 Welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. Laura Dubois joins me next, VP of Product Management at Dell Technologies. Laura, welcome back to the program. Yeah, thank you so much, Lisa. It's just fantastic to be here and talking about data protection. You know, now that we're coming out of COVID, it's just wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. Isn't it so refreshing? So you're going to provide some updates on Dell's data protection software, some of the innovation, how you're working with customers and prospects. Let's go ahead and dig right in. Let's talk about some of the innovation and the enhancements that Dell is making to its data protection suite of software and also how customers are influencing that. Yeah, so it's a great question, Lisa, and you're right. We have driven a lot of innovation and enhancements in our data protection suite. And let me just level set a second. So data protection suite is a solution that is deployed by really tens of thousands of customers and we continue to innovate and enhance that data protection suite. Data protection suite is comprised primarily of three main data protection software capabilities. So longstanding capabilities and customer adoption of Avamar, which continues to be a central capability in our portfolio. The second one is Networker. So Networker is also an enterprise grade, highly scalable and performant data protection solution. And then a couple of years ago, we launched a new data protection capability called PowerProtect Data Manager. So all three of these capabilities are really the foundation of our data protection suite. And as I said, enterprises around the world rely on these three sets of capabilities to protect their data regardless of wherever it resides. And it's really central now more than ever in the face of increasing security risks and compliance and the need to be able to have an always kind of available environment that customers rely on the capabilities and data protection suite to really make sure their enterprise is resilient. Absolutely and make sure that that data is recoverable if anything happens. You mentioned cybersecurity, we'll get into that in a second. But so thousands of Avamar and Networker customers, what are some of the key workloads and data that these customers are protecting with these technologies? Yeah, I mean, so actually tens of thousands. Tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of customers that rely on data protection suite. And it really, I think that the strength and advantage of our portfolio is its breadth, breadth in terms of client operating environments in terms of applications and databases, in terms of workloads and specifically use cases. So I mean, the breadth that we offer is unparalleled, you know, pretty much windows, Linux, open VMS, network, you know, kind of, going back in time, a long tail of kind of operating environments and then databases, right? So everything from SQL and Oracle and Sybase and DB2 to new types of databases like, you know, the NoSQL or Content Store and key value store types of no SQL schemas, if you will. And so, and then lastly is the use cases, right? So being able to protect data, whether that be data that's in a data center, out in remote or branch locations or data that's out in the cloud, right? And of course, increasingly customers are placing their data in a variety of locations on edge, on core data centers and in cloud environments. And we actually have over six exabytes of capacity under management across public cloud environments. So pretty extensive deployment of our data protections in public clouds, you know, the leading hyperscalers, cloud environments on-premise as well. So let's talk a little bit about the customer influence because obviously there's a very cooperative relationship that Dell has with its customers that help you achieve things like, for example, I saw that according to IDC Dell Technologies as number one in data protection appliances and software leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for data center backup and recovery for over 20 years now. Talk to us a little bit more about that symbiotic customer Dell relationship. Yeah, so it's a great question. We see our customers as strategic partners and we really want to understand their business, their requirements. We engage on a quarterly basis with customers and partners in advisory councils. And then of course, we are always engaging with customers outside of those cycles on a kind of a one-on-one basis. And so we are really driving the innovation and the backlogs and the roadmap for data protection suite based upon customer feedback. And approximately 79% of the Fortune 100 customers are Dell Technologies data protection customers. Now, that's not to say that that's our only customer base. We have customers in commercial accounts, in mid-market, in federal agencies. But we take our customer relationships really, really seriously and we engage with them on a regular basis both in a group forum to provide feedback as well as in a one-on-one basis. And we're building our roadmaps and our product releases based on feedback from customers. And again, large customer base that we take very seriously. Right, so that customer listening, obviously, is critical for Dell. So you talked a little bit about what that cycle looks like in terms of quarterly meetings and then those individual meetings. What are some of the enhancements and advancements that customers have actually influenced? Yeah, so I think continuing to provide simplicity and ease of use is a key element of our portfolio and our strategy. So continuing to modernize and update the software in terms of workflows, in terms of common experiences. Also increasingly, customers want to automate their data protection process. So really taking an API for strategy for how we deliver capabilities to customers. Continuing to expand our client database, hypervisor environments, continue to extend out our cloud support. Things like protection of cloud native applications with increasingly customers containerizing and building scale out applications. We want to be able to protect Kubernetes environment. So that's kind of an area of focus for us. Another area of focus for us is going deeper with our key strategic partners, whether that be a cloud partner or a hypervisor partner. And then of course customers, in fact, one of the top three things that we consistently hear from from these councils that we do is the criticality of security. Security in your data protection environment, but the criticality of being able to be resilient from and in the event of a cyber attack to be able to resilient recover from that cyber attack. So that is an area where we continue to make innovations and investments in the data protection suite as well. And that's so critical. One of the things that we saw in the last year, 15 months plus, Laura, is this massive rise in ransomware. It's now a household word, the colonial pipeline, for example, the meatpacking plan. It's now many businesses knowing it's not if we get attacked, but it's when. So having the ability to be resilient and recover that data is table stakes for, I imagine, a business in any organization. I wanted to understand a little bit more. So you talked about tens of thousands of customers using FMR and Networker. So now they have the capability of also expanding and using more of the suite. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, so, I mean, I think it starts with the customer environment and what workloads and use cases they have. And because of the breadth of capabilities in the data protection suite, we really optimize the solution based upon their needs, right? So if they have a large portfolio of applications that they need to maintain, but they're also building applications or systems for the future, we have a solution there. If they have a single hypervisor strategy or a multiple hypervisor strategy, we have a strategy there. If they have data that's on-premise and across a range of public clouds, one large customer we have is a kind of a three plus one strategy around cloud. So they're leveraging three different public cloud IaaS environments and then they also have their on-premise cloud environment. So it really starts with the customer workload and the data and where it lives, whether that's be out in an edge location in a remote or branch office, on an endpoint somewhere they need to protect, whether it be in a core data center or multiple data centers, or rather that be in the cloud. That's how we think about optimizing the solution for the customers. Curious if you can give me any examples of customers, maybe by industry that have been with Dell for a long time with Avamar Networker and how they've expanded being able to predict, as you say, as their environment grows and we've got now this blur of right, it's now worked from anywhere with data centers edge. Talk to me about some customer's examples that you think really articulate the value of what Dell's delivering. Yeah, so I mean, I think one customer in the financial services sector comes to mind, they have a large amount of unstructured data that they need to protect, petabytes and petabytes of data they need to protect and so I think that's one customer that comes to mind is someone we've been with for a long time, been partnering with for a long time. So a lot of flexibility and choice for Avamar and Networker customers as things change, the world continues to pivot and we know it's absolutely essential to be able to recover that data. You mentioned, I think 79% of the Fortune 100 are using Dell technologies for data protection software that's probably something that's only gonna continue to grow. Lots of stuff coming up as you mentioned but what are some things that you're personally excited about as the world starts to open up and you get to actually go out and engage with customers? I mean, just looking forward to in-person meetings, right? I mean, I just love going and trying to understand what problems that customers are trying to solve and how we can help address those. I think what I see customers struggling with is how do they manage their current environment while they're building for the future? So there's a lot of interest in questions around how do they protect some of these new types of workloads, whether they're deployed on-premise or in the public cloud? So that continues to be an area where we continue to engage with customers. I'm also really personally excited about the extensions that we're doing in our cyber recovery capabilities. So you can expect to hear more about some of those in the next 12 months because we're really seeing that as a key driver to kind of increased policies around and implementations around data protection is because of the need to be able to be resilient from cyber attacks. I would say we're also doing some very interesting integrations with VMware. We're gonna have some first and only announcements around VMware and managing protection for VMware, you know, VM environments. So we can look forward to hearing more about that. And, you know, we have customers that have deployed our data protection solutions at scale. You know, one customer has 150,000 clients that they're protecting with our data protection offerings. Wow. And so 150,000. And so, you know, we're continuing to improve and enhance the products to meet those kind of scale requirements. And, you know, I'm excited by the fact that we've had this long-standing relationship with this one particular customer and, you know, continue to help and flow and have where their needs go. And that's something that you've been a great job of talking about is just not just a long-standing relationships, but really that dedication that Dell has to innovating with its customers. Laura, thank you for sharing some of the updates of what's new, what you're continuing to do with customers and what you're looking forward to in the future. And it sounds like we might hear some news around the VMworld timeframe. Yes, I think so. All right, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate your time. Yeah, it's been great to be here. Thanks so much. Excellent. For Laura Dewa, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this CUBE conversation.