 Welcome back to Veeamon 2022. We're in the home stretch now. Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. And we're excited to have Drew Schlesel on. He's the director of product marketing at Wasabi and he's joined by Dustin Albertson, the manager of cloud and application alliances, product management at Veeam software. Dustin, did I get that right? You got it right. All right, you're going to explain all those little titles in a moment. So Wasabi is a company, cool name, but you may not know much about them. Drew, what does Wasabi do? We do cloud storage, plain and simple. It is the one thing we do extremely well. It's S3 compatible and it covers a broad range of use cases. Primarily we work with Veeam on backup and recovery. We're going to get into that, but there's a lot of people do cloud storage, a lot of people do object store. What makes Wasabi unique? Simplicity, predictability, performance, security. Predictability, let's talk about price, right? That's the thing that gets people's attention, right? Yeah, sure. Okay, you can look at it one of two ways. It's either one-fifth the price of all the hyperscalers, significant difference there, or for fundamentally the same price, you get five times more storage, which makes a huge difference, especially in the backup space, when you want to have a lot of backups, right? Folks would prefer to have months of backups as opposed to days or weeks, right? How do you do that? Because, you know, maybe- It sounds like magic, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, you know, look at us. We've all been around the block quite a few times, and we know that the bits and the bytes and the bolts are all basically the same. What are you doing to get that level of efficiency? It's secret. It's secret? Look, it doesn't have to be that expensive, okay? Now, granted, there's some things, obviously, we do that are proprietary and different from- Well, like stealing electricity from your neighbor or something? I mean, what do you- We just run a cord over the wall. Absolutely, that's one way to cut down on price. But because we're so focused on just the storage, right? And our founders, you know, the gentlemen who founded Carbonite know a thing or two about storage, right? We have a very highly optimized stack, very efficient. You know, you guys know what raw to usable story is, right? You've gone through that TCO analysis before, and we're highly efficient in how we use the raw storage. And we pass that price on to our customers, right? We believe that a low price cloud storage, right? One tier, always hot, always available. It gives our customers the ability to spend their money in other places, right? Well, and there's a price umbrella that the public cloud guys have, it's kind of a gift that they've given you. Look at Amazon's operating profits last quarter. It was 35%, those are like Oracle operating margins. Not that we don't know what your operating margins are, but I've followed David Friend's career for a long, long time. He's got good nose for business. But so, Dustin, when you hear Drew talk about the ability to retain that much data, what does that mean for Veeam customers? So, the primary thing for Veeam customers is the ease of use. I would say, you know, the performance and things like that are all nice, right? They're important, but primarily what I see is people say how easy it is to use and how easy it is to price. Now, the objective, you know, the alternative is you go to another cloud provider and you say, well, how much will this cost me per month? You really have to understand object storage, how Veeam works, how we're moving data, all the API calls, all of that, to really kind of correlate out a guesstimate of what your price would be per month. You know, with Wasabi, it's a flat fee, it's per terabyte, you know what it's gonna be. That's it, there's no API charges, there's no egress, so the customers really love that ease of use. This become one of the most popular endpoints for object storage for our customers. Imagine this, right? You go to Best Buy and you buy a refrigerator and you bring it home and you stock it with all your favorite drinks and snacks, okay? On game day, you go and you open the fridge and you hear a sound, bing, and it's your phone and it's your credit card company telling you that you've been charged a door opening fee, okay? And then you grab a beer out of that fridge, bing, bing, and you hear another ring and now you're getting a beer extraction fee, okay? Now, I wanna be fair to all the sponsors here, but okay, with Wasabi, you can open that door, you can stand there, you can air condition the whole house, you can take a beer out and put a beer back or whatever your favorite beverage is and you're not gonna hear that noise, okay? Very straightforward, like in geometry class, right? The slope of a line, y equals mx plus b, b equals zero, okay? Whoa, whoa, whoa, you had me at free beer. You don't, you don't. But you understand, why would you pay your fee to open your fridge and take out a beverage, take out a snack, okay? That's the predictable part of Wasabi. That's what's resonating so strongly with folks where everything else is, in this world, unpredictable. So ease, simplicity, maybe the answer to that is, there's all this other stuff in the cloud, like it's convenient for me, it's right there. So how do you address that convenience factor? All these other services, you know, that I can get streaming and machine learning and all that other great stuff. Well, how do you address that? Sometimes all you need is storage, okay? No, that's it put. Okay, that's the beauty of Wasabi. We're not trying to be everything to everyone. We're trying to be one thing executed very well for a specific set of users and use cases. I may be a little objective here, but I've grown up with you guys, right? You