 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE in our Palo Alto studios. We're here with our quarantine crew, doing all the remote interviews, getting all the stories that matter. Got a great guest, Catelyn Gordon, Vice President of Product Marketing at Dell Technologies. Catelyn, CUBE alumni, welcome back remotely. We didn't make it to Dell Technology, we always got moved to the fall. We'll see you, certainly virtually, but thank you for coming on remotely, appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me again. It's great to be here. So storage is on the upswing, we're seeing a lot of activity. We're going to talk about data protection specifically, but first I want to find out what's going on with you guys. There's been some changes in your organization within Dell. Can you take a minute to explain what they are? Yeah, absolutely. You know, what we found is certainly a lot of our conversations in the storage space end up talking about data protection and data protection, talking about storage. And what we've decided to do is actually really bring those parts of the business together. So specifically now I've been in the storage business for a few years, spent a long time in data protection before that. So now we brought the gang back together and we've got storage and data protection really brought together as an organization all the way for engineering and product marketing, product management really help us collaborate and be really attack problems for customers cohesively. So we're really early days here, but it's exciting. We've been really busy on the storage side and we've got some exciting things come in here on the data protection side as well. I want to get your thoughts because you know, almost every interview I do in the past four months, it's just doesn't stop. It's COVID impact. It's one of those things and we've talked about data protection. I've had so many great conversations, you know, continuous operations, non-disruptive operations. You couldn't ask for more disruption than people being asked to work at home. So it's caused some IT departments like wait a minute we got to read, you know this is something that we didn't see coming. Business still needs to go on. So I want to get your thoughts of seeing cloud obviously become highlighted in this pandemic. That's obviously impacting the data protection. What's going on in the data protection front on your side? Because obviously cloud is showing everyone, hey, I can use modern technologies in the cloud but I still got to do my business. I still got to protect my data. What's going on? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think we've seen a lot accelerate with this whole situation we're all in with the global pandemic, with the challenges that all businesses and people are having. A lot of digital transformation has been compressed, right? It would have taken people years but now they've been forced to do that in months. Things like containers are really exploding and the requirement to protect Kubernetes is really something that we know more and more having conversations about cyber ransomware has really unfortunately only accelerated in this increasingly digital world that we're now all exclusively living in. So cyber resiliency has become a lot more important conversation and that being able to protect data certainly on-prem but also across multiple public clouds and having that consistent experience is probably more important than it's ever been before as well. So it's really just put the accelerant on a lot of conversations that we were having before and now they've become even more important. Talk about the innovations around the protect product. You got the power protect. It's agile. There's been some developments. What's the new additions? What's being highlighted? What are the key features? Yeah, so it's actually a pretty exciting month for us here. Power Protect Data Manager has been in the market for a full year. So believe it or not, full year. And again, as you mentioned, Agile development. So it was introduced a year ago. We've had a number of enhancements over that year in the space of adding workloads, our cloud integration. We've added cloud DR to both Azure and AWS. You have three click failover, two click failback, really simple cloud disaster recovery, the availability and AWS marketplace for in cloud data protection. We have now as well, we have integration with our cyber recovery solution. So again, that ransomware protection and recovery is an important part as well as a number of enhancements for supporting additional workloads. SAP HANA, Microsoft Exchange. We have broad workload support. We've really, really enhanced that a lot. And then most recently, just this month, we now have a brand new data protection, Power Protect Data Manager offer, which includes all of our cloud capabilities, all inclusive available in a subscription. So again, as we talk about the way not only people are using their data protection solutions, but how they're consuming and purchasing that, we've really transformed also now the way that people will be purchasing that. That's awesome. Congratulations, subscription is the format people want. And Amazon marketplace that shows they can consume if you're an Amazon customer, you just go in the marketplace, you get it. That's awesome. Congratulations, that's the way the world wants to consume. So that's awesome news. The thing that I want to get your thoughts on, and you've obviously been busy, the cyber recovery and the resilience piece you mentioned, can you talk about that? Because we're hearing a lot more that work at home is not going to be more permanent, more permanent in the sense of, as we come out of the pandemic, people say, hey, I can be productive at home. So you're going to see the at home, not just a, here's some, here's some extra expense for your bandwidth. It's going to be more thought through. There's going to be more cyber attacks, just the attacks just on the COVID scams alone or has been a problem, personal level. But from a business standpoint, I got to have a VPN. I got to have my connections. I got to be secure. How do you guys look at that? Because organizations are putting a focus on it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, cyber resiliency is something we've focused on actually for a number of years and it started in the obvious places, right? The banks of the world, the financial institutions, the healthcare organizations, where they always had to have data really protected and they were kind of some of the more early targets. But now we've seen ransomware and these digital attacks really get worse and worse. I think all businesses, including our own, are really ramping up to make sure that we are protecting in every way we can. And from our data protection portfolio, we have a fully air-gapped solution. So you have that protection and it does two things. It first helps mitigate against the attack in the first place by actually being able to do full content scanning to detect if an attack has happened. And just as importantly, if an attack happens, being able to quickly in an automated way recover from that attack. I think it's something that we are really finding our entire sales team is having conversations about. It's no longer focused on the financial institutions of the world. It's every organization. And a lot of people really appreciate that we've come with that expertise and that knowledge to be able to help them prevent and then unfortunately in many cases recover from these attacks. To me it's table stakes. I would agree with you. Question I have for you on that. Can you talk about the speed piece because one of the speed to recover has always been a big feature. Now with the at home situation, does that, how does that play into how you guys would have been on that speed to recovery aspect of that? Can you share some thoughts on that? Yeah, and it's specifically with cyber because we have a fully air gap solution and it's in a secure enclave. That recovery is automated and it's all within that secure enclave. So you have that security, you have the confidence and you have the speed of that recovery. So it's really important the way we've implemented that it's not attack on to an existing. It's truly a fully secure enclave, a full air gap solution so that you can recover quickly but just as importantly, you can recover securely as well. You know, one of the quotes that's been kicked around in the industry is in the past two months we've seen more digital transformation than the past two years. And I think that's rightfully articulated because of COVID and you're seeing all the warts and scabs out there and the infrastructure where there was investments lacking. The ones that made the right investments were doing well and it becomes around cloud native, some of the things you guys saw with your success with agility. What is going on with a container based architecture? Because that to me is becoming one of those things where it's accelerating development teams at the same time providing some of those business values that people have to keep the lights on for. So what do you guys look at that? How do you look at this container architecture? What specifically in the portfolio you guys have to address that? Yeah, absolutely. I think containers we found accelerating in the past couple of years and then in the past few months is a huge, huge requirement. And although we didn't think so pretty recently containers are part of production applications. They need to be stored, persistent storage on the storage side but they probably even more critically and urgently they need to be protected. We've done a number of integrations and work specifically with VMware to be able to support Kubernetes and being able to support those workloads and protect Kubernetes workload. A lot of advanced integration being able to protect and recover those clusters natively and having that deep integration with VMware as well as other distributions as well. Cause we have really found that containers are exploding. The ecosystem is obviously very much evolving but we are really keeping up with the bleeding edge of that to ensure that as these cloud native applications are developed that the containers are truly being protected just as physical applications of past have been, right? We need to make sure that certainly VMs but even more importantly those containers alongside are being protected. I've always been a big fan of containers and certainly Kubernetes that keeps the legacy alive and until you can transition the new in and the old and sometimes they can work together. With that I want to get your thoughts specifically around this idea of technical debt. A lot of customers we talk to say, hey, I want more end to end. I want some cloud native. I got to have the versatility. I got to have the agility and the speed. I got to be multi-cloud. So multi-clouds on the horizon, certainly hybrids today. I don't want my infrastructure to be the technical debt for tomorrow. That's the question that comes up. How do you answer that and how do you talk to that specifically? Yeah, it's interesting you bring that up especially in the storage side too. We've been talking about that a lot. That was a pretty centralized message about how we architected PowerStore and it's pretty central to everything that we're designing is that investment with our Dell EMC infrastructure with Dell Technologies is investing for what you need today but more importantly is going to bring you into the future. And what we have with PowerProtect Data Manager is something that is rooted in the innovation and the proven architecture to provide support for all these broad workloads and all of these broad clouds but also be able to protect these new modern cloud native applications and help you bridge that gap in your own environment. So you have that. And even just as important as supporting modern applications is that support for multiple clouds, right? AWS and Azure, we think we all know that that technical debt can also come in the form of being locked into a single public cloud. You need that flexibility to be able to leverage that public cloud of choice whether it's for disaster recovery, backup to cloud, long-term retention to cloud. Having that flexibility is also just as important part of that equation as it is for your on-prem investments as well. Well, congratulations on the data protection and the product front on having the bright mix. Having that certainly is going to be key as the buying cycles start to ramp up again. I want to get back to the business because I'll check on the technology. Congratulations, I love cloud native. You know that to buy us but check on the technology business model. You mentioned subscriptions. So can you talk about the trend on your customer side to move from capex to op-ex because if you go cloud, the consumption will be subscription there'll be more operating expenses. How does that impact the IT budgets? How do you guys align there? What's your answer to that? Can you explain? Yeah, absolutely. We announced late last year so in the fall of last year our Dell Technology on Demand family and that's really our effort to focus more on our cloud like experience and consumption and product offerings. And part of that is our subscription. I know pay as you go model. And what we've found and you know I'd love your perspective on this as well is that the moving from capex to op-ex has been a conversation and certainly when it comes to infrastructure there's been some set of customers over the past 12 months that had them moving in that direction. We're seeing that accelerate certainly in the infrastructure place space but as we all know software is where that's already pretty well established. As I think you said, that's table stakes. So we've seen that that's really the methodology both from our standpoint and our customers, our partners is when we're selling software that's gotta be really on a subscription basis. So that's why obviously with PowerProtect Data Manager it makes all the sense in the world to really focus there. And that's really part of our bigger initiative overall to move towards more of these consumption based as a service, op-ex models for our customers. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up I'd love to share my opinion because I do have an opinion on this and one of the things that's coming out of some of the COVID interviews with the practitioners and the customers and the insiders is it's a developer led market. So cloud native we've been talking about for years and certainly happened but as the pandemic has shown people are going to be coming out of this they have to have a growth stretch they got to have the foundational product sets and technologies in place but the customers your customers have to have a growth stretch they got to refactor they got to look at what they want to double down and kind of what they want to cut back some things are pretty obvious now what not to do. So it's clear that some lines of sight around certain things but it's developer led the applications are going to drive value of the business and so I'm seeing the alignment between that trend of developer led with a flex of consumption based resource. So yeah, you get the foundational services and then hey if the app's successful you're still in business. I mean people are really worried about even you know making sure they come out of this not on a downward trajectory. They want to be on an upward trajectory that's a really key thing for your reaction. Yeah, I mean that really resonates I think it's you know and we look at just to go back to the technology a little because you know I never can resist is if you look at even just PowerProtect Data Manager one of the things that's so important is that we have built that to be both controllable by the application end users so they can do their own protection but then have that centralized view and that being able to have that consolidated centralized management of data from a single console for IT. I think that gets to the now the next level with developers is we need to enable developers as seamlessly as possible in their own language to be able to protect to be able to store data so IT can feel good about it but we have to be able to enable them in the way that they are needing to develop these applications as quickly as possible and from an IT perspective that means being able to do that on-prem or even do that in the cloud so that we can keep all of those policies in place and keep that centralized governance but really support the acceleration and the digital transformation that those folks are driving so I think it really it makes a lot of sense and it really resonates with our product strategy. I think it's going to be a slew of new applications are going to need to have all kinds of the strategies built in countermeasures recovery all new things are going to emerge so you guys certainly will be certainly more busy than ever. I want to get your product kind of view on something while I got you here because I think this is kind of key as you look at your portfolio, you mentioned the tech and the tech of all the features that you have what are the few that resonate the most? I mean it's classic product markings. I mean everyone wants to know we got all these features which is great. Which ones do you say Caitlin are jumping out right now that are resonating the most because sometimes it's a feature that might not be that heavy tech or it's something that's really differentiated but the customers will glob onto a key features. What are some of the things that you're seeing that are rising to the top in terms of the feature set? Yeah and it's not the speeds and feeds of yesterday, right? And I think this more broadly across storage and data protection is what we're finding. The speeds and feeds are good and some people do want to have that conversation but we've gotten to a point from a technology from an industry standpoint that we're able to meet latency the bandwidth with the throughputs that people need. What's more interesting and is more compelling and important to the business is how can you help me change the way I'm running my data center and interoperate with the cloud and therefore change the way I'm running my business and some of the pieces that come in there is automation. I think automation within systems, two systems across the enterprise, across edge and cloud that is so incredibly critical. The AI that we're building into platforms the integration with whether it's VMware based with VRO whether it's Ansible modules, the intelligence in this idea of having an autonomous data center that then has that connectivity to cloud and interoperate then also with the edge is so incredibly compelling. And again, not just for the large enterprises but more and more for smaller ones because in this world we need to help our customers have their data center run itself as much as possible and whatever does require administration is as simple as possible. We've all gotten used to technology being as simple as our smartphones. This consumerization of IT has really changed the requirement of what people think simple means. So the things that you don't necessarily think about and we don't necessarily market even that actively about how important the number of clicks and the user interface and the seamless transition to products as well as automation is so critical. And I think the other ones we've already hit on right integration with multiple public clouds that flexibility support for containers and Kubernetes and deep VMware integration are increasingly critical. And I think someone who's been in product marketing for 15 years, I couldn't be happier that our conversations have kind of moved off of speeds and feeds and into these much more compelling and business centric conversations because I think we can add a lot more value to the business that way. It also shows the strategic nature you mentioned, Edge, these new environments. It's a multi-environment environment that you have to have built products for. So it's not so much how fast packets are moving back and forth or this or that. It's really about the business value. Yeah, it's about the business value, the locality, the value of the data. It's really all about the data and how we can help our customers better manage that for also locations but do that in a very, very simple way. But the requirement for what simple really means has really raised the bar on that and we're going to continue to push ourselves and challenge ourselves on that as well. Okay, then I'll give you the final word. Talk about choice. Choice has always been a big part of what you guys have offered customers, Dell Technologies, that's great storage. In this day and age, what does that mean for customers? What does choice mean? Yeah, I think it's a delicate balance and we've gone through quite a transformation over the past couple of years here and this summer was an exciting one for many reasons but we just recently completed that full simplification of our portfolio and we have our full portfolio of power solutions all the way from PowerMax to Power Vault, PowerStore, PowerStale, PowerFlex and of course, the one we talked about today, PowerProtect, we now have that all in market and I bring that up because that is our simple portfolio to give customers best in class products across all of these different categories and the fact that we have that choice but we've simplified that choice down to as few choices as possible kind of back to what we were just talking about. It's critical that we have solutions that meet the requirements of all of our different customers but also that we don't give them more than that, that we need to give them choices that will meet their needs but also not give them so many choices that it's overwhelming. You don't want to be the cheesecake factory and not be able to choose what you want. You need to just be able to choose from what the options that really make sense and that's why I think it's really exciting now as we move into the second half of this year and look into next. We have that portfolio now and we can focus on which is the right combination of solutions for you. During the pandemic, people are reading a book doing a hobby, you guys are updating your product portfolio. Congratulations on all the hard work. Caitlin, Gordon, vice president of product. Great to see you. Thank you for spending the time and giving us an update on the data protection stuff. And again, congratulations for being so productive during a tough time and stay safe. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Okay, this is the CUBE coverage with Dell Technologies. Caitlin, Gordon, vice president of product market. Give us the breakdown. Very productive for them during this time and again, companies want a growth strategy when they come out of the pandemic. More than ever, infrastructure has to enable the software for the new solutions. This is the CUBE coverage. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching.