 Live from New Orleans, it's theCUBE. Covering VeeamON 2017, brought to you by Veeam. We're back, Mario Angers is here. He's the senior manager of systems at the University of British Columbia. Welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you. Thank you, thank you. So how's VeeamON going? So far, so good. Yeah, it's fabulous actually. I love the event because it's not so big that you can't talk to a lot of people and it's small enough that you get to know a lot of different folks. It feels bigger, they're saying the number is 3,000. It feels bigger than that to me, but at the same time it is kind of intimate. Yeah, no, I went to their first event, so certainly this is very different than what it was like. I think their first event was 2014. So yeah, it's very good. So tell us what's going on up at British Columbia. What's hot these days for you? Well, I spoke to this a little bit yesterday during the partner session. So British Columbia is in a bit of a unique position because we have laws that prevent us from storing data outside Canada. So up until recently, we didn't have any of the large service providers. So we had to basically, to some degree reinvent the wheel. So if we wanted to provide or consume cloud, we had to basically build it, which is what the University of British Columbia did a few years ago. And because we're the largest in BC, we were doing it at scale already. So we were approached by an organization inside British Columbia called BCNet, which basically services all the other higher ed, and they asked us if we wanted to provide cloud services to the community. And we've been doing this for almost three years now. As a partner to BCNIT. Yeah, to BCNIT, yeah. So we're basically the service operator. They're the service provider, right? We do everything. They take care of the marketing, the communication. And Mark, could you walk us through what's that stack look like? I actually, I did an interview with the OpenStack Summit with a Massachusetts higher ed cloud that they built that used OpenStack as kind of the underlying piece. Yeah, so we went with, we're a VMware shop. So we went with the cloud director, right? As the front end, basically. But the back end is a combination of Cisco servers, HP servers, NetApp storage, HP storage, data domain for our backup. Of course we use Veeam for our backup software. And then it's basically VMware stack, right? End to end. Okay, great. It was funny. The gentleman that I interviewed actually was the one that created VCD when he was at VMware. So, yeah, I'm just curious, your viewpoint. One of the things we used to say is cloud is not virtualization plus, but if you build a stack, if you can have kind of the orchestration and management pieces. So you feel you have a cloud, what differentiates what you have today versus what you could have built five years ago? Well, I think five years ago it would have been really challenging to provide the services in a self-service capability to our end users, right? So today we can do that, right? We basically, the only involvement we have is we provision a virtual data center for our end user and then it's self-service from there for them, right? We also use NSX, which is also a VMware product, right? So it's self-service end to end. All right, and how has your availability become better with what you have today versus what you had before? Well, I mean, using Veeam, you know, Veeam is a significant partner of ours, right? So we've been a Veeam customer for probably five or six years now on the backup and restore side probably about four years. And I would say it's made our jobs a lot easier, right? So historically our legacy backup system was just to bear and a monster to manage, right? So it required a huge amount of time to not just manage but understand how it was done. You know, with Veeam, they've really simplified that process, right? So, you know, and we have a very large environment and we basically have one guy managing backup, right? So it used to be, okay, well, that's pretty good productivity. So it used to be the conversation around, well, we're meeting our backup within the window. You know, that was sort of the challenge. And now increasingly it's, we want to get as close as, you know, RPO zero as possible for certain apps. You know, not everything is too expensive. And we want a much faster recovery time objective. So can you talk to us, first of all, do you converse in those terms with your line of business and have you been able to affect those metrics? So we're not quite there yet, right? So from a sophistication or a maturity perspective, right? So we still have a bit of a ways to go, right? To get there. You know, however can we now guarantee to our folks that we'll be able to bring workloads back in a, you know, within the service level that we have with our customers? Absolutely, right? So it's, we can provide peace of mind now knowing that if we lose something, you know, we can bring it back very quickly, you know, as it's actually being restored to the production environment. So where do you want to go from it? I mean, it sounds like you've got the, you got the productivity thing nailed. You got one person managing all this and you're able to meet those SLAs. What's next? So I would say next for us is, so today we provide what I'll call a managed service around backup, right? So basically the team that I manage is looking after backup for, you know, for all the clients within the service. So our next step is really to provide them the ability to manage that themselves, right? So we're looking to do that over the summer. You know, once we do that, then we want to start partnering with Veeam as well and start looking at their CloudConnect product, right? We've been in discussions for some time now about how we're going to do that. And that's the evolution of that. So, and then building on that, and also we're being also asked to add to the portfolio of services that we provide. And one of those services is disaster recovery as a service. So that's becoming very, very critical to the province. Vancouver is basically like San Francisco or Los Angeles. We live in one of the, you know, biggest fault zone in the world, right? So at some point it will happen, right? So now we've basically provisioned a data center in the middle of the province where it's outside your quake zone. You know, so now we can start providing those services to our community. Mark, could you speak to the relationship of Veeam with the storage arrays that you have? What's the interaction there? So when we went to Veeam, it was really important that the integration, the full integration is there with the storage vendors that we had. So originally we were, you know, primarily in that app shop, right? So when that integration was in place. So when we started looking at moving off of tape and moving on to disk for backup, right? So we basically narrowed the list down to vendors that also fully integrated with Veeam, right? So we chose Data Domain, right? An EMC product, we've been very happy. And just recently we went to RFP and we basically selected a new vendor for virtualization storage. And the same rules