HPE Discover Barcelona 2023 | Tim Pfaelzer | Veeam Software

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Tim Pfaelzer

VP Enterprise EMEA

Veeam Software

play_circle_outline Partnership between Veeam and HPE to safeguard data for data-driven organizations

play_circle_outline Balancing Ethical Considerations: Safeguarding Data, AI Responsibility, and Protecting Against Attacks & Ransomware

play_circle_outline Seamless experience for customers through collaboration and innovation with HPE

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Tim Pfaelzer | Veeam Software

Tim Pfaelzer

VP Enterprise EMEA Veeam Software

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(upbeat music)

>> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live ongoing coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona 2023. We are here at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. We've already had four guests today. It's so much great content in the show. A lot of great stuff, a lot of how you're going to use AI, how you're going to build for AI, and at the same time, how do you have an infrastructure, because that data is all over the place? And by the way, it needs to be protected.

>> It sure does. >> And that's going to lead into where we're going here.

>> That's a good point. >> Yes.

>> I love that. >> I think you would

agree with that too. >> Yeah, yeah, exactly, I can't agree more, that's it.

>> So I want to introduce Tim Pfaelzer. He is the SVP EMEA at Veeam Software. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

>> Thank you for having me. Brilliant to be here in this beautiful city, and this beautiful event, great people.

>> Yes, all right. >> Absolutely my pleasure.

>> Okay, a great segue. So as Rob was just saying, security is a big issue, whether it's from human error or a malicious attack companies, this is something that is really occupying the minds of CSOs and everywhere. Talk about the joint value proposition between Veeam and HPE and how you are helping data-driven organizations safeguard their data.

>> No, absolutely, thank you very much and it's a really good segue in, because you nailed it, right? I mean, every time you're picking up the newspaper, you see a company was getting attacked, data was robbed, data is locked, ransomware, all these things that are happening every day and literally across all the industry. So our job is to make, keep our customers' business running. So, but we have the right software, right? But software is one piece and there's a whole infrastructure piece, the hardware piece that HPE and ourselves are partnering up together. And this is actually the number one solution that we can get out there on the market. Our software has been proven really to keep customers' businesses secure. And HPE's stuff has been proven to keep their customers' business running all the time. So what better way than we can collaborate together, right? So this is what brings us together in this partnership. It's a long-living partnership really, right? We are doing this for many, many years for now, and we've been growing together, we've been expanding our base together and we still keep 'em winning customers and we still keep on showcasing customers together that are helped with the solutions that we offer together.

>> And Antonio talked about a lot about hybrid cloud, and he has been talking about hybrid cloud. And I think a piece of that is people don't just use on-premise data anymore. They have other things, like they have Office 365 and SaaS-based. And a big piece of what you bring to the table is being able to protect a lot of that.

>> Well, you see, I think that what we bring to the table as HPE and is Veeam is basically the freedom of choice to the customer, because as you rightly say, hybrid cloud is a major topic that we see. However, there's still traditional companies that have data on-premise. We look into banks looking at insurance companies, right? For them, if the part of that stuff is on-premise, part is in the cloud, the private cloud, and part in the public cloud, so it's everywhere. So our solution's always been focused first and foremost to guide customers into the cloud journey. However, we can support all of the on-premise and the hybrid ones. So if you look into what customers are using today, once we get secure, the on-premise stuff, look into what else we do on the cloud space. We are protecting the sales force. We acquired a company called Customs a couple of years ago, where we are looking into the Kubernetes environments that we are protecting together, right? And if you look into Microsoft 365 offering where everything is in cloud, guess what? That data needs to be protected as well. So we're offering all of these things together, but we are offering it as a freedom of choice to the customer, same as HPE does, going through GreenLake, through a classic offering with the way, whatever you want it, whatever you want to consume it, we are there for you, we can partner with the customers.

>> Yeah, I actually got to talk to the cast and folks at KubeCon in CloudNativeCon in Chicago.

