Sanjay Poonan VMware Explore 2022
Transcript
>> Welcome to VMware Explore 2022 with The CTO Advisor Studio. Come on in and consume some content. >> All right, this is an exciting conversation. VMware Explore 2022. It's where the people you want to talk to in IT infrastructure, in the developing cloud environment, are here. Case in point Sanjay Poonan, former President of SAP, former COO of VMware and current CEO of Cohesity. Welcome back to the program. >> Thanks, brother. Good to see you, Keith. >> It's good to see you again.
>> Thanks for having me on your show. >> You know what? I really appreciate you being here, but there's so much to talk about. And I think the first thing that people want to ask you is what happened to our baseball teams this year? (Sanjay laughs) I mean, that, let's get the important stuff out the way. >> You talking about the Giants? >> Yeah. >> Oh man. I don't know, man. I mean, listen, we're a little spoiled in the Bay area.
We got the Warriors, we got the Ford Warriors. I'm so glad they won, but no one would've predicted that they would except maybe Stephen A, a snip at ESPN. (Keith laughs) I mean, the 49ers went a lot further than I thought they would. Giants in the last season. We'll see, man, it's still early. I'm a believer, we'll see. >> Keith: Yeah. >> And it's fun to go to these games. Fun to take the family, fun there but at the end of the day, you go to other cities that have not had any championship teams, we're pretty spoiled here.
>> So I'm less interested in the end of VMware and more interested in the beginning of something else. I talked to you last year, I talked, we talked about faith. We talked about leadership. We talked about your opportunity to take some time with your family. Mohit, we had him on the program. He loves his company. He has deep technical chops. The team there loves him. He's a well-respected leader within Cohesity. That decision for him to step back and for someone else to step in.
Let's not even talk about you stepping in. You love your family. Why Cohesity? >> Yeah. Why the heck? (Sanjay chuckles) Listen, Keith, when I spent the last year after VMware, thinking about what's next, everybody advised me, treat this like a sabbatical. What is sabbatical? You take a Sabbath, you take rest. >> Right. m. m. at night, to nothing on my calendar, except a nice meeting in a park with Keith Townsend, at some point in time, which is great by the way.
I was on two boards, Philips in Europe, Snyk shortly thereafter. So that was good to keep me intellectually stimulated. I just said, listen, I'm going to start helping companies who needed help, startups would come to me and ask me for help. A few of them, I'd invest in them. Didn't have capacity to join more boards. So four months ago, four, five months ago, when Carl Eschenbach and the Board of VMware, and then, sorry, Board of Cohesity, and Mohit reached out to me, and told me the narrative of what had happened.
They'd filed a confidential S-1, Mohit was- >> Wait a, hold on. I got to interrupt you for a sec, Sanjay. You just mentioned something, S-1. Where are you guys at in the whole going public? >> Listen, we can't talk about it. We did file a confidential S-1, a press release was announced. We are, we'll see what happens as the market. But at that point in time, what happened was we Mohit basically felt he wanted to do the depth job more than the breadth job.
So he went to the Board, and I hope you get to talk to him soon too, 'cause he is just as fired up as ever before. But when he reached out to me, I needed to make sure that he was still fired about being in the company. This is a little bit, you could think of me a little bit like Eric Schmidt coming into Google with Larry and Sergei. >> That's a bold comparison. >> As a new company. >> I don't know.
I hope I'm one day as big as Eric, but this is a little bit like that, where the founder has tremendous amount of clout and should be there for years to come. I need to make sure I have a very, very strong relationship. So I spent three, four months going on walks with him in discreet places where Cohesity people and our competitors wouldn't find out. I wanted to make sure a, it was his decision, and B, that he had still fire his belly.
And I can tell you, he absolutely does. He is the genius that created the Google file system. Bill Coughran on our Board, who was the senior engineering leader at Google, told me when he had engineers in his team, this guy was one of the best, kind of almost the Jeff Dean level. Jeff Dean's kind of the author of a lot of AI, writing, I think, code in the order of 50 to a hundred thousand lines per year. So this guy's the real deal.
He is really the father of hyperconversion because he wrote the code being Nutanix. So this guy is, he's created one unicorn and now it's the second unicorn in Cohesity. So I have tremendous respect for him, but I didn't know him. Well, I'd heard about him and I will tell you, from my vantage point when I was at VMware, even as short as a year ago, when I looked at the data protection space and I was in this space 18 years ago at Veritas.
>> Right. >> So I'd watched this. Hands down these guys are the best tech. All the customers would tell me, when you looked at the, some people had good marketing, had good parties here. But when you looked at the technology and the platform from scalability, from security, from simplicity and cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud, public cloud, one customer told me, which I called during my interim period of doing due diligence, they hadn't seen tech like this since VMware 20 years ago and Amazon 10 years ago.
So the validation from customers of having the best tech for me, Keith, was the most important. >> So Sanjay, let's dive into that a little bit. You don't call the previous president of SAP. You don't call the COO, the previous COO of VMware to deal with the mid-market. This is enterprise. You are enterprise player executive. You understand having conversations at scale. Cohesity, roughly 25, 20, less than 3000 employees, correct? >> Yeah. 2,100. >> 2,100. There's big players in the place, the Veritas, the ConVaults, the gorillas of the space.
