 From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. Hi everybody, welcome to this CUBE conversation sponsored by Dell EMC. Today we're going to cover Dell EMC's next generation data protection announcement. But before we get into it, I want to talk a little bit about data. Is data an asset or is it a liability? You know, many years ago, people used to look at data because it was growing so fast, it was so expensive to manage. They looked at it really as a liability that had to be managed, but that's changed. Data today is viewed as an asset. Why is that? I would say it's because of digital business. What's the difference between a business and a digital business? We think it's how they use data. Digital businesses put data at the core. It's their most important asset. They're trying to figure out how data contributes to the monetization or the mission of the business. The problem is that data is plentiful, but insights really aren't. People want insights that drive business impact. In a digital world, protecting that data has never been more critical. But it's complicated. You've got data on-prem, you've got data in the cloud, you've got data at the edge. So what we've seen post acquisition of EMC by Dell is the company has dramatically accelerated the cadence of announcements and they're further enhancing their portfolio today and we're going to talk about that. We've got really three segments today. I'm going to talk to Rhea Barrett about the announcement and the hard news. We're going to look at a short video and then Beth Phalen, the president of the Dell EMC data protection division is going to come in and talk about the vision. So let's get right into it. Rhea Barrett, great to see you again. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much, Dave. It's always a pleasure being here. Yeah, well, you've been here a few times this year, haven't you? A few times, yeah. A quick coming here to opening presence on a holiday because it's the professional equivalent and I think we've been here four times already this year. Yeah, that's right. We had you here early in the winter and then of course pre Dell Technologies World and we talked about the survey that you guys did and here we are again. So, okay, so you've got this market momentum. I talked about that a little bit. The space is growing. What's the news today? We have some exciting news. Before I talk about the news though, I do want to talk about when we were here in April. If you remember, we introduced some exciting new products into our portfolio. It was a product called PowerProtect Data Manager, our brand new next generation software for data management. We introduced an integrated appliance, PowerProtect X-Series, the multi-dimensional appliances basically, as well as an IDPA, eight terabyte IDPA. Again, these are all important because they're proof points of our commitment to our customers in terms of delivering industry leading appliances, as well as software defined solutions to meet their ever growing, ever more complicated data protection environments from the core to the edge to the cloud. So as I said, I mean, you guys are accelerating the cadence of announcements. So how does all that fit in to what you're announcing today? What are you introducing? I'm actually really, this is an exciting present for me because as you know, in February when we talked about data domain, we were celebrating a very important milestone. Data domain has been the bedrock and the foundation of our portfolio. And since its inception, it not only defined a brand new market and disrupted an existing market, but it also led the market for over a decade as the lead product and the lead solution that customers chose. That makes this announcement and this present even sweeter because I'm really here to introduce the next generation data domain, PowerProtect DD, the ultimate data protection appliance. So PowerProtect, that's kind of the new brand that you guys are using. And so that's exciting. Dell is using it across its entire portfolio. Yeah, we're powering up the portfolio and data protection is no exception. We're introducing three new models under the new PowerProtect DD umbrella. It's PowerProtect 6,900, 9,400 and 9,900. That's replacing actually four models. And we're also, what you'll notice is the PowerProtect, the DD 3300 as well as the PowerProtect virtual edition will be parts of the solution for our customers. So how should we think about the value from a customer perspective that you're delivering? Yeah, that's great. At the end of the day, it's all about customer value. And when we think about data domain and what it meant to our customers in terms of proven solutions, it's all about the next generation really taking that and even raising the bar further. So for customers, what are they looking for? Cloud is everywhere. So multi-cloud is one of those facets. The other is really around performance, efficiency and security because those issues are never going away if not only getting exasperated. And multi-dimensional appliance portfolio, it's part of a bigger portfolio which is important from giving our customers choice. So what about the business impact? I mean, can you share any metrics or data? I mean, how do we quantify this? Sure, absolutely. It's all about measurement and data. It's very important. And customers really want to understand the value. So you look at, let's go one by one. Let's look at fast. Customers, what are they trying to do? What's the urgency? It's all about restore speeds. And what we're seeing with the PowerProtect DD series is SLOs where