>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco,
celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage,
it's theCUBE!
Covering VMworld 2019.
Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners.
>> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman
with my co-host, Justin Warren, and this is theCUBE,
live from the lobby of Moscone North here in San Francisco.
The 10th year we've had theCUBE
and happy to bring back two CUBE alums.
Which, of course, in 2010
we didn't even have the idea of a CUBE alum,
we were just gathering some friends, some industry experts.
To my right is Jaspreet Singh,
who's the founder and CEO of Druva.
Sitting next to him is Kit Colbert,
who's the Vice President CTO
of the Cloud Platform Business Unit at VMware.
Gentleman, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Good morning. >> Thanks for having us.
>> All right, so Jaspreet,
I remember talking to you when Druva was a new company
and cloud native wasn't the thing that came to mind
when we were talking about it.
We've known for a long time how important data is,
and protecting that and managing that, of course,
is something the industry's been looking at a long time.
But give us the update on kind of Druva
and you brought along Kit,
so we're going to be talking about some of the cool,
cloud native multi-cloud modernization type things,
how that fits in your world.
>> Absolutely.
If you think about the world, right?
In 1998, say for a start, they would create a whole notion
of size and no software and the whole picture, right?
Since then applications went in size,
then came developer tools which were in size,
and now it's all about infrastructure
and first your management
which is getting to be a cloud native,
public cloud orientated size world.
To where Druva comes in.
As the world gets more and more fragmented,
the data gets more and more fragmented.
The multiple versions of cloud
are different parts of strategy.
Data management has to get more and more centralized.
Which is where Druva comes in
and which is where me and Kit are together.
I think as VMware build a strategy for multi-cloud.
Pulling the whole VMC approach
to multiple versions of public cloud.
Druva is a great partner,
to sort of bring the data management together.
A single control plane to manage multiple versions
of cloud deployment on a single plane.
>> All right, great so Kit it sounds like VMC
is the kind of key component work together.
'cause when I think at Druva,
a lot of what I think of is SaaS.
And SaaS isn't necessarily the first thing that I think of
when I think of VMware, so...
>> We're tryin' to get there, tryin' to get there Stu.
>> Yeah, no but pull it together
as to where your customers intersect.
>> Yeah absolutely, so it's a great partnership
and definitely really focused
on rallying around VMware Cloud and native AWS.
And the core idea there was that we could deliver
a cloud service to our customers
of our VMware infrastructure, right?
And we'll become a SaaS company, transforming into that.
And that's something that we've been
very focused on strategically, right?
And so VMware Cloud and AWS is really the first offering.
But there's many more coming.
So just earlier today we announced the availability
of VMware Cloud on Dell EMC.
This idea of bringing our cloud service,
STDC as a service on premises,
to customer data centers, to customer edge locations.
And the cool part about it, as Jaspreet mentioned,
is that this world is becoming more and more distributed
and we're seeing that with just the number of STDCs
and how they're proliferating everywhere
and you do need that centralization
in terms, from a management perspective
in order to handle all that diversity.
And so, that's the big focus for us,
in terms of the infrastructure,
kind of just the core compute, source, network
but you then have to up-level
and say, how do you think about the data?
And that's really where this partnership comes in.
>> Right, so Jaspreet so if I understand that correctly,
what you're trying to do here
is to provide one data management method,
no matter where the data lives.
So, I don't have to go and find one tiny thing for,
oh okay, I've got this other weird bit in the corner here,
that I need a special, dedicated data protection thing for,
'cause that's always difficult.
Data protection is hard enough.
I really don't need to have,
oh how am I going to deal out of this particular thing?
Oh, now I've got to go and get another tool.
And learn how to use it, maintain it,
keep everyone skilled in it.
Well actually, I can just pick Druva
and then I've solved that problem.
>> That's right.
I think we are more forward-looking, than backward-looking.
So, what we're doing is,
any new application comes into an enterprise.
