 Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's day one coverage of HPE Discover 23, live from the Venetian Expo in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante, having a great time covering day one. We've been talking a lot about HPE's partner ecosystem. We're going to do that next as well. Well, you know, there's an old saying, backup is one thing, recovery is everything. Recovery is everything. It is very true. We're going to be talking a little bit about that next. We have Valerie Defonseca here, Senior Director of Worldwide Sales Leader for HPE GreenLake, and Larissa Crandall is here as well. VP of Global Channel and Alliance is at Veeam. It's great to have both of you on the program. Pleasure to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Larissa, you are new at Veeam. You joined, I think I saw on LinkedIn in December 2022. Talk to us a little bit about your role, what's new and the momentum that you see with HPE. Yeah, happy to. So been there for seven months. Charter was to bring the entire partner ecosystem together. HPE is our top strategic partner. So I'm so excited to be here at this event. But yeah, the mission for me is to bring the partner ecosystem, whether it be the VAR channel, GSIs, marketplaces, across all of alliances and bring it globally together. And it's the first time that Veeam has had this role. So it's been fun. It's been a great time so far. Valerie, talk a little bit about your role from a GreenLake perspective. A lot of news coming down today, lots of excitement, a lot of progress made since GreenLake was announced a few years ago. Give us a scoop. It's amazing. I mean, you've seen that we're announcing a lot of, a lot of new solution, new services that are bringing across HPE GreenLake around data and AI, but also around equinics and having the pre-provision environment and that ability to really give a rapid solution to our customers that they can consume. And it's been a journey, really, moving from HPE GreenLake a few years ago when we were starting with a few servicing, having our first services, having now 50 plus services on our platform, on the Edge 2 platform, but also growing thanks to all of our partners bringing those integrated solution and that's really where we want to scale, having the ability to deliver those services through HPE GreenLake, but also thanks to the help of our ecosystem of partners like Veeam. Well, the line on Veeam is it just works, right? That's the sort of, you hear that all the time. And I remember when- Because it's true, Dave. It's true, it's simple and people, the name resonates. I remember when the company first came up, people were like, is that Veeamware? And that's brilliant marketing, just without even trying. But so, I remember when the partnership sort of started in its infancy, and I remember the executives at both companies at the time said this thing's going to really take off. And it has, and the trajectory has been incredible. To what do you attribute that success? So, yeah, it's a long-standing partnership of 13 years plus. And I think the growth has been incredible. I think a couple of things. Culture is obviously a big deal. And when you have alliances like this and the large strategic partnership, meeting in the field and really having our sellers spend time and ultimately it's customer demand, right? It's coming in and giving the customer choice and really paying attention to what the demand in the market is. I mean, if you look at everything, we've had a lot of meetings together in really talking about GreenLake, that's a perfect opportunity for us to continue to help and solve what's going on in the market. So, I think it's been an incredible partnership. And we're excited. I think GreenLake, when we're looking at all numbers, GreenLake has grown 158 percent. Yes, 158 percent, 158 percent. Yeah, just in one year, since last year, we've been seeing that exponential growth. And actually in each one, in that first part of the year, we're seeing exactly the same kind of growth and momentum. So, excited and expecting to see that tomorrow in the next few years, please. Well, the bar's been set, so of course you want to surpass that. Yes, of course. What are some of the main pain points customers are coming to Veeam and HPE to solve? And how are they bringing you guys together as a joint GTM? You mentioned the sales folks getting together. What are those, but start with those main pain points that they're saying. You can go first though, I'll tag on to that. Okay, I'll start with, I think that's, in terms of trends, when you look at the data growth, that data exponential growth, that has forced the organization to rethink their cloud models, their cloud strategy. And now, I think that when they look at their strategy, they need to go into a hybrid model. That's really de-apparating model by default. And just to give a few data points, because I think that some people like those data points, you look at the number of devices that are going to triple in the next three years to 150 billion devices, creating 175 zettabytes. We're already going for the zettabytes of data. And that's creating a lot of complexity. How do you put those zettabytes of data really to work and create and bring the business value that all those organizations need? It's very complex. And above all, you need to, one thing that I forgot to mention is that when you look at all those data, I would say half of it is created outside of the cloud and data centers, meaning at the edge. So how do you bring that seamless experience and that seamless data protection across all the IT estates, making sure that you will bring exactly the same experience. And that's exactly what we want to bring with HPE GreenLake and having HPE GreenLake with Veeam, with an integrated solution, with optimized hardware and software platforms. That's really where we think, where we see that that complementarity is bringing what the customers are expecting that fastest go-to market. They really want also to improve their IT operations and also get a cost that is also more affordable there. And when looking at the data points, I'm mentioning data loss, but I know that Larissa will just get over those pain points. Yeah, that's exciting for me. So I think data is driving businesses today, no question. And I think with that, what's really important is you have a joint solution like we have that's protecting, you have to make sure that you can recover on time, all of that. That goes without saying, it's critical. If you think of, and you listen to the keynote today and everything that everyone's presenting out here, again, working, you need the visibility, you need the access to the data, and