 Hi everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org, and I'm here with John MacArthur. And this is the Dell Storage Forum 2012, and this is theCUBE, where we bring you the smartest people we can find. We extract the signal from the noise. We package information and share it with you, our audience. Tweet me at atd.vellante, at stew, as my other co-host. You can tweet us, ask us questions. We're here with Jeff Eccles, who's a senior director of product marketing at Commvault. John, Commvault's one of these companies, whenever I talk to Commvault, I go, really, you guys can do that? So, it's got a rich history. There's a lot of really interesting things, particularly in the area of data protection and other innovations. But first of all, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Jeff, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is you both have a legacy with Dell. You came from Dell, and you joined Commvault I think about seven years ago, is that right? That's about right. So, and you've been working very, very closely with Dell. So, I want to hear a little bit about sort of the Dell-Commvault relationship. Sure. And then a little bit of a discussion about what you're doing in terms of integration with the Snapshot technology. There's been a lot of discussion regarding Snapshot. Absolutely, so our relationship goes back actually well over seven years. Gosh, it's been a long time, but we've been integrating for years with Dell. Obviously, we're a software company, and so it's a natural match to have just great hardware technology in Commvault. And so we've always come at market from a backup standpoint over the years with that single platform software. We've added in archiving, replication, kind of reporting, what we used to call storage resource management, and all that's built into a single platform. And so we've always been able to come in and really compliment that Dell story very well. And just continuing down that line, you know, we've, I guess in the last couple of years, really built out the Snapshot integration story. So as you guys know, the market's really moving from kind of that traditional streaming backup story to more of a Snapshot and replication approach to the market. And Commvault's really tried to lead the charge on just getting deep integration across those hardware Snapshot APIs combined with our application intelligence and our scheduling and our catalog. Really, if you can combine those two things together, it solves a lot of problems that customers have being able to find application, you know, specific data, whether it's a file or an object or heard you talking about objects earlier or an email. And so this week we're really talking about our Snapshot integration with Compellent. And we've obviously, we've had it with Equalogic. We've got it with their PowerVault MD, kind of lower end storage arrays. But really extending that Compellent story even further by integrating with that Compellent Snapshot methodology and being able to kind of de-duplicate backup data off to other Dell storage products like the DL, the DL 2200, which is a- That's a disk library. It's a disk, that's right. It's a PowerVault disk library for backup to disk. And so it really kind of complements, you know, the tiering coming off of that primary Snapshot copy, moving that into a secondary disk target. And then even going even further to go off the tape, you know, Dell has a strong tape portfolio as well. So having a console really tie all of those products together from a Snapshot and a recovery standpoint is really where we've been focusing our efforts for film. When you go into the customers, Dell's got a broadening storage portfolio. Are you finding customers that have all three sort of tiers of storage in there, or do they tend to be concentrated in one area? Yeah, I think we find both. I mean, obviously Dell's got a lot of loyalty in their base. So there's quite a few PowerVault customers out there that have always been buying PowerVault disks. Obviously, since the acquisitions of Equalogic and Compellent, I think a lot of their customers have kind of grown with them and as they look for primary storage or they need more and more advanced storage technologies, Compellent makes a lot of sense for a lot of those PowerVault customers. Did you have relationships with Equalogic prior to the acquisition? Absolutely, both Equalogic and Compellent. In fact, Bob, who was just up here, we stored with him a couple of years back, so it's good to have that same continuity as they move into Dell. So Jeff, what are the big changes that are going on in data protection and how is Commvault leveraging them and capitalizing on it? Yeah, I'd say the biggest change that's going on with protection is really, what I was talking about a minute ago, it's moving to more of a snapshot, starting with a snapshot story. So that recovery story is becoming more important. Back in the old days, I think, backup and getting data backed up was something everybody kind of measured and how successful were my backups. Now it's, I don't have time to get things back from tape, I need to get my application back up and running in a matter of a couple hours or less in a lot of cases. So whether it's Exchange or SQL or Oracle, seeing a lot more shift to a snapshot story, and then again, that replication piece. So being able to move data from one side to another side, whether that's off-site, whether that's in the cloud. Cloud's another big piece where we are starting to see, especially in that kind of mid-tier, lower-tier market, people are starting to move data into cloud infrastructure, so what's your relationship with the cloud providers or how are you sort of leveraging that? Sure, so we don't offer direct cloud services to the market, but we do enable cloud infrastructure. So it's more of a, it's a hybrid approach, I would say. For example, with Dell Solution, that DL Power Vault Library, Disc Library you were talking about, it's great for keeping