 Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2017, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its partner ecosystem. Good morning, welcome back here on theCUBE, the Silicon Valley or SiliconANGLE TV flagship broadcast here as we continue our coverage live from the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., the AWS Public Sector Summit, 2017. I'm John Walls, we're glad to have you here on theCUBE along with John Furrier. Good morning. Good morning. Good night. Great night. I had two great meetings, learned some information, got some exclusive material for a story that has to do with the government stuff. So you were kind of working then, weren't you? I'm always working. In D.C., I went from my year to the ground. I went home once. I had all these stories back to my show, Silicon Valley Friday show, which has been on hiatus during the month of May and June for all theCUBE events. Slacker. I got some great, great metadata, as they say. Data about data. I went home, I watched the Natscape last night. That was my big night. Jeff McAllister is with us now. He is the GM of the Americas for Druva. And Jeff, glad to have you here on theCUBE. We appreciate the time. Oh gee, thank you for the opportunity. It's a pleasure to meet you. All right, so you guys, you're all data all the time on the cloud, right? All about data protection and security, availability. Tell us a little bit more just about Druva. And then we'll get into maybe your relationship with AWS. But first off about you, about Druva. I've been fortunate to be with Druva since we really embarked on our enterprise strategy. I've been part of the team that made the investment a couple years ago to start to pursue FedRAMP and some of the specifications for the federal government. And as you know, we are cloud native. We are for the cloud and built on the cloud. And we've been a partner with AWS for over eight years now. So we've had a very strong working relationship with them and the opportunity to come and speak here today with you gentlemen has really been tremendously exciting. And frankly, they're absolutely wonderful partners to go to market with. Yeah, talk about how integral that obviously is to your business to have not just the relationship but to have the relationship that you do with AWS. Well, AWS obviously provides a world-class platform on which to build a service like ours. For our customers, it means tremendous levels of security, tremendous data durability, reliability and availability of that data. But also the idea that many of our customers are very mobile. They have great geographic disperse and among their employees, their employees are engaging in other parts of the world. So availability of that cloud and that cloud infrastructure in local areas is tremendously important. And for our federal customers, the certification for ITAR and other things that are specific to that market, having a platform like GovCloud built specifically to their specifications to service them creates great leverage for us and our customers. I mean, eight-year relationship, and that's going back. I mean, they're only 10 years old and they just spent their 10th birthday going on their 11th year just AWS. So obviously they saw some federal action right away or public sector action right away, nature of the cloud, very friendly to developers back then, but still they was building blocks foundational back then. That's right, exactly. What's changed? I mean, how would you chronicleize that change other than the massive growth we've seen in the marketplace, which we've chronicleized as well. But I mean, from your perspective in the public sector, this is not a nice trajectory. It's, you know, I've been in the business now for over 30 years, started out at Data General through Sunmarker Systems and I've seen much of the industry change. But one thing that has been very impressive with the public sector is that the interval in product innovation would come to the public sector a year to two years behind what we saw in the commercial marketplace. That time in space is absolutely shrinking down to nothing. Yeah, they are pursuing the same business continuity data transformation issues, the cloud first strategies that our commercial customers are and frankly the government worker today has become more mobile and the requirements to protect that data and secure it are at an all time high and the AWS platform in combination with we do really provides a level of security that is hard to do on your own. Yeah, so yesterday we talked about a term I coined or phrase I coined around the seminal moments in GovCloud's history and really in Amazon public sector is called the shot herd around the cloud. And that was the CIA deal where AWS came in and beat IBM, which had a lock in spec and then their old school IBM, they know how to sell. The sponsorships, they had everything locked and loaded. Who knows if they were doing wine and then dying and you know, the federal government is very much baked out, everything's gotten up and then boom, shadow IT is happening, Amazon wins. Since then, you've seen a lot of change in how people are procuring, how people are deploying. No better example than data protection because there's no walls, there's no firewall. You're in the middle of it. Talk about that dynamic, about how the no walls, no perimeter in the cloud has changed the role of data and data protection. Sure, so gone are the days where we can dictate the device, how somebody wants to work, what solutions are going to use cloud applications like Office 365, Box, Slack, other have really created an environment where the IT folks want to stimulate innovation, stimulate the work in places where people want to get done but then provide the same level of protection and governance that they would on an on-platform solution. So watching that evolution take place, it's really driven us to really have to be mindful that we are in the performance business and with that performance, we have to be respectful of the requirements from a security and protection standpoint that our customers call for. FIP certification became fundamental for us to be able to service the government. That led us into the pursuit now of FedRAMP. We're sure now FedRAMP ready. But all of those things provide the infrastructure to allow them to embrace these new strategies and this digital transformation be it in my cloud first strategy or my mobility strategy and be able to extend