 From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019, brought to you by Acronis. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here at Miami Beach at the Fontainebleau Hotel, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, for Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019. We're here with the Chief Marketing Officer, CMO, Guy D'Armagnan Nourof, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for having us and thanks for coming on. Thank you for talking to me. Not a bad venue, Miami Beach. People like it here, it's got a good vibe. Yeah, it's a lot of entertainment. Actually, for an event perspective, having people in such a nice place is very tough because you have to keep them inside somehow and you cannot block their doors. So, we have to have really good content. Well, people are feeling good. I can see a lot of people smiling, people are very happy, congratulations. Take us through the event, why the event here, what's the main theme, what's the top story that you're telling here at the Global Cyber Summit 2019? Sure. So, we were talking about cyber protection for quite a while. And cyber protection is, in simple terms, is combining data protection and cyber security because what we see is happening in the digital world is that the traditional data protection is not an off anymore. It cannot really protect you against all of the threats that you have out there and the number of threats is just growing. So, cyber protection is super important and we were developing it and we're selling it for quite a while but now it is time to kick off really a big push for cyber protection because we have the products that can enable our partners, resellers, service providers, they can enable end customers and enterprise IT to deliver cyber protection to their workloads. So, what we do here at the summit, we are announcing three major things. One is a current cyber infrastructure which is a secure, hyper-converged infrastructure for running cyber protection. It's extremely important on the edge workloads because when you run something in the data center, you have the perimeter of security, you can protect it, but the moment you get out of the data center, you need something really secure and easy to use and also cost efficient because the number of workloads are growing outside of the data center rapidly. So, we have this cyber infrastructure. We present it here. The second piece is cyber platform. The current cyber platform is the way for any third party to customize, integrate or extend the cyber protection so they can take parts and pieces and integrate it into their applications or they can integrate an application they support for customers so they can expand the portfolio of solutions that they protect. So, that's another big thing and it's a huge thing because now everybody can integrate cyber protection in any solution and support any type of workflow. And the third thing you'll announce here is the product Acronis Cyber Protect which is basically a combination of backup, disaster recovery, cyber security, we have an antivirus, we have anti-mallware capabilities, but we also have vulnerability assessment, hash management, remote management. So, it's a combination of multiple tools into one package. So, that's really designed for an IT guy who is already tired of aging fatigue. They don't run lots of applications and doing different things. They are tired of managing many things. So, we offering them a tool that combines everything that they need to manage outside of the data center. You know, I've been really impressed with you guys and doing my research for this. Two things jumped out at me. One, we cover cyber security. I mean, mostly from an enterprise space but also from a data space standpoint. You guys have been around for a long time, got great growth, a lot of customers. Got a great channel, a relationship with a go-to-market which has been successful for you guys in cyber. So, cyber security has been in your wheelhouse as a company, but it's interesting. This theme of the enterprise is coming into focus. So, to me, I think there's a huge opportunity from a market standpoint on the enterprise. Your team has traditionally been cyber security but the story is interesting. You're essentially telling an IT story with cyber. You're telling a data story in context to cyber. These are coming together. These worlds are here. Talk about that dynamic in the market because that's a market you're targeting specifically. So, first of all, a little correction. So, we do cyber protection and that's an important difference between cyber protection and cyber security because what we do, we combine data protection. So, the traditional backup disaster recovery, file sync and share, all those tools with security. That's the vision of what is needed for the modern protection digital world. So, Christ was a traditional data protection company for quite a while and then we realized that there is this need for security integrated with data protection and we started to implement that. So, now we're introducing to the market a new type of solution that everybody now recognizes needed, integrated solution between data protection and cyber security. So, the market for that solution is virtually anybody but when you talk about the enterprise, the key workloads where you really need that is the edge. So, everything outside of the data center, edge and endpoints and the thing here is that you have just a tiny fraction of all of the devices in your data center. Everything is outside and protecting it and managing it is really complicated. That's what we offer now. So, you can start protecting those workloads and the edge-like workloads in the data center. Talk about the product specifically because this platform enabling is interesting. You have APIs that you're opening up. You've got a developer network. You have ISVs and MSPs in your customer base. How is that platform going to help that edge problem and simplify the protection aspect that you're just talking about? Yeah. So, platform helps in a different aspect. So, on one hand, we as a company would never be able to support all types of workloads because there are so many different applications and people want to have application-aware protection. So, any third party, any ISV that have the expertise with a particular application, they can develop their own workload support. So, they can support workloads. They can support different types of storage destinations. They can create different services on top of the data so they can process the data. So, for example, they can deliver a malware scanner on top of the backup that will be integrated in the backup solution. So, they can extend the platform in that sense. But also, that's an opportunity for service providers because all service providers, they try to differentiate. They all look for something that will help them to tell the story that they're different from the others because the major problem is that if you, a service provider, you have multiple customers, for them it's very easy to switch to another service provider. So, they all look for those differentiators and without a platform, they can customize it. They can integrate it with a particular systems and they can focus on specific applications. So, let's say, electronic medical records. They can support that for their particular customers and their customers are not going to switch to another provider because they have this customization. And they have a lot of expertise that they can implement through the platform and create a customized solution that only them can develop and deliver. So, that's another aspect of the platform. It's not only for ISVs, but for service providers. And then we talk about resellers and distributors. They can integrate the platform. They can integrate it with their marketplaces and they can sell services directly from the tools that they're building already or the solution marketplaces already have. Talk about the difference between data protection and cyber protection, because those are kind of now coming together as you're pointing out. The target persona for IT has been the CIO or IT buyer. And then you have a CISO, Chief Information Security up from the large firms. Where, who's buying, who's using the product? Is it the CIO and the IT staff? Is it the CISO? Yeah, and because if I look at data protection the old way, it's like, okay, storage. That's the IT buyer. Go down the list, buy some storage, both on data protection. That's the old way, the new way is kind of bringing it together. Who's the, talk about that dynamic. It's a very good question. So, if we think about the traditional data center and we think about the roles of people who work with the data center. Storage guys, the working guys, security guys. They may have different goals, different budgets. They can be separate organizations. They may not even be talking to each other. So, selling a combination, integrated solution to the data center is complicated. And we've seen that stories many times when semantic inverters, they try to sell backup and security together, they failed. Just because it's very difficult to do that. But what we do is we go to the other type of person, to the edge guy, the guy who's responsible for the whole infrastructure outside of the data center. Usually it's one team or one person and they cover everything. And they have a problem. They have multiple solutions they have to manage. And more solutions you have, more people you have to hire, more trainings you have to make. And the reliability of this is just going down because you have to manage multiple tools that update on different schedules. And it's a disaster for a lot of companies. So we go to that guy or that department and tell them, hey, here's a solution that will cover most of your needs. The number one problem that you're solving is what? What's the problem statement? If you had to take the high order bid on the problem. It's the protection of the device. So you protect the data, application, and system on that device. Talk about the range of the platform protection. You get the core platform protection, infrastructure, cloud backup. You've got core areas in the model. Which one is the most popular in terms of where customers start to rethink their architecture when they start thinking platform versus tools? Because a lot of customers that we talk to and we poll in our community are all in the CISO specifically, our hard core. We don't want another tool. We have a lot of tools in the tool shed, so to speak. We want to get data to be horizontally scalable. We all want to have an enabling platform with software, but then have machine learning and AI be very specific in the services that we use. So trying to balance that architecture is what's on everyone's mind. That's essentially what you guys are doing. So talk about why that's important and why it's important for the customer. Exactly, and I will take a step back here. So a lot of people want to think about protection of data. They think in traditional terms of data protection, backup, I have a copy somewhere. So in case something bad happens, I will be able to get back to that copy. But now people started to understand it's not enough. First of all, they want to get value from the data. So data should be available, it should be fresh, and it should be authentic. So they want to make sure that they have the data they can trust. So the moment they shift from traditional having a copy to having data that I can use and get value from the data, we start thinking about how they can make it work in a way that you always have your data available. You're not wasting time, you're not losing anything, and you have a proof that you have the original data. This is where we play. So we come to them and tell them that simple story. So in the past, you hit by ransomware, or you hit by malware attack, or somebody attacks your system, you would say, okay, I'll go back to my backup, I'll find those files, I'll recover them, I will hope that they're not too old. What we offer them is the automatic recovery, they get everything back, and they have everything that was the most fresh data that they need, and we have guaranteed that this is the original data they had. Because what's happening now in the cyber security market, and there were a lot of people in our keynote that were talking about it, and security experts, is that the hackers are not only corrupting the data, stealing your data, they're also modifying it away to influence your decisions. So they do like small tiny modification, and you're sending your paychecks to somebody else. That's what they're basically trying to do all the time. So you have to be able to trust the data that you have. So the moment you think about the trust and authenticity of the data, you think, okay, it's not just backup anymore, I need cyber protection, I need something that will actually help me to trust my data. Yeah, and you see in the examples everywhere, you pointed out the digital threats, you know, the automation of cyber crime, you're seeing ransomware, that's killer, and then just personal tax. This is a really key area. I got to ask you the question that came up on Twitter the other day when we were talking to some folks. This comes up a lot with CISOs as well, and this is a quote from a CUBE conversation I had. The CISOs said, look it, my environment's becoming more complex and the costs are going up. So that's one killer problem that he has, in terms of what he's dealing with in his environment. So complexities going up, you mentioned the edge, it's a big one, and a variety of other things out there, wearables, and then costs, too many vendors, not enough sharing data. So again, this is a very complex and nuanced point, but how do you guys answer that question? Complexity and costs, I want costs to go down, I want the complexities never going to go down, you have to abstract that away. Yeah, even more, it's not only complexity and costs, it's also security. More complexity, the surface of attack is getting bigger, so you have to find a way to protect it. So our answer is integrated cyber protection. So what we do, we address five vectors of protection, and in the digital world, the way we call them, we call them SAPAS, is safety. You have a copy you can recover, accessibility, you have a copy that you can access when you need it and where you need it, and privacy, you have control where your data is and who can access the data. Then authenticity, you have a way to prove that this is your original data, and then security. You have protection against external attacks. So we combine it all together into one solution. So you deploy one single agent that will provide backup, disaster recovery, file sync, and share all the services that you need to work with your data, create a copy of your data to share your data, but also it's integrated with security. So we'll ensure that we patch your system, you have all the updates are installed, you have everything up to date, everything's protected, then we have an antivirus, we have antimalware, we have the ability to manage the system. So everything is packaged into one solution. So you don't have multiple agents that are incompatible or multiple agents you have to update on different schedules or multiple people you have to support different types of agents, everything is combined. So that way we decrease the complexity and then increase the security because security is already integrated. And then the last final piece, the cost, is the infrastructure solution that we have. So what we have, we call it a current cyber infrastructure, it's either software appliance or hardware appliance that is designed specifically for cyber protection workloads. So it cannot replace your standard HCI, but it gives you an ability to store data in the most cost efficient way. You get our appliance, plug in the hardware, you have a cheap storage for your secondary data or disaster recovery. You can do the disaster recovery to that appliance or you can take our software appliance and deploy it to commodity hardware. You don't have to buy a very expensive storage rack, you just deploy it to the hardware that you have and use it from there. So that way we solve the cost problem. So you get multiple options basically on that front. Okay, so I got to ask you the hard question that's going through everyone's mind is, okay, I hear this story is too good to be true. Everyone wants to be a platform, platform wars are out there, everyone kind of sees this, they're pandering to customers. What makes you different? Prove that you're valuable to me, show some evidence, wear your differentiation, how do you answer the differentiation? What makes you guys different? I would say the answer to that is innovation. So everybody now has a platform, everybody's building a platform, IDC was proclaiming it's an era of platforms probably three or four years ago. So everybody's talking about it, right? So we do have the platform, but the core differentiation is the innovation that we have. We're the first company to use blockchain for authenticity. So we can record the hash codes of files to blockchain and then you can use it to get the verification that you have the original copy of the file and the timestamp. We're the first one to integrate the anti-run somewhere protection into the backup. So you don't really have to recover after you hit by run somewhere. You get all your files back, I don't need the most recent files that you had. So you're getting it all back and it works there. So those innovation, they already implemented on a platform. So the moment you get a platform, you have all that you need, all the basics, you have user management, quarter management, so you can deploy and bill for it. You can, you can sell it. What's interesting is you have a holistic view on data, not just narrow view on data. And I think the integrated is killer. Customer success, anecdotal sound bites that you can share. What are some of the feedback you're hearing from customers on this? So the feedback from customers, the best feedback is that we're hearing from our customer that they have issues, right? That's the best thing to do. So when things go right with customers, they happy. And you can go online and just check out the most interesting case that we have of our sports partnerships. Because the sports are becoming digital. So everything's digital, it depends on data. When you think Formula One, you think data. They lose data, they lose the race. So they have tremendous amount of data and they have to transfer to different locations. They transfer from the track to the headquarters. So we had implemented our cyber protection for a few teams in Formula One. And you can just go online and check out the Williams story, Williams Formula One. Great story. They actually tell people how they use it and how it helps them. And we have a bunch of those stories. Industrial IoT is a huge area. I think you guys have a great opportunity there. I mean, people talk about digital threats and getting hacked as individuals. Equipment and machinery can get hacked too. A device or a car, certainly if there's sports betting on it, certainly someone's going to want to manipulate it. Yeah, everything's been hacked. And now, because we have our Cyber Protection Operations Center, we have engineers and security expert who are watching what's going on and we're collecting feedback from our customers and partners. We hear some crazy story all the time. Like, what hackers now do, they would hack into your email and start modifying your emails and your documents that you had there. And because it's digital, there's no trace. You don't really know what was the original document. So eventually, it will get you to transfer money to a wrong account or do something with your assets you were not going to do. And it's just becoming more and more prominent because in digital now, you don't even have a copy or a document that's stating how much money you have on your bank account. What if you wake up tomorrow and instead of a million dollars, you get to see a thousand dollars and you have no proof that you actually had something else, right? Cyber Protection is a data problem. You guys are tackling it with an integrated platform. Congratulations. Better, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for your insights. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. You're watching us here at Miami Beach at the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. More coverage after this short break.