obviously increase in productivity and all of that. So this is an incredible solution. We're excited. And HP, we do think that when you are going through your digital transformation, you need to start with the data modernization first, because that's how you need to build your strategy and understand how you're going to get, extract that value for your business that will help you just maybe create new services in the right way. If you don't have the right skills, go in the managed services way, so you can really dedicate your resources to where your business needs it and innovate. So you guys mentioned, and look at the notes here, last year, grew a joint HPE GreenLake and Veeam business by 158%, which Larissa's like, there's the bar. There's the bar. But how much of that do you think was really kind of catalyzed by the massive changes from a security landscape that we saw? To Dave's point, you know, backup is one thing, but it's all about recovery. Just curious, how much of that you think is maybe attributed to security landscape changing and ransomware becoming a household work? Yeah, ransomware is prevalent. We came out with the, Veeam just came out with a ransomware report and we've been around the globe talking to our customers and partners about that. That's obviously top of mind and prevalent for a lot of customers. I think security has changed the landscape. A lot of times, what we're doing is we're talking about data security all day long, data freedom, as well as the data protection piece. And I think that is driving a lot of conversations. We've also seen where you're having the security teams come together with the backup team. You know, some of this first time, like where is the data and how do we protect it and mitigate risk against that? But absolutely, you're seeing that. Yeah, still not enough, I would say. Still not enough. We're seeing that. And sorry, I interrupted you. Don't know, please. But we made a survey around 8,500 leaders and they were all saying that data protection was the number one priority. But even though they still need to redefine that data management policy to meet the compliance that you were referring to, all those regulatory needs that you have in the different countries and that's where we really need to move faster into that direction and have data protection embedded in everything that we do at the core. And it's a good point because data protection has become an adjacency to security. Correct. Some of your competitors have said, we're a security company this week and that's sort of an interesting little pivot. But I wanted to ask you about SAS backup. Because I remember I was a Veeam on when you announced office 365 backup. Salesforce. Salesforce, you were the first there. I remember talking to Kastin before you acquired the company. And this is interesting, this is years ago. And so you were way ahead of the curve on that one. Do people understand why they need to back up their SAS? Are you over that hurdle? Or is it sort of, where are you on that maturity? Sure, I mean, O365 is our fastest growing right now. And I think you're absolutely right. A few years ago, didn't think that they had a backup Salesforce. Didn't think that they needed the backup, and recovery piece of the O365. I think some customers just by chance are seeing that it's needed now, it's a must. We've talked to some of the hyperscalers and you think of what they, from a cloud perspective, what percent they're thinking that they have to back up and the data there, it's a low percentage. It's a huge opportunity for, obviously for joint solutions like us together, but it's prevalent now. It's coming up to our sellers, everyday conversations. And it's not, let's look at this. It's absolutely a must, and a need here. I'm sure Veeam has been part of that enablement and the awareness of the shared responsibility model that you guys were alluding to. Was it a couple years ago that Salesforce kind of killed their recovery service and then it sort of came back? But I talked to a number of customers who were like, we thought it was in the cloud, we thought it was safe. And educating them, I think that was the word I was missing before, helping educate customers on there is a shared responsibility model. Protecting your SaaS data and backing it up is critical. It is critical. And we're educating a lot of our partners globally with that because obviously the partners in our entire partner ecosystem, and we've talked about that here, is how can we go continue to enable the entire partner ecosystem joint to have those conversations and really have it get back to the market that way. And I need lines also with our HP Greenlight Strategy, that is how do you really protect all your environments from edge to cloud? And that's where that comes into the equation and where that partnership is also helping our customers. Last question for you, customer story. Is there one that you think really, even by industry, just shines a light on the value of the HP Greenlight game? Yes, I can think of a large financial services company in APAC and they were having a lot of issues in terms of their data protection where they were not meeting their compliance or the regulatory needs in their countries. They were having issues also around their skills and the people managing the data protection and also they had a time to market that was just like super long in terms of delivering new services for the business. So with Veeam and HP Greenlight, we delivered a data protection as a service solution, completely managed for them. And guess what? They managed to really accelerate their time to market for months to days. Obviously they are meeting now all the regulations. They also, the fact that we bring that solution in a managed services way, help them also get their people focusing on the right task, innovation and getting those new services. So that was really one of the story and we're trying to see if we can make it public at some point. But that is really helping us. I'm sure you are, ladies. Thank you so much for joining us, talking about the 13 years in counting with HPE and Veeam. We appreciate that. You're articulating how you're working together, what you're enabling customers to achieve and of course wrapping up with that mic drop customer story. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our pleasure. For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. Up next, a great customer story, speaking of customers. Western Canada Lottery Corporation is here. They're going to be talking about how GreenLake is enabling it to achieve some pretty big goals you won't want to miss. Stay tuned, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.