>> Fantastic. >> Briefly out there. And then I think again, when it was in Amsterdam last year, and I think, or earlier this year, and I think that what's to your point about the freedom of choice, organizations aren't just doing one thing either, right? It's more, I have a container environment on Kubernetes. I have a SaaS-delivered software, and by the way, I still have my traditional apps that run my business. So are you going in together with them to really architect out that choice so that they can cover, have a minimally-viable company that they can bring back up if something goes bump in the middle of the night?

>> Oh, yeah. So basically, again, we are doing whatever the company needs is, but if you look into big enterprises, for example, and we are working with a lot of them, right? In fact, we are reaching 80% of the Fortune 2000 companies today with our solutions and also together with HPE solutions as part of that. So the way that those companies are run, it's a complex environment. There's no one solution fits all for every sort of data and every project that they're having and every development stack that they're running on. So this is why we need to be capable of working together with the customers to make sure that we have the right solution for them. So we are partnering together with our customers. That's the way we see it. And you're also talking about Edge. I mean, Edge is a huge thing, and Edge to cloud is super-big, right? So a lot of customers that we're seeing, we're asking for an Azure service solution. So we have a company called Cirrus, we acquired them, it's part of our solution stack. So if you want it, and that's again coming back to freedom of choice. If you want to consume as a service, we are there, right? So that's perfect. But we can do everything together, together with our great partners like HPE.

>> And I was going to say, you also have I know the company a little bit, and you have a network of cloud service providers as well that do backup as a service and things of that nature.

>> Absolutely.

>> And I would say that it again, it goes to that freedom of choice and things of that nature, but you also do pretty significant integrations with StoreOnce and their catalyst software as well.

>> Yes, and thank you for raising the point with our Veeam cloud service providers and in general, the channel stuff. I mean, our company's always been 100% dedicated to channel, right? And to alliances into partners. And why is that? Simply because, again, we do believe that there's a solution the customer requires, and it's more than just one piece of software or just one piece of hardware, but it's a combined thing that coming together. So that's why we're always bringing in that whole intelligence piece to our customer space.

>> How do you choose your partners? I mean, at HPE you've had a long, very strong partnership with them for a long time, but as you said, you want to make sure you give customers choice and be able to provide the right solution for the right customer. How do you choose your partners? How do you collaborate with them and innovate?

>> Well, it's typically based on reliability and trust, right? And with HPE, we've acquired so much trust over the years as a common solution, and we get the approved by our customers and we've got big car manufacturers that we're working together with on the customer accounts. So we know that works for them, right? So if you have these things, why don't you just take them also to other customers? Because there's 100% trust from a customer, from HPE to us, from us to HPE. So this is how we get there. But clearly also saying, if the customer's looking into a different route to market, we can definitely do that. But we will always push forward working together with the fantastic partners that we have as HPE.

>> So what are the big things that you're hearing from customers? 'Cause there's a lot of regulation going around, everybody's talking AI, there's data protection, there's PII and all of this. What are you hearing from customers when it comes to really data resilience and data protection, especially in EMEA here?

>> It's getting more and more important, right? Especially, I mean, we are in the European Union, right? So European Union has been the number one in setting this data protection regulation that we have and we need to all to adhere to. If you look into the autonomous driving market, for example, there's tons and tons of petabytes coming in every day that need to be stored somewhere and also need to be analyzed, of course. But they need to be stored just in case to be safe if something happens that the company who delivered a solution can be sure that they did nothing wrong with that, right? So that's endless stuff that you need and you also need to be able to recover it instantly. So there's two parts again. One is you need to store it somewhere, the other part is the intelligence of a software that you need to put it onto the stack. So we are hearing from customers these stories every day. We're hearing that the data resiliency is a super-important thing for them, data security. It goes on and on and on, because literally coming back to the beginning of a talk, you see it and you read it every day on news. There's always more attacks. So we really get the feedback, can you please help us as Veeam or as Veeam together with HPE to help us protect our data, make sure that we can't be affected, because if we are losing our data, if we lose access to data, that's a huge cost associated with it for every hour that's happening, right? So these are the big talk tracks along with AI. AI is the new thing that's basically coming up, a lot of companies are still struggling with. Well, when we have this data, we know what data's getting extracted. How can we make sure these are safe and secure? How can we make sure AI is used in the proper way, the right way, and not in a misleading one? So these are big, big things that we're seeing every day as feedback from customers.

>> Well, you're talking about a lot of ethical issues here, responsibility issues and sustainability is really part of that too. How are you approaching sustainability with your customers? Because that's a real theme here in terms of, in terms of thinking about AI as an energy-intensive technology, but that every company wants to get in on.

>> Yeah, thank you, that's also a very good question, because sustainability in terms of us as a backup company is, is per se not really a given if you think about it firsthand. But on the other hand, if you do it right, and if you do your backup and your recovery, right? There's only one place you need to go, right? So that saves a lot of energy, because you're concentrating it onto one piece. You don't need to go to the other ones. If you're doing it right, it also saves a lot of resources by putting these data into some places. So that's saving a lot of resources, because it's only on one place that you need to go. And if you also look into the everyday digitalization. I mean, having the right data at the right time without having a loss of data prevents people from needing to do stuff manually on, doing their everyday lives, going somewhere, driving somewhere, all these things, because they're just available online. So basically, a lot of things that you can do from your home, and this is how we are working together with customers, and this is where we are showing the value of us in sustainability.

>> Yeah, I think there was a stat yesterday, even on in the Atmosphere keynote where they talked about the average ransomware attack is now costing like 1.8 million. I'll say Euro, because I don't remember if it was dollars or Euros or whatever they said, but it's about the same unfortunately right now anyways. But when you start to look at it, the cost of doing nothing is enormous and it's board level. You have regulations like in France where they have even protecting your cloud, your stuff that's in cloud, for financial services companies, you need to be able to be back up and running within 24 hours. So are you seeing customers come to you and saying, "Hey, how do you help us meet these SLA's and these regulations? Is that a big piece?"

>> Of course, we see that all the time, and as you rightly say, the cost of doing nothing is huge, right? And fairly frankly saying, backup is the last line of defense. So you need to do a lot of things before that, before you actually need the backup. So of course, we're working together again, and we are also working with security alliances to make sure that we're not even getting to the place where you need your last line of defense, but where it happens earlier in the cycle to prevent a lot of cost, right? So we are also partnering with companies like SOPHOS and other ones in terms of the security part, just to make sure that we are helping our customers not cross the bridge of falling into the trap, spending loads of money.

>> Yeah, helping them understand also what's a known good backup

and things of that nature. >> Oh, absolutely. And we are learning from our customers every day on what a good approach is. We are also taking that in, applying that to our broad customer base. We're taking feedback very seriously, but we're also taking analyst feedback seriously. We try to bring it into a product and product development so we can make sure that our customer's data are as secure as the humanly can be.

>> And it can be, but your technology can be consumed in multiple ways. Can you talk a little bit about how you are innovating with HPE to make sure that you are able to drive this seamless experience for the customer? Who also, as you said, wants choice and wants performance and wants compliance and wants security, and wants sustainability.

>> I mean, so when working with HPE, our products are basically on the price list of HPE, right? So they can be bought through HPE. Even so if you go to HPE and you want to have a good solution around resiliency and data security and backup, there's a good choice that they offer you a solution when Veeam comes naturally with it, because it's simply embedded into their offering and their go-to-market piece. So, you can do it from there, but you can also buy it from any channel or any partner out there. But also, again, as I said earlier, you can consume it as a service with our new offering called Cirrus. Everything's there.

>> What's the one point that you want to get across to customers who are watching this today about how it's better together, HPE and Veeam?

>> Well, the number one thing I would say is if you are working with data and everyone needs to think that through, what data am I working with? You're using your laptops, is this the Edge? Are you working on more data? That's basically, more on the infrastructure side. Whatever you have, right? Think about it in the morning when you wake up, is my data secure? And if that is not secure and you're relying on your data than better do something today. And that's especially true if you're working for big corporations. If you're working for mid-sized companies, then just, give HPE a ring, give us a ring, send us a mail, contact us, whatever you want, and we'll be happy to help you and guide you through this process.

>> We'll hold your hand.

Excellent. >> Yes.

>> Thank you. >> We love holding hands, yes.

