 Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partner. Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. Live from VMworld, day one. Really exciting day that we're having so far. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by a CUBE alumni and a new CUBE guest. Welcome back to theCUBE. Rhea Barrett, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Dell EMC. Thank you, thanks for having me. Good to have you here. And we also want to welcome Mark Wisely, the CIO of Palmer Chiropractic College. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, it's great to be here. It's great to have you guys. So, one of the things that we were talking about before we went live is backup. Is backup back? Is backup sexy again? It's hot. Why is backup so hot, Rhea? Oh my God. Yeah, it is. I started years ago and I was in data protection and go forward 20 years, it's back in data protection. It's hotter than ever. In the last six years, I think there's been over five billion dollars invested in this space, whether from venture capital or big companies. And it's hot because of what's happening in the customer's environment. We see a huge restructuring of data centers. So, before data used to be in a couple of locations that we called data center. And now it's really much more about centers of data, data is moving out of the four walls, moving closer to where decision making is, which is with the business, out in the geos. So it's moving to the edge and also just cloud. Cloud is really, and cloud deployments are really reshaping where customer's data is. So now that data is no longer in a building, how do you secure it? How do you protect it? Where is it? Who owns it? Those are becoming more and more prevalent questions. So that's why backup is sexier than ever. So what are the drivers for you in terms of your backup? What keeps you up at night when you wake up in the morning? What are you thinking about in the backup context? Well, for us, it's really about not having to think about it. Making sure you've got a solid solution that's there to back up that data and make sure that it's available when you need it and where you need it. And the Dell EMC product we put in place gave us that opportunity where we can back up our servers, our desktops, our laptops. It doesn't matter whether they're off-site or on-site, they can be anywhere. It gets backed up quickly. And it doesn't interfere with what they're doing. Users don't want to be interrupted with a backup and have to sit there and wait for it. So it's been a great solution for us. So Mark, you've been, you've got over 20 years experience in the industry. You've been a CIO at Palmer for nearly two years now. And one of the things that I read about you is that you were attracted to neglected IT systems. I imagine you saw a tremendous amount of opportunity, but we talked about kind of bringing sexy back with state of protection. You were instrumental in kind of changing the IT direction at Palmer back to Dell EMC. Tell us a little bit about that and why that was so important to you as the leader of IT there. Well, when I came into Palmer, we had a number of different issues, everything from performance to backup windows that we couldn't hit. We're still using tape backups. There was a number of different issues. And so we really needed a platform that would be able to come in and solve all those issues and also do it as quickly as possible. So we put in a Dell EMC VX block, which allowed us to kind of look at it as like a data center in a box type thing. I mean, it solved our networking issues and our backup issues. And then because we have multiple sites, we were able to actually back up our data and replicate it to some of our other data centers across the US. So it was just a perfect solution for us. And then one of the real nice things is when we actually put that product in, Dell EMC came in and helped us to implement it. And within three days of them arriving, we were actually running production workloads on that. So it worked out great for us. You know, that reminds me. So I've asked this of some of your colleagues and it's backup forever has been a bolt-on. And the VX block triggered something in my mind. I remember the original V block. I remember it said, serves up 5,000 VMs. And my first thought was, how do you back that up? Right. And there wasn't an integrated answer. This is a long, long time ago. There is today. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe talk about the philosophy of backup as a core component of a deployment and what you guys specifically have done there. Absolutely. We actually today had a really exciting announcement that really would be under what I call more of a transformational approach to data protection. And really the move that we see is it used to be that backup used to be kind of an afterthought. Something that you roll out your applications and you're like, oh yeah, we have to protect them and figure out what you're going to do and you'd implement what you need from an infrastructure standpoint. We're really seeing a much more of a move towards a source-based data protection. So we're building data protection capabilities and directly to the applications. So today we announced Data Protection Suite for Applications and a whole new version of it which really enables the native UIs that the database administrators are using to be able to protect their own workloads. And this source-based data protection is going to be more and more critical, especially as data is moving closer and closer to where it's getting created. So you need to protect it at the source, not in the background, not as an afterthought. We also are seeing convergence, which is your question around VxRail. We have integrated data protection now built into VxRail deployments and we've had it for a couple of years now. And this year at Dell EMC World, we introduced IDPA, Integrated Data Protection Appliance. Again, bringing all the components that a customer would need, Integrated Data Protection Storage, Integrated Data Protection Software into an appliance model. So it's all about simplicity, just making it easier for customers to be able to deploy. So Mark, you're obviously a VMware customer. And as a VMware customer, your backup has sort of been subservient to the VMware momentum. You remember the ascendancy of VMware totally changed your backup requirement. You get less physical servers and backup was very consumptive of resources. So you had to think about that. Fast forward now, this whole cloud world. What are you doing in cloud? How is it affecting your backup strategy specifically? So we're looking at, you know, the cloud is one of the areas where obviously we're exploring opportunities. You know, one of the reasons that we put in the VxBlock and the data domain and Avamar and the data protection suite was really to set us up to be able to make that transition to the cloud simpler. You know, now we have the tools in place so we can decide when we need to move it to the cloud. What data do we need to move in the cloud? Where do we need that data to be? And it just gives us lots of opportunities and lots of options, so. So let me take that one step further. And so let's define cloud a little differently. Not just as a place you put data, but as I want to bring a model to the data, wherever the data lives. So it's, you know, self-service and it's automation and all those things associated with cloud, maybe bringing that on-prem or putting it in the cloud. Is that something that as an IT practitioner, you see as viable or is the cloud? No, no, it's in Amazon or Google or some other external location. Are you trying to bring that cloud model to the business? Yeah, I think, you know, as we look at the cloud, I think a lot of it is just options. You know, figuring out which model or which provider you're going to utilize both from a cost perspective as well as regulatory compliance pieces come into play. So, you know, as we look at cloud, you know, we look at kind of what we've put on site as kind of a private cloud or cloud in a box type thing. And it just opens up lots of different opportunities for utilizing, you know, Amazon or Azure or whatever that is, so. So one of the things that I wanted to ask you, Mark, is really about, you know, Palmer School of Chiropractic was chartered in 1907. 1897. Right. And then I think I saw that it was chartered maybe different name in the early 1900s, but it's been around for a very long time. So, you know, as we see people moving from virtualization to cloud, we're seeing certifications change. You've seen a lot of evolution in data protection, as you said. What's the evolution from an education perspective or maybe even a cultural perspective at Palmer? An organization that's been around for well over a hundred years. What's that shift that you have maybe driven within your IT experts to improve their education, to remain, you know, at Palmer and to help you attract new talent as technologies evolve? Well, I think, you know, one of the reasons that Palmer decided to really look at IT is, you know, we're kind of the trusted leader in chiropractic, the founder of chiropractic, and they really wanted to, you know, up their game. You know, we're a higher ed institution, so most of our students come from, you know, large universities and they're used to a lot of technology and Instant On and all of these different things, and so we really wanted to make sure that we could provide an experience for them that gave them that, you know, the Instant On as well as there's a lot of online experiences after you graduate, you know, there's a lot of CEUs and things that they need to come back for, and so we're starting to build some of our online programs to give them the opportunities without having to come onsite for everything, so it just opens up a whole world of opportunity. I had one last question for you, Mark. I mean, it's the why Dell EMC question. I mean, you got a lot of options out there. We talked about all this investment going in. Why Dell EMC, what's attractive to them and two-part question is kind of what's on there to do list in your view? Well, I think the thing with the Dell EMC is it really was the one company that gave us everything that we needed. You know, it gave us that full solution, covered all of our issues, everything from, you know, performance with the servers and the network and data backups and recovery. It just gave us everything that we needed, and it was one solution from one vendor, so if we do have support issues, we have one vendor to reach out to. We don't have three different vendors or having vendors fighting with each other. It's one solution, one vendor for support, and it just gave us everything that we needed. Excellent. I heard you say it at Dell EMC World on theCUBE, moving from data centers to centers of data. Pat Gelsinger may have got that from you. We said it on stage this morning. I don't know. So, you're the first. As things are evolving, we thank you for sharing your insights. Sounds like there's a lot of opportunity. Same thing at Palmer. Congratulations on the evolution that you have helped to charter there, and we want to thank you both for taking time to chat with Dave and myself this afternoon. Thank you so much. Thank you guys, thanks. They've seen you guys. And for our guest and my co-host, Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from VMworld 2017 Day One. Stick around, we'll be right back.