 Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering NetApp Insight 2017, brought to you by NetApps. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. This is The Cube's exclusive coverage of NetApp Insight 2017. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of The Cube, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media, my co-host. Keith Townsend with CTO Advises, and our next guest is Gene English, who's the Chief Marketing Officer of NetApp. Great to see you. Thanks for having us, and thanks for coming on The Cube. Oh, thank you. Thank you guys for being here. So NetApp is no longer a storage company we learned last year, now this year, they're a data company. Sorry. The brand promise is still the same. Take us through as the Chief Marketing Officer, you have to, it's a complex world. I mean, one of your concepts here we've been seeing is winning while in a tough environment, and IT is a tough environment. I got application development going on, I got DevOps, I got data governance, I got security issues, Internet of Things. It's a challenging time for customers. How's your brand promise evolving? Yeah, so we really see that NetApp is a data authority for a hybrid cloud, and the amazing thing is, is that what we see is our customers aren't talking to us about storage anymore. They're talking to us about data, and what their data challenges are, and most companies are trying to think through, if they're going to transform, how are they going to harness the wealth of the data? What are they going to do to maximize the value of the data? And the cloud too is center stage, because the cloud is a forcing function, it's changing the relationship of your partners, far as we had a lot of folks talking about the dynamics with customers around multiple clouds. We saw on stage the announcement with Microsoft, congratulations. Thank you. So you've been in Amazon for a while, we've been covering that, but the on-premise work still is growing. We have the data from Wikibon Research, came out shows that the on-premise true private cloud, which is defined as cloud operation business model, is actually growing. However, the decline in automation of non-differentiated labor is declining by 1.5 billion over the next five years, which means the SaaS market is going to continue to explode and grow. So the on-premise is actually growing as is cloud. How does that change the narrative for you guys, or does it, or is that a tailwind for NetApp? We think it's a complete tailwind for NetApp. I mean, when we think about data today, we see that it's really becoming more distributed across environments. It's definitely more dynamic as you're looking for the latest source of truth and the diversity of data, especially with machine learning. I mean, it is exploding. So how do you start to be able to build that data together? We really think of it is that our customers want to maximize that value, and the only way to do that is to start to think about how do they bring it together, and how do they get more insight from that data, and then how do they have more access and control of that data, and then the most questions we usually get from our customers around, how do I make sure it's secure? But the really big point is that as we think about what NetApp is doing, it has been about three things that we see with our customers. They have to make sure that they're modernizing what they have today, and that goes to the on-prem environment. So if it's going to be that they've got to accelerate applications, they want to make sure that they have that. But this notion of building clouds, like even building private clouds, and we think of that as a next generation data center, especially with DevOps environments. Then harnessing the power of the cloud and hyper-cloud world. And if they are not able to really leverage cloud for SaaS applications, if they're leveraging cloud for backup, or even disaster recovery, data protection, that's where we see that these three imperatives, when they come together, that they're truly, truly able to unleash the power. So we saw on stage CEO, George Curry, and talking about his personal situations in light of what's happened in Las Vegas here. Data is changing the world, and your tagline has changed the world with data. So I got to ask you, I'll see data, we see a lot of examples in society, and also personal examples of data being harnessed for value. Cloud could be great there, it's all on-prem. How do you guys position NetApp as a company? You know there's a lot of positioning exercises and marketing you do, but positioning is really important, because that's what you do. The tagline is kind of the emotional aspect of it. Okay, changing the world, let's change the world with data, I believe that. But what's the positioning of NetApp? I mean, how would you say that the positioning, what's the positioning statement of NetApp? The positioning statement of NetApp, I think we've really seen a big break in the positioning in the last couple of years, and why is because the customers are demanding something different. You know they're really looking for more hybrid cloud data services. And what are those data services that accelerate and integrate data? And that notion of on-prem and in the cloud, that's where we see what's going to happen to accelerate digital transformation. And so this notion of yes, thought about a storage before, customers are demanding more for their data, and they need data services, especially in hybrid environments, to really be able to drive their business. You know, the expression, position it, they will come. And you guys done a good job with the data. Okay, now let's get to the customer reality. You have to go out and do the tactical marketing. They're busy, right? There's a lot of noise out there. We just came back from New York at our big data NYC event that we ran in conjunction with Strato, it's a separate event, and it's clear, they don't want the hype, they want reality, they're representing the road, because they're so busy, and with the security and the governance challenges, GDPR for instance, in Europe is a huge pressure point for data, a lot of challenges, but they want the magic, it should be easy, right? But it's not, how do you guys go out day to day and take that to the field message? What's your strategy? Well, you talked about changing the world with data, and it feels like a lofty promise, but we really believe that when we come down to the purpose of why NetApp exists, it is to empower our customers to change the world with data, and that's something that NetApp has been focused on not just for today, but the 25 years of history, and then also into the future. So what makes that the reality? Well, number one, they want something that's simple, and so this notion of simplicity, and no matter how they think about managing or optimizing their data, it's got to be simple and easy to manage. Optimized to protect, I think data protection is critically important, things of safeguarding data across its life cycle, and I think that NetApp has always been focused on how to make sure that data is secure and protected, and that now is what we're seeing in the cloud too. So all the relationships and partnerships that we've been creating and solidifying AWS has been for the last couple of years. We've had some latest announcements of what we're doing to really make sure that we have stronger data protection in multi-cloud environments. Obviously today, from what we're doing with Microsoft Azure, and really providing, not even having to know how to manage storage, you can do it easily in Azure. No, I'm sorry, I really love this message from NetApp. As a traditional technologist, I understand NetApp disrupting the original storage sand market with Fowlers. You guys were one of the first in the cloud with AWS. So from a trusted partner inside of the infrastructure team, I understand the vision of NetApp. But the transformation also means that you're starting to expand that conversation beyond just that single customer of the storage admin of the infrastructure group. How has that messaging been going towards that new group of customers within your customers who have said NetApp, isn't that a storage company? How has that transformation been going? You know, when we talk about reinventing, NetApp is reinventing itself and that's what we're going through right now. And what we see is that the customers that we know and love, the storage admins and the storage architects, those are definitely tried and true and we love our relationships with them. But we see that the demands around data are growing and those demands are starting to reach more into DevOps, application developers, definitely into cloud enterprise architects as they think about cloud environments. The CIO is now under more pressure to think through. They have a mandate to move to the cloud. Now what? But who do they want to move with? Someone that they've trusted before. And by the way, because we've been first and because we're so open with all the relationships with the cloud providers, why not move with us? Because we can help them think through it. So you're keeping the core, you're not pivoting off the core, you're building on top of the core, extending that, is that what you're saying? We're building off of a really great foundation of who we've had as customers all along. We're establishing new relationships though as well with cloud enterprise architects. And today we actually just had here at Insight our first executive summit where we brought together CIOs and CTOs and really talked about what's happening with data and organizations, what's happening with data as being disruptive, what's happening if you want to thrive based on data as well. We used to have an old expression back in the day when Polaroid was around. What's the new Polaroid picture of something? Now it's Instagram. So I have to ask you a question. What is the new Instagram picture of NetApp? For the customers that you have and for customers that are now in the data space, there's a lot of data conversations happening. What is that picture of NetApp? What should they know about NetApp? NetApp is in the cloud. Yeah, I love that messaging that NetApp is in the cloud and how important is that moving forward? Especially as we look at technology such as OnTap that have been there from the beginning, I love the NFS on Azure story. But that's powered by OnTap, which, you know, I kind of, it took me a few minutes to kind of get it because I'm thinking OnTap and Azure, that's bringing the old to the new, but that's not exactly what it is. What messaging do you want customers to get out of something like an NFS in Azure? We want them to understand that they don't have to do anything about storage to be able to protect and manage their data, no matter what environment that they're in. And by the way, we've been looking at, I've been commenting critically on theCUBE, many events now that multi-cloud is pipe dream. Now I say that only as looks know me, it's real. Customers want multi-cloud, but multi-cloud has been defined as, oh, I run 365 on Azure and I got some analytics on Redshift on Amazon and I do some stuff on Prem. That's considered multi-cloud because it happened to be stuff on multiple clouds. You guys are doing something with cloud orchestration, it's quite interesting. It truly is multiple clouds in the sense that you can move data, if I get this right, across clouds. So it's in a complete transparent way, I mean, seamless way, so I don't have to code anything. Is that true? If that's true, then you might be one of the first multi-cloud use cases. We are one of the first multi-cloud use cases. We have created the Data Fabric, which is really looking at how do you seamlessly integrate across multiple clouds or on-prem environments. The Data Fabric, we've been talking about this vision for a couple of years. What we're seeing now as customers are seeing it come to reality. And now that we have the more and more relationships expanding, as we mentioned, we've been building really SaaS offerings with AWS for a couple of years. We just had the big announcement today with Microsoft Azure, we're working with IBM Cloud, we're also working with Google Cloud, Alibaba. So as we think about a seamless data fabric, they want frictionless movement in and out of the cloud. Gene, you got to change gears for a second, because one of the things we've been observing over the past couple of months, certainly we've had the open source summit, Linux Foundation. Open source is growing exponentially now. You're seeing a new onboarding of developers in general, and the enterprise is going to take a bulk of that. Companies are supplying personnel to contribute on open source projects that's continuing to happen. Nothing new there, but it's starting to change again. You see blockchain out there, getting some traction, high CEOs and all that hype, but it points to one thing, communities are really valuable. So as a marketer, I know you were at IBM, very community oriented, very open source oriented. The role of communities is going to be super important as customers discover, so marketing is changing. From batch marketing, you know, search, email marketing to real time organic with communities, this is not just, you know, have a social handle, really have you guys looked at the B2B marketing transformation as customers start to make selections and take opinions in the new organic communities because you have people in these projects in open source, people are making decisions based on content, what's your view on communities and the importance of communities? Well, we believe highly in communities. Our A team is a community with us that is so strong and they're our biggest advocates. They get brought in very, very early on in terms of learning about our new technologies and learning our story and understanding our strategy and where we're moving. I think you may have talked to some of our A team members before, but they are an amazing group of people and we believe highly that their advocacy is what is really going to help us to stay in touch and be really close to these new buyers as well. And you've got to really internalize that too in the company. Operationally, any best practices you can share with other CMOs, because this is a challenge for a lot of marketers is, how do you operationalize something new? Yes, well we're finding that this notion of reinvention and it starts with the company itself and it starts with our own employees. And so when we talk about the shift from storage to data, we're even having our own employees talk about their own data story and how do they connect data? George talked about his data story actually on the main stage in our keynote the other day. But connecting to that's been really important. This notion of transforming to think about these new customers and new buyers, it starts with the customer needs. It's not about a product out discussion. And so a new story to a new buyer, relevancy, what's happening in their industry, and then engagement, engagement, engagement. I've been following NetApp since they were a startup and then went public. Great story. They have a DNA of reinvention. David Hitz is going to come out, I'm sure. We'll talk about that because he's been an entrepreneur, but he's also had that entrepreneurial DNA. It's kind of still in the company. So my question to you is from a personal perspective, what have you learned or observed at NetApp during this reinvention? Not a lot, not a pivot. It's not at all, it's more of an inflection point for NetApp and a new way, a new way to engage with customers, new way to build products, new way to do software development, a new way to use data. This is a theme we're seeing. What's your personal observation, learnings that you can share? Well in my first month, what I really learned is just the absolute amazing culture of what NetApp has and this notion of we're always embracing what our customers want to where we move. So what our customer wants, we move with it. We embrace it holistically. Years and years ago, you know, Linux and Windows, years, a couple years later, virtualization, virtualized environments, could have killed us, made us stronger, now embracing the cloud. A lot of our customers say, I would have canceled the meeting with you, but I now understand that you're interested in the cloud and that you're in the cloud. I've totally changed my mind and we say we love the cloud. We embrace the cloud holistically. You guys are progressive. I notice it's a competitive strategy kind of theory, but the old expression goes, you got to eat your own to get to the new market. Some companies will milk the market share dry and then can't get to the new model, right? This is the reinvention challenge. When do you stop making profits to build for the future? It's a tough call. It is, but that's why we listen to what our customers say. And so when they talked about wanting to move to the cloud a few years ago, we said we're going to be the first to holistically embrace the cloud. Okay, so you got the NetApp Insight 2017 going on in Berlin. Okay, that brings up the question because it's in Germany, so I have to ask. GDPR has been super hot. The global landscape, how is that going on for NetApp? Obviously you have some experience outside the U.S. I mean it's not always the U.S. North America centric world. What's the global story for NetApp? It's not. I lived in China and Singapore and I know that there are demands that are not just U.S. centric. When we talk about Germany, I was just there a few months ago and this notion of how do we start to address the articles that are in GDPR that help to make sure that we have the right compliance and protection for data inside of a country and inside of Europe. We actually have expertise in that area. We've been actually consulting and talking with customers about what they want to do with data compliance and we're being asked now to say, how does NetApp help address those articles? How do we come back with solutions to help control data and make sure we have the right access of data? So, we're already consulting with customers. We know it's a top priority and we have expertise to be able to help. Sheila Fitzpatrick, she's the Chief Privacy Officer. Very colorful, very dynamic, a lot of energy. She's going to slap anyone around who says, do you don't bolt on privacy? Good policy conversation. Policy is converging in with that. It's interesting, the global landscape, the Cube will be in China next week for the Alibaba Cloud Conference. So, we're going to go report and see what's going on there. So, huge international challenge around regulations and policy. Does that affect the marketing at all? Because policy kind of is data privacy and security. Security is super hot, obviously data security is a big thing. How does policy intersect with the technology and how, as a CMO, do you kind of get that realized and put it into action? Well, I think basing on the foundation that we're always optimized to protect and that's one of our key foundations of why people choose NetApp. We definitely know that there are other demands that are happening in local markets. I was just in Australia a few weeks ago and was meeting with the New South Wales government, of which they've had a mandate that all the agencies need to use their own cloud platform. They've been working with NetApp to ensure that they can have the right data management solutions on that platform. And from a marketing perspective, we embrace that. And so we work with, whether it's Telstra, we're working with New South Wales, we're thinking about how do we ensure that that message is strong because we know customers there have different demands than just what's in the US. So when you get CIOs and senior executives together in the summit, like guys had over the past few days, ideas start to percolate, problems start to come across. What was some of the biggest policy concerns throughout those conversations? Was it GDPR, was it something else? What's the top of mind? What we're hearing top of mind right now is data governance. And I think that that could be towards data compliance in terms of GDPR for Europe. I think it expands beyond Europe though. I mean, I just heard, like I said in Australia, where they're having demands based on the government of what's needed to be really driven through a cloud platform. We're hearing through our customers in the last couple of weeks about, if I'm moving to the cloud, number one, I want to have seamless transition to the move in or out of the cloud. But I got to make sure I've got the right governance model in place. So we've heard this repeatedly, customers move into the cloud. How many customers are coming to you saying, you know what, for whatever reason, whether it's cost, agility, the overall capability we thought we'd have available in the cloud, not really what we thought it would be. We need help moving it back. And what is that conversation like? Well, it's a conversation that we're able to help with pretty easily. I mean, right now we have had customers that have either had won a cloud mandate. So they got to think about, how am I going to move all my data to the cloud? Once they actually started getting into the detail, we do a design workshop where we help them think about, maybe there's not all workloads going to the cloud. Maybe some workloads go in the cloud. We have had a customer who did move the majority of workloads in the cloud and then decided, actually we think we'll get better cost performance and better efficiencies if we actually have those back on-prem. He said, no problem, we can help you with that too. And I think that's the beauty of what we've talked about with data fabric is, we're able to help them think through, no matter where they want their data in on-prem or in the cloud, we can help them. Gene, thanks for coming up here. I know your time's super valuable. I got to get one more point in because I want to make sure we get that out there. A public sector, net-ass position, strong, getting better. What's your thoughts, a quick update on public sector? We are very, very strong in the public sector. We've actually had a strong presence in public sector with our customers for many years, and we're continuing to help them think about too, how they start to look at cloud environments. All right, Jean English CMO here in theCUBE, getting the hook here in the time. She's super busy. Thanks for sharing, congratulations on great positioning and looking forward to chatting further. It's theCUBE, live coverage here in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. Keith Townsend, we'll be right back with more live coverage after this short break.