>> Narrator: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE.
Covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019.
Brought to you by Acronis.
>> Everyone welcome back to theCUBE coverage
here in Miami Beach at the Fontainebleau Hotel,
for Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019.
I'm John Furrier.
Two days of coverage, we're on day two,
learning a lot about the global security,
cyber security, and protection.
Market place and Solutions.
Our next guest is Alex Miroshnichenko.
Also know as Alex Miro.
Great to have you on.
And great chatting with you prior to coming on camera.
Thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure, thank you.
>> So Vice President of Cyber Infrastructure for Acronis,
essentially looking at your platform.
That's essentially the hyperconverged stack
underneath the platform software you're enabling,
kind of the critical infrastructure for--
>> That's, yeah that's one-- >> the platform.
>> one way to describe it.
It is infrastructure we provide the complete stack.
All the way whatever you're ran on top of.
The standard comminuting hardware,
including the virtualization layer.
Capability to run the still standard container workloads.
And essentially optimized for whole cyber platform.
It's good enough.
>> You know you're interesting background.
We were talking before we came on camera
about your background.
Certainly you've seen waves of innovation,
you've been a high performance,
storage enterprise, infrastructure,
engineer and developer, and executive.
A lot has change in past couple of years,
and certainly the past decade.
You're on the vSAN wave,
you saw that storage wave,
and now we're in a cloud wave.
Now we're on premise with hybrid.
>> All right. >> So hybrid,
certainly now a big part of the operating model.
>> Correct. >> So the operating system
is not just storage anymore,
it's a system view.
What's your personal opinion
on where storage is now?
I've heard software defined data center
from VMware for years.
We've even joked about software defined storage,
software defined compute. >> Everything.
>> I mean everything software defined,
but software is the game.
Scale's a game, high performance is a requirement.
What's changed in storage right now?
>> Well in everything and in nothing at the same time.
As I said, like, remember going back to thirty years ago.
It's like, "Oh gosh, the storage is exploding!"
You know, soon we're going to have like two gigabytes.
(laughter)
You know a company server, my God!
And, or, where's it going to be coming from.
Like imagining when people started recording music,
like they seeing this MP3 things is coming up so.
>> Yeah.
It's the same game, different year.
More game, more storage. >> It's just like,
It's this exponential curve.
It's like the shape of the curve stays the same.
And to be honest, I,
part of me never believes that.
Like come on, how much bigger can it get,
and now everybody's like we get IUT line,
we got like those cameras.
Streaming things 24/7
and every possible thing you can think of.
And of course we're going to store everything,
but we obviously don't know what to do with it, but.
So from that point of view, the demand keeps growing
and you need, you have technologies
to handle that appropriately.
>> Yeah. >> And again,
it's just not a matter of kind
of throwing the bits somewhere
and forgetting about them.
It's just keeping them in the predefined order,
and actually being able to process them.
And Acronis in the business of a cyber protection.
Some people say: "Oh you guys are just
"like a back up company."
I mean yeah, that's the fundamental part of that,
but as you pointed in our pregame chat, as you call it.
(laughter)
Is, the traditional data protection guys,
be that backup, you know you can think about as the various,
like a raid as a way to protect your data.
They are all about defending against
like physical disruption as you call it, right.
My disk died, my data center died.
You know, my power went out.
>> Yeah >> So what do I do?
I was the data.
But it does not protect you,
what I call a logical destruction.
I mean back in the classical.
>> Logical disruption, what does,
>> Disruption >> Okay yeah logical disruption
>> Did I say this destruction?.
Okay. >> Disruption.
It's almost the same thing. >> Right
>> I mean, ransomware is pretty much destructive.
I mean it's hostage at that point.
Logical meaning nonphysical, not like an event like
a hurricane or outage or something like that.
>> I mean you remove the wrong file,
the right file and you didn't notice that.
And then you went through several back up cycles
and then you realize, " Oh, I want my files back"
but then you, the back up that had
that file is gone.
I mean what are you going to do right?
Nothing got disrupted, destructed or destroyed.
(laughter)
But your files gone.
