 Live from San Francisco, California, it's theCUBE at VMworld 2014, brought to you by VMware, Cisco, EMC, HP, and Nutanix. Now here are your hosts, John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Welcome back live in San Francisco. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Ratmir Timeshav, the presidency of VM, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me. So I'm all like buzzed up right now, just talking to the venture capitalist. I love hearing their decoding, all their secrets and what they're investing in. What do you think about the opportunity right now for entrepreneurs out there and around VMworld? What's your take around the mega trends, circling and orbiting around VMworld this year? I think the opportunities are expanding. The market is expanding, opportunities are expanding. The need for new technologies that satisfy new business needs is growing. So I think that it's good to be in the VC business these days. So I didn't want to pimp up too much for Jerry Chen there because I'm a big fan of Greylock and Jerry and certainly Docker. We've been following Docker for a while. I didn't want to give him too much press there because I wanted to spend more time on some of the VC conversations. But I want to ask you about Docker. I mean, one of the things about Docker that's been really interesting is the open community aspect of it. And it's really become a really sticky and viral aspect of the accelerated growth of Docker. How much is that a factor versus the containerization piece of it? I mean, the container's good. We've seen containers. What's your take on that? Because this is really a lever of growth right now. What's your take on that? We actually don't work in that area much. So we focus more on the motor data center, the private cloud as well as the public cloud. Do you think that's going to be a threat to like Microsoft and VMware? I think VMware is embracing it because of the love of the community or is it part of a defensive move for these guys? What's your take on it? Because it's certainly going to impact, we heard people in the city talk about Amazon. We also, Microsoft's got a huge cloud presence. Every once in a while something comes up and everybody's talking about that it's a threat to Microsoft or other large players. So it remains to be seen. How much competition do you think VMware is going to get from Microsoft and Amazon in terms of like with you guys? How do you guys see that all playing out? We are vendor neutral. So we are kind of- You're an arms dealer. We are Switzerland, we are peaceful. So we support VMware. VMware is our strategic partner as well as Microsoft. Microsoft is our strategic partner. You guys were very early in virtualization. Do you think virtualization has become abstracted away or is it still fundamental in a lot of the aspects of the software battles right now? Because a lot of people are like, okay, virtualization is enabling a lot of growth. What's changing in virtualization from your perspective? Yeah, virtualization kind of drives the modern IT, modernization of the data center. But then there comes other technologies that are integral part of the modern IT and modern infrastructure. And that's where our company also plays a very important role because we provide the very important technology block, what we call availability block for the modern data center. So virtualization is one of the key enablers for the modern IT. But there are other new technologies such as storage technologies, cloud technologies, and that drives the overall growth in modern IT environments. You know, we were talking to Pat Gelsinger yesterday and you know, a lot of vision all laying it all out there. But when we press them for specifics, and it's funny, Dave and I always talk about this after we press them on specifics. It all comes back down to the blocking and tackling of enterprise features. Storage, backup and recovery, DR, I mean. H.A. I mean, so, okay, this is really not headline worthy. Hey, you know, backup and recovery has new advancements. I mean, that's not the front page of the Wall Street Journal for VMware, but really it comes back to every conversation that's fundamental. There's huge stakes. What's your take on that? I mean, obviously it's important, but what's changing in the area of say, backup, recovery and all that stuff? Yeah, that's an excellent question. So in the last literally several years, the business requirements for IT have changed dramatically. IT has become a strategic part of any business. And right now everybody needs access to data from any place, any device and 24 by seven. And that's the reason customers are investing very heavily in the modern IT. And then they come to realization, even though they built a new modern IT, modern data center, if they use the legacy tools, they don't achieve what we call always on business 24 seven. It takes too long to backup data and too long to recover. And that's where Veeam comes in. Veeam is built on the new modern technologies to overcome these problems. The problem that it takes too long to recover data and application. We call it availability. It's not just the backup. It's availability of your modern data center. And the way we define availability is the ability to recover any application, not just the mission critical, quickly with the minimum data loss. So for Veeam, would you guys describe yourselves as an aspirin, a vitamin? We are not the aspirin, we are not the insurance. Backup, backup is the legacy backup, is the insurance or aspirin. We are a neighbor, a neighbor of the modern data center. You're manufacturing aspirin and vitamins. That's right. So I wonder if we could talk a little bit about, so back in 2010, first year we did theCUBE at VMworld, we had Jim McNeill on. Jim McNeill at the time was with Falcon Store, a former Cheyenne, you probably know Jim a little bit. And he said, you know, backup is broken. And we went into sort of a long discussion and many people have been talking about this. I mean, I personally have been talking about backup being broken for a long time. Long discussion about how virtualization stresses backup. And the concept was basically that you get all these extra resources that are being wasted, then your whole idea of virtualization is to improve utilization of the servers, but one of the applications that isn't underutilized is server capacity is backup, right? So then when you consolidate, you know, you're starting missing your backup windows again, it's a big mess. That whole meme coincided with Veeam's ascendancy. Now you have spent your career sort of building software companies to simplify things, whether it's in Windows environments, and now sort of VMware. So I wonder if you could give us your perspective on sort of the complexity of backup. Is backup broken? Was backup broken? How is Veeam fixing it? Yeah, the legacy backup is definitely broken because it wasn't built for this modern data center. Modern data center is built on the virtualization and new storage technologies, new cloud. So the legacy backup definitely is broken because it doesn't satisfy the business needs. The business needs of what we call always on business. The business today has changed dramatically, literally in the last five, seven years. You need access to data all the time 24 by seven and legacy backup cannot meet