 Cisco, extracting the signal from the noise, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2015. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Now your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Stu Miniman with wikibond.com and this is SiliconANGLE TV's live wall-to-wall coverage, VMworld 2013, getting towards the end of the show. It's always we say a marathon, not a sprint. Last year, we were across the street and our first guest of the show was Paula Long from Data Gravity. So we thought no better way to finish up this year, say what's happened in the last year, lots of ecosystem. Paula Long, Data Gravity, thank you for coming back Paula. Thank you, I had such a fun time last year and I got lots of compliments and people giving me crap about being on theCUBE. It was pretty fun. Yeah, so Paula, you know a ton of the players here, especially we say VMworld, at least half of the companies that are here are storage, storage related. I met a bunch of good companies, it's like new startups coming up, up, long for time friends of Paula, things like that. First, let me start, kind of your impressions, 2015 versus 2014, general trends, themes, what have you seen? So this year I saw a lot of refinement of the ideas that came out last year. So I joke around that I saw a lot of copy and paste. So I see a lot of companies that are doing a new twist on, especially in the storage space. I can make IO run faster than somebody else can. I can de-dupe faster. I can beat gravity and speed of light to get you to the cloud. Yeah, I'm more hyper-converged than you are. Yeah, yeah. I'm more hyper-converged than you are or I can scale out further than you can. So I didn't see as much this year, sort of the new, what's the up and coming? A lot of security, which we're a part of as well, data security, but not as much as I was expecting. Nothing that wowed me. Yeah, I think coming into the show, we didn't expect there to be one central theme. Even you talk about what we talk at VMworld here, it's ready for any. So where's the focus? Last year, kind of hyper-converged year before, networking took a front and center stage. This year, Pat laid out this vision of 30 years as to where we're going. What do you think of VMware? They stopped talking about, let's get to 100% virtualization. It felt some of the old battles of Citrix and Hyper-V got kind of put in the rear view mirror a little, and it was focused more, a little bit on the future, a little bit of cloud, and where things are going. So there's a few things. Like last year, the theme was, and I heard someone else say this as well, containers aren't VMs. I guess this year they are. I must have missed when the conversion happened. The other thing I noticed was, VMWare's been doing a lot of innovation. They're doing stuff. I watched them VMotion something to and from the cloud. What they didn't answer was, you said data's kind of a couch potato. It doesn't move well. So they didn't really talk about what happens with your data to and from, or what happens with your active directory, but the VM moving was pretty cool. Now show the data at the same speed. Some people have said data has gravity. Keeps wanting to sit down. You try to get it to come up, move around, it's not doing it. Yeah, Ashley, so let me bring up a company you're familiar with that launched recently is ClearSky Data. I got the name, right? You got it right. Yeah, so tell us, you know, you're friends with the founders and they have a kind of a very interesting way of dealing with storage, the metro area, low latency and the like. Yep, so full disclosure, I'm on the board of ClearSky Data and I'm also friends. And so as people think to go to the cloud, there's a few things that sort of stop them or cause and pause. One of them is performance. One of them is security and one of them is cost. And ClearSky is sort of addressing all of those. So what they've really done is sort of a shock absorber to the cloud. So they've created a way to use public cloud economics, but on-prem performance for those companies who are already in pops. So I'm actually very impressed with what they're doing and I think you're going to see them get a piece of the market. Yeah, so one of my critiques of the show with VMware's message is that they talked a lot about cloud, but I didn't hear the word AWS or Azure at all. And when I talk to customers, they're all using that. So what's your take on how cloud fits in the overall ecosystem discussion? So storage is not one size fits all. So there's, if you've got reg requirements on your data or latency requirements on your data or you've got sort of application requirements from your data, it's going to stay on-prem. Some is going to go to the cloud. We've been going to the cloud 100% for the last 10 years, right? So right around the time we get rid of tape is probably when cloud will get like 20% of the data. So for us, we will have a cloud piece to our product at some point, but right now on-prem and data security is really where we're focused. All right, so let's talk about data gravity some. So you launched the company last year, bring us up to speed, kind of the business customer adoption momentum. So we launched actually at just about a couple of weeks before VMware, we showed our first public demos of the product, very excited, really started shipping late last year. So we're about into our third quarter shipping. And what we're finding is 100% of our customers are finding issues in their data. So they're finding clear case credit cards where they're finding IP or they're finding, and we joke around that there was state and local government where they found corner files, right? So people are finding things in their data that they really need to be protected against. And they're finding that they don't know how it got there and they don't know who accessed it. So data gravity is really about putting information into the power of the end user and the IT person so they can protect their data and leverage it. And we're getting phenomenal response. We have law firms, we have small banks, we have lots of education. So the growth is really phenomenal because once people see that MRI of their data, they're like, oh, there's stuff I can delete. The best you do, by the way, is delete. So you want to have the best you do ratio, find stuff you shouldn't be using and delete it, right? So Paula, when you briefed us on the company, one of the questions we have is, people are used to just buying storage, buying capacity, thinking about performance, higher level functionality and shifting of mindset is tough. And some of those data analytics type information, often it might be a different person, different group. It was like, the electricity of storage, it's a real problem but facilities will deal with it so I don't have to pay for it. I don't want to think about it. Can you walk us through how customers are actually taking advantage of this and how well that's going? So for us at least, we'll walk into a customer site and we'll ask them, so what storage are you using today and what problems do you have? Almost every customer that we've talked to has either been talked about data security or worried about data security and the press is helping us, right? If you looked at some of the breaches, people actually have password files in their storage, right? So the first thing we talk about is, are you worried about protecting your data beyond the smoking hole being hit by lightning? Are you worried about data loss? And then they say, well, we're covered by data loss and I say, well, what happens when crypto happens? That's a kidnapping. What happens when malicious stuff happens? That's a murder. So when you get a virus, you had living, breathing data and now it's mush, it was murdered. What happens when your data escape? That's identity theft, right? So we start talking about the fact that data loss is a broader problem and that every storage administrator knows that data loss is a resume generating event, but now it's a resume generating event, not only for the IT guy, but the CIO and the CEO. So people care much more and the more that people are having problem with the data, the more they want to talk to us. Yeah, security definitely seems to be raising up in that conversation level. Chris, we talked a little bit about containers before. What's your view on security when it comes to virtualization in general and maybe where that goes with things like containers? Yep, so what you watched was, and I was, we were very pleased to see VMware announced actually today that they're going to start getting into encrypted data and helping with security. So the data being encrypted is important, but it's not enough because the users are reading it unencrypted and they're moving it to unsafe places. So very excited that VMware's going to get in that space. You know that's going to have to happen with containers. Any data that's mobile, you have to believe it's going to end up someplace you don't want it to be. So it's important that they're not just encrypting, but they're tracking and they're also making sure that they've actually categorized and tagged things properly so it doesn't leave the building. Yeah, so Paul, you made a comment earlier that, storage is, it's multi places that we put things out here. What do you see as the future there? How many different types of solutions do we need from the cloud down to the SMV? I mean, does hyper-converge become another silo? Mid-range, high-end, you look at a company like EMC and people say I don't know whether they have six to eight primary products that they go on there. What's your take on the future of storage? I think storage, you're never going to have a one-size-fits-all. So I think what you're going to see is a segmentation based on people who really need high IOPS. And I do, I know I bash the flash, all flash guys once in a while, because you don't need, I'm quoted as saying you don't need a Ferrari to get milk, but you do need a Ferrari race. So you're going to see the higher end storage, high performance, that's going to commoditize by the way. And then you're going to see the intelligent storage where it's unstructured data, you're going to get information from your storage, you're going to be able to leverage that report you wrote two years ago, you're going to be able to do analytics across your own data, you're going to see patterns on your own data. So I think you're going to see the high-end and then I think you're going to see the mid-range, which is going to be more focused on intelligence and the high-end is going to be more focused on pure performance. Yeah, so David Fleuer wrote a research note recently and he said it's the performance and the capacity are kind of the two tiers. So it's more nuanced than that level of it, but you're shaking your head. So I don't know if you've seen what he's published there, but I'd love you to respond. It is performance and capacity, but it's also information and intelligence, right? Because having capacity without knowing what's in it is like saying I'm going to buy another storage locker and I'm just going to keep filling it up with crap that I don't need. It's probably going to get me into trouble, but I'm not going to sort through it, get any value out of it or use it, right? So capacity for the sake of capacity is dangerous, right? You really want to know what's in that data. Yeah, but does that just become a feature over time into how we build our storage or is that a separate thing forever? So