>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts.
It's theCUBE!
Covering ZertoCON 2018.
Brought to you by Zerto.
>> This is theCUBE.
I'm Paul Gillin here on the ground in Boston
at ZertoCON 2018, the final day of Zerto's user conference.
Here in Boston and joining me now is Avi Raichel.
(laughing) I hope I didn't butcher that too badly.
Avi Raichel, who is Chief Information Officer at Zerto,
and welcome, thanks for joining us.
>> Thanks for having me, Paul.
>> CIO at a software company is a bit
of an unusual position, right?
Because you're a user of the product, so you have to give
unvarnished feedback to your developers,
but you also have input into how the product is built.
How does a CIO interact
with the product side of the business?
>> Yeah, you're spot-on Paul.
As the CIO I've got a unique point of view within
the management team of the company, because I have the same
role as the customers we're trying to sell to.
So yeah, the product team and the marketing team
and the sales team can use me as a sounding board
to see that we're taking the product to the right direction.
And of course we use it, so we can give honest feedback
on how it is working.
>> Do you see CIOs becoming increasingly involved in
the resilience issue?
Is this becoming a C-level issue?
>> Yeah, I believe it is, and this because of
the digital transformation.
Because almost any organization in the world
is going through a digital transformation, one way of
another I.T is becoming more and more critical part
of the business.
So once so much relies on I.T, I.T resilience becomes
a significant issue because, let's say your health care
provider now, a lot of your operations are digitalized.
Can you really afford the down time?
What does it mean?
So this is become a strategic risk for organisation.
You can talk about significant revenue leakage,
about huge brand, reputation if you have problems.
So, I.T resilience is become massive,
every organization needs to have.
>> A lot at stake.
Talk about your own internal I.T infrastructure.
Your use of clouds, and where are your data centers located?
>> So, like most organizations, we are in this landscape of
hybrid-multi cloud I.T infrastructure.
We have few data centers, we have small data center that
is on-prem.
We have the Colo data center, and of course we use the
public clouds and modern, one of them,
and I think this will be the reality going forward.
I think once the hype of the cloud settled down,
everybody understands that you don't put everything
in one single cloud.
And I.T needs to enter this hybrid reality,
and part of I.T resiliency is this workload mobility,
and having the option to move workloads
between the data centers.
>> So what is the business case
that you would make for going multi-cloud?
>> I think there are a couple of reasons.
One, is one of the barriers to going in to the cloud,
the public cloud, one of the concerns is the locking.
I think organization needs to worry that the putting
all the eggs in one basket, and when you craft
cloud strategy, one of the things you need to pay
attention to is do you have an exit strategy?
What happens if tomorrow, prices are not to your liking,
or, you don't feel you're getting
the right operational level?
So you need to be able to move, and make sure this is not
a one-way journey that leaves you in doubt.
Without options.
That is one aspect.
The second aspect is, in the end, you will find
that many workloads are optimized for a specific cloud.
Some things can run better on the dual,
some things can run better on the beleur, so,
or on Google, so by natural evolvement, you will find
yourself with several clouds.
And of course, there are workloads that in the end,
shouldn't go to the cloud.
That's part of the hype, is over, that not everything
is cloud-ready, and sometimes you should leave
some workloads on-prem or in a Colo data center.
That creates this hybrid reality.
>> Are you able to dynamically shift workloads
between cloud providers, or do you pretty much assign
a workload to a specific provider and leave it there?
>> You can.
You can move them.
That's one of the nice things that a Zerto product
has not between all the providers in the world,
but with the Zerto product, you can actually mobilize
from your data center, or to a Dual or AWSM between them.
So this is something that, you definitely can do.
And I really feel that the next few years we will
see more and more of that, as you will start to have
smart placement of clouds, depending on commercials,
quotas, and optimization.
>> Of course, you're a user of your company's product.
What features do you find most useful in running
the I.T operations at Zerto?
>> So, I think that the product started of course from
V.R with continuous data protection.
And that is the basic usage, and for that
this is a great product that can give you the peace of mind
that your infrastructure is resilient,
and in case something happens, you can recover within,
I feel, seconds, within few minutes, which is great.
But I also find this workload mobility feature very useful.
Just last month, we've mobilized about 50 workloads
from our on-premise data center to the Colo data center,
and it was just a few hours of work,
with the Zerto product and without any downtime,
which is fantastic.
>> We're just two days out as we record this,
two days out from the implementation
of the general data protection regulation in Europe,
which you do a lot of business in Europe,
how has that impacted your role as a CIO?
>> I think as a CIO, all these regulations are
something that you must address,
and you must have an honest look at at all the data flows
within the organization, and make sure that
you're complying with this regulation, so this is
an initiative we took on in the last few months,
together with our legal department, to map everything,
and make sure that once the regulations go live,
we are ready.
>> One of that tiny percentage who expects
to be ready in time?
>> I think at this stage nobody can really say
exactly what ready means, because this is new,
but we're making an honest effort to complete the mapping,
and to make sure that the way we understand,
and what our consultants tell us,
that the regulations means, that we are complying,
with, we feel we are relatively in a good place.
This is not something organizations should ignore.
>> Right.
So as you talk to your peers, to other CIOs
and other organizations, what do you see as being
the principal priorities they have,
over the next 12 months or so?
>> So, I think that CIOs, still like I said,
with digital transformation, where technology is
the engine, driving force will be the customer experience,
employee experience.
I think everybody is still early-on with the journey
to the cloud, and this is something that will still
take few years, until everybody completes the journey.
Cyber is, of course, strategic risk for companies,
so almost all CIOs deal with developing and building
security program that tackles not only predict and protect,
but also the detect and response capabilities
that the organization require.
I think finding ways to leverage the data assets
within the organization is a great opportunity for I.T.
And I think there is a number of technologies that are
reaching their maturity stage, things like
Artificial Intelligence, machine learning,
blockchain and I.O.T.
So, CIOs should find a way, the right use case,
to implement those technology for the organization.
Not for the sake of implementating cool technologies,
but because they really bring disruptive innovation
that can generate significant business value.
>> Very exciting time and also a risky time.
>> Yup, of course.
>> Avi Raichel, thankyou for joining us on theCUBE.
>> Thank you very much.
>> We'll be right back.
From ZertoCON in Boston, I'm Paul Gillin, this is theCUBE.
(upbeat techno music)