 Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering Veritas Vision 2017, brought to you by Veritas. Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. This is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage, and we're here covering wall-to-wall coverage of Veritas Vision 2017, hashtag Vitas Vision. I'm Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. Lynn Lucas is here, she's the CMO of Veritas. Welcome to The Cube. I am so excited to be on The Cube for the first time. Thank you for joining us. Oh, well, thank you for having us. We're really excited to have you. We were talking off camera and this morning at our open about Richard Branson, the keynote. Very inspiring, so interesting, and then you got an opportunity to interview him. It was really substantive. So what was that like? What was it like meeting him? What was he like backstage? Share it with our audience. Absolutely, so first, it really was an honor. The man has, when you do the research on him, the number of businesses he's created and disrupted is really amazing when you go back and look at it, record industry, phone industry, airline industry. I mean, it goes on and on and he's still doing it. What I was most struck with though is that he's really humble and approachable. So we spent about 20 minutes with him in the backstage and he was just a very genuine person, very concerned as you and your listeners may have heard in the keynote about the impact of the hurricanes. Really committed to philanthropy now and what I loved is that he really understood what Veritas is doing with data and he was able to really quickly connect that with how it might help on important issues that he's concerned about, namely climate change, making communities, part of businesses, and so forth. It was fantastic. Well, I thought he did a really good job and you guys did a really good job because he's like, okay, wow, Richard Branson, big name, but why is he at Veritas Vision and he came, he talked about his agenda, he talked about the hurricane, he connected it to data, to climate change. He very, like I said, off camera in a non-self-promoting way, let us know, very quietly that, yeah, of course, the fee that I'm getting here, I'm donating to the cause, you should donate too, right? And it was just really, congratulations on such a good get. Well, we were thrilled to have him and really honored to have him and I truly felt that he understands the importance technology he's playing. He actually told us that they were without cell phone and any kind of internet connection right after the hurricane for about, I think what he said was about seven days and he said it was a very weird, disconnected feeling because it's become so prevalent in our lives and then when they all left and got on his plane to go back to London to mobilize aid for the British Virgin Islands, said that he looked back in the plane and he said every single person is on their phone like this and it's such an interesting and powerful tool, though, for generating interest in unfortunately the very horrible events that have happened and so the social media and the connectivity that we all experience and getting that word out. I think he really connected with what we do as technologists here and he had a really fascinating conversation with us about his interest in flying cars. So he's seeing potential for flying cars in the next few years and as a way to perhaps help us reduce carbon emissions and he's excited about technology so I think he had a lot of fun. And we should mention, I think Bill Coleman and Veritas is matching contributions and then you've extended that through his nonprofit. Correct, so Bill Coleman also is a great philanthropist like Richard is and ever since he's arrived here at Veritas he's been very lean forward with making sure that Veritas is giving back. It was part of the culture but I really feel that Bill has augmented that. And so for these recent set of disasters, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Veritas has set up funding and then we are doing double matching and what we did after the unfortunate Hurricane Irma came through is Virgin Unite is donating to the BVI's. We've added that to the list of charities and double matching that as well. So people can go to Virgin Unite and donate or they can donate through your website as well. They can go to, they should go to Virgin Unite and donate. They should go to the, there's also the American Red Cross in the Houston area and the Miami area that are doing donations. Donate direct through them. So please take a moment if you can, donate often, every little bit helps for sure. So okay, so let's get into it. Quite a show, second year of Veritas. What's the rebirth of Veritas in our view? How do you feel? Give us the sort of rundown on the show. Oh, fantastic. The feedback from the customers, which is what I'm really most concerned about here has been this, last year was a great coming out but this Veritas is much more innovative than we ever thought you could be. We heard the predictions around 360 data management last year, but wow, you've delivered. You've got a new set of exciting announcements around what we're doing to move to the cloud. Clearly the partnership with Microsoft is a huge part of that. New innovations in SDS and so we've seen great rise in attendance this year in terms of our customers and we've had a fabulous new set of sponsors which I'm just thrilled to have here, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, IBM, which I think shows the strength of what we're doing to help customers as they move to the cloud and they really are transforming their data center environment. So, talk a little bit about digital as a marketing pro. Every customer we talked to was going through, if you talk to the C level, they're going through digital transformations, it's real. As a CMO, you're living in a digital transformation. What does it mean from a marketing perspective how are you addressing these trends and taking advantage of them? It's crucial. I spend most of my time with my staff thinking about how do we advance our own digital expertise and take advantage of the data that we too have. Really, CMOs are in command of so much data around customers or should be in command of so much data around customers in a good way to provide more content that is directed at what their problems are. I think we've all experienced the uncomfortable feeling where maybe you Google something and suddenly you're getting ad after ad after ad from a company and it might have been an accidental Google search, right? So, we can use it for good in that way and understanding our customers. We're on a real digitization journey. It's a big word but what it means for me in marketing at Veritas is really advancing and investing in our marketing infrastructure. One of the new things that we've just done is a complete underpinning reboot of Veritas.com which the audience can see has gone live right here for vision, making the site more personalized and more relevant to those that are visiting it. Lynn, one of the things we've been digging into a little bit is you have a lot of existing customers with a very strong legacy. There's all these new trends and you threw out lots of really interesting data. IoT, 269 times greater data than the data center. How do you balance kind of helping customers get more out of what they have but bringing them along, showing them the vision, helping them along that path to the future because change is difficult. It is but I have to say and I think Mike Palmer said this as well at one point. Actually, when I visited customers, I've been in this year, I've been to Australia, I've been to France, I've been to Germany, and London, Singapore, all over in the US and talking to a lot of our existing customers and what they're telling us is really that we want your help in moving forward. So we really embrace our existing customers. We're not in the business of trying to go around them but they're our best advocates and I think as a marketer it's really key to understand that is your existing customers are your best advocates. So we're helping them understand what we're doing for them today and also helping them learn how they can be advocates and heroes maybe to other parts of the business with some of these new technologies. Yeah, that's a great point. I'd love for you to expand on. In IT it was always up. The admin for my product is kind of where I'm selling and how do I get up to the C-suite? Conversations we've been having this week. There's a lot of the cloud strategy, GDPR, digitization. The person that might have bought net back up is pulling in other members of the team. Talk us to us a little bit about the dynamics inside the company where Veritas is having those conversations. Yeah, I think actually you've brought up GDPR and that's a perfect example. So GDPR is a regulation that is going to impact any company that is holding data about a European Union citizen and it's an area that Veritas can really solve problems in but we didn't know a lot of the legal and compliance buyers which often are the ones making the purchase decisions in this case. We have been so thrilled to see that our existing advocates in the backup space have been bringing us into conversations and in Europe what we've done so successfully now is actually bring the two groups together in round tables and have our current customers bring us into conversations with legal and compliance and it's creating for them stronger connections within the business and that makes them more relevant to their bosses and those other lines of business and there's a lot of proactive or positive feedback around that that I think is what marketers and sales should be thinking about. It's not about having to go around, it's about how do I bring you with me. So as you grow on the world, I wonder if again another marketing, marketing to me is very challenging. You got a hard job, marketers. I don't have the marketing DNA but you want to maintain your relevance. You're a 30 plus year old company. Take something like GDPR. How do you think about the content that you serve up your audience? You can scare them to death. That's what a lot of people are doing. You can educate them but it's kind of deep and wonky. How are you thinking about that transfer of knowledge for the benefit of customers and obviously ultimately for the benefit of Veritas? So the way I think about that is B to H. Business to human. So at the end of the day, we talk about B to B marketing or B to C marketing. It's B to H now. And what I mean by that is at the end of the day, we're all human individuals. We have a lot coming at us as you pointed out with information and data. So what we've done is definitely not a scare tactic. Yes, GDPR is coming. But I think that in marketing my philosophy is let's work on how we can help you in the positive. I don't believe in the fear, uncertainty and doubt. And what we've done is approach it as we would hope to be approached which is let us give you some practical information simply in amounts that you can absorb. Let's face it, I think Jothi was the one that said this. Our attention span is about that of a goldfish. I can't remember if it was plus or minus one second. And so what we've actually gotten great feedback on is that we've broken the GDPR regulation down into very simple parts. And we've said, hey, here are the five parts. Here's how we're relevant and can help you. And we've done that in pieces that are as simple as a one page infographic. We can obviously go a lot more complex. But at the beginning when you're researching a topic, you're not looking for the 40 page white paper anymore. You're looking for what we call snackable pieces of content that gets you interested. Yeah, that was good. I remember that infographic from the session yesterday. It was sort of discover and then four other steps and made it sound simple even though we know it's more complicated but at least allows a customer to frame it. Okay, I think I can now get my arms around these. I understand there's a lot of depth beneath each of them but it helps me at least begin to grok it. Another topic we want to talk about is women in tech. We had a great conversation with Alicia Johnson from Accenture about Wave, which is a women in veritas empowered, right? Talk about, again, the relevance of those programs generally and I want to ask you some follow up questions. Sure. So I'm a big believer in those types of programs. We want to sponsor those here and bring together our own veritas female engineering community but also our customers that are here. I think that while we would all like it to be a world where we were at a neutral bias free, we're not quite there yet. And I think that programs that bring people together, whether it's gender or any other dimension, are important to get people to connect in a community, share with each other, learn from each other. And so I do hope one day for my daughter, who's 11 perhaps, that this is a non topic but until it isn't, I think the power of sharing is important and so really pleased to have Wave. It's our second year having Wave. It was a bigger program with Accenture sponsoring it and we look forward to continuing to do that. Veritas also will have a big presence at the Anita Borg Institute, which is coming up next month as well. Yeah, and theCUBE will be there, of course, our fourth year there, Stu. Yes, yes, you will. It's a big show for us and we're obviously big supporters of the topic. We tend to talk about it a lot and I think, you know, Lynn, your point is right. Hopefully by the time our daughters are grown up we won't be talking about it but I think it's important to talk about now. It is. And one of the things that Accenture laid out is by 2025, their objective is to have 50% women on staff and I think it was 25% in women in leadership positions. I was impressed and struck, and I wonder if you can comment as a C-level executive struck by the emphasis on P&L management, which tends to be a man's world but thoughts on that and you as a C-level executive, women in that position. Yeah, and again, it's one of these things where I'll have to say it's a little both uncomfortable but obviously I feel that it's still important to talk about because I wish we were at a place where we didn't have to. I'm really proud of Veritas because we have myself and Michelle Launderhaar on Bill's staff. So Bill has been a promoter of having diversity on his own direct staff and I think that tops down approach is super important in Silicon Valley and any business that there's real support for that and Michelle Launderhaar is our chief counsel which has in many cases not been a position that where you would have seen a lady leading that. So we work on that at Veritas and I personally believe it and I think Mr. Branson said that as well in his keynote as well this morning. When we have diversity, we have a breadth of ideas that makes it just a better place to work and frankly I think leads to better innovation in whatever field that you're in. Lynn, last question I wanted to ask you, the tagline of the conference is the truth and information. So much gets talked about, what's real news? What's fake? What do you want people as the takeaway for Veritas and the show? The truth and information is our rallying cry and you're right, I think it couldn't be more timely. We're not here to take a particular political stance but what we find is in the business world the companies are struggling with where do I find what's really relevant? Let me give you a story, I was in France earlier this year sitting with a CIO of one of the very largest oil and gas companies in France. Happens to be a lady who was formerly the Chief Data Officer and she'd moved from that position into the CIO position and when we talk about the truth and information the example that she gave us which was so striking is that they've been doing the scans of the earth and actually the streets of Paris for 50, 60 years to understand the infrastructure, what they may have and so forth and at this point with all of that data they literally are having a hard time understanding what out of all of these pieces of information these topographical scans that they have is relevant anymore and this is the same story that I've heard in pharmaceutical companies that are doing drug tests this is the same story that you would hear in frankly media companies that are doing filming and are trying and all of this is digitized so when we talk about that with our customers it really resonates is that with so much coming at us it's hard in business as well as it is in our consumer lives to really know what do I have that's relevant and I think the opportunity Veritas has is to help customers with a single data management platform start to get a handle on that and be able to be much more efficient and productive. All right Lynn Lucas we have to leave it there thanks so much for coming on theCUBE really appreciate it. Thank you I've really enjoyed my first time I can't wait to be back on again and hope to have you guys here next year of region 2018. Love to be here. All right bringing you the truth from Veritas vision this is theCUBE we'll be right back.