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>> Live from Barcelona, Spain,
it's theCUBE!
Covering Ciscolive! Europe
brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back to Barcelona everybody.
You're watching the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage.
This is our first day of three days
of coverage for Cisco live for Europe.
Lynn Lucas is here, she's the chief
marketing officer for Cohesity.
Lynn, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on.
>> Great to see you here in Europe.
>> We were just saying it's the first time that
we've done this on the continent so, another first.
>> Yeah, another first.
>> So pleased to be in the US with you guys
at multiple shows, and now we're here in Barcelona.
>> So it's a great venue.
>> We've actually done you know, a number of shows here
and again, it's a pleasure having you on.
Let's see, let's get right to it.
What's going on with you guys in Cisco?
You got some news? Let's talk about it.
>> Absolutely.
>> As you know, we don't stop innovating,
continuous innovation at Cohesity,
and a number of new things.
So, last week we announced a new
Cisco validated design with HyperFlex,
and Cohesity integrating for Snapshot.
Integration for backup, and of course,
instant recovery of that critical data center
infrastructure and we're calling it HyperSquared.
So you get full hyperconvergence
for your primary and of course,
your backup and other secondary applications.
>> And those guys this morning talked
about HyperFlex anywhere Stu so,
it's like infinitive hype and infinity HyperFlex.
>> HyperSquared.
>> So, HyperSquared, love it.
So you guys will, how's that work?
Obviously you want to be the provider
of data protection provider for multi-cloud.
That's a huge opportunity for you guys.
>> Absolutely.
>> So how do you do that?
You'll plug into whatever framework
the customer wants, presumably a lot of customers
want the Cisco framework, how does that all-
>> No, absolutely, you hit the nail on the head.
I mean, Cisco, obviously one of
the most respected IT leaders in the world.
Tens of thousands of customers globally depend on them.
I'm a Cisco Alum, love being back here
at the old stomping grounds.
And Cisco's been an investor in Cohesity now
since our Series C, so they really saw
the promise and the benefit of what Cohesity
offers with hyperconverge solutions for modern backup,
recovery, and two year point to the cloud.
You know Cisco's talking a lot
about multi-cloud here and Cohesity
with our native cloud integration helps customers
protect those backups on, or those applications
on HyperFlex.
And then instantly move them to a cloud of choice
and then as you've mentioned,
Cisco has so many fantastic relationships that
they're a very strong go to market partner with us.
When customers want to buy a solution,
they can get the whole solution
from Cisco, including Cohesity.
>> Yeah Lynn, glad we have you on.
>> Because connecting the dots between something
like hyperconverge, which we've been talking about
for a number of years now and how that fits
into multi-cloud is, it's a little clunky sometimes
because like, when I've got my data center
am I just doing backup to the cloud?
Cause what we know is customers at Cisco
says their data is, you know, kind of de-centered.
It's no longer in the data center,
it's all over the place.
Companies like Cohesity can give you
that centralized data protection
no matter where your environment is.
Walk us through what you're hearing from your customers,
how they look at their data center versus
the multicloud environment and data production.
>> Yeah so, I think it's you know,
customers are now understanding that
its not either or, right?
There was a time when people thought
"wow I'm going to move everything to the cloud"
and I really think there's a maturing of an understanding
of what's going to work well for me
in this cloud first world, what do I want to put there
and then what am I going to keep on premises.
So that's one of the things that Cohesity
innovated; our core technology,
a distributed webscale file system,
spanning file system which spans the data center
and the cloud world seamlessly.
And what we're seeing is customers are really
using the cloud for archiving,
getting off of tape because then they get that
search capability very easy when they need to.
Tiering and then most importantly,
disaster recovery you know, in the event
of something man made or natural.
Many many organizations moving to the cloud
for their second site and with Cohesity,
it's very easy to make that transfer happen
in a very seamless way with our capabilities set.
So I think what we're seeing is
this real maturing of how customers look at it
as a real holistic environment.
And so Cisco calling it data centered,
but we call this mass data fragmentation
and then with our spanning file system
being able to really consolidate that now.