apply, right? Full integration needs to be in place. We need to be able to know that we're going to be able to read the data off of the storage arrays and then move it to the backup, right? So and without that integration, there's no guarantees that we can do that successfully. So Data Domain customer, happy with that is the backup appliance. Yeah. Fast, great data reduction. Didn't the EMC get you in a headlock and like say, you've got to buy a networker and Avamar and really push hard? Oh, they tried, of course. Okay, and so what's wrong to your decision to go with Veeam? The complexity of those solutions, right? So, you know, we're not going to reinvent how we're structured, how we're architected just to put a backup solution in place, right? It's just, and that was really, and if you look at some, a lot of the other big vendors in the marketplace today, that's basically the expectation. Is okay, well, you're built out like this, now you're going to have to do this in order to consume our solution. That just wasn't an option for us. And that, so some people would say, well, I get one throat to choke and that simplifies things. You don't buy that. No, not at all. I think it keeps vendors honest if you have more than one, right? So it gives you some leverage to be able to negotiate, right? You know, and to be quite honest with you, I've yet to find another vendor that provides the level of quality and support that Veeam does, right? So, you know, and they're growing as a company and I expect that things will change to some degree, right? Because that's part of growing. However, so far, the experience that we've had is the same we had four years ago when they were a relatively small company. Can you give an example, like what resonates with you as a customer in terms of that service experience? So I think as a bunch of IT guys, right? We think we know everything, right? So when we originally acquired Veeam, we thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get what you're telling us but we know better than you do. So we went ahead and implemented based on what we felt was right. It wasn't right, right? So they didn't come over and say, told you so or, you know, we're not going to help you now because you decided to go this way. No, they provided us with all the support we needed in order to actually change what we had done and there was never any finger pointing or any, right? It was basically, you're a partner, we're going to help you be successful, right? And that's very rare, I think, in the industry today. Yeah, really respecting sort of the fact that you wanted to do it a certain way and we had to learn. Yeah, they did try to talk us out of it but we decided to move in that direction anyway, right? But to me it's like, yeah, it's a fantastic relationship. Anything that you've seen here today or this week, the announcements that was really interesting and exciting to you? I think, yeah, I think a lot of the things that are coming in version 10 are going to allow us to expand on the things that we provide to our customers, right? For example, all the stuff they talk about around availability, right? The primarily disaster recovery stuff, right? Which is such a big thing for us, right? So I think to us this is going to add significant value. Mario, anything, either Veeam or your other vendor ecosystem that you're looking for that would make your life easier? You seem to have a pretty opinionated view of what you need. So to me is, you know, so we're in the business of solving problem, right? So as a vendor, you're not going to help me solve my problem unless you understand what my problem is. You know, so in my experience, I'm not going to say with all vendor but with a lot of vendors in the past couple of years is basically, you know, the caliber of the sales people I feel have changed, right? So it used to be that the sales folks used to be pretty knowledgeable about what they sold. Now it feels like all they're trying to do is make their quarter, right? And it's becoming, as a customer, it is becoming frustrating, right? Because I don't want to be sold to. I want someone that's going to help me solve problems, right, and deliver solutions to my customers, right? So you're, let's get a lot of different storage infrastructure, but NetApp is a primary supplier of yours. It's still very big in our environment. You just had NetApp on with Veeam and they were talking about their relationship. As a customer, how do you find the relationship between Veeam and NetApp? Is there tangible value that you see in that working relationship? How do you interact with those two companies? Oh, of course there's tangible value, right? So we're an enterprise customer, right? So, and as we scaled within our environment, we came into a bottleneck between Veeam and NetApp, right, and you know, all we had to do was basically expose it to both companies and they worked together to resolve the issue, right? And you know, I believe it was version nine, they finally released a fix for it, but you know, that's been the experiences. You know, the work that happens behind the scenes, you know, we're not exposed to that, but it always creates a positive experience for us in the end. We had Dave Russell on earlier from Gartner and he was talking about pricing and licensing and specifically socket-based pricing and he said that that had a big impact in the marketplace from a customer standpoint. What can you share with us about, you know, licensing, pricing, strategies that you employ and maybe advice for other customers? So I think a lot of vendors are starting to try to simplify their licensing, right? Because if you look, you know, I'm not going to pick on anyone specific, but they had, you know, okay, well we're going to sell you a number of VMs and then the storage on top of that and you know, and it's like, okay, that doesn't make sense, right? I don't want a PhD in math to be able to calculate how much I'm going to spend for licensing, right? So give me a model that is easy to manage and I'm going to know exactly what my cost is and have, you know, a very predictable cost going forward, right? So, and I understand Veeam has, you know, has a couple of different models, but they're still very simple, right? So you either subscription or your socket, right? So to me, it's just keep it simple. What's your preference? Right now it's socket. However, I'm not opposed to looking at something different. If it makes sense for my clients, I'm perfectly fine with it. Does that have enough, when you go subscription, does that have an effect? I mean, does your CFO like that? Because it's switching to a radical model or? Or just basically turning capital into operational, right? So, you know, and as long as my base cost doesn't change, right? So I think it's perfectly fine. So from a capital budget standpoint, it's got to be neutral and you go from there. Excellent. All right, Mario, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great, great insights, as always. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there, but we'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, Stu Miniman, Dave Vellante. We'll be right back.