Transcript
in New York City watching theCUBE's coverage of VeeamON 2026. The afternoon keynotes are getting ready here. People are excited. My name is Dave Vellante here with Chris The Case. We're also joined by Tom Watson, who's the Director of Cyber Resilience Alliances at Everpure. Welcome. Yeah, thrilled to be here. It's wonderful to be in New York, an incredible atmosphere here and a great location as well. A really, really neat venue. Yeah, so you've been in this role a little over a year. You know a little bit about data protection and cyber resilience, but tell us a little bit about this role at Everpure. Yeah, so in my role, I've been there for about 13 months so far. And what we've really been trying to do at Everpure is move beyond just a storage company, right? With the rebrand formerly Pure Storage, we've been focused on enterprise data management. And with cyber resilience, a lot of the focus there has been moving beyond just a repository for the backups, but really driving outcomes for our customers around cyber resilience and cyber recovery in general. And this partnership with Veeam that's been really wonderful over 10 years that we've been partnering together has been leading the way, especially with our enterprise data cloud solutions. Okay, so Pure Storage had really great storage. Now you're moving beyond that to what'd you say, enterprise data management. Yeah, enterprise data management, exactly. How is that resonating with customers? What does that mean to customers now that you're Everpure? Yeah, so I think it's resonating really well. One of the reasons why we made this change is we really saw the demand from the customers to be more than just storage. Really think of storage these days as one of the last layers or last line of defense in general. So overall, what we've done is cyber resilience as delivered as a service is a framework that Veeam and Everpure worked together to put out there last September, actually, at our Accelerate New York, and that's around nine, 10 months ago. Since then, in the March timeframe, we debuted our Veeam Anomaly Awareness Integration, really incredible integration. With that, we're using our Pure One offering to identify anomalies. We had flagged that over to the Veeam Instant API, and then VBR is able to go in and actually tag potential anomalies in there. So all in all, we're really focused on delivering greater simplicity to our customers to help drive those end results they're looking for. Tom, can you kind of put a finer point on that and take us through the Venn diagram, like where Veeam leaves off, where you pick up, where there's some overlap, and maybe give us a little thought as to where you'd like to take the partnership. Yeah, so overall, with this integration, it's being able to identify those anomalies, and we're really proud at Everpure, using our Pure One and showcasing some of our capabilities, again, more than just a storage company. But with that, we're able to flag that and send it over to Veeam, and then Veeam's able to go do that deeper discovery and use the capabilities that Veeam has beyond just a backup company, but all of those capabilities in terms of identifying what might be causing that anomaly. But overall, for our customers, the real incredible value there is having everything inside now of the VBR console. So you're no longer having to, say, go to the Pure One console, but the security admins are being able to see all that visibility, single-planning the glass, so driving the operational simplicity, and then faster speed recovery. So the other advantage for Everpure is you can do that across any, irrespective of the physical location, cloud, on-prem, you're out at wherever the devices are, or wherever the infrastructure are. That's a single experience for the customer, right? So really, yeah, we're focused for the Veeam side. It's going to be that single pane of glass, so you're not having to go into different consoles. It's going to be all right there in the VBR. So we think of it as eliminating some of the barriers between the storage side of the house and the security side of the house, and really giving that visibility in one singular place. How are customers thinking about this move toward so-called accelerated computing? I mean, you guys have always done, in your world, accelerated, right? We were slash all day, right? Of course. But now we're kind of redefining accelerated computing. So what's that conversation like, and how does that affect the need for greater cyber resilience? Yeah, so I mean, breakout times, I think the fastest one most recently from the CrowdStrike report was about 27 seconds. So when you think about that, just having fully integrated across all the different layers. So at EverAppear, we're speaking more and more about this six layers of cyber resilience, and overall, the operational resilience that provides. So I think at the end of the day, it's having all of your different solutions be able to speak to each other, be integrated so that you can recover. Because unfortunately, I think we're moving towards a world where it's not an if but when bad actors are going to get into the environment. Yeah, certainly, Tom. And I know you were kind of talking about this operational simplicity, but there's also sort of this six layers you were just talking about that sort of you've integrated together. And so putting myself in the shoes of the customer, it sounds like that framework is what helps to make this actually an operational reality, because it could be pretty complex without that. Yeah, it can be complex. So being all inside the VBR console for that single pane of glass, I think there's so much value there. And then again, being able to take all the different signals from the different layers, the storage signals, and being able to automate that over to the VBR eliminates a lot of the potential human error, and then that helps with the speed of the recovery as well. What are the salient aspects of a good partnership? I mean, obviously, you want to drive revenue, of course. But when you come into a role like this, what do you look for to determine, okay, we've got good alignment, it's going to meet the customer's need, there's product market fit. How do you determine that? What does a good partnership look like, Tom? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think one of the biggest things that I've seen is being so important is that the shared organizational values is really, really impactful. And then both of our organizations have a really high focus in terms of moving more and more into the enterprise market. So I think our solution scientists have done a wonderful job of really uniting over the past 13 months to really focus on those customer outcomes and working back from the customer to deliver them something that's going to be really powerful. Not just building offerings or solutions in a silo, but getting out there in the market, understanding what the demands are, and then going out there and building solutions that are going to assist with those needs. So how do you determine that? I mean, that sounds like something that AI can't just figure out. That's like a human touch, you know, a sixth sense, you know, how do you determine that cultural fit? Yeah, so it's a lot of different areas. I think going out and aligning in the field is one of the most impactful things. Having conversations with the customers. One of the great things about our partnership is the thousands and thousands of customers that we have together. So we have an incredible voice back to us in terms of what's valuable, what's needed, and then it's really just taking the opportunity to listen. So Tom, I had a question. You mentioned sort of these customer outcomes, right? And I'm sure, I know you talked about sort of the anomaly detection, right? So I'm sure things like faster time to detection, right? Or some of them, but can you speak to some of those customer outcomes that you're hearing frequently? Yeah, so I can't speak to anything too specific, but I think overall, it's being able to identify sooner, right, instead of just searching through storage logs, et cetera, having the automated capabilities that our integrations are building on, and then we're going to have, I have not mentioned yet, but we are going to be adding on to our EDC roadmap that we're jointly building together. So we're now at v13.1 integration that'll be upcoming, so very excited for that overall. But yeah, I think it just goes to the automated pieces being the most valuable there to surface these potential errors in a more expedited fashion. So you mentioned joint customers. Yep. Veeam, I think, has 550,000 customers. Absolutely incredible, yeah. So I'm holding my dashboard here, my friends at ETR, we have a partnership with Enterprise Technology Research, and there's actually a considerable amount of overlap. I mean, Veeam obviously has more customers than does Everpure, but the overlap is significant. And so I'm just looking at it now. It's, wow, it's a good, you know, 15, 20, maybe even 30% of those customers, this is an account-based view. And you guys are trying to get more into the enterprise. You guys have probably always been, you know, into the enterprise layer, it's kind of where you started. You were driving a truck through the EMC Symmetrics back in the day, it was before your time there. But that's a decent overlap. So two questions, what do those customers want from you, those overlap customers? And what about the ones that aren't overlapped? How much of a priority is that? Are you bringing each other into accounts? I know Veeam predominantly goes through the channels. How does that all work? Yeah, so really what we've been doing with the EDC integrations and the roadmap there has been focused on our mutual customers and the value that we can immediately provide there. But in terms of prospects on either side or organizations that might be interested in the offerings, I think it's just continuing to showcase the value that our Better Together story brings to market. And I think these are common themes across the board in terms of operational simplicity, consumption type model in terms of an acquisition of a product, and then overall just security. These are things that all organizations are interested in. And more and more, we're just seeing ransomware being a board level topic. Yeah, and you've got some low hanging fruit there. I mean, you're talking tens of thousands of prospects for you guys. And truly, and globally too, right? I think that's a really great part about this partnership is this isn't just a North America focused partnership. This is something across the globe where we are seeing really high demand overall for these joint offerings. And obviously, Veeam is such a substantial business over in EMEA where we've seen a lot of uptick recently. What would you like to be able to say about this partnership a year from now that you're not able to say today? Boy, that's a tough, that's a good question for sure. And maybe, Tom, even thinking about the themes that we're talking about here at VeeamON 2026. I know the security AI acquisition by Veeam and sort of that combined roadmap and how they're kind of pushing more into the security side of the house and kind of building this AI data governance layer. Maybe what does that mean for Everpure? Yeah, that's actually where I do think I would go is just how we can broaden the portfolio, right? So today we've really talked about cybersillience, EDC, obviously, but I think growing that beyond that in terms of the breadth of offering that Veeam has. So whether it be some of the Kasten products or obviously with the security AI acquisition around AI, et cetera, there's a lot that we can potentially add to the roadmap. So that might be what I'd call out is to have a really defined 36-month roadmap here around where the partnership is going and trying to get out in front of some of these really interesting times that we're having here in the world. We're definitely in the front of some of these really interesting times that we're dealing with currently. Yeah, let's give a little plug for Accelerate. You guys got your conference coming up soon, right? Yeah, Accelerate, June out in Las Vegas, very excited about that. And then obviously we'll be at Veeamon in London and Australia as well. So we're very much looking forward to those two events coming up. Another awesome event like this one, I'm sure. Well, Tom, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. We appreciate you sharing your perspectives and good luck with the partnership. Thank you so much. Wonderful time. Yeah, you bet. All right, and thank you for watching. This is Dave Vellante for Chris D'Case for theCUBE's coverage of VeeamON 2026. We'll be right back to the Big Apple right after this short break.