>> So logical disruptions or destructions
that's happening,
certainly your security points that out.
>> But the security is the big thing.
That's what the people didn't think about it back,
definitely not like me, back twenty years ago.
It's like, they.
So what happens if you see some got hacked
or like people, like a ransomware, right.
It's specifically the product designed to
muck with your storage.
Encrypted, deleted, whatever they want to do there.
And again, next thing you know,
you're backing up junk that will keep a virus somewhere.
And then you go to your back ups
and then it's like oh my God,
where's everything?
Because it's all dead.
>> So you're saying people have really strong
back up and recovery,
but they're recovering malware that they stored.
>> Exactly. >> Yeah.
>> It's like. (laughter)
>> So that seem like an obvious problem,
but nobody but Acronis as actually provides
an integrated solution to deal with that.
I mean there are different, I mean people know
what the problem is and there companies out there,
like we'll scan your backup archives,
and will find malware backup.
Fine, great.
But then anybody could try to really deal with
their restore, in a critical situation,
knows that even without the malware concerns,
it's stressful shall we say.
>> Yeah and it's not always predictable.
And it's post-aged too.
After the fact.
>> Right.
But if the malware is involved that's, you know,
it becomes and extremely expensive
and sometimes impossible operation.
Acronis takes care of that.
Because you know we can actually monitor your back ups.
We can find out where was the last time you were clean.
It's a post-hawk.
We're purposely practical sort through,
kind of real time scanning for viruses.
So it's a multilevel cyber protection.
Which is fairly, I think, >> New
>> I think it's unique in the industry.
>> Well I think it's interesting how you guys
have brought data protection concepts
and paradigm, and practice by the way
into cyber with much more holistic view.
>> Right. >> And I think
that's like an operating system kind of thinking.
And thinking holistically is about systems.
And systems has consequences.
If something goes wrong over here it's affecting it,
all over the place. >> Right.
You've got to the right software for that.
>> And I have a very strong system background
or DNA as they sometimes like to say that.
And in fact the first virtualization solution
and containers for that matter,
were built by the Acronis engineering team.
More than fifteen years ago, way before anybody
in the Linux world new how to spell container
or what they mean.
So our storage layer,
software defined storage, >> Yeah.
it's fully blown HCI product.
Complete around, understand who built that.
That gives us a unique advantage
among the security companies.
>> You know I got to ask you a question.
I'm fascinated, I'm a student of history
and also of competitive advantage
when it comes to technology platforms,
and the one thing I always say and see
is entrepreneurs whether they're young or old,
is that there's two types of entrepreneurs:
there's a systems thinker and a coder, right.
And I think with platforms you can't short cut a platform
because there's trajectory benefits,
economies of scale for putting the work in.
You can't just put a platform out there over night.
You got to have a, you got to build it
and it takes time.
So there's some people trying to exhilarate platforms.
Some have done the work,
you guys have done it for a long time.
What's your view on that whole:
"Well I'm going to throw a whole platform out there."
What are some of the things that get exposed
when I try to push a platform too fast?
>> Well, the platform presumes that you have an ecosystem,
people actually using it
and building stuff on top of that.
Like every, you talked about the coders,
every programmers, software developer,
or most of them at least.
They dream of two things:
To write and create a new programming language.
Finally the one. >> Yeah, yeah. (laughter)
Or the other kind of guy is like,
I'm going to write a new operating system.
I went through that phase mostly an operating system.
Log time ago.
And it's a process.
I mean whatever you build has to actually serve the purpose.
>> Yup.
>> There are a lots of platforms in all areas of technology
that people's like:
"Oh, we're going to create a set of API's
"and anybody can plug into us."
It's like unless you solved the real problem
and really simplify life for people,
they're not going to do that.
They're not going to do,
use a platform for the sake of using the platform.
Our cyber platform is different
because we're essentially exposed our API's
to our technology that's out there
and people has been using.
I mean, I don't know you saw the keynote yesterday,
there was a demo the way how to write,
let's go to plug in for the sake of better term.
For the person who's interviewed.
When people can add their own policies
to cyber protect workflow.
Which could be specific to what they're doing.