were one of the first partners that I started working with and I've seen you kind of grow. But one of the things I think that you've done a real good job at is, like you say, sticking to your lanes, you know, just going after use cases that just need data, right? I don't need to get into the AI or the analytics or all of this. We just do this and do it well and people have resonated with that, right? So a big topic here, of course, is ransomware. Three, two, one, one, zero. What is that? What are the three's, the two's, the one's? That's you, you got to explain that one. So forever we had the three, two, one rule, right? Like the three copies of data, two different copies, two different media types, one off-site, and then one is testing, and then zero now is validation. Basically reuse that data, make sure that you're testing it. Because if you're following three, two, one, and you're not actually testing your data, is it really good? You don't know, you're just, you may have bad copies spread out all over the place. So one of the things where Wasabi shines is, is that they don't have these e-risk charges, they don't have these API charges, so you can test that data. You can, after you send a backup up there, restore it somewhere else and validate that it's works, and then get rid of it, and it's still sitting up there in Wasabi. So you're not trying to balance your activities and your operational requirements with your bill. Correct. You're not getting yelled at by the controller at the end of the month, right? You're unconstrained, right? And I think also immutability comes into play. Correct as well. Talk about that. Right, so we heard this morning in the keynote, that backup data sets are one of the main attack vectors for cyber criminals. And it makes sense, right? They take down your primary systems and they control your backup systems, they've got you. You have no choice but to pay that ransom, okay? So, immutability. That means that your backups are untouchable. Your root user, your admins, the folks at Wasabi, the folks at Veeam, nobody can alter that data, period, end of story, okay? That saves you from yourself. That saves you from the hackers, right? I mean, the most disturbing story I've read about cyber warfare right now is that people are getting bribe offers from these cyber gangs, and they're just, you know, for a couple of Bitcoin handing over the keys to the kingdom. With immutability, you're actually safe from that scenario. So that's a service, correct? No, it's a feature. Okay, so can I turn it off? Yeah, you don't have to use it. No, can I, after I've turned it on, can I turn it off? Oh, it's up to you. I mean, why don't you talk about it? Yeah, yeah, so it's an API. So, let's say you send some backups up there today and you set it for two weeks and you decide today, oh, I made a mistake, I wanna turn it off. You can't turn it off. Okay, so as long as you set that policy, it's a big warning. Right. You can't undo this. Right. Okay, so even if I come to the admin with a bunch of Bitcoin, he or she can't undo it. That's right, nope. That's right, and you can set it for two weeks, two months, two years, right? You can use it to secure your backups, right? You can also use that same feature in compliance situations, right? Regulatory environments where you've got to retain customer data for, you know, five, seven, 10 years, right? By using that immutability feature, you guarantee the integrity of that data for whatever period you set. And it's a feature, it's not a paid-for service, is that right? It is included as part of the service. Okay, so I don't... Free beer and free mutability. I think I'm correct. Some competitors, you pay in for that service, so if you turn it off, if you don't stop paying, there's a theory they could turn it off on you. They will warn you. Sure. But that says to me that somebody could be tempted by a few Bitcoins. That's not immutable. That's not immutable, yeah. I agree, yeah. Well, and there is a charge to use it in other places because it's an API request, right? It's an action. It's opening the fridge. It's like texting. Yes. Maybe a charge. Yeah, I remember those days. Ha ha ha ha. Was it 10 cents a message or something? Telegraph. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You still get those messages, right? Text fees may apply, really? Okay, so tell me more about... You got me, I'm sold, okay? David Friend's got credibility. Okay, but I have some other questions. Like, where's my data? You guys running your own data centers? What's your global footprint? How do you deal with data sovereignty? All that stuff. So right now, oh boy, now I'm on the spot. I want to say 11 locations around the world. It's our gear. We're running it in concert with folks who are helping us host that system, right? But we have complete control, of course, of our systems. We're everywhere, right? Just opened, let's see, Toronto, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Sydney just spun up in the last week. We've got Singapore coming online, I think, in the next two weeks. Two in Japan? Yep, two in Japan. Multiple locations in the United States. So in terms of sovereignty, right? As long as folks are keeping it within, you know, their physical boundaries, not a problem. And if folks want to use, you know, other locations in other countries, great. We can support that as well. So you got momentum as a business. I mean, that's pretty clear from the discussions I've had with folks like David, and obviously you're excited about this. Where's it coming from? Is it really that price factor that's driving people to you? Is it, Dustin said simplicity. I mean, where are you seeing the momentum? Geographies, where's it, where's the action? I'll say, you know, from my point of view, it's been a combination of all that, right? It's simple, it's easy to use. Like a user can, any user who's not cloud friendly, right? Can log in and create one. It's a simple portal to create a bucket and then start sending stuff off site. But also they've kind of, they reminded me of a younger beam, like when they first started, because they went after the channel and they started these partner programs and MSP programs and things like that that have been really successful as far as one of the key markets is MSPs, right? Because they want a cheap place to put this data. They don't want to have to buy appliances. They don't want to have to go to AWS and things like that. So this has been really appealing to them. You know, it's interesting. So I have a, we have a partnership with a data company down in New York called Enterprise Technology Research. We write a breaking analysis every week and we use a lot of their data. One of the things that popped up recently, maybe a year ago, OpenStack. I'm like, OpenStack, so we dug in, like where's OpenStack and what it was was MSPs didn't want to pay the VTACs, right? So they were rolling their own with OpenSource and OpenStack, those red hat services, blah, blah, blah. But it sounds like a similar dynamic, especially with the MSPs. So I think we, I hate to use the metaphor, but I will, right? There's a perfect storm happening, right? Especially in the last, what? Two years, all right? The cloud has been gaining traction, but we've been around long enough to see the pendulum swinging, right? Some folks went crazy for the cloud and then they got their bill and then they went crazy to get back out of the cloud. But now, you know, with distributed workforces, with the constant attacks on their on-prem systems, right? The growth in cloud across the board has been phenomenal. I know you're a market watcher, right? I know you guys are keeping close eyes. I saw your recent analysis on the cybersecurity firms, right? It continues to grow. There's no question about it. We're on that wave, right? And I think we've, you know, we're not, we're, I don't know if it's the longboard or the short little snappy board. Yes, we actually identified and went after the opportunity to partner with Veeam very early on because it's the perfect work case, work load. How long can you sustain that and still resist the temptation to come out with some new shiny object to distract people? I mean, what does that look like in terms of as you look out in this laser-focused addressable market that you're going after now? So, you know, the best part about being here this week is having great conversations and talking to folks about what they're seeing in the marketplace and the different verticals. I don't think we've even scratched the surface of any of the verticals that we are working in today. First and foremost, when it comes to backup and recovery, so much more opportunity with Veeam, right? Whether it's healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, analytics, backup of AIML, you know, analysis. I think it's almost limitless, right? Data's growing, what, 40, 80% year-over-year depending on who you ask, right? Then, the other things that we do, which maybe folks don't even know about, we have a burgeoning business in video surveillance, right? We're working with all the top partners in that sector and the take-up is phenomenal because they are tweaking their technology to maintain a relatively small cash, right? On-prem or in the central office and then they're just kind of, you know, tearing that off to the cloud to have essentially a bottomless backup or archive of that footage and they can do it at 4K. Here's the best part, right? When 8K comes out, guess what? That data set doubles in size. But that's right in your zone. That's not stepping out, that's not stepping out. That's classic leveraging a channel. In other words. Yeah, thank you. If you're hitting singles and doubles all day long, right? Do you have to switch to be a power hitter and go for the fences and drop your batting average down but hope that your slugging percentage goes up? I think you keep hitting singles, doubles and triples. A lot of people on Sand Hill Road or, you know, at the bar at the Rosewood would disagree with you. And so I appreciate the discipline. Yeah, and it's true. And as we know, the industry is littered with a lot of those names that just didn't make it. Let's stay positive here, you know? No, he's saying. Yeah, no, no. A lot of guys at Sand Hill Road would say, no, you got to go for it. Yeah, yeah. You got to see, forget these singles we want. Yeah. We need homeruns. Yeah, shiny. Well, I mean, look at Veeam as an example, right? Of a disciplined approach, right? Exactly. To a space that they have steadily grown. I mean, congratulations, right? You guys have been identified by IDC, right? Is essentially, you know, co-number ones, and I expect that to be the number one in the market, right? I think, you know, David Friend clearly has provided excellent guidance, right? To steer the company that way. And I'm just really happy to be about it. Well, the TAM is data, right? And you're just another node on the data universe, right? That's what you want. You don't necessarily want to move it around, if you don't have to. It is interesting, though. I mean, we are seeing more and more analysts identifying Wasabi as, like, the fourth player. Yeah, which is pretty cool, right? And I also heard it from some good sources this week that, let's say, one of the hyperscalers has started to, yeah, have conversations about us. Let's just leave it at that. That's good. That means you're bothering people. Yeah, that's it. All right, guys, we've got to go. Thanks so much for coming on the queue. Thank you. Great to have you. That was easy. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there. We'll be back to wrap up day one from Veeamon 2022. Right back.