that same level of security that I would need and provide that flexibility for my end users to get their jobs done. You know, and obviously cloud native we, as you know, we love cloud native. We do too. We cover it from day one. Cloud first is kind of like a moniker that people use. It's kind of an ethos. It's more of a manifesto, it's a real agile but really Amazon has never hidden the ball in effect what they believe the future will be and that is API economy. And then from day one it's all about APIs and they believe that APIs everywhere. The cloud has no perimeter so that changes the security game. But the one thing that's emerged out of all this is a new SaaS business model for businesses and government and federal and education. So everything's as a service. Correct. That is a huge deal and this is maybe nuanced a bit but how does public sector turn into a service model with the cloud? Because that's something that everyone's kind of going at. You know cloud native is great. We're going to be cloud native check but really what they're getting to is everything's as a service. Right. It's created a lot of flexibility in the buying process. First of all, you're bringing that elasticity of demand, right? So they are able to embrace the idea that I only pay for the services I actually consume. So should I have a movement in employees? Should I change in structure? Should my usage suddenly spike? I have the ability to adjust on the fly. That's a big part of it. But the other piece of it is that we can deliver our service at a fixed price cost for a certain period of time within that government fiscal year. So not only does it become easy to manage technologically, but from a budget standpoint, it makes it a very predictable cost. I no longer have an explosion of data that I have to manage and go off books to try and find data to provide those IOPS and storage on site. I can simply continue to go at the same budget level that I've already set aside. One dynamic that's come up and while you've brought this up because I think it's relevant to you to what we're just talking about is lock-in, right? I mean the word lock-in has always been vendor lock-in but really that's on one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is user lock-in. So last night, one of my secret meetings I had last night was with a senior government official and we were talking about how they're all pissed because they got Microsoft Surfaces instead of Macs. They wanted Macs. So they were just handed a bunch of Microsoft Surfaces. No, no offense, Microsoft. I love the surface personally, but I got Mac here. The point is they didn't want it. Right. They was forced down their throat. We just shut that for a moment here. This is the old leg. We made a decision. We're going with this product. So this is really the flexibility point is they're interesting, right? Because now with Cloud, you can actually do these really agile deployments. Exactly. And give people more choice. That's right. The time to value on these products, we have a very large defense contractor inside the Beltway. We were able to deploy to 23,000 users worldwide in under six weeks. But we understand that we're in the deployment business or in the performance business. And the idea that our customers could leave us at any point in time when the term is up keeps us very conscious of the specifications that they require. And frankly, it requires us to be innovative on their behalf, certainly taking their feedback, but really starting to anticipate their requirements so that we continue to earn that business year over year. And frankly, if you want to talk about lock-in, SaaS provides tremendous flexibility to switch when a contractor isn't performing the spec versus a perpetual license where I'm locked in for the duration. And this is for you, and obviously they're going to use their dollars wisely. I want to get you to weigh in on Drova's digital transformation impact of the customer. Obviously you guys are doing well. You're in the sweet spot. Obviously, data protection is a hot area. Thank you. It's one of the hottest areas no one really kind of looks at, but it's really hot with the Cloud. What impact are you having with customers and how are you rolling out your value proposition to the public sector? What are the key highlights? I mean, I see, how they work with you. Is it FedRAMP? I mean, what are some of the, is it GovCloud? Just take us through your value proposition with respect to that. Our value proposition I think is fairly unique. So first we run on the most widely accepted cloud platform by the public sector, AWS GovCloud, without question the market leader there. We bring all of our experience from the commercial marketplace into that same experience on GovCloud with the added certifications of FIPS certification 140 dash two moderate, our FedRAMP in process. We're also HIPAA certified so that we have the ability to address HHS and FDA as some of our customers. Because they also process a lot of personal information that is unique to that particular agency. But at the end of the day, the piece that really is most interesting to our public sector customers is one, this is a very easy service to bring to the cloud at lower cost and frankly, higher value. The plethora of features and the security and the ease of management that we bring, relieving them of having to manage hundreds of terabytes of data and IOPS on behalf of this service is tremendously beneficial. The predictability of the cost year over year makes it very, very easy to manage. But I think the biggest thing that people have come to embrace is that the innovation that takes place in the cloud comes to market so much faster in the cloud. Just think of the QA cycles and how they've been reduced because we're QA'ing for one platform. Being able to consistently quarter in, quarter out, deliver that additional feature set and additional value at no additional cost to our customers is really what they've really gelled around. How do you guys handle the certification processes that are going? I'm sure there'll be more. Yes, there will. I mean, with all this free flowing data, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of regulations and policies and governance issues. But you got to move fast. That's right. You got to move fast to certify, is there a secret sauce? Is there a secret playbook? How do you guys stay on top of it? Is it automation, machine learning? What's the