 Ten years ago, a group of industry storage veterans formed a company called Infinidat. The DNA of the company was steeped in the heritage of its founder, Moshe Yanai, who had a reputation for relentlessly innovating on three main areas, the highest performance, rock-solid availability and the lowest possible cost. Now these elements have historically represented the superpower triumvirate of a successful storage platform. Now as Infinidat evolved, it landed on a fourth vector that has been a key differentiator in its value proposition, and that is petabyte scale. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm pleased to welcome in two longtime friends of the CUBE. Phil Mollinger is newly minted CEO of Infinidat, and of course, Lee Caswell, VMware's VP of Marketing for the cloud platform business unit. Gents, welcome. Thank you so much. Yeah, great to be here, Dave. Yeah, great to be here, Dave. Thanks. Always good to see you guys. Phil, so you're joining at the 10-year anniversary mark. Congratulations on the appointment. What attracted you to the company? Yeah, that's a great question, Dave. You know, I've spent a long time in my career at Enterprise Storage, and I've enjoyed many of the opportunities, you know, through a number of companies. Last fall, when I became aware of the Infinidat opportunity, it immediately captured my attention because of, frankly, my respect for the product. Through several opportunities I've had with Enterprise customers in selling cycles of different products, if they happen to be customers of Infinidat, they were not bashful about talking about their satisfaction with the product, their level of delight with it. So I think from the sidelines, I've always had a lot of respect for the Infinidat platform, the implementation of the product, the quality and reliability that it's kind of legendary for. And so when the opportunity came along, it really captured my interest. And of course, behind a great product is almost always a great team. And as I got to know the company and the board and some of the leaders and learned about the momentum in the business, it was just a very, very compelling opportunity for me. And I'll have to say, just 60 days into the job, everything I hoped for is here. Not only a warm welcome to the company, but an exciting opportunity with respect to where Infinidat is at today with a growth of the business, the company has achieved a level of consistent growth through 2020, cash flow positive, even now positive. And now it's a matter of scaling the business. It's something that I have had success with several times in my career and really, really enjoying the opportunity here at Infinidat to do that. That's great. Thanks for that. Now, of course, Lee VMware was founded nearly a quarter century ago and carved out a major piece of the enterprise pie. And predominantly that's been on-prem, but the data center is evolving. The cloud is evolving and this universe is expanding. How do you see the future of that on-prem data center? I think Satya recently said that we've reached max consolidation almost. You pointed that out earlier. I thought it was really interesting. We believe in the distributed hybrid cloud and the reasons for that actually turn out to be storage led in the real thinking about it because we're going to have distributed environments. And one of the things that we're doing with Infinidat here today is we're showing how customers can invest intelligently and responsibly on-prem and have bridges in across the hybrid cloud. We do that through something called the VMware Cloud Foundation. That's a full stack offering that, and interesting here, started off with the HCI element, but it's expanded into storage and storage at scale. Because storage is going to exist and we have very powerful storage value propositions and you're seeing customers go and deploy both. We're really excited about seeing Infinidat lean into the VMware Cloud Foundation and VVolz actually as a way to match the pace of change in today's application world. Yeah. So, Phil, you see these trends, building bridges is what we called it. That takes a lot of hard work, especially when you're doing from on-prem into hybrid across clouds, eventually the edge. That's a non-trivial test. How do you see this playing out in market trends? Yeah. We're in the middle of this every day as you know, Dave, and certainly we data center architectures ebb and flow from centralized to decentralized, but clearly data locality, I think is driving a lot of the growth of the distributed data center architecture, the edge data centers, but core is still very significant for most enterprise and it has a lot to do with the fact that most enterprises want to own their own cloud. Fortune 15 or Fortune 50 or Fortune 100 customer, when they talk about their cloud, they don't want to talk about the AWS cloud or the GCP cloud or the Azure cloud. They want to talk about their cloud and almost always these are hybrid architectures with a large on-prem or Colo footprint. The reason for that number of reasons, data sovereignty is a big deal among the highest priorities for enterprise today, the control, the security, the ability to recover quickly from ransomware attacks, et cetera. These are the things that are just fundamentally important to the business continuity and enterprise risk management plan for these companies. But I think one thing that has changed the on-prem data center is the fact that the core operating characteristics have to take on that public cloud characteristic. It has to be a transparent, seamless scalability. I think the days of CIOs, even tolerating people showing up in their data centers with disk trays under their arms to add capacity is over. They want to seamlessly add capacity. They want non-stop operation. 