 Live from Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Commvault Go 2019, brought to you by Commvault. Hey, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Commvault Go 19 from Colorado. Lisa Martin here with Stu Miniman. Stu and I are pleased to welcome somebody who knows a lot about Commvault from a couple of different angles. We have Andrew Cochran, Solutions Architect at SelfCat. Andrew, welcome to the program. Hi, Lisa. Stu, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. You have a familiarity, more than familiarity with Commvault for a long time. You're at SelfCat now. You've been there since the beginning part of this year, but you've been working with Commvault on the customer side for a long time. Let's start there with just giving us your history of what you guys do, what you were doing with Commvault on the customer side before we get into the partnership with SelfCat. Yeah, yeah, so I started working with Commvault about five years ago. I was working for a large global company. Headquarters in the UK around research and development. And we had a lot of different siloed backup technologies. We had a big problem with data growth. So I ran a project there to find a solution that would help us with that in the day that we were doing it, but then also as we grew, as we had big plans to grow our data, we were growing about 60% on average year on year. So we had a major challenge with that data boom. So I started working with Commvault. We selected that as a tool set. And we implemented it and we were able to reduce our backup down to a much more controlled environment, much more automated and increase our backup success and our restore success dramatically from our SLA was, we didn't have one actually, but it was probably more around 50% up to sort of the 99% success rate. And then we started that journey and it was definitely a partnership with Commvault then from a customer angle because we saw backup as day one. And then it was really, how can we progress that and move from data protection to data management? So we started looking at what we now refer to as orchestrate and activate. So orchestrate really looking at how can we move workloads? Initially it was between sites or it might be for disaster recovery scenarios and then obviously now the cloud. And then we started looking at activate because we realized we had a challenge of our data is growing more and more. We can protect it, which is great, we can move it, but we didn't really know what it was. We knew we had stuff, we knew we had it a lot of it, but when you start drilling down beyond the file types or the sizes of, is it sensitive? Is it person identifiable? Is there risk with this data? Do we need it? Can we delete it? We didn't know. So that's where we started looking at activate. So that's kind of where my journey started to end as a customer, when we started to get involved and activate, I sort of left that when we were sort of end of the POC phase. So we knew we could do what we wanted it to do is then matter of scaling that. And then, yeah, I joined SoftCat beginning of this year to take on a new challenge as a partner. All right, so great learnings you had as the user now. You can relate with your customers even more. Just give us a thumbnail sketch of SoftCat and how the Commvault partnership fits into the overall business. Yeah, so SoftCat are a UK partner. We were around infrastructure and services. We're one of the leading UK partners and we cover a broad range across hybrid cloud, network, security, digital workspace. So we cover a wide gamut of different technologies and Commvault are one of our key vendors that we work with and really one that we work a lot with around the data management piece and discuss with customers the challenge I had as a customer and we share that with them and discuss Commvault and how that can help them in their challenges. The role that you now have with SoftCat, what part of your experience with Commvault on the customer side attracted you to shift over to SoftCat and partner, and be a partner, what's your partner with Commvault? Yeah, yes, I mean, my whole career up to this point, so about 20 years has always been from a customer side in different organizations, different sectors. And I'd kind of, I'd got to the point where I'd done a lot of different roles. I'd been different infrastructure roles, different end user compute roles. I'd been on service desks and into the architecture world and I'd kind of had a good round of experience but I thought I'd never experienced the channel or a vendor. So I wanted a new challenge and SoftCat had the solution architect role which was ideal and I thought actually seeing in the channel and I suppose still being close to the customer and being able to understand their challenges and what they're trying to do because that's been my whole career to that point. But then also, sign to form relationships with vendors that were different and sort of having that closer relationship that being able to, I suppose, amplify almost my voice because I can have one voice as a single customer but now I see even in 10 months, I think I'm into triple digits of customers. So I can start to amplify that voice of saying it's not just one, it's all of the customers that I represent and almost starting to be that go-between between customer and the vendor and I thought that was a really interesting challenge and something that I'd be good at hopefully and it really attracted me to start seeing that space and start to meet more customers, see their environments, their challenges to see was my experience unique or is everybody having the same sort of challenges and aspirations and start to work together to try and help solution design around those. Great. So Andrew, I'd love you to bring us inside some of those conversations you're having. Yeah. We've been having conversations this whole week about the new Commvault, they've got some new products like Metallic, very much a partner-driven activity. Which of the products in the Commvault portfolio are resonating most with your customers and what have you heard this week that you want to make sure that you're bringing back to your users? Yeah, so I suppose before this week, the two that really resonated were complete and activate. Complete, obviously, for that, almost the stuff that we have to do. We need to protect that data, we need to be able to recover it. So that's always going to be, I think, a conversation in any organization. The activate one is a really interesting discussion point, actually, and it's something which, from my experience before as a customer, I bring into a lot of the conversations I have with my customers and it's really trying to understand, yes, you might protect it, but do you understand it? I really, like I said, the challenge I had as a customer and quite a lot of organizations don't. They don't have that understanding or that ability to automate things or they might be early on that journey. So it's really, I try and take a slightly different tact of trying to understand the business. Work with not only, traditionally, it would be our infrastructure contact, but also trying to say, actually, can we speak to legal, to compliance, to governance, to HR? Because data, particularly when you start considering things like GDPR and other regulatory bodies, it's not an IT problem, it's the whole organization and actually we find that activate is a good way to start to have that discussion with customers. So I suppose that was up to this point and then obviously now the last couple of days, I think the one that I'm looking forward to will be Metallic. It's not yet outside the US, but I'm waiting for that time because we definitely see a space with SMBs where they want the power of something like Commvault, but they also want the simplicity to deploy it, to operate it. And I think Metallic has a really great play there. I've seen over the last couple of days a few times and I think it's looking really powerful. Yeah, Andrew, I'm curious. You've talked about the products that are resonating with your customers. How many of them are really on the defensive when it comes to data? And I'm worried about protecting, I'm worried about government, versus those that are saying, okay, I want to be data-driven, I'm going through digital transformation and therefore understanding and leveraging my data is a key part of that. Yeah, I think it's a mix I've seen so far and it really comes down to the sector they're in. I find that the sectors that are more governed tend to be more around that security and that protection side. So like government, healthcare, anything federal or anything like that, they seem to be much more protection-orientated. Anything more in the private sector is definitely that transformation. And that's where we have a lot of discussions, whether it be a digital transformation, a hybrid cloud, it's definitely more data-driven. And it's interesting to see those two different perspectives, but I think at some point they will start to merge. At some point I think it's just where those sectors are at the moment. Where would you say customers are, you said you're working with triple digits, so say 30 plus, or no, 100 plus customers, wait. It's been a busy 10 months. That's a lot, that's a lot of businesses. Where would you guesstimate they are with respect to readiness for GDPR? I heard some stats recently, 70% of organizations are still aren't really ready or really fully able to address that. Your take from the UK standpoint. Yeah, I think, I'm not sure of this stats, but from what I've seen, I think you're right. It's probably a high percentage that aren't compliant or ready for it. I think the main thing is to address that and I suppose be aware that you're not ready and to start on that journey. Because a lot of the regulatory things it's about being on that journey and starting it and knowing that you've got a roadmap to get to, to be, there is no real nirvana of being compliant. It's a constant rolling and it's a matter of starting that journey, identifying the processes, building a virtual team of like I said, all those different people within an organization, finding out what data you have but almost that comes after you've almost identified the problem and the technology will come after to try and help you go through that and yeah, I find a lot of the organizations that I've met so far, they're not really ready for that. I think there's still a little bit of a way to go with all the different, because you've got GDPR, you've got CCPA that's going to come any day now, which, yeah, I don't think a lot of organizations are ready for it, but it's a matter of starting that journey. Is that part of the advisory services that SoftCat delivers is to help them understand, like I said, there's no recipe for how to get ready but obviously, you mentioned CCPA, that's probably the tip of the iceberg of more privacy laws that are going to be enacted so looking at the fines that are there, how do you advise customers, I'm sure it depends on how ready or not they are but what's SoftCast sort of prescription for helping customers, like hey, you've got to get, here's the place to start because GDPR has been around for a while, other things are coming and if you're not compliant and a compelling event happens, there's a tremendous risk to a business. There is, yeah, yeah, and I mean, this is a financial risk but it's also that impact actually of if you do get audited and not compliant is that can have a really detrimental effect, especially on a brand. So yeah, I mean, really, we go in and we try and, first of all, identify where an organization is and that's across the board, we try and identify the problem of where are you, what do we need to do, are there any sort of business challenges that might have, any objectives, anything that we're trying to do as well as just getting compliant and then really it's trying to help formulate a plan and the first place that we start is building a team of different people, of identifying, even if you might not know where it is but identifying the types of data you'll have, where it might be stored, what we think are the risky points and starting to work from there really of trying to formulate a plan of where you need to start actioning things because some organizations, even if they can't put their finger on it, they'll have an idea of where it might be so it's starting to help formulate that plan, formulate the teams that can bring different perspectives because IT can bring in the technology side but they might not be as okay with the legal aspects and so therefore you need legal, you might need HR because they'll understand the employee side, you might have customers so you might need customer relations to understand what are the customers, what data do we keep with them so you need all these different aspects to try and get them around the table to start to understand almost what the problem is within each organization there's some things which are common but every organization has a unique partner, there might be more experience in one area, less in another so it's about balancing up that risk of where you then need to focus on. So Andrew, I heard at the partner keynote on Monday they talked about some new initiatives, some new incentives especially going after new logos, you've only been on the partner side a relatively short time but curious your reaction and your organization thinking about some of the changes that are happening in the go to market from convolt standpoint. Yeah, the partner exchange day was a great day and I think a lot of good announcements for the partner world. Yeah, I mean really it's ways to engage with convolt better, I think the marketing that's been talked about is a really big thing. I think making convolt stand out from everything else on the market, showing those brands that we can go and talk to other customers about. Sanjay's mentioned I think a couple of times as well about debunking some myths about convolt being complex. That's one that I have to address many times when I go into organization. So it's great from a partner aspect to see that convolt are getting those things head on really because that will help convolt but also the partners and also there's customers because I feel more customers can enjoy their great technology. So yeah, I think they're doing a lot of great work for the partner on the channel. I'm sure your perspective is as a long time convolt customer now a partner are going to be invaluable to the relationship. So we thank you Andrew for coming by theCUBE talking with Stu and me about convolt and soft cat and lots of exciting things on the horizon I'm sure. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's been great to be at go. It's been a great event. It is a great event, isn't it? Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE convolt go 19.