local backup copies, but we also have a storage connector out into the public cloud. And so we are seeing, again, those S&B customers kind of tier backup copies out there. Do you, so do you have the relationships with the cloud providers or does the customer have the relationship with the cloud provider? It's the customer that has a relationship. So the customer would have a relationship with a, for Microsoft, for example. So they could tier backup data into an Azure cloud and then use those Azure servers to mount that backup copy in the event of a local disaster. In terms of the convol customer base, are you seeing any sort of preferences among the customers between the various cloud providers? You know, it's still a bit early to tell. I think we've got four to five different public cloud storage targets that we do integrate with. And I think from our perspective, seeing Amazon and Microsoft are obviously ones, from a brand perspective, people know those companies and so start to, or start to work with those folks on different little projects just to kind of test it out and see how it works, but quite a few. Some of the resellers are also creating their own little sort of regional private cloud, or public cloud offering to get to serve their customers. Are you seeing more uptake on that? Yes, I mean, I think resellers in general are also wanting to build those solutions because they know the customers are starting to look for lower cost ways to kind of retain and hang on to data. And so we do see public, resellers start to build out their cloud infrastructure. Maybe it's using like an open stack type of a layer that they can put on top of their own products. A lot of them are starting to look at Dell products. Like at Dell DX, you heard about a second ago, that's object storage, which could be a cloud storage target for a reseller that Commvault could naturally tier data into. How did the app assure acquisition impacts or your relationship with Dell and how do you position the offerings? Great question. I think it made a lot of sense for Dell. I mean, I think that we will compliment that one actually really well. So tell me how you're going to compliment that. The way we compliment it, I mean, our sweet spot in the market is more focused on enterprise on larger types of accounts. And so we spend a lot of time with Dell selling a kind of a larger enterprise story around protecting not just Windows, but also Linux and Unix and the different applications Oracle and SAP to kind of work across that. So, and then mixing across, not just going back to that primary snapshot story. So spending time talking about a modern story with snapshots, backing up to disk all the way to their tape, into their tape portfolio. So that type of sale, I think will still exist with Commvault as we go forward. And really compliment that. And then app assure will go where then? I think Dell will continue to build that out. I think right now there going to be a very strong player in that SMB and mid-market space. And I would expect Dell to continue to try and develop more awareness across the different storage medium out there. You know, I think from a scale perspective, we'll still play for a long time with them, Dell, with where their focus is. The back of software tends to drive the sort of decision. Would you agree with that? I mean, it's been sort of the tip of the spear. Is that a fair statement? Decision for? For a customer. For a customer. Yeah, absolutely. I think in a lot of, it's traditionally been that way. I think that one of the things we do see with server virtualization, for example, is we've seen a lot of folks run out there fast and try and build out a virtualization story, but not quite have that backup component to it. And so we've actually done, I think we've done very well, even working with Dell, going into those accounts where customers kind of get to a point where they've got dozens or even hundreds of VMs and all of a sudden they're trying to figure out, whoa, hang on, how do I, what's my protection story here with this? So is virtualization sort of changing that tip of the spear to somewhere else? I mean, is it changing to the, I don't know, backup appliance or to the new paradigm of backup? Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, the number one use case for that snapshot protection and story that I was talking about a minute ago is virtualization, because what you've got is, you've got fewer servers in the environment that are much more taxed from an IO standpoint because they're trying to handle all these VMs. So you don't have any bandwidth to kind of, from a CPU standpoint to drive a backup copy anymore. So you've got to start with a snapshot copy and then get all of that processing off of that ESX server. So something that can come in and mount those snapshots, can catalog those VMs, understand what's in those VMs, and then that server can drive those backup copies, again, off that ESX host because without that, you just know no realistic way. And no one can continue to put VMs in, or agents inside of VMs, it just, you know, as you get into the hundreds, you just can't scale that. I wrote a piece, must have been almost two years ago now saying backup is broken, data protection as a service is the fix. And the premise of the piece was that backup is one size fits all, but applications have different RPO and RTO requirements. And so I like what I'm hearing from Dell today, and this is again, I always say this when I say, come back, come on, you guys do that. The best kept secret in my world, maybe I'm just talking to the wrong people, but I do talk to your customers, I've run into you guys because you're out there, but that vision seems to me to be the right one as opposed to just continuing to throw sort of a tape based mentality and throw disc at the problem. It just seems to me, there's a better way to do it. And the problem is the backup window, and we've been chasing the backup window, bowing down to the backup