 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We're joined by Rawlinson Rivera. He is the Chief Technology Officer Global Field at Cohesity. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Rawlinson. My pleasure, my pleasure. So I want to hear from you what you're hearing from customers. This is obviously your first time at Microsoft Ignite. What are you hearing from them? What are they telling you? What are the challenges they're facing? Lay it on us. I mean, the reception we've got here has been incredible. Everyone's kind of really looking into some of the things we're able to do with regards to disaster recovery, beyond some of the normal backup stuff that we're known for. Now we got a chance to talk to a couple of executives, CIOs here, from different countries, different continents too, where they've been actually very excited about some of the things that we can do, overcoming some of the challenges, and particularly around disaster recovery and data mobility with some of the things we actually can do today very well. So I've been having a pretty good amount of conversations with respect to that, and the reception has been incredible. So talking about the recovery, what is a CIO? What keeps the CIO up at night in terms of that? What is he or she saying to you about that? You know, for some time, we've been talking about how we need to be able to leverage public clouds and the clouds for use them as a form of disaster recovery, but there's always been a challenge to do that, moving data from one place to another, from your private data center to a public data center, and maintaining that sort of continuity and the ability to maintain business going after that happens. We're able to now produce a solution that can do that, where these guys can actually validate it without having to actually have an actual disaster recovery to see if it really works. And when you can do that, these sort of executives are like, okay, I have a better way to sleep now. These are some of the things that I can now go to bed and safely know that if I have a failure, I have the solutions in place with enough of an ecosystem that allows me to come all the way across to my public cloud and kind of keep business going as it should be. Yeah, Rawlinson, I think you bring up some really good points. Customers now have, you know, they're living in a multi-cloud world, so they've got a lot of different tools out there. Making these choices aren't easy. It's like, well, they've got to choose between finding providers, they've got their existing data center, they're doing stuff as sass. We've seen Cohesity at a lot of these shows now, and especially Microsoft plays across this broad spectrum. So maybe give us a little bit more, you know, how important, you know, we know data is the lifeblood of companies, but how are things different from them today than where they might have been a couple of years ago to be able to take advantage of these new things? Well, Stu, you know, we've been at this for several years, right, several different sort of companies that we've been around, but when you think about the fact that there's so many different solutions, different silos, different capabilities, those are probably the most, one of the biggest challenges, the biggest problems that exist in that world, when we have that many components in play, there's that much more risk to introduce into that sort of solution. What we're able to do now is basically consolidate and collapse all of these different silos and deliver a solution that can actually be natively integrated with the cloud, provide the mobility, the necessary replication capabilities in order to move the data from one place to another, and eliminate sort of the risk, give you like a risk adverse type of approach for DR, which is something that everyone needs in this particular case. When you have a disaster recovery, risk is not something else that you need to worry about when you want to come back up from a failing that particular case. And that's one of the things that we actually introduce and provide with our particular solutions. Yeah, it's a conversation we've been having with Microsoft all week. Trust, Microsoft's a trusted brand out there. Absolutely, absolutely. We've had them forever. It gives a little insight of what you hear from the Microsoft customers, you know, you and I, we, certain other shows we're much more familiar with. This has a little bit of a different vibe than some other shows. Maybe what are you hearing? So here, obviously, being able to work within the Microsoft ecosystem, being able to utilize and provide a right solution for the right application that they use, SQL, you know, SharePoint and Exchange, not only about protecting their information, their data, but now how can I move it from on-prem to my actual Azure Cloud? Being able to have those capabilities seamlessly without having to worry about anything else is something that customers really worry about now. How can we actually take your on-prem data, regardless of what virtual infrastructure resides on, and put it on my private or my public Azure Cloud? Being able to do that successfully without ruining and changing the behavior and the security of these applications is key. And that's some of the things we can actually do very well seamlessly, without having to do any afterthought, not having to introduce multiple components to do that, and keeping everything simple and safe, which is actually what every customer wants. As CTO Global Field, your role is really about defining and communicating Cohesities vision and strategy. Two questions. Number one, has Microsoft done that effectively at Ignite for its own products and strategy? And number two, when it is the Cohesity Ignite conference, or you'll have some other Zaza name after it, what do you want participants and attendees to come away with? You know, what we look for is basically, I think Microsoft has done a very good job with us here. We've also been able to sort of come into their show for the first time, and sort of showcase our capabilities. And the reception has been incredible, right? I think our session here was packed. We needed like floor, you know, people just around the booth looking at some of our capabilities. For in the