They have this thick, the incumbents, they have 20, 30 years of these enterprise IT datas. When you burn the card, play the card and say, "Hey, Mr. CIO, Mr. " how are you having that conversation against those giants and that something as sticky as data protection >> Listen, Keith, first off, every one of those, every company in our space, same with SAP, we had giants there. Oracle was a giant. VMware, we had giants where there was Red Hat, or even the early days, the cloud was somewhat competitive.
We changed them in the partner, so it doesn't daunt me. But firstly, I have respect for them. I was at Veritas in 2004, but there was also a Teradata and now there's a Snowflake. There was also a Symantec and now there's a CrowdStrike. There was also People Soft, now there's a Workday. So disruption happens in tech. Some of these companies were founded in the 1990s, that's 30 years ago. So I have respect for them, but the fact is with a generational shift, especially with cloud and security being the vectors that now are important, you have to redesign architectures to be Webscale.
The legacy players just haven't done that. I have respect for them, but it's a new architecture. If you look at Webscale architectures, the reason the biggest of the biggest Fortune 100 companies are picking us over legacy platforms is the same reason they moved off Teradata to Snowflake. Webscale architectures that can embrace a private and public cloud. And then in the security world, you have to look at this from, when you use data protection, there's a management aspect of it, and there's a security.
I built the security business of VMware. We took it to a billion plus. I was at Symantec. I ran the security business at GRC and I've invested in a lot of security companies including on the board of Snyk. So I had know a lot about security, and in the right aspects of security as relates to data, I think we can do some things that are differentiated. So at the junction of cloud and security, now this is going to sound awfully similar to the conversation we had a year ago when I was at VMware, or two years ago, lies a great company that's going to disrupt.
And that's what they've been doing. IDC ranked everybody in the space last year. And two years in a row, the fastest growing company in this space was Cohesity. So many of those legacy players are good players but slowing down, shrinking, actually declining. We're faster growing, and my hero companies are the Snowflakes, the ServiceNows, the CrowdStrikes, the Datadogs, dogs who I think one day we can be like, and we are well set to do that. We've got to earn our chops, because we had to build a better product, which I believe we have today.
We got to embrace the ecosystem, companies like Amazon and VMware and so on. And third, really delight these customers with the enterprise. The Fortune 1000, which are the biggest US companies in the Fortune 1000, sorry, the thousand best companies in the US, biggest companies, and the Global 2000, which are the biggest 2000 companies in the world are wide open, Keith, to be pursued, because the next gen players are very early in that process. And many of them are looking for a replacement strategy to the legacy players.
And that's what SnowFlake picked up on and executed on. That's our opportunity. >> So you're not the only company in this space recognizing the opportunity. This is unsponsored content. So I can go anywhere I want to. And then I'm going to go- >> You should. >> I'm going to go into taboo space. We'll have the team offer sponsored conversations later but people want to know, the other player in the space, Rubrik, great technology, great founder with similar chops.
Just a really great story. When companies are bringing Cohesity and Rubrik side by side, you're going to have this conversation with CIOs and CTOs, Cohesity over Rubrik, why? >> I mean, first off, I always respect all my competitors. The day I joined, I texted every one of these CEOs of these other companies I know. I mean, when we were here at VMware, they'd all have their beauty parade. >> Keith: Exactly. Yeah. >> Come here, kiss our ring so to speak, if I could, (Keith laughs) to tell 'em why we're the best.
>> It's beautiful. >> So I know them pretty well. >> Right, right. >> It's VMware, right? And so I have respect for them. I texted them said, listen, I'm taking this new role. I want you to know, I'll compete honorably. But people said the same thing when I was at SAP or VMware about VMware versus Citrix. When we were writing (mumbles), Citrix is a credible company, good CEO, but we disrupted them with innovation. So number one, I feel the platform we have is more innovative heard from customers.
That Fortune 100 customer, I can't tell you who it is, baked us off against this company and others, and picked us. And if we win enough more like them where in the enterprise we win because of scale. Put us to the test, and because of scalability and inbuilt security, there's just so much inside the platform. I would be very disappointed if we go head to head in a POC against anybody, if we lose. Now, what is happening, though, is that because we're a smaller company and not as well known, we probably have not marketed ourselves aggressively.
Some of the other companies are perhaps, again, I've got a great marketing team. It's not a function of it, Mohit's an engineer. So now if you get the combination of Mohit and me, who's your favorite duo? " I think this combo, and now the management team I'm going to build, will be the best in the data protection business, bar none. So, gey, game on, and I like a little competition. Our goal now is with these vectors, cloud, security and a better product, and better ecosystem.
So I've come here to tell every VMware customer I'm the best platform. I showed up here, I walked the floor, just like I was a startup CEO again, and earn every customer one at a time. Same thing with the cloud part. Amazon had anybody they could invest in, >> Okay. >> Anybody in this space, they chose to invest in us. They're number one in the cloud. Did their due diligence, picked us, because so we have to earn our confidence.