window for decades. So how does that change given this whole notion of snapshots? You hit the nail on the head. I mean, there increasingly is not a backup window. So I think again, you've got to, you've got to start with that snapshot. And by the way, thank you for saying all that about some of the best kept secret. In fact, today, under the Gardner Magic Quadrant came out just this morning and had convolved in the leaders quadrant. So we've been excited about trying to get that out there a little more. Thank you very much, but you're dead on. There increasingly is not a backup window anymore. So it's got to start with that snapshot angle, and it's got to get that, you got to get that processing off of that ESX server. So I think that, I think you'll continue to see more and more of that as people, as VMware proliferates. And the other thing I'll say is as applications start living inside those VMs, I think we've all seen that, VMware has dominated everywhere in terms of infrastructure and test and dev, moving applications into VMware is just, is really accelerating right now. And so as people try to figure out how to recover exchange or SQL instances inside of running inside of VMs, right? That's the real trick here. You've got to have that snapshot copy in order to get back from something. And then you've got to have something off host that can drive those backups without taxing out ESX servers. So that's what you're going to see more and more. The storage software, the backup software landscape, and the backup in general, the landscape is changing. The pieces are moving around the chest, which you guys have, I'm sure you still do, at the customer level, a very tight relationship, for example, with data domain. Then EMC goes and buys data domain. And of course they own Legato. You're doing stuff with NetApp, which is pretty clean actually, because they don't own any kind of software. Dell buys AppaShore, that's, you know, you've got some positioning down, that's good, but where do you see all this going? You see like hardware companies clearly getting more into software. Are you guys going to start making hardware? Yeah, excuse me, I don't know. Never say never. No, we will not start making hardware, but going back to my earlier point, you're talking about that Power Vault DL. I mean that is really our only hardware, coming out of a factory with Commvault already on it, and kind of fine tuned for all the performance stuff we're talking about for snapshots and backup to disk. That will increasingly be more of our play. A partnership strategy around hardware. We've seen that with IBM at Edge, one of the exhibitors there, sells an IBM server and their sand volume controller with software in it, so we're seeing that sort of model for some of the software companies. Clearly the systems companies want to have more of a software play going forward. What's your take on the converged infrastructure? So you've got VCE and you've got Dell's coming out with more of this converged infrastructure story. IBM's got one. What's your play in that? Great question, in fact I was getting ready to go to the little guys. You're going to answer that question before I ask it. Well yeah, you're right, the hardware guys do want to have more of a software element to it, and what you're seeing come out of that is converged infrastructure. It is literally not just their servers, not just their storage, not just their networking, but they are going out and partnering with different software providers like a Commvault or a VMware, and they're putting that together in a package, and there are a lot of customers that want to buy that way. You tell me what do you recommend as a fine-tuned recipe that I'm going to get out of this? And so our play in that to answer your question is that almost all of those converged infrastructures are missing data protection. And so they've got VMware, they've got the management of the VMware, they've got the storage. We're coming in right now with reference architecture. In fact, that's what we're here talking about this week is a compelling reference architecture for VMware. So here's a block of Commvault you dropped in. So we're going to see a VCEC. Yeah, that's right, CB and Commvault at the end. Yeah, I'm not right. I like that. Well, you're right. I remember when these reference architectures first started to come out, it's like, do you have a reference architecture for backup? Exactly. It's forthcoming, you know? So it's always the, oh yeah, we got to back this stuff up, and then the other great quote I heard from a customer the other day, he said to me, he said, you know how I back up a petabyte? I don't. I don't, right? Yeah. To a point being, you know, your vision. So Commvault, again, very interesting company. It's a, it's about a $400 million company with a $2 billion market cap. So obviously, obviously you wouldn't want to get into hardware because that, you know, that multiple, that revenue multiple would come crashing down Oracle. And Oracle is still doing pretty well. And I really have always been intrigued by the company. You've always done some very innovative things, and, you know, I'd like to see you turn up the volume on marketing now. So that, so theCUBE hopefully will help. Yeah, that's why we're here. No, you're absolutely right. And I think, you're right. I think that that protection element missing from those blocks, I think it's, again, going back, I think it's got to be snapshot based. And so that's really where our play is. You know, latch onto that snapshot story, tell that modern story, and then just, you know, make sure we're clicking with those reference architectures as the de facto standard for backing those up. So. All right, Jeff, well, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you very much. I appreciate the update on Commvault. Thank you very much. All right, keep it right there. We are live from the Dell Storage Forum. We'll be right back after this word from Dell. And keep it right there.