>> Thank you so much Tim, for coming on theCUBE, a really fun conversation.

>> Thank you very much for having me.

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. For Rob Strechay, stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2023 in Barcelona. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in high-tech technology enterprise coverage. (upbeat music)

Tim Pfaelzer | Veeam Software

search

(upbeat music)

>> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's live ongoing coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona 2023. We are here at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, along with my co-host, Rob Strechay. We've already had four guests today. It's so much great content in the show. A lot of great stuff, a lot of how you're going to use AI, how you're going to build for AI, and at the same time, how do you have an infrastructure, because that data is all over the place? And by the way, it needs to be protected.

>> It sure does. >> And that's going to lead into where we're going here.

>> That's a good point. >> Yes.

>> I love that. >> I think you would

agree with that too. >> Yeah, yeah, exactly, I can't agree more, that's it.

>> So I want to introduce Tim Pfaelzer. He is the SVP EMEA at Veeam Software. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

>> Thank you for having me. Brilliant to be here in this beautiful city, and this beautiful event, great people.

>> Yes, all right. >> Absolutely my pleasure.

>> Okay, a great segue. So as Rob was just saying, security is a big issue, whether it's from human error or a malicious attack companies, this is something that is really occupying the minds of CSOs and everywhere. Talk about the joint value proposition between Veeam and HPE and how you are helping data-driven organizations safeguard their data.

>> No, absolutely, thank you very much and it's a really good segue in, because you nailed it, right? I mean, every time you're picking up the newspaper, you see a company was getting attacked, data was robbed, data is locked, ransomware, all these things that are happening every day and literally across all the industry. So our job is to make, keep our customers' business running. So, but we have the right software, right? But software is one piece and there's a whole infrastructure piece, the hardware piece that HPE and ourselves are partnering up together. And this is actually the number one solution that we can get out there on the market. Our software has been proven really to keep customers' businesses secure. And HPE's stuff has been proven to keep their customers' business running all the time. So what better way than we can collaborate together, right? So this is what brings us together in this partnership. It's a long-living partnership really, right? We are doing this for many, many years for now, and we've been growing together, we've been expanding our base together and we still keep 'em winning customers and we still keep on showcasing customers together that are helped with the solutions that we offer together.

>> And Antonio talked about a lot about hybrid cloud, and he has been talking about hybrid cloud. And I think a piece of that is people don't just use on-premise data anymore. They have other things, like they have Office 365 and SaaS-based. And a big piece of what you bring to the table is being able to protect a lot of that.

>> Well, you see, I think that what we bring to the table as HPE and is Veeam is basically the freedom of choice to the customer, because as you rightly say, hybrid cloud is a major topic that we see. However, there's still traditional companies that have data on-premise. We look into banks looking at insurance companies, right? For them, if the part of that stuff is on-premise, part is in the cloud, the private cloud, and part in the public cloud, so it's everywhere. So our solution's always been focused first and foremost to guide customers into the cloud journey. However, we can support all of the on-premise and the hybrid ones. So if you look into what customers are using today, once we get secure, the on-premise stuff, look into what else we do on the cloud space. We are protecting the sales force. We acquired a company called Customs a couple of years ago, where we are looking into the Kubernetes environments that we are protecting together, right? And if you look into Microsoft 365 offering where everything is in cloud, guess what? That data needs to be protected as well. So we're offering all of these things together, but we are offering it as a freedom of choice to the customer, same as HPE does, going through GreenLake, through a classic offering with the way, whatever you want it, whatever you want to consume it, we are there for you, we can partner with the customers.

>> Yeah, I actually got to talk to the cast and folks at KubeCon in CloudNativeCon in Chicago.

>> Fantastic. >> Briefly out there. And then I think again, when it was in Amsterdam last year, and I think, or earlier this year, and I think that what's to your point about the freedom of choice, organizations aren't just doing one thing either, right? It's more, I have a container environment on Kubernetes. I have a SaaS-delivered software, and by the way, I still have my traditional apps that run my business. So are you going in together with them to really architect out that choice so that they can cover, have a minimally-viable company that they can bring back up if something goes bump in the middle of the night?