100% of time is the bar now. It has to be consolidation, massive consolidation is clearly the play for TCO inefficiency. They don't want to have any compromise between scale and availability and performance. The very characteristics that you talked about up front, Dave, that make Infinita unique, I think are fundamentally the characteristics that enterprises are looking for when they build their cloud on-prem. I think our architecture also really does provide a set it and forget it kind of experience. When we install a new Infinita frame in an enterprise data center, our intentions are we're not going to come back. We don't intend to come back to help fiddle with the bits or tweak the configuration as applications and multi-tenant users are added. Then, of course, flexible economic models. Everybody takes this for granted, but you really, really do have to be completely flexible between the two rails, the CapEx rail and the OPEX rail and every step in between. Importantly, when a customer, when an enterprise customer needs to add capacity, they don't have a sales conversation. They just want to have it right there already running in their data center. That's the experience that we provide. You guys are aligned in that vision, that layer that abstracts the complexity from the underlying wherever cloud on-prem, et cetera. Let's talk about VMware and Infinita at the relationship. Every year, VMware up until last year, thank you, COVID, Infinita would host this awesome dinner. You'd have this top customers there, very nice Vegas steak restaurant. Of course, I always made a point to stop by. Not just for the food. I was able to meet some customers and I've talked to many dozens over the years, Phil. I could echo that sentiment, but why is the VMware ecosystem so important to Infinita? I guess the question there is, is petabyte scale really that prominent in the VMware customer base? It's a very, very important point. VMware is the longest standing alliance partner of Infinita. It goes back to really almost the foundation of the company, certainly starting with the release one, the very first commercial release of Infinita at VMware and a very tight integration of VMware was a core part of that. We have a capability we call the host power tools, which drives a consistent best practices implementation around our VMware integration and how it's actually used in the data center. We've built on that through the years, through just a deep level of integration. Our customers typically are at petabyte scale. Our average deployment is a petabyte and up, and over 90% of our customers use VMware. You would say, I think I could safely say we serve the VMware environment for some of VMware's largest enterprise footprints in the market. So Lee, I know it's like children. You love all your partners, but is there anything about Infinita that stands out to you, a particular area, where they shine from your perspective? Yeah, I think so. The best partnerships are ones that are customer driven, it turns out. And the idea that we have joint customers at large scale, listen, storage is a tough business to get right. It takes time to go and mature, to harden a code base. And particularly when you're talking about petabyte scale, now you've basically got customers buying in for the largest systems. And what we're seeing overall is customers are trying to do more things with fewer component elements. Makes sense, right? And so the scale here is important because it's not just scale in terms of capacity, right? It's scale in terms of performance as well. And so as you see customers trying to expand the number of different types of applications, and this is one of the things we're seeing, right, is new applications which could be container-based, Kubernetes orchestrated. Our Tanzu portfolio helps with that, right? If you see what we're doing with NVIDIA, for example, we announced some AI work right this week with vSphere. And so what you're starting to see is the changing nature of applications and the fast-paced of applications is really helping customers say, listen, I want to go and find solutions that can meet the majority of my needs. And that's one of the things that we're seeing. And particularly with the vVols integration at scale that we just haven't seen before. Infinite has set in the bar, and we're really setting a new record for that. Yeah, let me comment on that a little bit, Dave. We've been a core part of the VMware Cloud Solutions Lab, which is a very, very exciting, engaging investment that VMware has made. A lot of people have contributed to in the industry. But in the VMware Cloud Solutions Lab, we recently demonstrated on a single Infinite frame over 200,000 vVols on a single system. And I think that not only edges up the bar, I think it completely redefines what scale means when you're talking about vVols implementation. So let's talk about both of those things. Not to geek out here, but vVols, they're kind of a game changer because instead of admins having to manually allocate storage to performance tiers, an array that is VASA certified. VASA is VMware or actually vStorage API for storage awareness, VASA. Anyway, with vVols, you can dynamically provision storage that matches, the way I say it is matches device attributes to the data and the application requirements of the VM. So Phil, it seems like so much in VMware land harkens back to the way mainframes use to solve problems in a modern way, right? And vVols are real breakthrough in that regard in terms of simplifying storage. So how do you guys see it? I presume you're sort of vVols certified based on what you just said in the lab. Yeah, we recently announced our vVols release and we're not the first to market with vVols, but from the start of the engineering project, we wanted to do it the way we think. We think at scale in everything we do. And our customers were very prescriptive in the kind of scale and performance and availability that they wanted to experience in vVols. And we're now seeing quite a bit of customer interest attraction in it. As I said, we redefined the bar for vVols scalability. We support on a single array now 1,000 storage containers. And I think most of our competition is like at one or maybe 10 or 13 or something like that. So our customers are, again, at scale. They said, if you're going to do vVols, we wanted at scale. We wanted to embody the characteristics of your platform. We really liked vVols