And even after all we do that, there might be two in the space. It could well be that we are the enterprise player and some of these other players are midmarket. That's okay. There will be two players, multiple, I think that keeps us honest, but we've got to make sure we win the enterprise. >> So you've talked to these enterprise CIOs. they're looking at the news. They're looking at the financial situations. Do you have the resources to continue to invest in R and D to keep that leadership space?
>> Absolutely. I mean, we've been careful about how, I think Mohit and our CFOs run the company very well. Just the fact that we could have filed for a confidential S-1 tells we're in good shape. I think, listen, we have to do this, not by spending on drunken sailors, but through an ecosystem. I mentioned Amazon. Do you know who else our investors and key partners to us, HPE, Pure, Cisco. These are companies who have a storage and a server business.
They didn't in do OEM deals with the others. And I invite everybody, NetApp should partner with us. Dell should partner with us. I want to have a big tent to everybody. I called Michael Dell, and Jeff Clark and Billy Scanlan, said. " We don't want to have any competitors. Our data plane is built to be multi-cloud, so while it can back up into AWS, we're doing Azure. We'll do Google. I called four CEOs when I was taking this job.
Andy Jassy, Satya Nadella, Thomas Curran, and Arvind Krishna at IBM. And I asked them about the space. They're all, many of them are friends and mentors to me. And I believe the big guys will partner with players in the space. Now, could they get in the space? Do they have offerings in the space? Potentially, yes. Dell has an offering. IBM has an offering, but it's my job to try and get as big a tent with everybody that's big.
And I want to stand on their shoulders. Now, as you know me from VMware, that's exactly what we did here. It took us years, but we went and got the Amazon deal. And then I was so excited to get after that Microsoft and Google and Oracle and Alibaba in the cloud world, right? So I know how to create ecosystems. I know how to win great customers. We have to now execute as a company. I'm four weeks in the job.
We just came out of our sales kickoff. I could tell you, our sales team are fired up. >> So last question, a point near and dear to some of your previous role, the Edge. We've talked about this without bringing up, like, you were the Edge guy at one point at VMware. We're interviewing a company that has 200 acres of organic vegetation. Each plant kicks off 25 gig of data a month. The opportunity at the Edge for data is absolutely exploding.
Cohesity, I typically think of a data center player enterprise, IT play. Where's the opportunity in the Edge, and where do you see Cohesity playing in the Edge? >> Yeah, because it's a Webscale architecture, Keith, it's built for three use cases, data center, cloud, and Edge, okay? And the form factors change. But when you have a monolithic product like some of the legacy players, it's hard to adapt to those three use cases. Because it's cloud, we can run a lot of what we're doing either in this hybrid cloud scenario or our data management is a service that runs an Amazon in the Edge type use case.
We even are able to sort of vault our archive data in a air gap solution in the cloud called Fort Knox. It's a great product, it's taken off. So there's a lot of use cases now because the product is nimble. The architecture is simple to be able to tackle that use case with something that's not heavyweight, right? It's hard to get to the Edge in a heavyweight use case. We're built to be a Webscale architecture that brings compute to storage.
Think about the exact, the principle that Mohit saw was, he saw compute coming to storage, reinventing hyperconverge and he was the father of hyperconverge with Nutanix. He took that same idea of bringing compute to storage but secondary storage, which is what, and when you bring that idea, you can apply that same principle to a form factor and a factor as much. Now we probably have to build relationships with other types of partners that are very heavily, maybe the CDN players. There's a variety of players that play effectively in the Edge.
I know a lot about SD-WAN and the Cloudflares of the world. So we'll do that. And the good news is, as we talk to customers they're taking us to those use cases. Retailers are very much thinking about Edge, wo we're talking to some of the biggest retailers. The banks are thinking about Edge, the government sectors. So I know the verticals where cloud data center and Edge are top of conversation. And I think as we work with these largest customers, it's wide open.
Listen, you mentioned four or five competitors. I don't feel like any of them are the big cloud guys. So if every year I'm creating some separation from the same players you've talked about, the biggest question to me as I entered the space was am I going to be long term competing with the huge players, especially the cloud players. And I don't think, I think they're all natural partners. So if AWS, Azure, Google, and then the appropriate service storage networking players, Cisco, HP, Dell, NetApp, so and so forth, are partners of us.
There may be five or six players. At some point I think the market will consolidate to two or three players. And my goal is to be the undisputed leader in data management and data security over time. But every year, Keith, I got to earn my way into that conversation and I'm looking forward to it. >> So you heard it here first. Sanjay Poonan, CEO of Cohesity, four weeks onto the job, is staking his flag into the ground. The undisputed leader in data protection.
We're going to have plenty of data protection companies on as we're continuing the coverage of VMware Explore 2022, here in beautiful San Francisco. Stay tuned as we challenge the vendors in their messaging and you can make the best purchasing decision around your data protection needs in your cloud compute needs. Stay tuned for more coverage.