secret sauce? I think it's interesting. Part of the uniqueness that is, Druba, I think is our ability to anticipate market demand. I think we have a very experienced team of individuals look at the choice to go to AWS eight years ago. It was unthinkable at that time, but it's turned out to be a visionary sort of choice. We identified that FedRAMP and FIP certification three or four years ago was an absolute mandate to play in this marketplace. So we went there way ahead of our success in the market, but we saw a very unique opportunity to go there. So I think it's just a tremendously creative group of people. It's a very dynamic marketplace, and it's one that requires a little bravery and a little bit of thinking in advance of the marketplace. I don't know that we have any magic sauce, but so far it's worked out. I think it's worked out all right. I would ask you to do it. Oh, that's a good question. But to that point, though, eight years ago, when you went, it was a leap. It was. Big leap. And now here you are, 2017. Things are rolling along. I imagine your sale or your pitch has taken on a different tune because you have so much proof in the pudding now. It does. A long time ago, it was strictly backup. We've now moved into governance, e-discovery, the idea of user behavior analysis so I can find anomalies that may occur so that I can avoid crypto lock or other sorts of viruses or things that may be able to affect the operation of my customers. All of those things have come into play that weren't there four years ago. So it's really been an advancement of the added services beyond what we just did in backup that have really kind of driven the business and differentiated us from the market, but it's still kind of fundamentally that idea that I'm going to protect your data, make it available to you, and separate you now from your device and really help you manage your data wherever you're doing your work. I know we're running tight on time. I do want to get one more question in from your perspective because, again, present creation is really a benefit to Druva. Congratulations on that. Thank you. You can ride the wave and now the wave's bigger and more sets coming in as they use the surfing analogy. But talk about the perspective from your personal standpoint, just the changes going on in this marketplace right now. Theresa Carlson, we were commenting on our opening, you know, how tenacious she's been. She's knocked on a lot of doors. Eight years ago, what the hell's cloud? You don't even know what it was, right? And then the shot heard around the cloud with the CIA deal and then just more and more momentum. This is a great business opportunity for Amazon, web services, not just the enterprise which they're doing well in now. They own the startup market. This could be, I think it could have a 90% market share of the fellow sector. That's right, that's right. Talk about the change, what's going on? What's, is it the perfect storm? Is it like right now? Is it, what's the progress? Well, you know, it seems like it's a perfect storm but for somebody who's been banging at it for the last four or five years, it seems to be a little bit more evolutionary. But it's interesting when I started at Groova, if I looked across our opportunities across the Americas, it was fairly evenly split between the idea that I'm going to do this on premise or I'm going to do it in the cloud. Today, if I look across all of North America and all the commercial entities and public sector entities that we're dealing with, we're probably engaged in well over 500 opportunities at any one time. Literally less than two. Quarter over quarter is now on premise. People have come to embrace the idea that this is a place where I can conduct business safely and securely. And frankly for us, is you look at that digital transformation or business transformation, we become two really compelling services to start and experiment with moving to the cloud. So very often we are the tip of that spear. Let's back up our endpoint devices to the cloud. Let's get out of that business, because we can do it much more effectively with the Groova than we can for ourselves. And it's almost a reverse of what on-trem was. I mean, I've been in many opportunities where I've bumped into IT practitioners, friends and whatnot in the industry. Oh, I forgot to do the backup plan. We all got the procurement going on. It's kind of an afterthought. It's been kind of an afterthought. Kind of oversimplified, but generally it's not the primary. When you go outside the walls of a company into the cloud with no perimeter, it's the first conversation. That's right. So I hear what you're saying, and I totally agree. This is unique. It's a complete flip around. Well, it's amazing. So often we're backing up server data to the cloud. So now it used to be just backing up to the cloud. Now it's, I have the application running in the cloud and I want to back it up and secure it into another cloud. It's completely morphing into all sorts of interesting places. But the part that's really interesting is that we will bring to our customers disaster recovery, for example. Well, that's a service. We turn it on. And if you never experience the disaster, you don't pay for it. It just creates a whole new mindset of how we're going to think and how we're going to approach the infrastructure that we're now building. No license fee. It's just if you need it, you get whacked on it and then you deserve to get whacked on it because you need the service. Well, they know what the cost will be, right? We've set it up for a nominal fee, but if you're fortunate enough that you never experienced the problem, why should you pay for it? So literally cutting that price in half, removing the requirement of two XL servers and 430. It's a new operating model. And the flexibility that it creates to change to your computing requirements is just phenomenal. Well, phenomenal, I think would be a way to describe your ascent as well. Oh, thank you. So congratulations on that front. Glad you could be here with us, Jeff, at the show, continued success. And we hope to see you down the road on theCUBE. John, John, it was a real pleasure. First time, right? It was. It was. First time, good to have your Tor alumni or a CUBE alumni. CUBE alumni. Good to have you with us. Thank you. Thank you so much. With Truva. Back with more here from AWS Public Sector Summit 2017 on theCUBE. You're watching live in Washington, DC.