>> Yeah, another thing that needs
that kind of holistic view is security.
>> I know its something that's in your product,
there was a ransomware announcement
that you made last week.
Tell us how security fits into this world.
>> Yeah well I think that we all hate to say it,
but that old phrase the new normal, unfortunately
ransomware and malware has become
the new normal for organizations of all sizes.
Here in Europe we had that awful situation
with the NHS and the UK last year,
and it's happening everywhere.
So one element that these attackers are taking
is looking at how to disable backups.
And so this is really important that
as a part of a holistic security strategy,
that organizations take a look at that attack vector.
So what Cohesity has introduced is really unique.
It's three steps. It's detect, prevent, and then recover.
So detect in terms of capabilities
to see if there are nefarious changes
being happened to the file system right?
And then prevent with Helios automatically
detecting and with our smart assistant
providing that notification.
And then if need be, recover with
our instant mass restore capability
going back to any point in time with no performance issue.
This is not taking time for the rehydration,
the spanning file system doing this instantly,
and allowing an organization to basically say
"sorry, not today attackers", we don't need
to pay you because we can instantly
restore back to a safe point in time.
>> So let's unpack those a little bit if we could.
The detect piece, I presume there's
an analytics component to that?
You're observing the behavior of
the backup corpus, is that right?
Which is a logical place because
it's got all the corporate data in there.
>> That's correct.
>> So, last year we introduced Helios,
which is our global sass space management system.
It has machine learning capability in it.
And that's providing that machine learning
based monitoring to see what kinds
of anomalies may be happening that is
then proactively alerted to the IT team.
>> And then the recovery piece as well
like you said, its got to be fast.
You got to have high performance,
high performance data movement,
and that's fundamental to your file system
is that what I'm hearing or the architecture?
>> That's correct.
>> That's one of the differences of our modern backup.
Solution versus some of the non-hyperconverge architectures
is the distributed web file system which our CEO,
Mohit Aron, he was formerly at Google,
helped with developing their file system,
has what's called instant ability
to go back into any point in time
and recover not just one VM.
At Vmware a couple years ago we demonstrated thousands
of VMs at a time and the reason for that is this
web scale file system, which is really unique to Cohesity.
And that's what allows an IT organization
to not be held hostage because they can
not have to potentially spend not just hours,
but even days with the old legacy systems
trying to rehydrate, you know, these backups.
If they have to go back potentially
many months in time because you don't know
that that ransomware may have been
introduced not say yesterday,
but it might have been several months ago.
And that's one of the key advantages
of this instant mass restore.
>> I mean, this is super important right Stu?
Cause we're talking about very granular levels
of being able to dial up, dial down,
you can tune it by application.
A high value application, you can have
much greater granularity.
Some of the craplications, maybe not as important.
So the flexibility is key there.
How about customers?
Any new customers that you can talk about?
>> Absolutely.
>> So one of the ones since we're here at Ciscolive!
So Cisco along with Cohesity, we've been working
with one of the largest global manufactures
of semiconductors and other electronic equipment.
Tokyo Electron based in Tokyo,
but also here in the UK on the continent.
They had one of those older backup solutions
and were challenged with the time it was taking them
to backup, the restores not being predictable.
So they've gone with Cohesity,
running on Cisco UCS because we're a
software defined platform.
We offer our software on our customers choice
of certified solutions and of Cisco UCS.
So they've started with backup
but they're now moving very quickly
into archiving to the cloud, helping reduce
their costs and get off of tape,
and to disaster recovery ultimately.
So, super excited that together with Cisco,
we can help this customer modernize their data center
and accelerate their hybrid cloud strategy at the same time.
>> Awesome.
And then you guys are also protecting
the Cisco live network here? Tell us about that.
>> Yeah so you know, Cisco builds
an amazing network here I mean,
you've seen the operation center,
a huge team of people.
But as we all know, things can go wrong potentially.
And so, we are protecting the critical services
that Cisco's providing to all of the Ciscolive!
