 I'm with Wikibon.org, I'm here with Jeff Frick, my colleague, this is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's continuous coverage of AWS Summit here at Moscone in San Francisco. AWS does about a dozen of these events around the world. Its big event is re-Invent. Last November, it was a big breakout, really Amazon flexing its muscles, showing the world that it is serious about bringing cloud to the enterprise. And these smaller events, it's smaller, but there's good, Jeff, what would you say? Four or 5,000 people here? Yeah, it's got a good buzz. Yeah, so good buzz, a lot of practitioners, a lot of IT professionals and partners. And one of the partners here is Avere. Chris Archonaco is here. He is with Avere, a company in the storage business, bringing storage capabilities to the cloud, embracing the cloud, not fighting the cloud. Chris, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, thanks for having me. So Avere, a very interesting company, got some cool tech out of Carnegie Mellon. Ron, your CEO, I've met before, you're like total geek, I mean loves talking to our CTO, David Floyer, loves talking to him because it's like, they start talking about different profiles and how to optimize performance and just really interesting stuff. But let's up level it here. What's happening with Avere? Give us the high level view. Yeah, I mean, so I guess first and foremost, traditionally we've always been a network attached storage play. So our architecture that we propose is one of an edge and a core. The core devices are your traditional NetApps and EMC devices. The edge filers are what we provide and that provides a number of valuable services, including global namespace, decoupling performance from capacity and decoupling kind of performance from geographic location. So really the natural extension of that, we really believe is the cloud. And we really think that that's the only architecture that can deliver high performance in that hybrid model. So let's go back a little bit. So we think about where we've come from. I mean, NetApp obviously popularized the whole notion of NAS and filers and they grew up in the enterprise. And now, of course, the industry's moving to figure out how to scale up, sorry, scale out and manage clusters. You guys, trying to get ahead of that curve, talking about global namespace, talk about the traction that you've made in the marketplace and where you fit. Yeah, so I mean, obviously we're well established and how we've been around for several years in the network attached storage space. But in terms of gaining traction on the cloud, I mean, really, we started a survey quite some time ago and talking to our customers about what they wanted and what they needed. And really, that is what we've brought together into this cloud prototype that we're demoing here today and it'll be released later this year. So it's really about going out to them, seeing what problems they want to solve with the cloud and then creating a product for them. All right, so let's break it down a little bit further. So I can go to Amazon, I can get block storage, I can get S3, nice, simple, get put interface. Why do I need a VAIR? Talk more about the value that you guys bring and the typical use cases that you envision. Right, so it's a really good question. I mean, the thing with the power of S3 is also something that's a challenge for people. It's so simple, it's provided just as a storage solution. But it's, of course, object-based. Most applications are not written for object storage. So what we heard from people is that they really liked the economies of it, they wanted to use object storage, but they weren't sure how to get there. So what we've done is essentially overlaid a file system into S3. We've taken a lot of the gateway functionality you see out there and we pulled it into our architecture. So it should allow people to make that seamless transition. So you have an existing NAS infrastructure, you can use this with that, you can easily spin up an S3 cloud instance and begin leveraging that. As far as typical use cases, it runs the full gamut. Some people just want to do something simple like eliminate tape. But really the thought leaders, the people that see where this is going, they want to do high performance workloads. So we had people come to us and say, well, can we use just your VAIR FXT nodes and just S3 storage? And the answer will be yes. If you want to have no disks on site, you can have no disks on site. And that's really powerful for a number of reasons, not only the cost and energy and everything associated with that in tape, but also all the personnel it takes to run that, it can now be reallocated to other functions within the company. So you referenced this in your comments. So what you're saying is that, yeah, you can go to S3, it's real simple, but you're going to have to make some changes to your application. Right, absolutely. So and whereas with you guys, you could just, the application doesn't know there's anything to it. Not only does the application not know, you can take existing data sets that people are actually working on and you can move them into S3 while people are still working on them with just a split second cutover, while maintaining the namespace, the file system that they're used to. So they have no idea that anything's actually transitioned to S3. And our box will intelligently handle caching the hot data locally and letting the cold stuff go back to S3 at a much better price point. Yeah, talk about the economics a little bit, could you? Yeah, I mean, so just take the case of perhaps media and entertainment. They have massive data storage needs, seismic processing, life sciences, genomic research, all these people have tons of data that they need to work on and they have massive data that they need to hold on to. But the actual working set is a small subset of that. So really what our device allows them to do is create an edge layer that can hold just the data you need to and provide that great performance and then you can store the data in S3 at a much lower cost. So where before you had potentially warehouses and warehouses or I should say data centers of disks, tape robots and tape devices, all of that can potentially disappear, all of the headaches associated with maintaining it and the high costs of pooling and energy and power all disappear and become part of the S3 model. So for topology, though, is it on-prem? Your boxes are on-prem or is there also, is there a way to get it through the marketplace so they're also sitting off in the cloud somewhere? That's a really good question. So today it's on-prem. The idea is that you co-locate our solution with either the compute nodes or the clients or whoever you want to have that land-like experience. You know, in the future, virtualizing our software is definitely something that we're talking to Amazon about and there's definitely use cases around that because I'm sure you guys are finding today at the show. Okay. So you guys also, when you first came to market, you had this kind of multi-personality capability I'll call it, where you didn't really, you had, you know, all kinds of devices at the back end, fat devices, fast devices. Now you got flash coming in and I remember your CEO talking about some of the algorithms that you had to sort of optimize that back end asset. Is that still sort of part of your value proposition and how does that play into the cloud? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's still part of our value proposition. That's the way people are using us today. You know, in addition to kind of, in addition to kind of decoupling performance from capacity and all these things, by inserting this other layer and now accelerating and providing the performance from that layer, you also free up the resources on the back end. So the net effect is actually exponential because now your core filers are now able to do more work. And then in terms of, you know, our algorithms and how we maximize that, yeah, we've had to deal with the full gamut. So, you know, high-end NAS devices and cheap NAS devices. And there's some interesting things you've learned about how to talk to them and deal with them. And we think that that's all going to carry over very well, you know, the cloud. And in addition to that, you know, we have a lot of people using us today in a WAN application as well to, you know, they deploy our devices remotely to some remote site where users need WAN-like experience, but they want to hold their assets in a central location. So that's a model we're already using today. And we think it's a very similar model to the cloud. It will translate very well. So how do you guys position yourself? There's all kinds of, you know, the theme, meme in the industry, all flash arrays, hybrids, and the like. How does a VIR position itself? I mean, you guys are a little bit different. Right. I mean, I would say that the way we position ourselves is that we make the best use of your most valuable resources. So there's a lot of different theories on how you can implement flash. You know, like you said, there's all SSD devices. You can put flash in servers and make them fast. Those are all valid solutions. However, you know, the one Achilles' heel that we think they all have is that they're located in specific places within that infrastructure. They become islands of, you know, high performance, so to speak. When you separate those into a core and you add the edge layer of us, which can scale, you know, up to 50 of our nodes, now you've taken your most valuable resources, which inside our box can be, you know, memory, NV RAM, SSD and disk, all in the same platform, all intelligently tiering. Now you've separated that out. You can choose where you want to allocate those resources. You're not talking about physically ripping something out of a box and inserting another or building up the flash on a physical device that we have to take downtime. You can scale the tier in front of it seamlessly and you can choose which, you know, parts of the namespace you want to accelerate. And you're in control of that data flow, right? That's correct. I mean, we have multiple options. You know, obviously our best performing and, you know, our most feature rich is when you're basically going through us, you're in a mode where we can cash everything, reads, writes, creates, et cetera. However, you know, that being said, there are different workflows where people have different needs and they have to access data behind us. So we have a lot of flexibility in terms of how you insert us to make sure that, you know, in the cases where you need access to the data, we don't force you in all cases to go through us. So you have the option of some flexibility there. From a product manager point of view, and, you know, from the storage background, now we've got all these cloud services and cheap storage and, you know, how have you guys really decided to attack that as a company? It sounds like embrace and augment and, you know, value add some of this transformative nature that's happening to the industry and the cloud. Yeah, I mean, you know, when people ask me those kind of questions, I mean, the big killer app that I see that has to leveraging is FlashMove. So FlashMove is, you know, what I talked about, you can actually move data while it's online between what we call core filers. So when you talk about leveraging these, you know, cheap or new, talk about, you know, object stores, both public and private, people want to know how do I use them? Well, when you add them to our infrastructure, it basically allows you to seamlessly introduce them into the, into your infrastructure. So if it's working well, that's great, you know, keep buying more of it. It doesn't work well. Well, you can have that quick switch out. So it allows people, you know, to experiment and ascertain their own risk and basically move into that in a gradual phase because everyone, you