>> Oh, yeah. So basically, again, we are doing whatever the company needs is, but if you look into big enterprises, for example, and we are working with a lot of them, right? In fact, we are reaching 80% of the Fortune 2000 companies today with our solutions and also together with HPE solutions as part of that. So the way that those companies are run, it's a complex environment. There's no one solution fits all for every sort of data and every project that they're having and every development stack that they're running on. So this is why we need to be capable of working together with the customers to make sure that we have the right solution for them. So we are partnering together with our customers. That's the way we see it. And you're also talking about Edge. I mean, Edge is a huge thing, and Edge to cloud is super-big, right? So a lot of customers that we're seeing, we're asking for an Azure service solution. So we have a company called Cirrus, we acquired them, it's part of our solution stack. So if you want it, and that's again coming back to freedom of choice. If you want to consume as a service, we are there, right? So that's perfect. But we can do everything together, together with our great partners like HPE.

>> And I was going to say, you also have I know the company a little bit, and you have a network of cloud service providers as well that do backup as a service and things of that nature.

>> Absolutely.

>> And I would say that it again, it goes to that freedom of choice and things of that nature, but you also do pretty significant integrations with StoreOnce and their catalyst software as well.

>> Yes, and thank you for raising the point with our Veeam cloud service providers and in general, the channel stuff. I mean, our company's always been 100% dedicated to channel, right? And to alliances into partners. And why is that? Simply because, again, we do believe that there's a solution the customer requires, and it's more than just one piece of software or just one piece of hardware, but it's a combined thing that coming together. So that's why we're always bringing in that whole intelligence piece to our customer space.

>> How do you choose your partners? I mean, at HPE you've had a long, very strong partnership with them for a long time, but as you said, you want to make sure you give customers choice and be able to provide the right solution for the right customer. How do you choose your partners? How do you collaborate with them and innovate?

>> Well, it's typically based on reliability and trust, right? And with HPE, we've acquired so much trust over the years as a common solution, and we get the approved by our customers and we've got big car manufacturers that we're working together with on the customer accounts. So we know that works for them, right? So if you have these things, why don't you just take them also to other customers? Because there's 100% trust from a customer, from HPE to us, from us to HPE. So this is how we get there. But clearly also saying, if the customer's looking into a different route to market, we can definitely do that. But we will always push forward working together with the fantastic partners that we have as HPE.

>> So what are the big things that you're hearing from customers? 'Cause there's a lot of regulation going around, everybody's talking AI, there's data protection, there's PII and all of this. What are you hearing from customers when it comes to really data resilience and data protection, especially in EMEA here?

>> It's getting more and more important, right? Especially, I mean, we are in the European Union, right? So European Union has been the number one in setting this data protection regulation that we have and we need to all to adhere to. If you look into the autonomous driving market, for example, there's tons and tons of petabytes coming in every day that need to be stored somewhere and also need to be analyzed, of course. But they need to be stored just in case to be safe if something happens that the company who delivered a solution can be sure that they did nothing wrong with that, right? So that's endless stuff that you need and you also need to be able to recover it instantly. So there's two parts again. One is you need to store it somewhere, the other part is the intelligence of a software that you need to put it onto the stack. So we are hearing from customers these stories every day. We're hearing that the data resiliency is a super-important thing for them, data security. It goes on and on and on, because literally coming back to the beginning of a talk, you see it and you read it every day on news. There's always more attacks. So we really get the feedback, can you please help us as Veeam or as Veeam together with HPE to help us protect our data, make sure that we can't be affected, because if we are losing our data, if we lose access to data, that's a huge cost associated with it for every hour that's happening, right? So these are the big talk tracks along with AI. AI is the new thing that's basically coming up, a lot of companies are still struggling with. Well, when we have this data, we know what data's getting extracted. How can we make sure these are safe and secure? How can we make sure AI is used in the proper way, the right way, and not in a misleading one? So these are big, big things that we're seeing every day as feedback from customers.

>> Well, you're talking about a lot of ethical issues here, responsibility issues and sustainability is really part of that too. How are you approaching sustainability with your customers? Because that's a real theme here in terms of, in terms of thinking about AI as an energy-intensive technology, but that every company wants to get in on.

>> Yeah, thank you, that's also a very good question, because sustainability in terms of us as a backup company is, is per se not really a given if you think about it firsthand. But on the other hand, if you do it right, and if you do your backup and your recovery, right? There's only one place you need to go, right? So that saves a lot of energy, because you're concentrating it onto one piece. You don't need to go to the other ones. If you're doing it right, it also saves a lot of resources by putting these data into some places. So that's saving a lot of resources, because it's only on one place that you need to go. And if you also look into the everyday digitalization. I mean, having the right data at the right time without having a loss of data prevents people from needing to do stuff manually on, doing their everyday lives, going somewhere, driving somewhere, all these things, because they're just available online. So basically, a lot of things that you can do from your home, and this is how we are working together with customers, and this is where we are showing the value of us in sustainability.

>> Yeah, I think there was a stat yesterday, even on in the Atmosphere keynote where they talked about the average ransomware attack is now costing like 1.8 million. I'll say Euro, because I don't remember if it was dollars or Euros or whatever they said, but it's about the same unfortunately right now anyways. But when you start to look at it, the cost of doing nothing is enormous and it's board level. You have regulations like in France where they have even protecting your cloud, your stuff that's in cloud, for financial services companies, you need to be able to be back up and running within 24 hours. So are you seeing customers come to you and saying, "Hey, how do you help us meet these SLA's and these regulations? Is that a big piece?"

>> Of course, we see that all the time, and as you rightly say, the cost of doing nothing is huge, right? And fairly frankly saying, backup is the last line of defense. So you need to do a lot of things before that, before you actually need the backup. So of course, we're working together again, and we are also working with security alliances to make sure that we're not even getting to the place where you need your last line of defense, but where it happens earlier in the cycle to prevent a lot of cost, right? So we are also partnering with companies like SOPHOS and other ones in terms of the security part, just to make sure that we are helping our customers not cross the bridge of falling into the trap, spending loads of money.

>> Yeah, helping them understand also what's a known good backup

and things of that nature. >> Oh, absolutely. And we are learning from our customers every day on what a good approach is. We are also taking that in, applying that to our broad customer base. We're taking feedback very seriously, but we're also taking analyst feedback seriously. We try to bring it into a product and product development so we can make sure that our customer's data are as secure as the humanly can be.

>> And it can be, but your technology can be consumed in multiple ways. Can you talk a little bit about how you are innovating with HPE to make sure that you are able to drive this seamless experience for the customer? Who also, as you said, wants choice and wants performance and wants compliance and wants security, and wants sustainability.

>> I mean, so when working with HPE, our products are basically on the price list of HPE, right? So they can be bought through HPE. Even so if you go to HPE and you want to have a good solution around resiliency and data security and backup, there's a good choice that they offer you a solution when Veeam comes naturally with it, because it's simply embedded into their offering and their go-to-market piece. So, you can do it from there, but you can also buy it from any channel or any partner out there. But also, again, as I said earlier, you can consume it as a service with our new offering called Cirrus. Everything's there.

>> What's the one point that you want to get across to customers who are watching this today about how it's better together, HPE and Veeam?

>> Well, the number one thing I would say is if you are working with data and everyone needs to think that through, what data am I working with? You're using your laptops, is this the Edge? Are you working on more data? That's basically, more on the infrastructure side. Whatever you have, right? Think about it in the morning when you wake up, is my data secure? And if that is not secure and you're relying on your data than better do something today. And that's especially true if you're working for big corporations. If you're working for mid-sized companies, then just, give HPE a ring, give us a ring, send us a mail, contact us, whatever you want, and we'll be happy to help you and guide you through this process.

>> We'll hold your hand.

Excellent. >> Yes.

>> Thank you. >> We love holding hands, yes.

>> Thank you so much Tim, for coming on theCUBE, a really fun conversation.

>> Thank you very much for having me.

>> I'm Rebecca Knight. For Rob Strechay, stay tuned for more of theCUBE's coverage of HPE Discover 2023 in Barcelona. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in high-tech technology enterprise coverage. (upbeat music)