 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital courage of Actifio Data Driven 2020 brought to you by Actifio. Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante for a little preview of Actifio Data Driven and with me is Brian Reagan, who is a longtime CUBE alum, good friend. Brian, awesome to see you. Thanks for coming on and help us set up Data Driven. Dave, it's always a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. So this is one of our favorite events of the season, not only because it's historically been in Boston, but it's a really good intimate event, a lot of customer content. Unfortunately, this year, of course everything has gone virtual, but tell us about that. What do you guys got planned for Data Driven this year? Well, again, we're delighted to be able to put the show on in spite of all of the challenges of travel and face to face. As you know from years past, Data Driven has always been sort of by the customers for the customers, very much an event that is driven around understanding how customers are using data strategically and how Actifio is helping them do that to power their businesses. This year is no different. I think what we've done is we've taken the best of the physical event, which is really facilitating fireside chats and panels of people using our technology to move the business forward with data, but also added a lot of things that frankly are impossible to do when you're strained by a physical event, which is be able to run a series of on-demand technical sessions. Our technical tracks are always standing room only. So now we can offer more content, more discrete packaged content that can be consumed the day of the event and on for a year plus after the event. So we're excited to really sort of mix the best of both worlds, virtual and the forms that have worked so well for us in the physical events. Well, it's like I said, a lot of these events are sort of vendor fests, but what you do with Data Driven is you bring in the customer's voice. So I remember last year on theCUBE, we had Holly St. Clair who was with the state of Massachusetts. She was awesome. We had a guest from DraftKings, which was really, really tremendous. Of course, you see what's happening with those guys now just exploding. But we also had a lot of fun. I mean, of course, Ash comes on and all the activity of folks, but we had Frank Jenzon, the first and only time we've ever had him on theCUBE. He's now retired from IDC, I guess semi-retired. We had DuPlession, which was a lot of fun. So it's just a good vibe. Yeah, we've made a conscious decision to your point not to avoid the traditional vendor fest and bludgeoning people with PowerPoint throughout the day and really wanted to make it, spin it around and have the customers tell their stories in their own words and really talk about the themes that are both common in terms of challenges, the ways that they've addressed those challenges, but also dig into the real implications of when they do solve these challenges. What are the unintended consequences? It's sort of like the, in a lot of ways, I think about the journey the customers went through with VMware and with the ability to spin up VMs effortlessly was a fantastic first step. And then all of a sudden they realized they had all of these spun up VMs that were consuming resources that they didn't necessarily had thought about at the very beginning. I think that our customers as they progress through their journey with Actifio, once they realize the power of being able to access data and deliver data, no matter how big it is in any form factor in any cloud, there's incredible power there, but there also comes with that a real need to make sure that the governance and controls and management systems are in place to properly deliver that, particularly today when everything is distributed, everything is essentially at arm's length. So that's part of the fun of these events is really being able to hear all of the ways these unique customers are adding value, delivering value, gaining value from the platform. Well, it's interesting you mentioned VMs. It was like life changing when you first saw it, when you saw your first VM get spun up and you're like, wow, this is unbelievable. And then it was so easy to spin up. And then you just had VM creep and copy creep. And you're seeing some similar things now with cloud. I mean, an example is the cloud data warehouses is so easy to spin those things up now. The CFOs are looking at the bill going, whoa, what are we doing here? You're going to see the same thing with containers as you begin to persist containers, you're going to have the same problem. So you guys created the category. It's always a marketing executive's dream is to be able to create a category. You guys created the copy data management category. And of course, I've extended that, but that was really good. I mean, it was something that you guys set forth and then all the analysts picked up on it. People now use that as a term and everybody kind of resonates with everybody. Right, right. It was bittersweet, but also very satisfying to start to see other vendors come out with their own copy data management offerings. And so yes, the validating that in fact, this is a real problem in the enterprise, continues to be a real problem in the enterprise. And by using technologies that Actifio really pioneered and patented quite a bit of foundational technologies around, we're able to help customers address those copy data challenges, those spiraling costs of managing all of these duplicate, physical instances of data. And to your point, to some degree, when you're on-prem in a data center and you've already bought your storage array, okay, I'm consuming 20% more of the array or 100% more of the array than I really need to be, but I've already paid for the array. When it comes to cloud, those bills are adding up hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and those are real costs. And so in many ways, cloud is actually highlighting the power and frankly the problem of copy data far more than the on-prem phenomenon ever did. Yeah, I was on the phone with a former CIO, COO now of a healthcare organization. And he was saying to me, there's the dark side of CapEx to OpEx, which is now that he's a COO, he's really concerned about the income statement and the variability of those costs. And so to your point, I mean, it's a big issue. I mean, the convenience seems to be outweighing some of that concern, but nonetheless, lack of predictability is a real concern there. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think we see that, you mentioned data lakes and whether you call it a data lake or you just call it a massive data instance, one of the speakers of Data Driven this year is a customer of our Century Data Systems down in Florida and they have 120 terabyte database that actually they're using and this is an incredible story that we're excited to have them share with the world during Data Driven. They're using it to help the federal government get better data faster on COVID treatments and the efficacy of those treatments. And so to even consider being able to rapidly access and manage 120 terabyte instance, I mean, it breaks the laws of physics, frankly, but again, with copy data management, we have the ability to help them really extend and really enhance their business and ultimately enhance the data flows that are hopefully going to accelerate the access to a vaccine for us in North America and worldwide. Quite frankly. That's awesome, that's awesome. Now let's talk a little bit more about Data Driven, what we can expect now. Of course, the last couple of years you've been the host of Data Driven. They pulled a Ricky Gervais on you like at the Golden Globes, he's no longer being invited to host, but I think probably for different reasons. But what are some of the major themes that we can expect this year? Yeah, we were disappointed that we couldn't get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. So I think we decided that in a virtual construct the host duties were pretty minimal. So among the many things, I talked about Century Data Systems and we have many customers who are going to be joining us and telling their stories. And again, from accelerating data analytics to accelerating DevOps initiatives to accelerating and move to the cloud, we're going to hear all of those different use cases described. One of the things that is different this year and we're really excited, Gene Kim, sort of the author and noted DevOps guru author of the Phoenix project and the Unicorn project is actually going to be, he's going to be joining us. We had previously intended to do a road show with Gene this year. And obviously those plans got changed a bit. So really, really excited to have him join us, talk about his point of view around DevOps. Certainly it's a hugely important use case for us, really important for many of our customers. And actually registrants between now and the event which is September 15th and 16th, we'll get an e-book copy of his Unicorn project book. So we're eager to have people register and if they haven't already read him, then I think they're going to be really pleasantly surprised to see how accessible his materials are and yet how meaningful and how powerful they can be in terms of articulating the journeys that many of these businesses are going through. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm stoked. I have not read that material, but I've heard a lot about it. And when I signed up, I saw that. It's a great, I'm going to get the free book. So I'm going to check that out. It's obviously a very, very hot topic. Well, Brian, I really appreciate you coming on and setting up the event. What are the details? So where do I go to sign up? When is the event? What's the format? Give us the low down. It is September 15th and 16th. Actifio.com will guide you through the registration process. You'll be able to curate the event based on the content that you're eager to participate in. And again, not only on the 15th and 16th, but then into the future, you'll be able to go back and re-access or access content that you didn't have the time to do during the event window. So we're really excited to be able to offer that as an important part of the event. Fantastic. And of course, the cube will be there doing the, it's normal wall-to-wall coverage, of course, at this time, virtual. And you'll see us on social media with all the clips and all the work on Silicon Angle. So Brian, great to see you and we will see you online in September. Thanks, Dave. All right, and thank you. Go to actifio.com, sign up, register for data-driven. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. We'll see you next time.