customers have up to 38% faster backups and 36% faster restores. So again, really critical for our customers. Let's talk about efficiency next. That's been a bedrock. Customers want efficiency because number one, it really impacts their cost of ownership. And with the new PowerProtect DD series, we're seeing 25% more usable capacity and half the rack space. And that's the case for the DD9900 which means that one DD9900 can replace two DD9800 racks in the same footprint. Lower TCO is critical. Again, we're doing the efficiency really matters because we're trying to make sure as the data growth is there as customers are looking for performance, their cost of protection isn't going linearly up with that. And with our new systems, we're seeing up to 65 to one data reduction. And that's really allowing us to be able to have up to 81 petabytes of logical data stored in the 99 hundreds. So again, up to 62.5% more logical capacity per rack which is unheard of as well as the ability to grow in place, grow in place capacity. So customers can license half shelves and seamlessly scale up within the family. Well, this is key because people, they want to keep investing in data centers. That's a big part of the cloud value proposition. So being able to more efficiently use the existing space is key. What about ransomware is a hot topic. How do you guys, how does this announcement fit into what you're doing with your ransomware solutions? Thank you, Dave. Actually, secure is one of our pillars. So it's fast, efficient, secure. And security is all about really customers being able to recover under any stringent circumstance and the security, our cyber recovery solution is basically completely integrated into the PowerProtect DD where customers can recover in the event of a ransomware attack. So it's that air gap ability to be able to make sure that even in the most taxing recovery scenario that you have a solution. And what about the cloud? Cloud is a target. I mean, that's a big topic of conversation. There's a lot of use cases, DR and many others. Where does the cloud fit into this now? Yeah, you can't have a data protection solution if you can't address a multitude of cloud use cases, protection use cases. So that's in terms of being able to protect information to the cloud, protect information from the cloud and protect information in the cloud. And with our cloud long-term retention with our cloud tiering capabilities built in on day one customers will be able to get a slew of capabilities that is basically built into the product. So like I said, you've been accelerating the pace of announcements. Can you paint a picture of the portfolio? How should we think about it now? Oh yeah, absolutely. Again, I think one of the most important elements that the Dell EMC data protection portfolio brings to bear for our customers regardless of their size and scope is flexibility in terms of their needs, whether it's our purpose-built appliances or integrated appliances or software-defined solutions. And the PowerProtect DD series is part of this now multidimensional portfolio. So being able to scale up with the PowerProtect DD series appliances as well as scale out with the PowerProtect X series appliances, whether it's integrated or hybrid, whether it's integrated or target, whether it's all flash or hybrid, whether it's really an appliance or software-defined, that's the amount of flexibility that our customers have to be able to make sure any workload, no matter where it resides, will get protected and meet their SLOs and the lowest cost of ownership possible. Well, the space used to be pretty straightforward, Rhea. You know, you'd back up an on-prem system and that was kind of it. Now you got the cloud, you got the edge, you got ransomware, all kinds of complicated stuff going on. So congratulations on the announcement. Thank you. It was great to have you again. Always a pleasure. Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. All right, keep it right there. Video number, come back with Beth Phalen, right back. We're not ready to say job well done. We keep working, building comprehensive technology that protects and manages your data from the edge to the core to the cloud. We won't rest at being your number one. We evolve, creating technology that's fast, secure and even more efficient, that reduces the risk of data loss. We are forging the future by building on the past. Dell EMC PowerProtect DD Series, the next generation of data domain protection storage appliances. The PowerProtect DD Series provides up to 1.25 petabytes of capacity in a single rack, using 30% higher data compression to lower costs. But there's more to this appliance than a beautiful form. It's also the preferred protection storage for data that's backed up and managed by PowerProtect software. PowerProtect DD Series appliances help you simplify your multi-cloud environments and gain more efficient operations. And because data protection capacity is challenging to predict, we engineered our multi-dimensional PowerProtect appliance portfolio with flexibility and agility at its core. You can easily scale up and scale out to future proof your environment. Dell EMC PowerProtect DD Series, the ultimate protection storage appliance. We're back with Beth Phalen, who's the president of the Dell EMC Data Protection Division. Beth, good to see you again. It's great to be here. You've been busy. We have been. Yes. So what's on your mind these days? You know, just adding to what we said before, this is a huge announcement in the history of data domain which by itself changed the data protection industry. And now as we introduce PowerProtect DD, we're bringing that proven technology into the future, couldn't be more excited. What are some of the highlights that you're really into that get you excited for customers? Yeah, I mean, we recovered much of it, but one thing that I'm particularly convinced is going to be a game changer is enabling data reuse. Customers don't want their backup data to be locked away. More and more customers want to take advantage of it either for a quick recovery or for analytics, test and dev. And so with the improvements that we've made with instant access and instant recovery, now up to 60 concurrent VMs can be available from your PowerProtect DD, 60,000 IOPS. We're really changing the way data domain can be used. PowerProtect DD makes it something that they can use not only for their backup for a whole set of data reuse cases. So under your leadership, your division has really accelerated the announcement cadence. How about the software side of things? I mean, how does that relate? They think cloud, they think SaaS. How has that affected your business? I mean, I hope people remember that just back here in July, we announced PowerProtect Data Manager, which is our next generation software. It includes PowerProtect Central, which is a SaaS based capability, starting out with monitoring, but over time we'll be filling that out. PowerProtect Data Manager is finely tuned to work with PowerProtect DD. So while the prevalence of data domain historically has really been built on the fact that we let customers choose, right? If they want to use Dell EMC software, wonderful, but if they've already made a choice, we also have always supported that broad ecosystem. We will continue that with PowerProtect DD, but the best choice in our view is going to continue to be to use Dell EMC software. And now with PowerProtect Data Manager, you're going to get absolute best capabilities combined with PowerProtect DD. So I'm sure I understand. So you're saying Dell EMC, on Dell EMC, you're going to get the best experience, but if for whatever reason I choose some other product, I can integrate in. Absolutely. All right, great. How about disaster recovery? It's a key topic. It's a painful topic. It's expensive, historically you've seen the three site DR. It's usually bespoke, separate tools. What are you doing for customers around DR? Yeah, so the nice thing is that in this world of multi-cloud configurations, it's easier and easier for more companies to actually have a full DR strategy. By doing cloud disaster recovery, you can set up your environment without the sort of old school approach of having a separate on-prem facility that was just for disasters. Doesn't seem viable. As we go forward, I expect fewer and fewer companies will choose that. So with PowerProtect DD on day one, combined with PowerProtect Data Manager, they'll be able to use our cloud disaster recovery capabilities that include orchestration, just three steps to fail over, two steps to fail back, and you get all the benefits of disaster recovery, but at a lower cost, the ability and agility by leveraging the cloud provider of your choice. So the market has really changed a lot since the days when you had data domain replacing tape. It was pretty straightforward. And now you've got the cloud, you've got the edge, you have hybrid, you've got heightened security concerns. So you have to be kind of a trend spotter in your role. What are you seeing as sort of where you're taking this? What's the vision for the division and the organization? Yeah, our strategy has been very consistent. We're recognizing that data is first, that we have to align closely with the application managers to make it easy for those customers to protect their data seamlessly. But at the same time, we have to protect that data no matter where it is. On-premise, on the edge, in the cloud, and no matter how customers are deploying their applications. So we're continuing to execute on our multi-dimensional appliance and software-defined data protection strategy. But we're now augmenting that with a concept of global scale. And I think that that global scale concept is going to really bring us into the future. So I've said many times that we've moved beyond the innovation stemming from Moore's law. That's not the heart of it anymore. It's data, it's machine intelligence, and artificial intelligence, and it's cloud because of scale. So explain further global scale and what you mean by that. So what we've found is, obviously customers enjoy the benefits of scale out. We have that with the X400, but they need those benefits of easy expansion of capacity, easy movement of backup data sets across locations to meet that capacity, intelligent placement of backup data sets. We need that capability beyond a single appliance. And so as we think about the concept of global scale, we're looking at how do we enable all of our multi-dimensional appliances to participate in those use cases and bring those benefits across the ecosystem. So breaking some of those physical barriers and being able to view my data in its form, which is also just distributed, right? All right, good. Exciting, congratulations. We'll see you next month, probably. We'll bet. Thanks again for coming on and sharing this announcement. And we'll be watching. Always glad to be here. And thank you for watching, everybody. You can get more information, I'm sure, at deliemc.com, right? You guys got your data protection side of the site, so go there, check it out. And thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.