Think about, from a point of view of a new cloud,
like a VMC, AWS deployment.
If you're deploying, you know,
a lot of new edge location or data centers
or new cloud services, Druva's a perfect partner
to bring data management, along with it.
For a legacy application that you always had,
you can keep your legacy vendor with you.
Where it has a con wall, you can keep them
as they remain in your enterprise.
Bring Druva for the new applications at hence.
All the new workload that are more cloud bound workload,
is our core focus, hence the VMC partnership.
>> Right, so does that mean I'll be able to use
Druva wherever VMC is available?
>> That's right. >> Yeah.
>> Because you're expanding how many places
I can get VMC now, I've noticed.
>> Yeah, very exciting.
>> That's very interesting
>> It is, yeah, and I think that's again,
the beauty of the partnership,
is that we're doing a ton of work
to deliver VMC to more and more locations.
We've partnered with AWS, and now we've got global coverage,
almost all the regions by the end of this calendar year.
And now with VMware Cloud on Dell EMC ,
we can go wherever the customer is.
They essentially give us a street address,
and we can deliver hardware there
and then operate it remotely
and they can take advantage of that.
And the cool thing about it, that all comes up
to this control plan that we have running in the cloud
and this is how we can interact with Druva.
They can have a few simple APIs they can manage
via us to access all those workloads
that are distributed all over the place.
>> Think of public cloud.
Public cloud is nothing but Amazon's,
initially was a concept of Amazon applying retail to IT.
You can buy a resource anywhere in the globe
at a fixed price point at certain SLA.
That's the promise of, public cloud promise of VMC
to get same VMware experience wherever you go
across the world same price point.
Same promise with Druva .
The same data you put anywhere, can be managed,
predicted end-to-end, same policy,
same price point across the globe.
>> And people often forget that part of it,
that we're technologists.
So people like to look at that the speeds
and feeds and what does the technology do
but there's, when you're running a business
is actually a lot more to it and pricing models
and things that technologists sometimes find boring.
I love a good spreadsheet
but something as, a simple pricing model
where I can understand it
and I know what it's going to do for me,
was when I spin up a brand new application
and I understand how am I going to manage this
over the long term, how am I going to protect it,
and what's it going to do for the the ROI on that?
And what's that going to look like in three years' time?
Not just turning up the brand new project.
What is the operational cost of that going to look like?
These are the kinds of things that people,
I think are starting to get a lot more used to now
that they particularly with cloud
it's a much more operational model.
It's not a build model.
It's, yes build is one part of it,
but you also need to be able to run and manage it
>> And think of what we call the world of two ransomwares.
There is a ransomware when you're worried
about a data breach or data loss
and there's another ransomware we have to,
your data production vendor
or your hardware vendors say is, you know,
give me five years of money up front
with the promise to manage the data eventually.
So in the public cloud world, it's pay-as-you-go on demand.
You need a new application you spin up a new workload
in VMC in AWS.
You need data protection spin up right there and then,
no pre-planning, pre-positioning,
architecture reviews needed.
>> And I think like, the great thing about Druva
and what we're talking about here
in this consistency of operations.
How you're managing data,
really goes into the whole strategy
that VMware has around driving consistency
across infrastructure as well.
I think one of the big value propositions
that we can help with is taking a lot
of this very heterogeneous infrastructure
with different capabilities, different hardware form factors
and layering on our virtual infrastructure
which simplifies a lot of that
and delivering that consistent experience.
And of course data management as we said
is a key part of that experience.
>> Yeah, you mentioned kind of the move of VMware
towards being more of a SaaS player
and working in those environments.
One of the flags along that journey
is VMware's always had a robust ecosystem.
But in the cloud my understanding is you've released now
a VMware Cloud Marketplace.
Reminds me a little bit of a certain cloud provider
that has a very well-known marketplace.
Give us a little bit about it, and Jaspreet'll,
of course tell us about the Druva piece of that.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
We're kind of really evolving our strategic aims.
Historically we've looked at how do we really
virtualize an entire data center?
This concept of the software-defined data center.
Really automating all that
and driving great speed efficiency increases.
And now as we've been talking about,
we're in this world where you kind of have STDCs everywhere.
On Prem, in the cloud, different public clouds.
And so how do you really manage across all those?
These are things we've been talking about.
So the cloud marketplace fits into that
whole concept in the sense that now we can give people
one place to go to get easy access to both software
and solutions from our partners
as well as open source solutions,
and these are things that come
from the Bitnami acquisition that we recently did.
So, the idea here is that we cannot make it super simple
for customers to become aware of the different solutions
to draw those consistent operations that exists
on top of our platform and with our partners
and then make it really easy
for them to consume those as well
>> And Druva's part of it.
We were day one launch partner on the marketplace.
Marketplace serves predominantly two purposes.
One is, the ease of E-commerce,
you can drive through a marketplace.
Second, is the ease of integration.
You have a prepackaged solution, which comes along with it.
It's a whole beauty of cloud, exactly as I mentioned.
We see cloud beyond technology.
It's an E-commerce model most companies should adapt to.
And as the part of the progress,
our commitment is to be in marketplace day one.
Druva is right now number one ISP globabally for AWS.
So we understand the whole landscape
of how E-commerce gets done on public cloud very very well,
and we are super thrilled to be a partnership
with VMC on the marketplace, the VMC Marketplace.
>> It's another one of those important indicators.
I think about VMware's Cloud journey.
Cloud isn't a destination, it's not a location.
It's a way of doing things--
>> Kit: It's a model, yep.
>> So having this this marketplace way of consuming software
and becoming far more like as you say,
it's STDC, but with that software as a service on Earth.
You can have STDC as a service.
That's probably too many letters in that.
>> We use that internally, yes the STDC, AAS (laughs).
>> Seeing those features coming to VMware
and the partners that you bring in to that ecosystem.
And Stu and I we spoke before,
it's like VMware is always been a great partner
for everyone in that ecosystem
and it does have a real ecosystem
and we see it again this year at the show.
That you have these partners who come in,
and you're finding ways to make it easier
for those integrations to happen
in a nice, easy to consume way and customers like that.
So the enterprise is a heterogeneous environment.
If you just do one acquisition and all of a sudden,
I've got two different ways of doing the same thing.
So being able to have known trusted solutions to do that,
where I don't have to spend ages and ages
figuring out how to, how do I configure this?
I don't actually make this do what I need it to do.
It's like I'm trying to solve a customer problem.
I'm not trying to build technology for its own sake
for most of the customers.
I just want something that works,
and particular with data protection, I just want it to work.
>> The owners aren't producing more back abutments.
>> No, which, I don't think it should.
it's kind of a shame.
I used to be a back out man
but we don't need anymore of those
>> I think this is the idea.
You talked in the beginning about this notion
of service delivery and how can we take all these STDC's
that we have out there that customers are running,
and enhance their value
and enhance the value to the customer's business
by adding on these value-added services.
So, I think that's one of the beauties of cloud marketplace
is that they can very easily extend what they,
customers can extend what they already have
with these additional services.
>> Jaspreet, VMware's been going through a lot of change.
They've made acquisitions.
I saw a number of announcements today,
that I don't think I would have seen
back in the EMC days of you know,
some of the data protection solutions
being baked into the platform.
Tell us what it means to be a VMware partner today.
>> I think it's great to see VMware innovating
and making strong progress.
I think in this world of constant change
it can either be in the front end of,
you can never never over-innovate.
You can be in the front end of, being in the edge,
driving change, driving Innovation, driving chain industry
or taking a back seat and then be in HPE.
So I think I love to see VMware what they're doing
and making all the progress
and great to be a partner in this change,
in this journey to see as a strong partner.
>> Yeah, I mean, we're not standing still
and it's funny like.
So one of the biggest announcements today in my mind
is Project Pacific, this re-architecture of vSphere
to building Kubernetes into the fabric of what vSphere is.
And it's funny when you start looking at that
because I think folks have a concept in their mind,
of what vSphere is, right?
It's VM-based and I have worked with it in certain ways.
It's got a certain API or interface
and we're fundamentally changing all that.
We're rethinking, as I mentioned how we deliver
our STDC's, our customers consume them.
And so I think that notion of being at the forefront,
we're very committed to that
>> Kit, I'm glad you broke it up
'cause I'm still having a little trouble
thinking through it.
Now on the one hand, every company is going through this,
we're going to containerize everything,
we're going to make it microservices,
every infrastructure component,
now has that fundamental building block.
Docker had a ripple effect on what happens,
similar to what VMware had a decade before.
But I look at Project Pacific and I'm like well,
when Cloud Foundry was originally created,
it was, we want back then we called it Paz,
but I want a thin layer, and I don't want to pull VMware
along for that necessarily.
It might fit underneath it, but it might not.
So help us understand as to like,
how is this not like, a lock into
what, you're going to use vSphere
and you're going to have your license agreement
with us every year and now you're going to be locked into this
because this is your Kubernetes platform.
>> Yeah, that's a good question.
So look, I actually think it drives more openness
because Kubernetes is an open platform
and we're integrating that in,
and we're leveraging the Kubernetes API.
And so, the vSphere will have two northbound APIs,
one of which is based on the existing VM-based one
and the other one which is Kubernetes.
And so partially, it's we're actually opening it up.
The cool thing about what we can do with Pacific
is that we have what, 300, 400000 customers running vSphere.
They have an aggregate around 70 million workloads.
We're able to take that massive footprint
and move it forward almost overnight
by building Kubernetes into vSphere.
And so the way I look at it,
is this is a huge force multiplier for our customers,
this ability to move their fleet of applications forward
at basically, zero cost, very little cost.
And while leveraging all the tools
and technologies, they already have.
This is another good thing,
that our partnership with Druva as well,
is that because the way we've architected this,
all the tools that use vSphere today and the vSphere's APIs,
those APIs will see the Kubernetes pods
and things that are provisioned
and those tools can operate on those pods
just like they can on VMs.
And those things just work out of the box.
So like if a customer gets specific and uses Druva,
and they start provisioning some pods,
into Kubernetes on vSphere,
Druva will see those they can manage the data,
it's all automatic.
And of course, Druva can do extra cool things,
like even get deeper integration there.
But the point is that we've got,
you know thousands of partners again
who's out of the box that stuff will work.
Now is that lock in?
No, I actually think that because people
are switching over to Kubernetes,
they now have the ability to move that
to a different Kubernetes environment
if they so see fit.
Anyway, so that's my quick answer
>> Think about the world.
Virtualization is practically free right now.
What you pay for is the enterprise,
once you pay for abstraction level,
remove complexity, make my scale happen,
and this is where you pay for the whole VMware stack.
When the customer start deploying containers,
they haven't seen the complexity they would see at scale.
When you see the complexity in management
and data plane and insecurity plane,
then they would need the ecosystem of providers
to solve those complexities at scale
but as we're a think if Kubernetes takes off
and production application,
right now it's mostly dev and test,
it goes to a production application,
the world would need something
which is a much more robust sort of control planes
to manage it end-to-end
>> Yeah, I mean, we solved a lot of the hard problems
around running applications in production.
And I think what we're doing with Pacific,
is enabling all those cool innovations
to work not just for existing apps
but for new Kubernetes-based apps as well.
>> All right, well Kit and Jaspreet, thank you so much.
A lot of new things for everybody to dig into
and I always appreciate both of you
and your teams are very responsive and dig in.
Be looking forward to more blog posts
and more podcasts from your team and the like,
to go into it more.
For Justin Warren, I'm Stu Miniman.
We have tons more coverage here at VMworld 2019.
Thank you so much for watching theCUBE.
(upbeat music)