Theresa Miller VMware Explore 2022
Transcript
>> Welcome to VMware Explore 2022 with a CTO Advisor Studio. Come on in and consume some content. >> Welcome back to our wall-to-wall coverage of VMware Explorer 2022. We're here in Moscone center, newly remodeled. We were freshly remodeled in 2019, Theresa, and we were all excited to be back. >> Theresa: Yeah. >> It took another three years to come back again. Thank you, Cohesity, for sponsoring the CTO Advisor Road Trip and CTO Advisor Studio here at VMware 2022.
Theresa Miller. Theresa, what's your official title at Cohesity? >> I'm the Director of Technology Advocacy at Cohesity. >> So again, here at VMware 2022 CTO Advisor Studio, we're having real conversations directed at cloud architects, enterprise architects, CTOs. We've had your peers on the show already. But there's a talk track or a walkway that I want to get off the top. Cohesity, a backup data protection company for VMware vSphere. VMware Explore 2022 is now a cloud conference. Eh, I don't.
The two aren't kind of melding in my mind. >> So the first thing we should level set on is that we're not just vSphere protection. So we can protect workloads, your on-prem servers, physical servers. We're in the Hyper-V space. We have vSphere, even cloud servers, virtual machines, instances, depending on the cloud, can be protected by our solution. >> Well, as I think about that, as I think about virtual machines being able to be protected by Cohesity, I still have to push back on that because Cohesity is a box.
It's a modular thing that I put in my data center. And when I need to expand the storage, I go to Cohesity. I go to my salesperson. I buy another box, and I put that on top. How's that backing up cloud workloads? That seems super inefficient. >> Yeah. So I think that if you think back to where Cohesity started, it was a box that you purchased and we're not that anymore. We're a software solution that you can deploy to basically any server you would like.
So if you have a relationship with HPE, Dell. You can deploy Cisco, it's another one. You could deploy our software to that, also in the cloud. So if you are a huge Microsoft shop, or an AWS shop, Google shop, you can actually deploy our software into those clouds to protect those workloads. So we are truly a software solution. Oh, and don't let me forget SAS. We're also, we have a SAS offering that will allow you to protect workloads as well.
>> You beat me to a question, 'cause I was going to ask you. I'm like, well, what if I don't want to manage any of that- >> Yeah. >> and I want a SAS offering. So we'll get to the SAS offering- >> Theresa: Yep. >> in a little, but I still want to beat up on this concept as Cohesity being a software offering. One of the advantages of buying an appliance, a box, is that I don't have to install it.
I don't have to worry about the bits when I want it updated. There's a single update from Cohesity, and I get the firmware update or the package update. When you break it out, and I put it on my ProLiant server, which I love. We're standardized on ProLiant, and I would love to have all of my appliance software on the appliance. Doesn't that complicate support? >> It actually has worked out really well because of our partnerships with many of these other companies.
But I think you hit on something that was really, really important. And it's customer choice. I've personally worked in so many enterprises that were standardized on, like, HPE or Cisco, and to bring forth a new solution that couldn't be deployed on our standardized hardware would stop the conversation. I couldn't actually bring something in even if it was the right answer, right? >> Keith: Yes. >> Because I wasn't following the best practice of the organization and the people that had to manage it, so.
So in any case, it's really about choice for the customer and the support. We just have powerful partnerships. >> So standard, is Cohesity still the first level of support that I call if I'm having a problem with backup or data protection, or if I'm, and we'll get into the ransomware conversation, if I'm hit by ransomware, the first company I call is going to be my data protection company. Is that still the first level call? How does support work? >> Yeah, so I think that's interesting on the ransomware side.
I think you said we'll dive into that in a little bit. Let's come back to that. I think that's part of the onion to unravel. " Absolutely. You call Cohesity first. >> All right. So again, last question around this software bit. Let's talk about the SAS offer. When I think about traditional data protection solutions that say that they're available in the cloud like the ACID test, is there a SAS offering? Because of course I can take the solution and install it on the VM, put a bunch of EC2 storage behind it, and it's going to work.
It's a Windows server or a Linux server, whether it physical or virtual, is a server. That SAS offering, where are you at with feature parity with the SAS offering versus the all-software offering? >> That's a great question. So in terms of the SAS offering, we have been expanding on workloads. We released it at this point, I feel like it's been at least 18 months. So workload-wise, we definitely have made a lot of advancements, right? I mean, you can do databases.
You can protect AWS workloads. You can protect your VMware vSphere virtual machines, M365, NAS, so. So there's definitely a lot from that perspective. There are certain features that you would be able to pull out of the regular product, the regular data protect product that aren't quite in our SAS offering yet. But what we find is that a lot of the times, organizations aren't necessarily looking for all workloads in the SAS offering. M365 is a big one where a lot of organizations are looking to use a different data plane, for example.
'Cause if you're M365, you're on Azure. And if you're a Microsoft shop you're on Azure. But you might have compliance reasons to have a copy of that data somewhere else, number one, and on a different back plane, which right now is AWS. So if those are requirements for an enterprise it turns out to be a really, really great option. >> So let's talk about kind of that geo conversation, because especially with a SAS offering- >> Theresa: Yep. >> if I'm in the EU, I want my data backed up in the EU.
>> Theresa: Correct. >> If I'm in the US, I want it in the US. Where's the solution offered, and where do I have my data rights protected? >> Correct. Yeah. So again, so we have the advantage of leveraging with AWS and the back plane. So regions that come to mind, there are many, and we're pretty geographic at this point. So we're east coast, west coast, US. There's a central, the Ohio region with AWS, Canada, APJ, Australia, and a couple different locations even over in Europe.
And I know that there are more. Those are the ones that come top of mind for me, but we're also always expanding as well, right? It's where customer demand is, and regions are being added. >> So we can't have the data management, data protection conversation without talking to what we handed to ransomware. What are the top couple of concerns customers are coming to Cohesity about when it comes to ransomware? >> So it's always, almost always recoverability. So, because security's a tricky topic, and it's really complex from the perspective that enterprise environments are complex to begin with, right?
You have workstations, you have mobile devices, you have servers. Now in this day and age, you have servers in the cloud. You have, as a service, applications in the cloud, and more, so. So you're going to have different layers of security in place at all of those levels anyways. But where Cohesity comes in, there's a couple different ways to think about it. So first of all, we do, because we're touching your data. If you're protecting your data with our solution, we do have the ability to do anomaly detection on that data.
And that will be flagged. And you'll be notified that there is the likelihood that there's ransomware on this server. You'll also know which server backup version you could roll back to that would be clean. So that's one element of it. I think the other areas that you could, 'cause every organization wants to do something different, right? We do archiving. We offer replication to other Cohesitys, which, you know, you could have one on prem, one in your cloud, Azure, whatever.
AWS, you could have it deployed there. You could do, we do have Cohesity appliances still, you could do a Cohesity appliance to another. So lots of flexibility. And then we also have a new SAS offering called Cohesity FortKnox, which offers organizations the ability to have that anomaly detection up front. But more importantly, FortKnox takes a copy of that data, it vaults it to a cloud, and gives you some additional security benefits that you may not have with, like, a traditional backup or archive copy or replicated copy.
And that is that we have a air gap. So it's because ransomware can impact a backup target if you don't have immutability in place, right? Worm et cetera. >> Yeah. If it's just simply a backup of either ransomware, or the ransomware attacks the platform directly. >> Yep. Yep. >> If I can tell the Cohesity Helios platform to erase my backup, well, you know, what's the point of having the backup? It no longer exists. >> Theresa: Yeah.
>> So how do I make that immutable? >> Yeah. So, well, Cohesity FortKnox has that immutability built right in. We call it data lock. But the data's air gapped, so if ransomware hits your environment, it can't get out and tamper with that data. The data is worm-like. And then the other piece to it is the recovery. And actually other elements, even the protection jobs can be set up with quorum-based approval, meaning that if for some reason, credentials were compromised, and someone tried to go into that vaulted copy and do something they shouldn't, you've got multiple approvers down the line that work at that organization just to make sure that this recovery is okay.
>> So where are you at with that next level of capability beyond vaulting in a public cloud? Can I recover to a public cloud if something happens? >> So you're recovering back to the original location. So if you're, it's all about how you set up the jobs. So if that original location was on prem, then you're recovering back to on prem. If it was in the cloud, you recover back to the cloud. So it's all about where that exists to begin with.
>> So the last question I wanted to ask you about was I heard that Cohesity has a marketplace. I'm not quite getting how, I mean, okay, I'll accept Cohesity is no longer a box. It's a software. But it's a software with a marketplace? What kind of solutions can I get from the marketplace? >> So my favorite workloads in the marketplace actually align with our SmartFile solution, which is basically where you can store your files and objects, like your user file shares, et cetera, or team shares.
Now we do more in the marketplace than this, but, like, this is my favorite space, so. So if you have a traditional file share, and those files are not on Cohesity, you're out there buying solutions, separate solutions that you're deploying on separate architecture and infrastructure to do auditing, to do antivirus scanning, and to analyze PII. Our marketplace has a few applications that work really well with the SmartFile's capabilities that basically, right on the Cohesity, you can download that software, install it, and then get some file and audit, some PII detection, as well as antivirus protection.
>> So if I have a Edge solution, if I have a Edge location, are you telling me I don't have to buy something like an Isilon and a Cohesity solution? I can just have the Cohesity solution at my Edge location? >> You could. We absolutely store files and objects. Yeah. It's called SmartFiles. >> All right. Well, Theresa, I appreciate you coming on. I've asked you some tough questions. >> Theresa: Yeah. >> We prepped, but I still asked you some tough questions.
>> Theresa: Yeah. >> If you don't think I asked Theresa tough enough questions, we follow each other on Twitter. My DMs are open. DM me, @thectoadvisor on Twitter. I will more than happily pass along those questions to Theresa. com. Stay tuned for more wall-to-wall coverage as we talk to operators, practitioners, developers, analysts, other vendors here at VMworld Explore 2022.