know, the one theme we've heard repeatedly is everyone is being empowered, tasked by their CIOs or CTOs, whoever the chief decision maker is, you know, leverage the cloud, reduce costs, but all the guys are struggling with the same thing, how to make that transition. And we just feel like, you know, our architecture is the best architecture, you know, for real enterprise, real high-performance solution for them to start dabbling in the cloud or even flip the switch and do it all in the cloud if they want to. Still an interesting move by you guys. I mean, let's face it, the cloud is very disruptive to the traditional storage world. That must have been an interesting conversation, you know, back in Pittsburgh about actually putting, you know, forward, going forward with this initiative. Yeah. Share a little bit about what the thinking was there, and was it a no-brainer or was there a little tension there initially, or you're kind of sleeping with the enemy in a way? Yeah, I mean, so honestly, this product or this feature, I should say, of the product has been more customer-driven than perhaps any other feature. So I've been on dozens of calls with customers going back, you know, to late last year, and it's really all about, you know, customers wanting the solution. And as far as, you know, you know, I do agree with you, it's totally disruptive. But I think it's a lot less disruptive for our architecture than for some of the other guys. So again, I think, you know, we play into that perfectly. And the great thing was that as we talk to these customers, you know, obviously you're not going to have total overlap in terms of requirements, but more so than anything else, there was a huge overlap in terms of the types of products that they want, or the types of problems they want to solve, and the way they want to solve them. So really it converged really quickly and, you know, I don't know if I call it a no-brainer, but yeah, when you have so many customers asking you for a solution, it does seem like it. And I'm guessing you guys feel like, and you've done the analysis, this expands your total available market, right? I mean, pretty dramatically, I would think. Yeah, I mean, basically, I mean, it is not an exaggeration to say that virtually every customer I speak to, regardless of topic, wants to talk to me about the cloud once they find out that we're doing something better. It's literally every customer, maybe one or two percent, aren't interested. Every single other customer is either looking at augmenting one of our existing solutions, or implementing a new solution based on this. Where are you guys winning in the marketplace and at whose expense? It's a good question. At whose expense? I mean, winning in the marketplace, you know, it runs the gamut, you know. Obviously, we're very well known in media and entertainment. We're well known in seismic processing as well. So those are kind of, you know, our big use cases. But it is a general purpose solution, so it can really be used across the gamut. I think by nature, the fact that it's high performance and scalable, it's natural that it would gravitate to those industries first, because that's really what they're all about. You know, as far as who are we, you know, kind of hurting, really the incumbents. Because, you know, people that have large, you know, infrastructures, they want to keep expanding those, they want to step them up to the next software revision, next hardware revision. Well, when you insert our nodes in front, you can get a lot of life out of those older NAS devices. So something that maybe was on the cusp of really hurting you, now you just bought another, you know, five or 10 years of productive life out of that thing, because you put in a beer solution in front of it. So it's a real big asset utilization play there for you guys. What's your head count these days? Do you know of him? I don't know if I'm actually in liberty to discuss it. Oh, okay. We don't know any general. Usually companies just talk about head count, not revenue. I can tell you it's growing rapidly and we are in the process of finalizing a move in Pittsburgh and we're extremely excited about it. Within Pittsburgh. Within Pittsburgh. You're staying, you're hanging out in the Steelerville. We're staying in Pittsburgh. We're from Pittsburgh. Steelerville. Pretty dogmatic about that. Well, you got some good DNA there and it's worked around in the past. Well, congratulations, bold move and good luck with the product. Break us down again. When's it available? The prototype will be available in the fourth quarter. We have a prototype now, customer demos in July and then beta coming in August. Okay, so reinvents a big milestone for you guys, obviously. Absolutely. I mean, we plan to stay engaged with Amazon from here on out. What's it like working with those guys? They've been great. Not just from a business development perspective, their architects have been great working with our engineers. Very accessible, very professional guys present themselves very well. So it's been terrific. There's got to be some serious geek fest that's going on between you guys and Amazon. Well, we're geeked. We want to get them more and more. The closer we get to deliver it, we keep enhancing our prototype and showing it. So the closer we get, I think the more it becomes a real product, the more excited they'll get. But I think they're excited about it, too. Awesome, it's a good event, right? I mean, it's real intimate, a lot of good customers here and it's good quality, not too much puff, I like that. Yeah, no, we've had a lot of tremendous conversations in our booth, you know, more so than some of the traditional larger trade shows. Yeah, good. Well, Chris, great to see you again. Yeah, thank you. And I appreciate you coming on theCUBE. Thanks a lot, guys. And I love the story, love the update. All right, keep it right there, everybody, we'll be right back with more from the AWS Summit at Moscone, live. This is theCUBE.