You know they notarize things like that.
That plan the platform makes sense
because it's already out there
and it responds to customer demands.
We love what you guys do but we have this special,
a specific set of requirements.
If it's general enough, incorporate it into the product
but there's also a lot of things
which could be specific to a vertical
or even to a specific company.
>> Yeah. >> We just want to
enable them to do stuff.
>> Well that's what platforms are
they're enabling >> Right.
>> They have to enable some capabilities
that provides value to >> Right.
>> that use case.
And that can be custom or domain specific.
>> I'm sorry what?
>> That could be domain specific.
>> Yes, I'm sorry. >> A platform enables
capabilities for someone to do something.
(mumbles)
>> Yes, but again the key point to the platform is,
it has to kind of solve a real problem,
not be there for the sake of elegance,
or solution, or API's or thing of that nature.
>> Final question for you Alex.
I'm a CIO or CSO or I'm there decision making,
man you know what, I got to rethink
my enterprise architecture, I got to think about,
I got IoT coming, I got industrial IoT
and just regular IoT,
I want to have a comprehensive platform.
Why Acronis, what's the pitch?
And what's different than the traditional SAN's
and storage and other solutions out there?
What's that pitch to
that enterprise decision maker about Acronis?
>> Well.
You kind of, like you said,
you have a tremendous growth in your data flows,
the number of data sources are exploding.
That's actually going back to your previous question.
I think that's what one of the difference is.
That it's not just the volume of data,
it's the breadth of the data sources you're getting that.
So you kind of have to manage that cat zoo some how
or it's not even a cat, I don't know.
I don't know what the right world analogy for that.
So how you guys going to manage that
if you have to protect it?
At least you have to know what your exposure is,
and what the things there.
And just throwing out a bunch of
you know, like standard cyber, >> Point products.
>> technology point products is not going to solve it.
I mean yes you can hire lots of people,
you can build your own thing,
you would be effectively reinventing lot of wheels
in the process while we already
have that solution for you.
>> I like the platform idea because it makes data
more addressable horizontally scalable.
It's not a side load. >> Right.
>> (mumbles) product that you can actually work
and enable the data.
Data's moving around and you got to be acting on.
>> Yes. >> You need software
to do that.
>> Yes, exactly.
So that's another thing.
It's not, it's like a structure data,
resting on structured data.
There's discussions been going on for many years.
You know the reality is you will always have
both types and you always have the need
to process them in both ways.
And that's the flexibility. >> I have one more question
final question since I just popped in my head.
So final, final question.
What's in the infrastructure platform
that you're involved in
that people should know about,
that they might not know about
that's important to investigate?
Is there a killer feature,
is there a killer thing in there
that is notable that they should know about?
What's under the hood
on the infrastructures side for Acronis?
>> Well lots of things.
>> What's your favorite features?
>> What are you talking about?
>> What's your favorite feature?
What's the one thing?
>> Gosh you know it's like I have lot of data
and I love them all.
It's kind of hard >> Yeah you can't take sides.
>> It's not sides.
Let's say I've been writing storage most of my career.
So I like storage.
But that doesn't mean it's more important
or less important than other things.
>> Yeah. >> Unless you have
a comprehensive compute layer on top of that.
The storage is just, then it becomes a storage vendor,
niche vendor, so that's not who we are.
I'm really fascinated by actually the integration
with the like cyber feature in the security
because that's on one hand it's not something
that I've been doing in my previous career
for most of the time,
but I do have a lot of kind of understanding
of the workflow issues and integration points.
>> Yeah. >> And that excites me.
That's one the reasons. >> Yeah.
Integrated platform is one the key things.
Thanks for coming on Alex.
Thanks for sharing your insight.
Appreciate it, first in the morning here,
and well afternoon now.
Thanks for coming on. >> You never know,
it's like everybody is so busy.
>> The Acronis inaugural Global Cyber Summit 2019.
About cyber protection, not data protection.
Cyber protection, they both work hand and hand.
>> Right. >> This is theCUBE Coverage
here in Miami Beach, I'm John Furrier,
we'll be back with more after this short break
(upbeat music)