overnight covid completely exposed those companies that were really not ready for the digital age there was a mad rush to the cloud in an effort to reshape the very notion of business resiliency and enable employees to remain productive so that they continue serve customers data protection was at the heart of this shift and cloud data protection has become a fundamental staple of organizations operating models hello everyone this is dave vellante and welcome to this cube conversation i'm joined by two long time friends of the cube rob emsley is the director of product marketing at dell technologies and stephen manley is the chief technology officer at dhruva guys great to have you on the program thanks for being here yeah great to be here dave this is the high point of my day dave all right i'm glad to hear it stephen it's been a while since we missing you guys so tell you face-to-face maybe it'll happen before 22. but we haven't aged a bit david ditto listen we've been talking for years about this shift to the cloud but in the past 12 months boy we've seen the pace of workloads that have moved to the cloud really accelerate so rob maybe you could start it off how do you see the market and perhaps what are some of the blind spots maybe that people need to think about when they're moving workloads so fast to the cloud yeah good question dave i mean you know we've spoken a number of times around how our focus has significantly shifted over the last couple of years i mean only a couple of years ago you know our focus was you know very much on on-premise data protection but over the last couple of years you know more workloads have shifted to the cloud you know customers have have started adopting sas applications and and all of these environments uh you know are creating data that is is so critical to these customers to protect you know so you know we've definitely found uh the more and more of our conversations have been centered around what can you do for me when it comes to protecting workloads in the cloud environment yeah now of course stephen this is kind of your wheelhouse how how are you thinking about the these market shifts yeah you know it's interesting and the data protection market heck the data market in general you know you see these these these sort of cycles happen and and for a long time we had a cycle where applications and environments were consolidating a lot it was all vms and oracle and sql and and we seem to be exploding out the other way to this there's a massive sprawl of different types of applications in different places like rob said you've got microsoft 365 and you've got salesforce and you've got workloads running in the cloud the world looks different and and you add on top of that the the new security threats as people move into the cloud i mean we you know a number of years ago we talked about how ransomware was an emerging threat we're way past emerging into you know there's a ransomware attack every six seconds and everybody wakes up terrified about it and so so so we really see the market has shifted i think in terms of what the apps are and also in terms of what the threats and the focus uh has come into play right well thanks for that there's there's some hard news which we're going to get to but but before we do rob stephen was mentioning the sas apps and we've been sort of watching that space for a while but a lot of people will ask why do i need a separate data protection layer doesn't my sas provider protect my data don't they replicate it they're they're cloud vendors why do i need to buy yet another backup product yeah there's there's a fairly common misconception dave you know that both sas application vendors and and and cloud vendors you know inherently are you know providing all of the data protection that you need um the reality is that they're not you know i think when you think about a lot of the data within those environments you know certainly they're focused on providing availability you know an availability you know is absolutely one thing that you can for the most part rely on the uh the cloud vendors uh to deliver to you but when it comes to actually um protecting yourself from you know accidental deletion you know protecting yourself from uh cyber threats and cyber crime that may infect your data you know through malicious acts you know that's really where you need to supplement the environment that the cloud providers provide you you know with you know best-in-class data protection solutions you know and this is really where you know we're really looking to introduce new innovations into the market you know to really really help customers you know with their client-based data protection yeah now you got some news here uh but let's kind of dig in if we we could to the to the innovations behind that maybe rob you could you could kick it off and then stephen will bring you in yeah so first piece of news that we're really happy to announce is the introduction of a new dell emc paraprotect backup service which is a new cloud data protection solution powered by druva you know hence you know the reason that stephen and i are here today it's designed to deliver additional protection without increasing it complexity so what powered by druva what does that mean can you add some color to that absolutely so you know when we really started looking at the expansion of our powerpatek portfolio you know we already have the ability to deliver both on-premises protection and to deliver that same software within the public cloud from a a paraprotect software delivery model but what we really didn't have within the portfolio is a cloud data protection platform and we really looked at you know what was available in the market we looked at our ability to develop that you know ourselves and we decided that the best path for our customers to bring capabilities to them as soon as we possibly could was to partner with druva you know when we really looked at the capabilities that that druva has been delivering for many years you know the capabilities that they have across many dimensions of of of cloud-based workloads and we're already engaged with them probably about six months ago you know first introduced druva as a an option uh to be resold by ourselves uh salesforce and partners and then we're pleased to to introduce uh a dell emc branded service power protect backup service okay so just one more point of clarification then stephen i want to bring you in so we're talking about this includes sas apps as well i'm talking 365 the google apps which we use extensively with crm salesforce for example what platforms are you actually you know connecting to and providing protection for yeah so the the real priority for us was to was to expand our power protect portfolio to support a variety of sas applications you mentioned you know uh real real major ones with respect to microsoft 365 um google workplace as well as um as uh as salesforce but the other thing that we also get with patek backup service is the ability to provide a cloud-based data protection service that supports endpoints such as laptops and desktops but also the ability to support hybrid workloads so for some customers the ability to use private backup service to give them support um for virtual machine backups both vmware and hyper-v but also application environments like oracle and sql and lastly but not least you know one of the things that backup service also provides when it comes to virtual machines is not only virtual machines on-premises but also virtual machines within the public cloud specifically vmware client on aws so stephen i i mean i i i remember i was talking to just several years ago and i've always liked sort of the druva model but it felt at the time you're like a little ahead of your time but boy the market has really come to you maybe you could just tell us a little bit more about the just generally cloud-based data protection and and the sort of low down on on your platform yeah and again i think you're right the market has absolutely swept in this direction like we were talking about with applications in so many places and endpoints in so many places and data centers and remote offices with data sprawled everywhere we find customers are looking for a solution that can connect to everything i i don't want seven different backup solutions one for each of those things i want one centralized solution and so kind of a data protection as a service becomes really appealing because instead of setting all of these things up on your own well it's just built in for you uh and and then the fact that it's it's as a service helps with things like the ransomware protection because it's off site in another location under another account and so we really see customers saying this is appealing because it helps keep my costs down it helps to keep my complexity down there's fewer moving parts and one of the nicest things is as i move to the cloud i get that one fixed cost right i'm not i'm not dealing with the oh wow this this bill is not what i was expecting it just comes in with with what i was what i was carrying and so it really comes down to as you go to the cloud you want a platform that's that's got everything built in uh something that and let's face it dell emc is is this this is this has always been the case you know that storage of last resort that backup that you can trust right you want something with a history like you said you've been talking to jaspreet for a while druva is a company that's got a proven track record that your data is going to be safe and it's going to be recoverable and you're going to want someone that can innovate quickly right so that as more new you know cloud applications arise you know we're there to help you protect them as they emerge so so talk a little bit more about the timing i mean we talked earlier about that okay covered really forced to shift to the cloud uh and you guys clearly have skated to the puck and you also you referenced sort of new workloads and and i'm just wondering how you see that from a you know timing standpoint and at this moment in time why this is such a you know the right fit yeah we we've seen a lot of customers over the last again 12 months or so you know one really accelerate their shift to things like sas applications microsoft 365 you know and and we're not just talking exchange online and onedrive but sharepoint online microsoft teams really going all in because they're finding that as as i'm distributed as i have a remote workforce my endpoints became more important again but also the ability to have collaboration became important and the more i depend on those tools to collaborate the more i'm depending on them to to replace what used to be in-person meetings where we could have a whiteboard and discuss things and it's it's done through collaboration online tools well i need to protect that not just because the data is important but because that's not how my business is running and so that entire environment is important and so it's really accelerated people coming and looking for solutions because they've realized how important these environments and this data is so stephen you mentioned you guys i mean i obviously have a track record but you got some vision too and i want to sort of poke at that a little bit i mean essentially is is what you're building is an abstraction layer that is essentially my data protection cloud is that how we should think about this and you've got your reference pricing i've seen your pricing it's clean it looks to me anyway like a like true cloud pricing gonna dial it up dial it down pay as you go consume it as you as you wish maybe talk about that a little bit yeah i mean i think if you think about the future of uh uh of consumption is that you know so many customers are looking for different choices than what many vendors have provided them in the past you know i think that you know the the days of of going through a you know a long procurement cycle and uh you know working through purchasing in order to get a big capital expense approved you know is it's just not the way that many of our customers are looking to operate now so i think that you know one of the things that we're looking at you know across the portfolio you know whether or not it be you know on-premises