 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020, our 11th year at VMworld. And of course, we've been watching VMware, they're doing a lot more in the cloud the last few years, big partnership with AWS and part of that is they bring their ecosystem with them. So just as they've had hundreds of companies working with them in the data center when they do VMware cloud on AWS, on Azure, Oracle, all the cloud service providers, the data protection companies can come along and continue to partner with them. That's part of what we're going to be discussing. Happy to welcome back to the program. It's been a few years. Deepak Mohan, he's the executive vice president of products organization at Veritas. Deepak, thank you so much for joining us. You got a beautiful Veritas facility behind you there. Yeah, nice to meet you Stu. Yeah, we are really excited about the VMworld event and happy to be on the show with you. Yeah, so let's, before we dig into data resiliency and all the other pieces, the Veritas-VM relationship goes way back. I mean, I think back to the early aughts, talk about the software companies. Veritas was the software company in the industry that really got a lot of it started. You know, a little company that you and I both know, an EMC picked up VMware. The rest is history there, but Veritas, that partnership has been there since the early, early days from VMware. So just to refresh our viewers a little bit on that partnership. Yeah, so VMware and Veritas have been partners for like 20 years. In fact, I'll say both companies were founded about the same time we are neighbors in Silicon Valley. And Veritas was actually one of the first companies to have introduced the concept of software-defined, data-centered, software-defined storage. In fact, even before, you know, we said and all came into the picture. But as VMware progressed with the virtualizations of the infrastructure, it was really important for enterprise customers to ensure that both their applications stay resilient and highly available and all that data remains protected. So 87% of the global Fortune 500 customers are Veritas customers. They're all using VMware in their infrastructures. So anytime VMware introduces a technology, we have to ensure it is available, it's protected. So that partnership goes along a long way where every VMware platform has, we supported on day one for the Veritas solution. So very tight partnership, we get to see each other frequently and make sure that our solutions are joint at the hip. Yeah, Deepak, the term we hear from Baratoss, we talk about data resiliency. And as you laid out there, you know, some things have changed. You know, 20 years ago, we weren't talking about cloud-native environments and, you know, all of these various pieces, it was really multi-vendor heterogeneous environments that Veritas lived in. But even in all of these environments, of course, you know, data resiliency, you know, making sure my data is protected, making sure things are secure, is still, you know, top of mind and so important for organizations. So, you know, talk to us a little bit about, you know, what that means here in 2020 with Veritas. Yeah, so I'll say 20 years ago, we had one application, one server, life was fairly simple. You know, then came VMware, you know, now we have the hybrid private clouds, public clouds, hybrid clouds. So the infrastructure is shifting into these other models, but the need for application resiliency and data resiliency is getting more and more complex. Because now we have applications that are running on-prem, they're running in virtual machines, they're running in hybrid environments, they're running in private clouds, they're running in infrastructure as a service, SaaS applications. So they're all over the place. Now think about the job of the CIO. First, you have to make sure all these applications are up and running 24 by seven. Second, these applications have to be protected, which means in case of a disaster, in case of an issue, you have to be able to recover them. Third, how do you be compliant with regulations, with things so the customers now have to have visibility into their infrastructure. So the job of the CIO is becoming super complex to keep in handle on everything. And that's where the companies like Veritas who are doing application resiliency, data resiliency has become really important. I mean, as an example last year at the VMworld show floor, I actually counted the number of backup vendors compared to storage vendors. And there was actually more data protection and resiliency vendors on the floor than there were actually storage vendors. Yeah, Deepak, you're absolutely right. We saw that for years we used to call it storage world because they'd all come in partner with VMware but data protection is so important here. One of the big conversations this year, of course, is that rollout of project Pacific with vSphere 7, vSphere 7 update one just right ahead of VMworld. I'm assuming Veritas is just keeping in lockstep with VMware, but talk a bit about how that fits into the portfolio. Oh, absolutely. So one of the keys for Veritas success over the last 20 years is that we have kept up with all the technology transformations and all the technology disruptions that happen. And as these hybrid cloud disruptions are happening with, you mentioned project Pacific, but it's the 10 zoo platform, we are one of the design partners with VMware for to ensure the data protection layers are done correctly. So we are definitely working with VMware on the 10 zoo resiliency, as well as leveraging the Valero platform. So we'll make sure that as our customers are deploying these new solutions, the Veritas solutions are there for to offer them the resiliency and data protection needed. Yeah, Deepak, we've watched that real maturation of what VMware is doing in the clouds. Of course, the partnership, first with IBM at VMworld a few years ago, right after VMworld, it was with AWS. And there was a lot of interest, but we are seeing that customer adoption. I wonder if you talk about how closely you work with them. Do you have any, you know, maybe anonymized customers that you can talk about what they're seeing in the cloud, why VMware and Veritas went when they go to this environment? Yeah, so we have several customers who are moving into the cloud space, leveraging say VMC, or now with the Azure VMware solutions. So what happens is when these customers, we have large financials, for example, who are using now VMware and migrating their workloads into the cloud. So they may be deploying virtual machines there, but the need for HA and data resiliency in backup actually gets a little bit more complex because the old environments are still there on-prem. Some workloads are now moving to the cloud and they're leveraging the Veritas solutions. One, to support the migration. Second, to offer the resiliency, leveraging the Veritas resiliency platform or net backup or Veritas input scale. An example is, I'll use an example of an airline customer, reservation systems moving to AWS within two availability zones. The application availability comes with