because it helps separate kind of the roles and responsibilities between the VI administrator and the storage system administrator. If you're going to put a majority of your most critical bits on infinite out in your data center, you're going to want to have control over how that resource is used. The vVols implementation and the tools that we provide with that deep level of integration give the VI administrator all the flexibility they need to manage applications. And vVols, of course, gives the VI administrator the native use of our embedded snapshot technology. And so it makes it incredibly easy for them to administrate the platform without having to worry about the physical infrastructure, but yet the people worried about the physical infrastructure still have control over that resource. So it's a game changer as far as we're concerned. Yeah, storage has come a long way, hasn't it, Lee? I wonder if you could add some color here. It seems, in talking to me, so vSAN, that's interesting. You had a hand in the growth of vSAN and a very successful product, but he chose Infinidat for that higher end application. It seemed like vVols are a key innovation in that regard. How's the vVol uptake going from your perspective? Yeah, I think we're in the second phase of vVol adoption. First phase was technically interesting and intriguing, but adoption was relatively low, I think. Because up until five years ago, applications weren't actually changing that fast. Think about it, right? The applications, ERP systems, CRM systems, you weren't changing those at the pace of what we're doing today. Now what's happening is every business is a software business. When you interact with your healthcare provider right now, it's about the apps. Can you go and get your schedules online? Can you email your doctors? Can you go and get your labs? The pace of new application development, we have some data showing that there will be more apps developed in the next five years and then the past 40 years of computing combined. When you think about that, what's changed now is trying to manage that all from the storage hardware side was actually getting in the way. You want to organize around the fastest beat rate in your infrastructure. Today, that's the application. So what vVol helps you do is it allows the vSphere administrator, who's managing VMs and looking at the apps and the changing pace, and be able to basically select storage attributes, including QoS, capacity, IOPS, and do that from the vCenter console and then be able to rectify things and manage them right from the console right next to the apps. That provides a really integrated way. So when you have a close interaction like what we're talking about today or integration that infinite ad has provided, now you've got this ability to have a faster moving activity. Consolidation is one of the themes you've heard from time to time from VMware. We're consolidating the management so that the vSphere administrator can now go and manage more things. What traditional VMs? Yes. VMs across HCI sure put now plus storage and into the hybrid cloud and into containers. It's that consolidated management which is getting us speed and basically a consumer-like experience for infrastructure deployments. Phil mentioned the Solutions Lab. You've got a huge ecosystem. Several years ago, you launched the VMware, I think it's called the VMware Cloud Solutions Lab, is the official name. Explain what it does for collaboration and joint solutions development. And then, Phil, I want you to go in more detail about what your participation is. But Lee, why don't you explain? Yeah, we don't take just any products because, listen, there's a mixing. What we take is things that really expand the innovation frontier. And that's what we saw with Infinite Ad was expanding the frontier on large capacity for many, many different mixed workloads. And a commitment to go and bring in not just VVol support, of course, all the things we do for just normal interaction with vSphere. But bringing VVol in was certainly important in showing how we operate at scale. And then importantly, as we expanded the VCF VMware Cloud Foundation to include storage systems for your customer, for example, who has storage and HCI and looks for how to go and use them. And that's an individual choice at a customer level. We think this is strategically important now as we expand a multi-cloud experience that's different from the hyperscalers. Hyperscalers are coming in with two kind of issues, maybe, right? So one is it's single cloud. And the other one is there's a potential competitive aspect from some, right, around the ongoing underlying business and a hyperscaler business model. And so what VMware uniquely is doing is extending a common control plane across storage systems and HCI, and doing that in a way that basically gives customers choice. And we love that the cloud lab is really designed to go and make that a reality for customers, strip out perceived and real risk. Yeah, Phil, to this point, there's not dozens and dozens and dozens of logos on the slide for the lab. No, I think there's like, you know, 10 or 12 from what I saw and Infinidat is one of them. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about your participation in the program and what it does for customers. Yeah, absolutely. And I would agree. We like the lab because it's not just supposed to be, you know, one of everything I can do. It's a purpose-built lab to do real things. And we like it because we can really explore, you know, some of the most contemporary workloads in that environment as well as solutions to what I consider to be some of the most contemporary industry problems. We're participating in a couple of ways. I believe we're the only petabyte scale storage solution in the cloud solutions lab at VMware. One of the projects we're working on with VMware is their machine learning platform. That's one of the first cloud solutions lab projects that we worked on with Infinidat. And we're also a core part of what VMware is driving from what we call a data for good initiative. This was inspired by the idea that tech can be used as a force for good in the world. And right now it's focused on the technology needs of nonprofits. And so we're closely working in the cloud solutions lab with the VMware Cloud Foundation layers, as well as there are Tanzu and Kubernetes environments and learning a lot and proving a lot. And it's also a great way to demonstrate the capabilities of our platform. Yeah, so yeah, it's just the other day I was on the VMware analyst meeting virtually, of course, and Zane and some J and a number of other execs that were given the update. And just to sort of emphasize what we've been talking about here, this expansion of the on-prem, the cloud experience, the data from, especially from our survey data, we have a partner ETR, they do great surveys on a regular quarterly basis. The VMware Cloud and AWS doing great for sure. But the VMware Cloud Foundation, the on-prem cloud, the hybrid cloud is really exploding. Exploding. And it's resonating with customers. And that's a good example of this sort of equilibrium that we're seeing between the public and private coming together. Well, you know, VMware Cloud Foundation right now with, you know, over a thousand customers. But importantly, over 400 of the global 2000, right? It's the largest customers. And that's actually where the Venn diagram between the work that VMware Cloud Foundation is doing and Infinidat, right? And, you know, this large scale actually is an, you know, interesting crossover, right? And, you know, listen for customers to go and take on a new storage system, we always know that's a high bar, right? So they have to see some really unique value. Like, how is this going to help, right? And today that value is I want to spend less time looking down at the storage and more time looking up at the apps. That's how we're working together, right? And how VVolz fits into that. You know, with the VMware Cloud Foundation, it's the hybrid, that hybrid cloud offering really gives customers the future-proofing, right? And the degrees of freedom they're most likely to exercise. Right. Well, let's close with kind of a glimpse of the future. What do each of you see as the future of the data center, you know, specifically? And also your collaborations, Lee, why don't you start? Listen, I think what we hope to be true is turning out to be true. So, you know, if you've looked at the, you know, what's happening in the cloud, not everything is migrating in the cloud, but the public cloud, for example, and I'm talking about public cloud there, the public cloud offers some really interesting, unique value. And VMware is doing really interesting things about like DR as a service and other things, right? So we're helping customers tap into that. At the same time, right, we're seeing that the on-prem investment is not stalling at all because of data sovereignty, because of bandwidth limitations, right? And because of really the economics of what it means to rent versus buy. And so, you know, partnering with, you know, leaders on, you know, in storage, right, is a core part of our strategy going forward. And we're looking forward to doing more, right, with Invinidad as we see VCF evolve, as we see new applications, including container-based applications running on our platform. Lots of futures, right, as the pace of application change, you know, doesn't slow down. So, Phil, what do you see for the next 10 years for Invinidad? Yeah, well, Lee, I appreciated your introduction because it does speak to sort of the core characteristics of Invinidad. And I think a company like us and at our juncture of evolution, it's important to know exactly who you are. And we clearly are focused in that on-prem hybrid data center environment. We want to be the storage tier that companies use to build their clouds. And the partnership with VMware, we talked about the Venn diagram, I think it just could not be more complimentary. And so we're certainly going to continue to focus on VMware as our largest and most consequential alliance partner for our business going forward. I'm excited about the data center landscape going forward. I think it's going to continue to ebb and flow. We'll see growth in distributed architectures. We'll see growth at the edge. In the core data center, I think the old days where customers would buy a storage system for a application environment, those days are over. It's all about consolidating multiple apps and thousands of users on a single platform. And to do that, you have to be really good at a lot of things that we are very good at. Our strategy going forward is to evolve as media evolves, but never stray far from what has made Invinidad unique and special and highly differentiated in the marketplace. I think the work that VMware is doing in Kubernetes is very exciting. We're starting to see that really pick up in our business as well. So as we think about not only staying relevant, but keeping very contemporary with application workloads, we have some very small amount of customers that still do some bare metal. But predominantly, as I said, 90% or above is VMware infrastructure. But we also see Kubernetes, our CSI driver, works well with the VMware suite above it. So that that complementary relationship we see extending forward as the application environment evolves. That's great. Thank you. You know, many years ago when I attended my first VM world, the practitioners that were there, you talked to them, half the conversations they were complaining about storage and how it was so complicated and you needed guys and lab coach to solve problems. And VMware really has done a great job, publishing the APIs, encouraging the ecosystem. And so if you're a practitioner and you're interested in how VVOLS and Invinidad and VMware are kind of raising the bar on petabyte scale, there's some good blogs out there. Check out the virtual blocks blog for more information. Guys, thanks so much. Great to have you in the program. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Dave. Thanks, Dave. Thank you for watching this CUBE conversation. Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time.