future, whenever we come up, when Mohit decides to have the Mohit show somewhere else, right? I think it'll be, it should be similar. It should be about an ecosystem. Our customers are, you know, all of the folks who want to come and see how we can, how we grow. We are in the midst of developing and growing our own ecosystem, and some of the things we're doing and bringing forward. And you'll see that come about, right? That's the same sort of a strategy we want to kind of maintain. And it'll be a great thing for everyone to see and sort of come and communicate and experience. And not just our own stuff, right? Because it's not about us all the time. We provide a specific solution and a specific capability, but when we turn it into an ecosystem where everyone comes in and plays into it, and we have a very tight partnership with Microsoft, and we want to grow that and eventually get to more things that we actually do today. Yeah, you bring up an interesting point. We know how important ecosystems are, especially it's a software world. I can't do it all myself, even though it's interesting, we had one Microsoft guest on and he talked about for certain AI solutions, they're going to vertically integrate all the way down to that end device, Microsoft will do end to end. But then you have things like the open data initiative. They know, when you talk about data, of course, Cohesity heavily involved in, data needs to go a lot of places. The open data initiative, when you get companies like Adobe and SAP and Microsoft standing up and saying, I want to be able to take that data and leverage it across these various solutions. Kirsten, do you have any feedback on that initiative? That ecosystem and how does Cohesity look at making sure that you're open and work across all the solutions that your customers need? Look, we know very well that it's not our world and everybody just wants to live in it. So the whole point is about ecosystem is very important. I can tell you that within our engineering organization, Mohit himself, we're looking into how do we provide the ability for our platform to be consumable, not just by us, but by everyone within our ecosystem, within the industry. If there's a particular application that you as a customer use, you may want to use it on our platform to leverage our capabilities for your information. So these kind of initiatives are already in play to be announced soon. So for us, it's what we need to do, right? It's actually giving the customer not only the capabilities of our platform, but choice, because we're always not going to be able to deliver and do some of the things that other applications are dedicated to do more effectively. We might be able to do it to a certain degree. We want to give the customers the ultimate experience, the ultimate accessibility to their data, to their information, which at the end of the day, it is what we say today, it's the new oil, right? Which needs to be actually properly mined, leveraged and protected and utilized in access. Without it, you'll be in some sort of a limited sort of approach within your business. Satya Nadella was up on the main stage talking about his company's culture and about the idea of being a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all. How would you describe Cohesity's culture? Well, I got to tell you it's tough because we have a series of geniuses working in this company, and we're small, but the guy at the helm is obviously the brainiac, I would say. But our culture is basically, you know, we're very receptive. We believe in really staying humble and letting everyone sort of have a place to play. Open-minded as always. A lot of things that happen at Cohesity happen in a short period of time, because the way in which we listen to customers, the way in which you listen to the actual engineers themselves, and we're very customer-focused. The customer can come in with the right amount, with the right demand and the right amount of time and the right place, and we will basically deliver that specifically for them very quickly. And that sort of culture, it's important, not only for us, for the business, but also for within the teams, within themselves, because everyone seems to be collaborative, everyone seems to be part of something that's going on, and they can contribute to what we're doing, which is changing some of the things that are actually within the data center. We're really pushing the needle forward, changing some of the things there. How do you maintain the culture? Because you are growing so fast. You are hiring so many new people. How do you make sure everyone is on the same page and pulling together? I got to tell you, the people that we bring in, it's not about the skills, right? Skills is one thing, and skills is many, many, and everyone has skills. Everyone has something to offer. But one of the things that we look at when we're screening folks who work at Cohesity is how are they going to work? How do they behave? What are their passions? That's just as important as the skills that they're bringing. Because one of the things that they'll do is that they may not know the technology, the things we're working specifically there, but they're willing to learn, and we need to collaborate with the team and kind of move that on, get better and better as we go. And that's very, very important for us. All right, yeah, Rawlison, we talk about the speed of things changing. Let's look out. We're back talking with Cohesity, Microsoft Ignite 2019. What are you talking about with Cohesity? Well, it'd be much more than what we so far see now, right? So obviously we have, we came into the industry with this particular process or approach of data protection. Obviously, it's beyond that. So some of the things that I see us in how the future will be is that, you know, secondary storage, secondary data and applications, to be honest, it will be much more interesting and a lot better in a sense than the traditional storage function it is. Storage is about feeds and speeds, I want performance, this and that, but the part that we place, what to do with your information, where to put it, where to place it, where to access it, process, compliance. Who can get to this point? We're looking at information in a way that, we're calling