we believe that it's part of the storage. So when I started Equalogic, we said storage automation was what everybody was going to do and everybody thought we were insane, right? And now who's not doing storage automation? Now I believe, all right. So now I believe and I could be wrong that knowing your information is going to be a feature of storage and we're just the first people who are bringing that out and it's the same cost, it's your data. Shouldn't you know it was in it? Why should you pay to know what you own, right? It's like saying, you can go in your closet, you can't look at what you're going to pull out of it, right? And maybe it fits, maybe it doesn't, but you really need to know, that's not a great analogy, but anyway, maybe you need to know what's in your data. Yeah, so first thing, do you have the chance to talk to customers at this week, I would assume? A lot to customers. Yeah, I mean, what's some of the top of mind issues that customers are facing? There was a lot of debate here as to, a lot of them aren't quite down that cloud path as many are, if I'm a virtualization admin, maybe I'm still looking at kind of my virtualization items, where are they, where's their mindset and what learnings did you get from the customers? So keep in mind that it's a little self-selecting because they're coming to talk to us. So what people are talking to us about is, they've got VMs, they don't know what's in it. You heard about VM sprawl, well there's also VM bloat, right? Which means there's five to 20 million files in a VM because they just keep cloning them. They don't know what it is, they don't know how to clean it up. So what they talk to us about is, how do I get a handle on what I have, what I can defensively delete. If I have a security instance, how can I track it back and reduce risk? So they're coming to talk to us about their data and they have a data problem. But again, they're self-selecting because they're coming to talk to us. All right, so Paula, did you have a chance, I think outside of your company, what did you find interesting? You mentioned there's a lot of more of the same, but any highlights that you'd like to point out? So I walked by the primary IO booth, I'm trying to figure out, did you see that booth? I didn't see the booth, no. So they have a bunch of, it almost looks like on big springs, a bunch of foam pads and they were jumping on it and they for some how saying it was about V-Volves. I didn't really understand that, but it looked cool. Yeah, my understanding, I'd gotten a couple of notes from them. I think it's kind of the intelligent caching type player that reminds me of Pernex and some of the others, that layer of the stack. Yeah, so we actually partnered with Pernex, I'm a big fan of what they're doing. Obviously Palo Alto Network should go in and just kind of see what's going on in security in that space. I wandered by and was checking out, you got Rubrik, she got Cohesity and it feels like they're going right after Actifio, but not at the high end and at the smart application. So that'll be sort of interesting. I saw, I didn't go by their booth, but I read Datrium, which seems pretty interesting, which feels like a combination of Pernex meets Nutanix. Is that what your read was of it? Yes, so we had Brian Biles on the Cube and I didn't get to talk to him yet, but it reminds me, I mean, his previous company is where Rubrik and the other guys are attacking, the data domain market, which is, I mean, they've still been doing quite well in the market. Yeah, so I would bet on those guys though, because Biles is very, very smart, so I would definitely bet on those guys. So you're seeing a lot of stuff, but you're seeing a lot of combinations of things. Yeah, so Paul, I mean, you talked Brian Biles yourself, you know, some of the same people that, you know, have had some big successes that move on, what's your take on, you know, final wrap up on the ecosystem of VMware and the company's, you know, supporting co-operate, co-opetition, I guess, with VMware? So I am rooting for every startup because I think we're pushing innovation and I think we're pushing each other to do new and interesting things, and I think if someone explains something to me and I get it right away, they did last year's technology, so I actually look for those companies where I don't really grok why it's important, and once I see it, it's like, wow, that was brilliant, as opposed to, yeah, like five other people are doing that, so I'm looking for those guys, like when Tiffio came out and Ash, you know Ash, he said, copy data, I'm like, huh, huh? And then it's like, wow, that was brilliant, right? But at the time, I was like listening to what it's saying, and I've been in storage a long time, I said, isn't that a clone? And then he started to explain the whole problem to me and I'm like, you know, wow, that's going to change how people interact with their data in ways that make a difference. I'm hoping data gravity does the same thing, right? And I think Newtonix did the same thing with Hyper-Converged, right? Because when you looked at it and you said, isn't that just DAZ that's with the cluster file system? And then when you look at it, you're saying, wow, that's actually really innovative and that's going to change the industry. I love those kind of companies. All right, so I think that's a great way to end it, Paula, thank you so much for joining us here on theCUBE and thank you everyone for watching SiliconANGLE TV's coverage, VMworld 2015. That's actually wrapping up the director's set here. The anchor set has a couple more segments, but check out everything out on siliconangle.tv, research on wikibon.com, and thank you so much for joining us. So thank you for having me. Thank you, Paula.