Attendees here so should something happen,
which I'm sure won't,
Cohesity will be used to instantly recover
and bring back up critical services like
DNS and other areas that they're depending on
to serve all of the thousands of show goers here.
>> So, super hot space, we talked about this at VMworld.
Actually last couple of years just how much activity
and interest there is and the whole parlance
is changing and I wonder if you could comment.
It used to be backup when the world was tape.
Now you're talking about data protection,
data management, which could mean
a lot of things to a lot of people.
To us storage folks its pretty specific
but you're seeing a massive evolution
of the space, cloud clearly is the underpinning
of the tailwind, and it requires
you guys to respond as an industry.
And Cohesity specifically as a company.
So I wonder if you could talk about some
of those major trends and how you guys
are responding and how you're leading.
>> Yeah. Yeah I think, you know, folks have been
a little bit surprised like wait a minute,
what's this kind of sleepy industry?
Why is it getting all this funding?
I mean our own Series D funding,
middle of last year 250 million dollars,
Softbank banked along with Sequoia of course.
But really the trend is being talked about
here at Ciscolive! Is data is,
I don't want to say the new oil,
but its the water of the world right?
I mean, it's absolutely crucial to any business these days.
Other than your talent, it's your
most important business asset and the pressure
on the board and the CEO and the CIO in turn
to be agile, to do more with that data,
to know what you have, because here we are in Europe,
GDPR increasing regulations, is super important.
And so, you know, this has really brought forth
the need to create holistic ways to organize
and manage and have visibility to all of that data.
And it's massively fragmented.
We put out that research last year,
massive data fragmentation, and most of
that data has been kind of under the water line
in most peoples minds, you know.
You think about your primary applications in data
that's really only 20% and the other 80%
in testev and analytics and backup,
has been pretty fragmented and siloed
and it hasn't yet had that vision of
how can we consolidate that and move it
into a modern space until folks like Mohit Aron
you know, founded Cohesity and applied those same
hyperconverge techniques that he did at Nutanix.
So I think this investment just further validates
the fact that data is the most important
business asset and people are really in need
of new solutions to manage it, protect it,
and then ultimately do more with it.
Gain insights out of it.
>> You know, just a couple comments on that.
>> One is you know, we always joke about data
is the new oil, its even more valuable
because you can use data in multiple places,
you can only put oil in your car once.
And so, companies are beginning to realize that.
How valuable it is, trying to understand that value,
how to protect that, and then GDPR.
It's interesting, its really the fines
went into effect in Europe last May.
But its become a template, a framework globally.
People, you know, US companies are saying
alright we got to prepare for GDPR,
and then local jurisdictions are now saying
well that's a decent starting point.
And so its not just confined to Europe.
It's really on everybody's mind.
>> It is.
>> You brought up the cloud before,
and you know the cloud is a new way for people
to be agile and they're getting a lot of value out of it.
But it also continues to fragment their data
and the visibility in talking to a large CIO
of Fortune 100, a large organization,
he actually has less visibility
in many ways in the cloud because
of the ease of proliferation of testev,
and that is creating more stress I would say
in the system, and need for solutions
to both provide and enhance that agility,
move data to the cloud easily, move it out when you need to,
but also with regulation be able to identify
and delete as you know, with GDPR if needed,
the information that your customer
may ask you to remove from your systems.
>> Yeah well, I love this conversation.
>> I love following Cohesity because you guys
are up leveling the entire game.
I've been following the data protection space
for decades now and the problem with data protection
is there's always been a bolt on.
And companies like Cohesity, both with the funding,
your vision, you're really forcing the industry
to kind of rethink data protection.
Not as a bolt on but as a fundamental component
of digital strategies and data strategies.
So it's fun watching you guys.
Congratulations on all the growth.
I know you've got more to go.
So thanks so much for coming to theCUBE
and its always a pleasure to see you.
>> Always a pleasure to be here with you guys.
Thanks very much.
>> You're very welcome.
Alright keep it right there everybody.
Stu Miniman and Dave Vellante from Ciscolive! Barcelona.
You're watching theCUBE.
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