it private public clouds. It would be probably primary and a secondary public cloud for different purposes. Being able to not only provide access to information, but also providing compliance, reporting out of, I mean, instantaneously. We can no longer manage information or data in the speed that is growing from a human perspective. There's just no way we can keep track of that. The result of that is a lot of risks, data leakage, all the problems that you see in the world. We are out to actually, you know, fix that, overcome that, right? Well, we can provide a solution where things are now seamlessly happening within the environment. You don't have to worry about all these different things. Microsoft plays a big part of that. Office 365, all the things, all the information that's stored and honed within the Microsoft ecosystem and their applications, we are specifically looking to make sure that is as seamless as possible, so that now we're dealing with access to my information, process information, get information where I need to go, without humans probably having to touch it. The more human touches we have, the more the risk. We want to make things that are more automated, accessible, utilize some of this AI, machine learning, so that some of these things that actually happen much more effectively with less risk. I want to hear about customers. We've actually talked with a lot of Cohesity customers this week. We had Brown University on, we have HKS later today. Lynn Lucas mentioned some examples of Penn, Annenberg. What else, even if you don't name names, I want to hear about the kinds of results you're hearing and the kind of ROI that customers are getting from Cohesity products and services. I mean, I've talked to so many in different verticals, whether it be finance, medical, there's so many of them and everyone's really excited about the fact that when it comes to our eye, one of the things that we're like out of the box, when everyone thinks of Cohesity and they look at what we can do, it's just from an operations perspective what we can reduce in that action. Not only from a software hardware perspective what they're doing, but when you think about operations, we simplify operations so that when it comes to operation efficiencies, we want to mitigate the risk in that process and they see it immediately, which by the way, whenever you introduce any new solution to any infrastructure, to any business, the biggest challenge is not the technology. It is, how am I going to take that into my operating procedures and consume it as one? Because listen, we can double click and we have people do that for days without a problem. But how do we do that and come into your systems effectively so that you can consume me, the smaller piece with the larger part of the infrastructure, which is not the main point yet? We're able to do that very effectively. We come in and we compliment the rest of the infrastructure that you have and we come into your consumption model. It's not about my interface. It's not about my service catalog. We come into your service catalog. Whenever you talk to these guys and you see that, whenever I bring that up for, and not only I talk to them, I show it to them. They're like, that's what I'm looking for. And showing it to folks is a lot different than when you show a logical diagram and tell you, oh, this is what we could do. No, no, no. This is what we could do. This is your world when we're in in your operating procedures. Yeah, you bring up definitely something we agree and talk about on theCUBE a lot, which is the technology piece. Oftentimes is the easy part and we know technology's hard, but how do I change that mindset and the pace of changes so fast? Something we've talked about for a number of years and I have a slightly different take on it now is like, well, geez, how can I keep up? And the answer for me, and I'd love your view point on, is like, look, nobody can keep up on everything. What you need to have is you have to have trusted partners, your channel partners, are the ones that are going to say, oh, hey, I understand in your environment. Here are some of the things that can help you because nobody, even, I've had the chance to interview some of the smartest people in our industry and they're like, I can't keep up with the pace of innovation inside. So what do you hear from customers as to how they keep up, how they learn about new technologies? Are they more willing to try new vendors and new ways of doing things or are they just going to incrementally wither themselves a way to death? You know, it is tough. I mean, our industry changes. It is sort of the results of our game, right? So how do we make and help our customers evolve and let them sort of look at what they can keep, try and keep up with? There are some key points here, and actually we play in a world that are specific plays around the data, right? So when it comes to that, no one wants to put their data at risk. No one wants to expose a new tool to sort of maybe expose some sort of leakage or some of a problem. Our ecosystem, our partnerships are with trusted partners within the industry, Microsoft. You know, think people of this kind of caliber where there's trusted, there's trusted advisors of several companies already. We come in and we compliment each other. But the point is that we want to deliver something that is not going to expose anyone at risk, but it gives them the opportunity to sort of adopt the portions that they need. One example of that is that we have the ability today when it comes to application portability that I haven't seen before. We've seen a lot of things, for example, in the industry, a lot of solutions for that. Today, we have a very simplistic solution that allows anyone to take their workloads or their application from on-prem to Microsoft Azure seamlessly. One single task, one place. And those are the type of solutions that you will want and it will become trusted because they're not going to change anything. I can rely on this thing working and coming into a Microsoft Azure Cloud and consuming it in any way I want to do it. Rollins and Rivera, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It's a pleasure having you here. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit.