be going out deploying software
to protect these things.
They want, "I just want an API,
"a service call in the cloud
"and it should do what I do like any other
"cloud native service."
So cloud native protection that we're delivering
for containers with our announcement today from Metallic
it's huge in that it behaves like a native cloud service
just like a developer wants.
An API called with a cloud target,
no set up, nothing
and it's up and running.
>> Yeah, I mean, cloud native is clear this year at KubeCon
this is the tipping point of full mainstream
adoption of Kubernetes and microservices.
So that means IT is going to be impacted, right?
So that means... We're all early adopters, let's face it.
We're at a point now where it's gone beyond test and dev
and cluster testing.
Kubernetes has now reached a point where it's penetrating
and proliferating rapidly.
So I got to ask you the announcements about Metallic
for Kubernetes as part of the broader portfolio expansion,
explain how that fits in?
Because you mentioned hybrid cloud,
you got backup as a service, you got recovery.
I mean, the world's changed,
who would've thought everyone was going to be working at home.
How do you back that up?
That's a service disruption.
So non-disruptive operations is always been
a kind of a cliche,
but now you've got a complicated operation.
How does Kubernetes fit into the broader portfolio?
>> Absolutely, so it is part of a three new announcements,
the new solutions we're announcing today,
all connected to this hybrid journey.
And you think about that hybrid journey,
and part of what happens with hybrid
you got all these paths, rewrite, re-platform, re-host
and you've got this whole desegregation of data
and compute also happening.
So our offerings are,
there's a Metallic for virtual machines
and Kubernetes as a service,
we have got Metallic for database delivered as a service
and Metallic for unstructured data file and object.
And all of those are key parts of a cloud native stack.
You'll have some in RDS, some Azure many SQLs,
some blob storage.
And you had to protect all those patterns in different ways.
At the same time, virtual machines are not going away,
they're going to be there.
And a lot of people will say that containers,
are new virtual machine.
So what we have done is we have introduced the VM
and Kubernetes module,
but anyone who buys that gets container protection for free.
So anyone who buys that for the next six months
or the lifetime of the subscription,
they get unlimited Kubernetes backup as a service for free.
The reason we're doing that is just we want to make sure,
especially our early adopters are taking full advantage
not compromising on the data protection
for this cloud native application,
as they think through this transition.
>> That's a good business model also.
I mean, you're in the cloud, right?
So is hybrid, you've got some leverage there.
That's the new freemium, "We'll give you a full protection."
"So what's the gimmick here?"
"There's no trick, you get it for free."
It's good because you can get to make money on other...
Again, this is the whole benefit
of the new kind of freemium SaaS
you're in enterprise model.
So yeah, you can take care of people,
you make it up on the critical infrastructure.
I get that, is that kind of how it's working?
>> That's exactly what we're thinking.
Today, I saw some stats out there,
75% of the people who are adopting containers
are not yet thinking about data protection for containers
has to be container optimized.
You can't just say, "Okay, the data is in a VM,
"I'll just do a snapshot and it'll be fine."
Now, what about all of the containers specific,
namespaces, tags, the config maps, pod?
You cannot recover this cluster
if you don't have a real container native solution.
And so part of the thought leadership
and education process,
we said, let's start by just making it available,
take all the excuses out.
And that really, I think over time,
our customers are going to really benefit
from our approach there.
>> Well, while I got you here,
I want to just grab you for a quick definition masterclass.
So we see B-A-A-S, not to be confused with SaaS
or PaaS, Platform as a Service.
B stands for Backup as a Service.
>> Correct. >> Everything's as a service
these days that's what cloud is great for.
Could you define what that is from cloud standpoint?
Because I mean, Backup as a Service
it could mean many things,
but as you guys are doing 'cause you have success,
it's working,
what is B-A-A-S, what is Backup as a Service?
What's the definition?
>> Yeah, so Backup as a Service in my mind,
and some people call it a cloud native backup
really includes delivering turnkey experience,
turnkey consumption model.
I should be able to go sign up like any other
as a service free, try it.
If I like it and may lead to an online experience
to acquire it and be up and running.
Our design goal was first backup,
even for a complex enterprise.
Foreclose should be less than 15 minutes from transaction.
Today we're able to do it in a matter of minutes,
all the way from acquisition to being up and running.
So I would say that's part of the definition.
Part of the definition is never having to maintain
your backup software ever.
That's not your responsibility.
We take care of that, it's always updated.
We're using the best of cloud capabilities to do SRE Ops
and maintain that in a very scalable 24/7 way.
Security of the service,
between us and all the security capabilities,
we provide ransomware detection and all that.
And building on top of Azure foundation
of 3,500 security engineers.
That's a key component.
You should not have to worry,
this is your data, your most critical.
And the last part is cloud adoption
is complicated enough for customers.
They shouldn't have to worry about things like Egress costs
and, "Am I going to get nickel and dime for the service,
"the whole rages?"
And so just price transparency is a big part
that we have focused on.
So our customers adopt O 365.
They don't have to ever pay for any storage,
unlimited storage, no Egress costs,
and the whole thing is a turnkey service.
So that's the kind... My mind that's backup as a service.
>> Yeah, and pay as you go is classic.
And I love the no hidden costs thing.
You mentioned this demand obviously out there
earlier in the interview,
what's driving the demand besides COVID,
what are some of the architectural shifts
that you're seeing?
And does it have the same characteristics
in all geographies?
'Cause remember you're talking cloud,
you're talking regions, right?
So what's the driving the demand besides COVID
and what's the regional impact around the world?
>> Now, the first thing a global impact.
We had a plan to... A multi-year global rollout plan.
And in the last six months,
we are now in 14 countries around the globe,
and that just maps to the interests.
We're in Australia and New Zealand,
we just launched 10 European countries last month
in the US, Canada, of course.
And that global journey is what we're seeing
with our customers.
So the pain points, the COVID crisis,
the economic shift, the need to be as a service.
Those are the things that are really driving.
We talked about remark work,
we talked about Teams adoption, really driving O 365.
And people think O 365 there's some folks
who just think mailboxes,
but you've seen news stories out there
with what happens with config changes to Teams
that just blows out all the chat sessions.
And so people understand the need for data protection,
their hybrid IT, containers, rapid cloud adoption,
probably the biggest one is ransomware.
We launched this Metallic Cloud Storage Service
that is an air gap ransomware cloud storage that can connect
to any Commvault customer.
They don't even have to be a Metallic SaaS customer.
And that's how to... On day two,
we had two and a half petabytes up and running
our first customer and it's just taken off.
So all of those are the trends that are today
driving customer adoption all of our solution,
along with everything else that customers are trying to do.
>> Manoj, I got to ask you a personal question.
You're the GM, which basically means you the CEO
of the Commvault startup, but we'll call you a GM.
Are you having fun?
>> Well, I'm having a lot of fun.
I mean, this is probably the most fun I've had
in a long time.
And look, when you are doing things
that are really impactful,
for me, that's... I'm sitting on my startup garage here
in the Bay Area
and touching customers around the world,
we have a global team,
And it's a challenging year from a human perspective
for all of the folks who are impacted by this
and our teams are a part of that journey.
And so their personal lives that are difficult,
but we're all working on this very, very interesting.
And I think disruptive but impactful offering
that we can see how it touches our customers well.
And I think that's partly what's kept the team
and all of us going,
so I'm having a lot of fun.
>> Well, we're fellow travelers,
we're not on site anymore.
I mean, we did an interview in 2015.
You and I were talking with Docker back in 25 years ago,
and you're still on point.
Now you're on the wave.
You got to be mindful of the current situation around you
and understand reality.
And it's a chance to do things differently
from the customer backwards-in, not inside-out.
So it's fun to have a new category,
but also it's a big wave.
You don't want to be, as Pat Gelsinger said, driftwood,
if you make the wrong move.
So keep plugging,
you're on the right track.
Thanks for coming on.
>> Thank you, John.
Really appreciate the time.
>> Manoj Nair, GM of Metallic.io.
Check it out.
It's a separate company from Commvault
but funded it doing backup as a service in the cloud,
very innovative, very smart.
Thanks for coming on Manoj.
I'm John Furrier with theCUBE Virtual
for KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2020.
Thanks for watching.
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