this requirement. So always on business drives the need for the new generation, new modern solution for data protection. So it's more than just backup. It's guaranteeing that all your data and applications will be always available 24 by seven. So not just the mission critical, but also literally all applications and all data. So, I mean, that sounds sensible, makes a lot of sense. Why are you guys so unique in your ability to succeed? I mean, a lot of people are sort of competing in this marketplace. You certainly have a lot of legacy software vendors that are entrenched and nobody wants to rip and replace. So how is it that you're able to get customers to hop on the Veeam bandwagon? I mean, you're targeting obviously the sweet spot of the fat middle, I call it. That's kind of your customer base. But how has it you've been so successful? What's the secret? Yeah, many customers, and we hear that from VMware and Microsoft, many customers believe that besides the virtualization helps them to reduce the cost and consolidate the hardware. But one of the main drivers to extend and to invest more in VMware is the better data protection. I don't even want to use the word backup because backup is the legacy term. Veeam has created a new category. New category, we call it availability. It's not backup, it's much more. Why? Because people need availability. Okay, so backup is insurance. You're right, and nobody wants to buy insurance unless they have to, but I would imagine a lot of your customers don't have, for instance, a disaster recovery strategy in place when you come in or they don't have a way to do fast recoveries. And so talk more about what you mean by availability. It's not just high availability. Is it as it's more sort of business protection? Yeah, the legacy term is high availability. High availability is normally used by rich enterprises for very small mission critical applications. And that's where the word availability comes. We don't say high availability because it's a legacy term. Like a tandem computer or something. It comes together with the backup. Banking transactions, right. So you use backup for most of your applications and the workloads, and you use high availability for the most mission critical. That's the legacy paradigm. Now Veeam can afford to use the availability for all your applications. So I have to ask you, when VMware came out with VDP, which was, I guess, it wasn't last year, right? It was two years ago, was it? It was two years ago, and then they followed up with VDP-A. Yeah, so when it announced VDP, which is essentially a free backup slash data protection capability, everybody set up, Veeam screwed, right? That was the convention of wisdom. Now since then, you've exploded. Why was everybody wrong? I mean, people forget that VMware did have the solution, similar solution, before they released VDP. It was called VDR or something. Yeah, something like that, but it wasn't that good. So are you saying this is not that good or what? I cannot comment if it's good or not about our strategic partner. But I mean, the customers and market is choosing Veeam. The market, the customers and partners are choosing Veeam for a reason, so. And that's the discussion we had with VMware as well. So let the customers and partners choose. Let's not get into the battle ourselves because we are partners. And VMware understands that Veeam is the important player in the ecosystem. VMware has been extremely successful for many reasons, but one of them is that they were able to build the ecosystem of the different hardware vendors, software vendors, and they understand that Veeam is the important part of this ecosystem, and Veeam solves a very important problem in the ecosystem by providing this availability. And you also asked me why we are winning over legacy vendors. Because we don't have this baggage. It's a truly disruptive technology. Virtualization is the disruptive technology. Data protection built on virtualization or what we call availability is also disruptive. We don't have this legacy baggage that our competitors have. We don't have to support physical. We don't have to support agents. All these old technologies that your existing customers are using in the physical world. If you are a legacy vendor when you release a new version, 80% of the time you have to think how you support your installed base. And only 20% of the time you are thinking about the virtualization and modern technologies and providing the better and faster recovery for new modern data center. So they have to worry about the legacy installed base. That's their problem. So we can innovate and move much faster. And that's a sort of conceptually pretty easy to understand. But that legacy baggage is also hard to get rid of. And in some senses it's an advantage to the incumbent because it's so complicated and it's so easy to say, okay, well just upgrade, buy another one. So take us through a typical customer engagement if there is one. When you come in, let's say there's a bunch of legacy baggage, are they just so fed up? Is there a change agent? Take us through how the adoption cycle occurs. Yeah, that's a very good question. So exactly, when I talk to a press or journalists or analysts, I always say that they always ask me the same question, why Veeam has been very successful? And one of my answers is that because Veeam is 10 times better than legacy. And they're asking me, right now, how did you measure 10 times? Why is it 10 times? Why not two times? Of course it's a joke, right? So I say, but take an existing legacy backup vendor customer. It's an insurance. How often do you change your insurance? Not often, right? So to change the vendor for the data protection requires a major effort of dealing with the new, establishing new relationship, purchasing new software, training, learning, deploying, and so on. So you're progressive. Yeah. You're a progressive insurance. So the customers choose to go through all this hassle. Because we are 10 times better. If we were only two times better, they would stick with the current existing legacy vendor. Well, that's kind of the definition of disruptive, right? Exactly. All right, we got to leave it there. Thank you very much for coming on. You guys have a big conference coming up soon, right? Yes, that's right, yeah. Yeah, Veeam World kind of made us, the success of Veeam World made us think that we probably need to have our own event. So Veeam World started as the virtualization event and now it progressed into modern IT event. So all the vendors here are exhibiting the best, the latest and the brightest, the best. And so we started thinking that we probably need to create our own data availability event where we as well as our partners can exhibit the best of their technologies to build the new availability. It's in Vegas, right? It's in Vegas in October. She bring the cube. Absolutely. Veeam Hot Company, privately held, right? That's right. And good stuff. Thank you very much. Great stuff. We can do a whole segment of this modern data center. We've got the hook here for our next guest. Modern era is upon us, huge opportunities, transformation, HP calls a new style of IT, Pat Gales calls a new brave world of IT. It's new, it's happening, so congratulations to your success. President CEO of Veeam, we'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.