solutions or or cloud-based services is to provide all of that capability as a service you know i think that that will be you know a real future point of of arrival for us is we really rotate to offer that across all of our capabilities dave you know whether or not it be you know in the domain of storage or in the domain of data protection the concept of everything as a service is really something which is going to become more of the norm you know versus the exception so what does a customer have to do to be up and running what's that experience like is this going to log on and and everything's sort of you know there to them they what do they see what's the experience like yeah well that's one of the great things about parapatek backup service is that you know once the customer has has has worked through their you know their their uh their dell technologies you know sales uh team or their or their dell technologies partner you know they effectively you know get an activation um you know code to to sign up and and set up their credentials with powerpit backup servers and once they actually do that you know one of the things that they don't have to worry about is the deployment of the infrastructure the infrastructure is always on ready to go so what they do is they simply point powerpit backup service at the data sources that they wish to protect you know and that's one of the the great advantages around you know a sas based data protection platform you know and it's one of the things that that makes it very easy to get customers up and running with powerpath backup service so i'm guessing you have a roadmap you may be you maybe not you may be holding out on us and some of the other things that you're doing in this space but but what can you tell us about about other things you might be doing or that might be coming what can we expect well i mean you know dave that one of the things that you know we always talk about it's the power of the portfolio so so with the addition of private backup service it's not the only news that we're making with respect to cloud data protection you know i mentioned earlier that uh we have the ability to deploy our on-premises solutions in the public cloud with powerprotect data manager and our powerprotect virtual appliances you know and with this uh announcement that brings backup service into the portfolio we're also uh pleased to expand our support of the public cloud with full support of google cloud platform making powerprotect data manager available in the google marketplace and then lastly but not least you know our other cloud snapshot manager offering you know is now also fully integrated with our powerprotect virtual appliances to allow customers to store uh aws snapshots in a deduplicated fashion within aws s3 so that's an excellent capability that we've introduced to reduce the cost of storing um aws infrastructure backups for longer periods of time so really you know we've really continued to double down in bringing new cloud data protection capabilities to our customers wherever they may be yeah nice now steven you guys must be stoked have a partner like dell just massive distribution channel i wonder if you could give us any final thoughts you know thoughts on on the relationship how you see the future unfolding yeah i mean and obviously i've got you know history with with dell and emc and rob and one of the things you know i think dell's always been fabulous at is giving customers the flexibility to protect their data when they want how they want where they want with the investment protection but if it shifts over time they'll be there for them right going all the way back to the data protection suite and all those those those fantastic things we've done historically and so it's it's really it's great to to align with somebody that's got the same kind of values we do which is at druva it's that same model right wherever you want to protect your data wherever it is we're going to be there for you and so it was great that i think dell and druva both saw this demand from our customers and we said you know this is the right match right this is how we're going to help people keep their data safe as they start you know and continue and extend their journeys to the cloud and so you know dell proposes the the power protect backup service powered by druva and and everybody wins the dell's customers are safer dell completes its offering and let's face it it does help druva accelerate our momentum so this is this is this is and it's a lot of fun just hanging out with the people i used to work with especially wrong it's good seeing him again well you guys both have kind of alluded to the portfolio and the optionality that dell brings to its customers but rob you know i'll give you the final word a lot of times optionality brings complexity but this seems to be a really strong step in the direction of simplifying the world for your customers but rob i'll give you the last word yeah for sure i mean we've always said that it's not a one-size-fits-all world you know i think that you know one of the things that this um evolution of our powerpatek portfolio brings you know is an excellent added option for our customers you know many of the customers if not almost all of the customers that we currently sell to you know have a requirement for sas application protection you know many of them now especially after the last year have an added um sensitivity to endpoint protection you know so so those two things alone you know i think are are two things that all dell technology customers can really take advantage of with the introduction of private backup servers you know this is just a continued evolution of our uh capabilities to bring innovative data protection for multi-cloud workloads that last point is a great point about the endpoints because you got remote workers so exposed guys thanks so much for sharing the announcement details and the relationship and really good luck with the offering we'll be watching thanks dave thanks dave and thank you for watching this cube conversation this is dave vellante for the cube we'll see you next time you
2021-04-10