 We're back with the cubes coverage of Veeamon 2022 from the Aria in Las Vegas. We're talking pure data protection and nobody better to talk about that than your storage. You can't miss these guys when they're around because the orange crush is here. Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. Michael Sotnik is here. He's the vice president of global alliances at Pure Storage. Michael good to see you again. Thanks for the little golf story. Appreciate that. Hopefully get out there this weekend and be seen. So how you doing man? I'm doing face to face. It's wonderful to be face to face with the cube. It's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to spend some time with you. Good to meet you. Good to meet you. Have the opportunity to get to spend some time together. You guys just great being at a show. My first one back. And so I'm just feeling the energy from the room and just great to come in here and see the cube all lit up. Yeah. Accelerate 2019 in Austin. It was an awesome event. And one of the last ones that we did before the pandemic. We did some obviously support for for virtual. You guys are having another show. Finally face to face in June. So got it forward to that 20 days 21 days. Yep. Right. So tell us about what's going on with Veeam. Give us the update. Yeah. Look we're thrilled to be here as a sponsor for Veeam and for Veeam on this is a long standing partnership. You know us right. So found in 2009 start shipping product in 2012 really disrupted the block storage base with an all flash solution. And you know it's it's a success story in terms of company going from single product to multi product to portfolio to solution. And along that way the data protection use case and workload has really come into the you know kind of center focus for us. First with flash blade in the market which is our unified fast file and object solution. And more recently with flash array C which is our capacity optimized flash array for block storage which is a great relationship with Veeam and an area where we've done some significant you know joint engineering and the FAC which is what we refer to it as and the Veeam selling motion is extremely strong. And you know it's it's solving a real problem. And that is you know customers are increasingly being faced with these tighter and tighter SLAs to ensure the availability of their data is there. And then there's also you know the the security element. And I think a term that Veeam's using here was cyber resiliency which I like. Right. I mean you know the safe mode integration which is our solution for immutability and for anti ransomware or one step to take to to safeguard yourself and against a ransomware event. You know that those are great complementary parts of us. You know Michael I want to ask you about your shared vision with with Veeam. I remember I was talking to cause on the Cube. It might have been a twenty nineteen. I can't remember. Might have been the year before that. No I think shorter pants. Sorry. Was he in shorter pants. He was in pants. OK. So I was pushing him on why don't you do it this way. Why don't you do that. Why don't you do tiering all this stuff. Just always came back to simplicity. He said we optimize for simplicity over all this complexity and you know we'll get the function through the ecosystem partnership. So is that the shared vision with Veeam. I mean that it's kind of it's just work. It just works as their mantra. But but talk about that shared vision as particularly as it relates to data protection and cyber resiliency. Yeah. Thanks so much for for recalling that Dave because we hear it constantly. It's it's in the now we're coming back to the office. It's in the hallways. It's out in front of conference rooms. You know the the elegance and and the and the value and simplicity is everywhere inside a pure. I would say it's part of our shared vision. I think it's customer centricity is at the core of what Veeam and pure you know really fused us together. We're both global. You know their history is European based and grew up out of there and then have succeeded in North America. Ours is absolutely North America based first on the West Coast then across the country and then finally into Europe more recently globally and and and a lot of growth internationally including APJ. So it's customer centricity is global. It's the way we go to the customer. So a partner centric go to market motion is live and well in both organizations. Solution providers MSPs GSIs you know range of different ways to get to that customer and without a doubt the customer experience is is part of the is part of the piece and that's where our simplicity is front and center and I know beams is the same. Dig it until good. So out in the real world are the conversations still about flash for backup and recovery convincing people that that makes sense or or have we moved on to where now it's the pure flash value proposition because people accept that flash makes sense. Where are we in the real world. Yeah I think it's it's different in different industries different use cases different workloads different environments and it's part of a bigger story but I think what what is happening now is we were before the inevitability as the data center primary storage solution but now like I don't think anyone would debate that right and and I think now in data protection flash as a component to a robust secure data protection both as a target for backup and as a source of recovery is an inevitability to be part of that conversation. So flash is there. You guys like to be first at a lot of things you know gives you bragging rights but it also gives you market momentum. I get I'll pull it my my bag of pure memories. I remember meeting Scott Deetson who was the first CEO of pure has only been two to my knowledge right. Scott was first Charlie Jean Carlo now in it was early days. It was 2009 like in an Oracle open world or something and he was telling me about this startup that he's doing and and one of the things that struck me is the vision around the API economy which was new at the time. It was like well okay what's that and that's really what's what's happened here. It's part of simplicity. It's part about ecosystem. We were talking about products versus platforms. You can't really have a platform unless you have an ecosystem. So where are we at today? How does that relate to your partnership with with Veeam. Yeah it's such a great recall on your part you know because I think we are a storage company. We do provide arrays in the wild you know over 10,000 customer tens of thousands of arrays now and you know but at the core it's the software that matters and and that's really what drives the user experience and we're proud to be you know the development partner on the universal storage API the US API for Veeam. That is a essential ingredient to success for the joint pure and Veeam customer experience. It gives them that single pane of glass that administrative view where they're able to get the information they need on what's happening within their environment and be able to take corrective action and you know we're very proud of all the tools that we provide our storage customers but when in that in a data protection use case and workload they want to put you know they want to go right to Veeam and have that be the source of truth and that's where that API is so important. What's the story to customers Michael in terms of particularly cyber resilience you've got always got a TCO play simple equals lower cost you got really much tighter service level agreements and requirements now the security the storage and data protection and security space are kind of coming together so what's the narrative for customers give me the pitch. Yeah look I think I think every customer today has an obligation to include security as a must have within their solution anywhere in the data center and for us it's you know simply put the combination of Veeam for data protection with pure for flash or AC or flash blade with safe mode you know which provides that immutability provides that customer with a safeguarded copy against bad actors externally to their organization or was jointly developed with a customer to prevent the risk of bad actors inside of the organization. City of New Orleans is one of the customer references that's up on you know the pure storage website just a great you know story in terms of the city's ability to defend against a ransomware attack continue you know with continuity of essential services police ambulances fire departments all in the combination of pure and Veeam and so you know a good you know example to pull that thread all the way through in terms of what the value proposition is and then what's the experience for the customer when they are find themselves on the other side of that event. What's the nature of the partnership with with Veeam obviously there's a go-to-market other solutions that you guys are doing together engineering that work that you're doing together can you explain that. Yeah you bet I mean you know these are two of I think high profile adjacencies in the data center you got your primary storage and then secondary tertiary and you've got your data protection use case and workload with Veeam we've got dedicated engineering to the Veeam partnership on the pure side as a development partner for the US API you know is a key piece we're integrated into what the support experience is like for the customer and really starting to challenge ourselves now with some of the leadership changes that Veeam's taken on and the opportunity to sit down and spend some time you know with Anand and and John and really say hey like we're at the core here we've got an opportunity let's let's open up some strategic doors and see what could be next. Well Veeam is maturing there's no question it's kind of early Veeam was the wild west there was big parties are still you know the reputational but but as you think about these joint engineering and joint go-to-market and you talk to joint customers where do you see sort of the future I mean I you know the ransomware stuff I mean obviously the pandemic was impossible to predict I shouldn't say that a lot of people did predict it but now that we see it but now that you have some visibility on these permanent changes that are affecting CISO buying strategies data protection storage buying strategies how do you see the future of this relationship yeah look I think I think the at the core we do what we do and we're focused on continuing to innovate and do it with excellence in everything that we do we measure ourselves rigorously against a net promoter score it's a certified net promoter score we're at 85.2 top 1% of all B2B so ahead of Veeam even at the core barely at the core it's it's about that customer experience and customer satisfaction and and so that's a maybe a different way of saying we trust that our partners do what they do with excellence and in the case of Veeam you know partnering around the data protection use case and workload looking at how that's evolving into holistic data management and hybrid cloud environment and we see rich opportunity for us to continue the partnership strengthen it learn and listen from our customers and our partners and and maybe challenge ourselves to to do some things a little differently uniquely along the way oh good yeah you mentioned you mentioned something at the outset that lends a lot of credit credibility to the pure story anywhere you seek to play you mentioned that you know founded in 2009 product shipping in 2012 I remember that Dave's not old enough to remember that period of time but if you remember violent memory was the king they were they were they were the ones to be yeah and you guys were quietly toiling in a bit of obscurity and people are asking well come on come on come on come on give us something but you didn't until you were ready so I've seen that methodical approach in every in every step of the way as you've transformed from being a product into solution focus and partnership focus so what does that look like moving forward you mentioned kind of getting ahead of the game in terms of all backups and recovery volumes being on flash what does that addressable market look like to you guys in the future how are you looking at that is this just the beginning of a new thing that's going to develop over time yeah I think I think it's a great question it's an insightful question it's also a great way for me to plug accelerate in 20 you know 20 days or so it's a great backdrop for pure to make some announcements in terms of what's next and you know and when we're ready to make them you know it's a good example but but in direct answer to your question you know without a doubt you know the adjacencies between data protection primary storage secondary storage the blurring that's happening within that you know based on the ransomware threats based on you know other environments around cloud and how customers have learned from cloud experiences early on and applying those learnings not just to demanding simplicity in their solutions but demanding the ability for you know kind of the storage is code and and to have that cloud operating model across everything that they do and so you know I think those are at the core some of the things that we think about in terms of what's next and and and to do it with partners like meme at the forefront as well as the voice of our customer at the forefront and that's what I wanted to ask you that's a great setup thank you David so the portworks acquisition was really interesting we're in Valencia Spain the cube is our colleagues are over there unfortunately John Furrier couldn't make the trip the vid hit him but one of the conversations the topic of conversations over there is you know shift left with the solar winds hack the sensitivity around the software supply chain we certainly talked about it last week at Red Hat Summit I haven't heard a lot about DevOps here but it's sort of intrinsic that that whole shift left component that idea of not bolting on data protection at the tail end actually shifting left means you doing it in the development cycle not throwing it over the fence you know to to the operations people what's that conversation like subsequent to the portworks acquisition which was very interesting a small lever can go a long way can you give us the update there yeah and first foremost I hope John's okay right he is still well good Mr. John we do and so you know I think the the the future of applications is really on center stage when you put portworks into the conversation and so as companies move like no one's going to develop applications today without a container strategy right related to that and that's going to allow for the applications to move and data gravity to really play a bigger role and pure fields confident in our ability to play a big role in that and as those applications mature up the containerized curve they're definitely going to have data protection data management other fundamental things built into it in that shift left context that we're going to be prepared to take advantage of based on the assets we have the two hardcore engineering cultures that have momentum pure and and beam Michael great to see you again thanks so much for coming to the Cube it's always a pleasure to be with you gentlemen and great to meet you for the first time i'm gonna meet you Michael look forward to seeing you the next time and and thanks again all right you bet all right keep it right there everybody thanks for watching this is the cubes coverage of beam on 2022 we're at the aria in las vegas and we'll be right back right after this short break