the Veritas solution. So Veritas is on their journey to the cloud, helping enterprise customers work in these hybrid use cases. Deepak, since you've got so many customers and they're going through their cloud journeys and Veritas works across all the environments, you get a good viewpoint as to where we are. One of the things we're really trying to help clarify people, we throw out these terms hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. Most customers I talk to, we have a cloud strategy. And do you use more than one cloud? Yes. Is portability the big concern? Oh no, I'm not moving things all over the time. I don't wake up and say, I'm checking the stock market and therefore I'm going to move to one or the other. But I need to have my multiple environments. Difficult on them with different skill sets. And we're seeing companies like Veritas and VMware living where the customer is. So give us a little insight as to what you're seeing from the customers, this whole hybrid multi-cloud environment, what does it mean to your customers? So what I'll say is, we have a variety of customers. And invariably when we talk to them, each one of them has a little bit different journey to the cloud. Some customers, I'd say maybe more mid-market want to move completely towards a platform as a service approach and leverage either Azure or AWS. But I'll say most of the enterprise customers are looking at taking workloads. It could be one of their applications. Some are further ahead in the journey and they're taking now a mission critical application. Again, it could be an SAP workload. It could be some mission critical, billing system, reservation systems. And then using VMware as the mechanism to go into the cloud with it. And when they do that, they're looking for the same level and same level of tools for both availability and data protection. So I'll say that we have lots of different examples between utilities, healthcare companies, financials, government, who are, I'll say the common theme is now they are moving towards, I'll say the harder workloads are now moving to the cloud and now they're absolutely leveraging tools from Veritas. They want to make sure that our solutions actually support those complex and highly scalable use cases. And we are absolutely doing that with the solutions. Well, Deepak, you talk about some of the challenges that customers have, some things have changed in 2020. One thing that has not changed is that security is top of mind. We often see the data protection and security, some of those pieces go hand in hand. I remember years ago talking at the Veritas conference, it was GDPR and ransomware, were the big things that we talked about with every single customer as to how they were defending and preparing for that. So give us the state of your environment. We know that even when everybody's working from home, unfortunately the bad actors, they're actually working over time. No, yeah, so I'll say the problem of ransomware has actually gotten a whole lot worse over the last couple of years. So as we think about ransomware, we have the security layer, which means first is you have to make sure your infrastructure is protected. You know, the second layer is detection, which means how do you know if there's ransomware sitting in your environment? Because it could have come in and it may actually click in at a much later time. And the third is recovery. And to be able to recover, you need really good data protection and backup policies within the company so you're able to recover it. So of course, most companies invest a lot in the security software, but we know that ransomware still gets sent. It can get in through a phishing attack, it can get in through email. Some, one of the employees at home clicks on something, you know, ransomware is in. So the backup and the data protection is the last line of defense to be able to recover. So now you have it, you're stuck, what do you do? You want to find the last best copy, be able to recover very, very quickly. And the problem is really serious. I was actually talking to one of our tech support leaders and we get at least one call a day with one of our customers that's been hit with ransomware and we help them through the recovery process. So that's a heavy investment area for Veritas with our net backup software, backup exec software. But also with the hardened Veritas appliances, we provide a very solid way for our customers to be able to protect and recover from ransomware. The only thing I suggest is, you know, once you've been hit and if you don't have a good backup, you know, I talked about that huge estate, that entire estate has to be protected also from ransomware, which means standardization is key. So when something happens, are you going to look at nine products to recover from or you want all your catalogs, all your data, all your insights in one place so you can then go quickly come back online and not have to pay the ransom. All right, well, Deepak, let's bring it home. We're here at VMworld. We talked at the beginning about the long partnership. You were there, you know, day zero with the vSphere 7 activity. What do you want people to take away from VMworld 2020 when it comes to Veritas? The key message to our mutual customers is that Veritas is here to support your journey to the hybrid cloud to the cloud. We are investing heavily in the solutions. We are goal is to continue providing day zero support for all VMware solutions and releases. And we are working very closely with VMware on the Tanzu platform rollout. We are a design partner with VMware there as well as leveraging the right APIs, whether it's VADP, VAIO, VSAN, we are certified on every latest versions of the VMware portfolio. We have several hundred engineers that work day just to make sure that we support these platforms. In addition, I'll say is as the VMware connects to AWS and to Azure, those solutions are also extremely well-certified. So Veritas works very closely with AWS. We were the first to be certified on the AWS solutions and VMware VMC. You're talking about like outposts, I believe? Oh, yes, outposts, yeah. So we just got the outposts ready certification, works extremely well with the VMware solutions as well as AVS, Azure VMware solution. So heavy areas of investment for us. So the same way that our customers have depended on us over the last 20 years, we are writing the technology disruptions to help our customers into the next wave with the same set of solutions working both on-prem hybrid and cloud. Yeah, Deepak, I'm having flashbacks. You and I remember the things when it was the VXFS and the VXVM and now we've got the, all the VMware versions on AVS and Google Cloud VMware Engine. It gets a little confusing out there, but hey, I really appreciate you giving us some clarity as to how you're helping customers with their data resiliency, supporting in ransomware and the deep and long partnership that Veritas and VMware have. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, thank you, Stu. All right, stay tuned. Lots more coverage from VMworld 2020. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE.