 We're back, this is Dave Vellante with John Furrier and this is the cube where we go out, we extract the signal from the noise, we bring you the most informed guests that are attending these events. This is the data protection spotlight here. We come to these events, this is possible because sponsors like EMC help us bring the cube to events and we share with you the information that we capture. John Furrier and I have been done, John, how many events have we done in the last four years? This is our fourth straight or global world here, the Q-Logic booth, which is great on the ground floor. EMC, we started the cube in 2010 at EMC World, so EMC has been with us from the beginning and it's been great. Yeah, so data protection is a topic that we really care about a lot in the Wikibon community and Silicon Angle. Caitlyn Gordon is here, she is in product marketing within EMC BRS Group, knows the products inside and out. Caitlyn, welcome to the cube. Thanks for having me, Dave. You're welcome. So, here we are, Oracle Open World, you guys got some love in the keynote this morning from Jeremy. You must have been happy about that. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. So, it's a big topic, data protection, obviously you're talking about Oracle, most mission critical applications, talk about the state of data protection in Oracle as you see it. Yeah, I think we see Oracle backup as probably the second biggest or biggest challenge that we really run into with customers today, probably second to VMware maybe. And it's because the size of the databases, how fast they're growing and how important they are to the business, we really find that that has bubbled to the top as the biggest challenge that we have from a data protection standpoint. Really, those traditional backup solutions simply can't meet the needs of backing up an Oracle database and protecting it in the time they have to do it. People, you think, they must be realizing it, but they have to respond to the notion that data protection backup for so many years has just been this afterthought, kind of a bolt on. Oh, yeah, we got the application, we're going to deploy the application, build the infrastructure. Oh, yeah, we got to back it up, too. And as a result, it's like security, if it's not designed in from the start, there's problems. Do you feel as though the customer base, as I say, they must understand that, but have they responded to it? Yeah, I think we've seen more and more that people are understanding that addressing that data protection up front is going to enable them from longer term to really have a solution that's going to give them that protection going forward. And they can't leave it to an afterthought anymore. You have to address it with the size of databases, the amount they're growing. You have to address that up front to be able to grow and do what you're trying to do. We were talking earlier, the average age of an application is like 19 years old. It's taken a while for people to respond to this. Why is that? Is it because it's too hard? Is it because it's backup is always perceived as insurance? Is there not enough other value associated with it? It's a very narrow use case. Why do you think it's taken so long to get to the point where we are today? I think part of it is that there wasn't a choice. So look at it 10 years ago, right before Data Domain came into the market. The only choice was really either tape or expensive disc. So you had a combination of backing up to primary disc. We have customers still trying to back up a VMAX. And you can clearly only retain a little bit there. The rest is on tape. When Data Domain came into the picture and really introduced that whole market, a de-devocation storage, the whole thing changed. The equation changed where you actually had another option. You had something else you could do from backup recovery and people started to focus on it more. So what have you guys done since Oracle Open World last year? Bring us back 12 months and take us to where we are today. What have you created, announced? What's new? Sure. So right before Oracle Open World last year, we announced DeDeBoost for Oracle Armand. Really great. It gives you faster backups, a lot more efficient DBA control of not just backup but also replication. And when we introduced it, it really only supported those 10G, 11G kind of traditional database environments. Now this year what we've done is we've extended that, supporting 12C, clearly, which was just announced. Also supporting Exadata environments. So you can support Exadata with DeDeBoost as well as any SAP applications running on Oracle databases. So we've got a lot of new enhancements there. And then from our EMC data protection suite and the network capabilities, we have some new functionality that enables kind of a best of both worlds, getting Armand and the network catalog to synchronize. So lay out the suite for us. Talk about the portfolio. It's sometimes people get confused at the EMC portfolio. It's a big one. You've bought in companies. You've got some organic development and you've got hardware and software. Help us understand the portfolio. Sure, absolutely. So I mean the first things is that that BRS division that we're in, the backup division, it's really focused on data protection as a whole. And it actually kind of came to be over a series of acquisitions. You look at all the acquisitions and the R&D, you've actually put about $5 billion in to the space, really invested in that space. And the technologies really, especially when we're talking about data protection, really data domain is that protection storage, as we've been talking about, really being that storage of last resort, very efficient storage tier. And then we have our data protection suite, which is your backup software, the Avomar, the networker. We also have archiving software as well, which is the source one portfolio. So we really have that full portfolio of solutions to help for kind of any data protection. And that's really the core of what we're trying to offer is that flexibility. For no matter how you want to do your Oracle backup, we've got a solution for you. So one of the things about EMC is it's got, it's got a product for every market. I mean, it really does. I mean, not maybe not every market, but a lot of markets. That's one of the reasons why you're a leader. At the same time, customers will often say, hey, I want it all to work together. I want it all to be integrated. The integration is hard. We saw Oracle took seven years to bring all its fusion apps together. So what can EMC do and what are you doing to sort of integrate that portfolio? Sure, absolutely. There's definitely a couple of tides to that. So kind of on the protection storage side, we're taking the evolution of Avomar, which had traditionally been that end-to-end software hardware combination. What we're doing is integrating that Avomar software layer with the data domain as the protection's hardware layer, and we're bringing that together. So really Avomar gets to be focused on that backup software capabilities. And then on that side, on the Avomar and the network, we're also working on bringing those capabilities more. So what we've done in the most recent release of Networker is actually include all of the Avomar VMWare capabilities into Networker, so really bringing that suite together. So on both sides, both the protection software, protection hardware, really consolidating those into single solutions. Now you had a session yesterday, right? What was that session about? Tell us about that. So that was all about making Oracle backups about 50% faster. So really what we focused on were the different deployment options for how you can use a data domain system in the EMC data protection suite to protect your Oracle database. And the three different ones that we really talked about are backing up directly with Arman over SIFS or NFS. That was probably the most popular run from a DBA perspective a few years ago. The one we spent the most time on, though, is that DDBoost for Arman capability, getting those faster backups, distributing the deduplication process up to the Oracle server, only sending unique data, but doing so all within that DBA's control. And then the last one is really of that backup application centric, Arman integrating with a backup application. So how was the session? And was it interactive? It was fantastic, you know, standing room only, so really good crowd. Really, how many people did you have? It was probably about 200 people. Really? 200 people, I'm standing. Yeah, it is clear that Oracle data protection is a hot button topic. Yeah, a lot of interest, a lot of good questions afterwards. I was in a session yesterday with three pretty senior Oracle execs, you know, just basically, you know, storage strategy, maybe there were 200, it was a big room, I don't think there were 200 people there, so that's awesome. Now, were you getting questions from the audience? Yeah, really good questions. And it's interesting for us as EMC and why we love coming to the show is that we don't necessarily get to talk to DBAs directly a lot in our everyday conversations, and it's clear that when we have a DBA conversation, we really are setting off lights in their head, that it's pretty much a different scheme for them. And to offer them a very efficient storage, reducing storage requirements by 10 to 30 times, reducing network requirements, enabling them to keep that control, they really just light up and they want to really learn more about it. It's really fun for us to kind of talk to an audience who really doesn't normally talk about data domain, about protection storage, about backup, and when we can give them that empowerment and give them that story and all the value, it really is garnering a lot of interest. Katelyn, I want to ask you about just kind of a more of a macro question around the market. I mean, Dave and I have been watching BRS, going back to 2010, and there was this kind of like hump where you kind of crossed over from blocking and tackling, back in recovery to, you know, wow, this stuff, the game is changing with virtualization, the software-defined data center kind of has a new destination focus and obviously software-defined infrastructure is obviously hot. It's much active now. People are looking at kind of low-hanging fruit in their enterprise, whether it's Oracle or through other areas, where it's kind of a topic of big-time conversations now. Why is that? Why is your BRS, Group Backup Recovery, such a hot, rabid topic among folks these days? Is it because of virtualization? Is it because of the new technologies? Is this going to cloud all the above? What is the reason for that enablement? I think it's a lot of things. Guy Churchward talks a lot about backup being the long pole of the tent. And as we kind of talk about all this IT transformation, trying to move to the cloud, a lot of folks are having to examine their backup infrastructure because it's not giving them what they need. So they're having to actually re-architect backup to be able to go to that next level, that next generation data center. Backup has sometimes gotten in the way, that traditional kind of backup scheme. So that's given a lot more attention. But also the fact that we now have a lot of the application owners, like DBAs, involved in this discussion and really driving the business to address that. That's really elevated the importance of data protection in the environment. Has people, have folks taken backup and recovery for granted? I mean, the sentiment has always been, ah, those guys take care of it. You know, stuff just gets done. You know, it's like the black box. It's like, you know, fenced out organization. You heard Darryl talking about drowning DBAs, now being lifted out, got a lifeline, enabled into new jobs, new opportunities. So obviously that kind of was an older sentiment, but now it's on the forefront. Is that because of the expansion of data sources? Is it because of the tech? As a product person, you've got to kind of watch both the market and the tech. Well, how do you talk about that? Yeah, and it's certainly in convergence. So from a technology standpoint, we have a lot of really interesting things going on, protection storage is a whole new conversation to be having, and it's something that people are really hungry for. But even just in the macro climate of the world we live in, we see the importance of having protection. So not just an on-site backup, but disaster recovery. Getting it off-site and having that secondary copy off-site is so critically important in the environment that we live in today that you simply can't take it for granted anymore. Dave, I got to ask you, Dave, as an analyst, Dave Vellante, you've been covering the space, and when we, you know, in 2010, we asked Joe Tucci, he's storage sexy. You know, we were the first ones to kind of call that storage kind of massive growth from kind of storage to what it is today. It's the center of the conversation. You know, we look at the data domain acquisition from EMC, it's evolved over the years. I want to ask you specifically, why do you think backup and recovery is so sexy? Why is it so hot? What are the things going on in backup and recovery that makes it the top of conversation around virtualization and software defined data center? What's your take on that? Larry Ellison has this little clip where they show Ellison talking about, it's not the PC age, they're not talking about the PC era, they're not talking, it's not the mobile era, it's the information age, right? And so I think that the reason why it's so hot is because it is about information. It's something that EMC's always understood really well. It's all about the information, it's about the data, and you've got to protect the data. So with security and privacy concerns, so much on the rise, people I think are much more sensitized to data protection. And number one, number two is I think everybody's now realizing the importance of data because whether it's your laptop or your device, the biggest issue is the data. It's not the $400 that you spend for your stupid iPhone that's where the value is, it's the data. So protecting that data is critical. Virtually everybody that I know that's over 30 has been snake bitten by data loss. I think that CEOs are starting to realize the importance of that, so it's become a boardroom topic. I don't know, Caitlin, if you would agree with that. Yeah, absolutely, I think you make a good point. If you, in your personal life, have ever lost your data, your photos, God forbid, you know the importance. And when you take that into a business context, that enterprise data, that is your lifeblood. You simply can't lose it, so protection has to be a priority. Next slide, well, Caitlin, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your perspectives and good luck going forward. Thank you, thanks a lot, Dave. Keep it right there, everybody. John and I will be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Oracle OpenWorld 2013.