 Okay, we're back here at EMC World for SiliconANGLE's exclusive coverage of EMC World. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events, and try to see them from the noise. This is day three of three days of exclusive coverage. We're going to try to keep the energy up. I'm John Furrier of SiliconANGLE. I'm joined by my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. Guy Churchwood is here. He's the president of EMC's BRS division, the conglomeration of a number of assets that has really done extremely well in the market, according to IDC, it's about two-thirds of the market space. Guy, welcome back to theCUBE. I thank you very much, appreciate it. I think one of your first weeks on the job was last year at VMworld, and then you were recently named president of the division, so congratulations on that. First hundred days in, what'd you learn, and how'd you apply it? I learned how to sleep less. I certainly learned that, but yeah, I'm just coming around to a year's anniversary, four days off. So it's been a whirlwind, to say the least, but yeah, I mean, I'm probably now, it's the first job I've had in years that I'm bleeding the color of the organization within a period of months, and the team's fantastic. What we do is phenomenal for the customers, and as you said, we have about a three-quarters market share in our space. And so we have two things. One is to basically upkeep what we have to do and execute going forward. The other one is basically to continue to disrupt ourselves to make sure that we're not lethargic and executing again what customers really want moving forward. Guy, I got to tell you something, because one of the things that Dave and I do in theCUBE is we look for the signal from the noise. That's kind of our tagline, but we look at the numbers, we look at the videos, and Jeremy Burton's got the big splash, everything's big, transformation, very sexy messaging, but BRS, backup and recovery, isn't like that top-of-line messaging, but consistently when we look at the data, your videos that we do with BRS and the backup and recovery are so popular because it's a huge market. There's a lot of people who care about backup and recovery. So we constantly love to have you on because we get great traffic and responsive engagement. So I want you to talk about not the sexiness of backup and recovery, but the relevance today. I mean, it's one of those things that's like, people don't necessarily talk about all the time, but it's always talked about. So what's cutting edge right now in backup and recovery? I mean, obviously, everyone has issues. You got transformation like virtualization, you got vibe, all these new kind of things going on. What is the current bleeding edge of backup and recovery? And share with the folks out there that vision. So you're saying the backup's not sexy? Is that what you're telling me? John Coyne, the term storage is sexy. It's relevant. It actually is sexy. It's one of those things where it's like, everyone is doing it and they have to know more. So we're seeing the numbers, we see the data, and it's just off the charts, and so it's demand. It's huge demand. So I mean, one of the things we were talking about on the keynote is that backup is now becoming, in some respects, the long pole in big data. So big data's the sexy thing is what people really want to do, but if you actually look at the way in which people will innovate, they're trying to create a data pool of information, and to enable them to do that, they have to grow the applications or the data pool exponentially, and to do that, they have to have a really efficient way of backing the systems up. Otherwise, the backup window, it's almost like Moore's law for backup. It actually starts to get trashed, and that's why things like deduplication and incrementals become really important, and synthetics become really important. And so as much as it is, in essence, is the infrastructure, it's the plumbing. You go by a house, and the drapes look good, and the carpets look good, and the plasma screen looks really good. But the reality is, it's very rare, you go underneath the house or up into the eaves and have a look at the plumbing and the infrastructure. But if you don't have good infrastructure and good plumbing, it doesn't matter how pretty the drapes are, yeah. I mean, and exactly, if things aren't working, the impact is pretty significant. You've got all kinds of problems. You've got all kinds of data loss. You've got all kinds of issues. Yeah, and I'm not talking about, yeah, I'm not going with the analogies of a lot of backups. I'm going to lie to the plumbing, at least. So, okay, but now you guys have been out talking about some of the issues that customers are having with backup. I mean, you've gone as far as to say, hey, backup is broken. We can't scale our businesses with this current model. Why is backup broken, and what are you guys doing to fix it? Yeah, so I think you've got Stephen on a little bit later, and you'd be chatting to him, and so he coined a phrase, in fact, he stole the phrase off me about the accidental architecture. It's kind of annoying, but you should ask him about that later. But in essence, what happens is because backup is needs more attention, let's just say. If you go back maybe four or five years ago in the way in which people were doing application development, and IT wasn't delivering the right value to the customers, their own internal customers, people started to go off in renegade or road models. So they're creating their own development platforms or their own paradigms, and in exactly the same way as with backup, is because we're not delivering from an IT perspective an efficient way of executing against backup, then the application vendors themselves or internally in IT, they're finding different ways of doing it. And what that means is that you end up with these silos or data silos where you have three or four or five or 10 different ways of backing up the data, and therefore it's then distributed. There's security issues with that. You can't get the duplication. It's not in a centralized pool, so everything kind of goes wrong. So the reality is most organizations now have multiple ways of doing backups, and because it's a long pulse, what we have to do is to get ahead of that, have a much more agile way of executing against it from a portfolio perspective. So what's your vision of backup or data protection? How will it evolve, and what's sort of the end state that you're trying to get customers to get to? Yeah, I mean, I think that in reality right now we're moving from a backup recovery to data protection and then to data management. So you go through all of the phases of that. And you also have to basically split from specifically being around on-premise to on-premise and off-premise, and what we're seeing increasingly as our customers are now moving to a hybrid model. So they'll actually have some data that's actually at the customer side itself with things like Data Domain, Distortion Last Resort, but they'll say, well, if I've got applications that want to do things like software as a service, then they'll have applications around in the cloud, and they want to have a backup, holistic backup program, or compliance program, or archiving program that enables them to look at both the on-premise and cloud services. So hybrid models are becoming increasingly important. And Mozi's back. Yeah, yeah. So that's obviously part of that cloud piece of the equation. Can you talk about that a little bit? Why is it back? And where does it fit? Why is Mozi back? You flew back to us. So this one comes with everything. Let it read and it comes home and it's good. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. It's true love. Well, actually, you know, we had Russ, I wish myself, Russ runs the Mozi business. Actually, we've rolled in Source One into Mozi as well because we think archiving's going to be really important as a service, but I think he would be elated. The team would be back into the EMC fold. One of the things that previously, because it kind of went from EMC out into VMware and then it came back again, when I joined BRS, I honestly thought that Mozi was part of the portfolio because it is such an intrinsic thing of moving forward. And I'm pretty obsessed with cloud and service provision models. And so I fought pretty hard to make sure that we actually pulled this thing back into the portfolio. So for them, they feel like they found their family. It's come back and it makes much more sense for us. We want to extend it. So I mean, in other words, if you kind of think of the current Mozi business, they're definitely moving more into the SME and up into the enterprise. But invariably, we'll have to move to BRS as a service. So you think about each of the products, lines that we have, how do we evolve that moving forward? And what's fabulous is we have one IP assets and a customer base that we can work with. And the second thing is the mentality and the way in which people from Mozi think is very different from the traditional way in which the BRS engineering team and executive sing. Because we're really about large scale enterprise infrastructure. They have a different mindset and model. So it's nice to have that blend. You know, it's, you know, key of management is don't hire people like yourself. Otherwise you get your own opinion back. So you have to make sure that you have that diversity and it gives us great diversity. So my other question, I hope you can help us to squint through is, how does the BRS division fit into this whole theme of software defined storage? And how do you see that evolving? So specifically, so we're kind of obsessed about that as well. So we are moving to virtualized editions of the majority of our products. Most of our value is really in software. It's not so much in the hardware piece. You know, so in other words, even if you look at things like data domain, although it's an appliance, the reality is it gets applied with things like DIA, you know, the data involved with the architecture, with the DDOS, the products, the levels of de-deplication, DD boost, and then right the way into having more a networker. A huge amount of it is software execution. And so when you look at the software defined architecture, you know, all software, including things like Viper that was announced yesterday, Viper's a really good way, and we believe it's super critical to the business. It's going to be disruptive. And I would see that as almost like a service bus, like a storage service bus, or a hypervisor that allows you to basically pull out behind that of generic. So we've got two sides. One is we want to be the protection platform behind the storage itself. And then the second thing is we look at it and go, well, you've got that transfer mechanism, but you still need to make sure you got application sensitivity and you've got a protection and a protection storage architecture. So we're working very closely with Viper and the teams to deliver this in their software defined architecture. So a couple of other things, guy, you're like a walking quote book. You mentioned accidental architecture. So we've covered that. The other one that you talked about is that backup's not a Swiss army knife. It's more like a harmonious survival kit. So what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? That's good, that's good. Well, so every organization you talk to thinks that you need to have a product that you switch on, it does everything. And it just isn't such a thing. You know, because in other words, if you look at enterprise, even if you look at SMB, SME, enterprise, cloud, service provision, you can't have a product that fits everything because it's not going to have the scale or it's not going to have the simplicity. So you actually need to make sure you segment it. So the challenge I have with things like a Swiss army knife is on the surface, it looks great, right? So in other words, you've got everything all in one. But the reality is not one of those functions inside a Swiss army knife is practical to the extreme. You know, and I used it in the keynote and I said, you can't cut a steak with a Swiss army knife, you know? And they have weird things that you buy as part of it, which you've no idea what the hell to do with it. Like the pointy bit with a little hole, which apparently is to repair a tent. So it's kind of pointless. And then, you know, I think I mentioned it when we last talked is, you know, I look around my house, I found four Swiss army knives and literally every single one of them had a logo of another company on it where I got given it as a gift. Freebie. So it's great to get as a gift, but the reality is it's not that practical. So the difference in that Swiss army knife or in a survival kit is I believe very strongly in a survival kit for backup and recovery services. So you have a proper knife or, you know, a proper sewing kit or a proper toolbox, a proper screwdriver, you know, coming from the same family. So that's the harmonious thing. So you want to get the management right on that. You want to get the user interface. You want to get the experience right onto it, but have a tool that's very specific for the job. You know, and then when you want a knife, you pull the knife out, you use it. When you put it down, then you've got a torch, you can pull out and use it. And then that way you actually have the best of both breeds, right? Yeah, now the obvious follow up to that is, okay, how do you make sure that all the tools get into the toolbox in their right place and are there at the right time and your kids didn't take them and hide them or use them or leave them behind? So how do you bring all that stuff together? Yeah, and that's there within is the challenge that we have inside of our organization because as you know, you said, I think at the start, you said we're a conglomerate of multiple acquisitions. And that was really why EMC bought me in in the first place is to have a look at that and say, okay, so we have these fabulous best of breed technologies, how do we then level them out and bring them forward? So we do have a project and I can't say the name, but it's around the harmonious thing. Project Harmony. Yeah, cheers, thanks for that. And we've been working on it for probably the last couple of years and it's a journey that will take another few years as well. So we're iterating. So we have releases coming out shortly around, Networker and Avomar, and you'll see further releases on that or further iterations onto it, but you basically need to make sure you have a management framework that works, a GUI framework that works. You need things like common catalog, you need things like common data formats. So it's actually working right the way across the brand. So it'd be really neat, for instance, if you could create a, and I'm back to my analogies, I'm sorry, but basically instead of a sea of storage, you actually have a lake of data, right? And so in other words, it's not so much on storage, it's about data and data being basically backup and archiving that's in a distributed environment so it could be in the enterprise or it could be in the cloud but have a single point to be able to drill to. And the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you think about it from our portfolio is Networker, Avomar, Data Domain, Source One, DLM and Mozi, all understanding the same catalog. And so you can basically have relevancy across the whole shooting match. So not an easy thing to solve, but it is a journey that we want to take our customers to. And we're going to drill down more on that with Steven later on this afternoon so he can help us unpack that. The other great quote that you had, I want to just make sure I understand it, is backup is the long tail of big data. What did you mean by that? So I'm going to use Oracle as an example, bizarrely. We love Oracle examples on theCUBE. Yeah, and what I find interesting about it is the number of years that I've spent in software development, generally if you're writing software you don't think too much about the hardware. It doesn't really matter. And if you think of Oracle with the database you think, well, why would they write anything that's actually to do with hardware? But what we found is customers, basically, because they're getting big data and they want to put all of their data in a single database for them to be able to use that value of everything in one place, the backup window's got so big that they can't actually get all the data into a single database, right? So they have to have multiple databases and then they can't search it because it's fragmented. So they came up with blockchain tracking so they could do incrementals. So the reality is you've got a software vendor who's now actually writing enhancements to their software package to basically optimize the hardware platform. And at that point you realize that backup's gone from being something which is, just as you said, it's kind of sitting there doing its thing, it's in the infrastructure, to something now which is actually, in some respects, it's the long pole. So to progress things like data discovery, massables of data, big data stuff is really, you look at it and say the long pole is exactly that which is the backup window. And you need to eradicate that. And so all of the work that we're doing enables that. And then if you take virtualization, you take cloud computing, you take the service provision market, these have catalyzed the space. So it's actually, I was remarking to Stephen about it is this is the fastest I've ever seen this market innovate. We're really now running really quick because it happened in the software development side where the software developers basically needed more from their IT group and they went out and did it themselves and now I'm seeing it from the backup. So we're on our heels, right? We're running fast. We've come full circle to why it's broken. Guy, my final question, because we've got to press on time here in the segment is you mentioned backup and recoveries, moving to data protection and data management. For the folks out there who are practitioners who have been in this field and you have a lot of experience, you've seen this transformation of the industry. What should people be thinking about as careers are changing? We're seeing it with big data and doop and other things, the DBA is changing, all these different roles. So there's shifting of practitioners things but your business is not going the way it's only expanding. So, but roles are changing and people are always interested in perspectives as data management becomes more of the practice. What's your advice for those guys looking at the career side of their business that they can build on? Yeah, and what I would say is I would, I mean, it sounds awful, but I'd say go with the flow, right? So I use an example of a hay bale on the stage yesterday and it was really, what you don't want to do is to get stuck in what you did well. There was a quote I saw maybe six months ago that said, you know, you don't want a career that basically you had a 20 year career where you learned something for a year and then you repeated it for 20 years. You really want to test yourself and you want to keep moving forward. So in fact, at the analyst briefing we had yesterday, one of our customers turned around and said that backup's finally getting sexy. You know, because we are involved in analytics. So the thing is, that's what I'm saying, is go with the flow, don't hold it back and just rock and roll. Back if it's sexy. I've always said that. I mean, you know, don't raise it to sexy. Data management is what's happening and this is what it's all about. So, you know, whatever you call it, that's kind of a more of a prominent role. So any particular things skill-wise as a software is one of the things that you, that's on the edge that people can start looking at and start putting their toes in the water. So you want to take all of the backend stuff and try to make it as simple as possible. So in other words, the adapters, you know, the way in which you plug in, you know, we're going to move towards what I would say is more of a backup-less backup. You definitely, systems management side, the front-end-wise, GUIs, analytics, you know, that's going to be important. Purdue technology is going to play pretty big into it. So there's lots of really interesting new skills to learn, but as I said, I think it's, I think it's step out of the uncommon piece, you know, or what's been working all the time and then just basically go with the flow because the companies are literally going to take us there. Guy Church, we're great to have you on the queue. Obviously there's a lot of demand for this market segment. It's not shrinking, it's growing. You guys are live streaming from the booth right here. So there's a lot of demand for the content and what to do with their careers and how to expand on backup recovery, data protection, obviously data management. So thanks for coming on theCUBE. We're going to hear more from the BRS team here throughout the day. We got Jeremy Burton, a lot of the top executives. We've got some customers, we've got VCE coming up. This is day three exclusive coverage with SiliconANGLE Wookie Bond here inside theCUBE. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.