HPE Discover Barcelona 2023 | Vendula Králová | WEDOS

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Vendula Králová

Chief Sales Officer (CSO)

WEDOS

play_circle_outline Vendula Kralova: From Hosting Services to Cybersecurity - Safeguarding Banks, Governments, and More with WEDOS

play_circle_outline Use of HPE's Moonshot 1,500 hardware

play_circle_outline Availability of trials, 24/7 customer support, and data center tours for interested individuals.

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Vendula Králová | WEDOS

Vendula Králová

Chief Sales Officer (CSO) WEDOS

search

(upbeat music)

>> Hi everyone, and welcome back to "theCUBE's" live ongoing coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona 2023. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. One of the things that has really come through at this conference is just how many partnerships and collaborations HPE has with different technology companies throughout its own ecosystem.

>> Yeah, and I think, again, they're showcasing it very well in showing that it's a very robust European based community as well, from hosting to security, and sometimes even both.

>> And sometimes even both. Which is the perfect segue, Rob, to introduce our guest here she is Vendula Kralova. She's the CSO, CMO of WEDOS. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

>> Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure.

>> Why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about you and your career at WEDOS and what WEDOS does.

>> Okay, so I would probably start with me and I started as an event manager. So I was organizing all those events abroad, similar to those ones actually. And that was it, like all the communication, all the organization to get the team there and all of those kind of stuff. And then presenting our services and present like the brand and everything, what we can provide and just, you know, let people know. And then I was promoted to be the CSO and CMO, but I'm still involved a lot in those kind of events and, you know, the presentations and the interviews and all of those kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's going to be me probably. And then WEDOS the most important part. We were founded 2010 and we've started as a hosting services provider. And throughout the years we've thought about like cybersecurity and we started to think about it, I guess 2013. That was the first thought, because that was the first VDOS attacks that appeared, and it wasn't fun. So we had to, we had to think about it and we've tried like multiple different solutions from different companies, but it just wasn't enough. It wasn't efficient and it wasn't what we needed with the amount of traffic and everything because we grew in like 31 months, I guess we were the top one on the Czech market. So it, it was a huge traffic and it was a big deal. So we've started to focus on developing our own cybersecurity. So right now we're mostly focusing on that and, you know, faster websites and loading and everything. And that's the top priority for us right now to be able to protect ourselves and our customers, so.

>> How does the relationship work with you and HPE? Are you a partner, are you a customer? How does that, how does it work?

>> We're basically, I would say we're a customer and we actually have the GreenLake Corporation, so that's where we started with HP. And actually when we were founded, we started with different company because at the time the servers for us weren't like, you know, that much efficient and effective and they haven't got what we needed. But in like 2013, I guess we've actually tried first servers and that's when the cooperation started. And they actually offered like the GreenLake Corporation, which was perfect for us because we've had like free hands and we could've done what we wanted to, and that was like just the perfect, thing for us to do. So that's where it started. And right now we actually used only like hardware from HP and basically the whole global infrastructure that we are building is based on moonshots from HP, so.

>> Wow, well, we definitely want to get more into that, but I want to go back to WEDOS's history and you and the transition, you alluded to it being a little bit of a trying time in your company's history. Making the transition from hosting to cybersecurity. What was the reason behind that

and what was going on? >> What was the reason? The really strong DDoS attacks and it started slowly like, you know, with the typical ones and everything and in 2019 we actually started to think about this kind of solution because until then we've been only like using, or only we've tried even like the magical black boxes, which costs like huge amount of money and it's a nonsense basically, and uses actually the unicast solution, which is probably the worst thing you can do for the protection, because it's really destroying, like if you have a huge attack that is, you know, that goes towards like only one spot on the last server, it can be really harmful. So we wanted to focus on any caste solution, and that's where it started, like the whole thought. And till then we've been using blackholing, but then the war in Ukraine started and we showed support publicly, and that was a good thing from our point of view, but a bad thing from, you know, the outside world's point of view. So we faced the most terrible attack that we've ever faced, and they actually attacked like every single IP address that we've had. So blackholing wasn't like an option. Like we still had to do something and like half of the banks in Czech Republic, they weren't working and everybody was angry because, you know, nothing was working and we were angry too, and we wanted to cry a little, but then we were like, okay, so this solution that we've been thinking about, we wanted to launch like two to three locations in one year. So it was like a long future plan and we had to act fast. So we were like, okay, so we're going to skip like the long part of the plan and we're going to do like everything we can in a really, like short period of time. So it was like, in few months it was like 15 locations that we had to get connected, to find the spots, to find the data centers and everything. And we turned everything on and we were, even we were surprised how effective it is and how well it works. So at the beginning, it was only solution for our company. It was something that we wanted to do to be of course able to protect like our customers by being protected ourselves. But in a few months when we had the ability, when we were able to like test it and everything, we've decided it's a good product and we should be able to provide it even to our customers. And one philosophy that we actually have or trying to have is to have quality services for reasonable prices. And we've always done that, even with our hosting services. So we want to keep this philosophy even in like, you know, this area of cybersecurity. So that's what we want to do. So it doesn't matter if you're like a startup business, single person trying to do business or a huge company or like really a corporate or something government, it doesn't matter. Everybody can use this service. So that's the main goal for us, probably.

>> Is it using some unique hardware or software? Combination of both or?

>> We have developed our own software for the cybersecurity and yes, we have exceptional hardware from HPE. It's actually Moonshot 1,500. And sadly they're not going to, you know, do them anymore. So we need to transfer to different ones, but we still have ordered like 30 more.

So yeah- >> Get them while you can.

>> Yeah, right. >> Yes, yes, exactly. Because you know, it was like a long journey to find the right hardware for what you want to do. And with the HPE Moonshot, it's really easy to actually like install them and to, you know, function with them. So usually when you need to, because it's like a chassis with 45 servers, two switches, and then you have, you know, like four power sources, et cetera. And if you want to install somewhere and connect like 45 servers, it's going to take you like two people and probably one to two days. And with the HPE Moonshot, it's actually really easy because our CEO and one of our colleagues, they actually flew to Switzerland, I guess, and it was all prepared, even with the phone calls, like back home so they can test it if it's working and everything. It took them like 40 minutes. So that was like the game changer for us because with this specific hardware, we were able to install everything really quickly and it's easy, you know, to send them somewhere and just to install them there. So, yeah, that's going to be probably it. That's the unique hardware and that's why we chose it.

>> Well, and the fact that this came about because you needed to solve your own problem. You know that you were being attacked from every which way and so you needed to come up with something and come up with something good and fast. Which is obviously a very good marketing message to your customers.

>> Yes, it is. >> As a CMO, how many customers do you have? And what has the response been so far?

>> Okay, we have over 300,000 customers and over like 600,000 services. And right now we already like, you know, protect over 10,000 customers, I would say. And we have even banks, governments, and that's a, like a tricky one because we always have to modify things, but it's not a problem for us. Like you get the full protection and if you have like specific needs or something because we're protecting on layer 3, 4, 7, and on layer seven where we use actually BGP Anycast plus reverse proxies, you can see into basically everything. So it's a lot about trust, but also we can negotiate like anything and we can modify the things so it's like comfortable for our customers. So, that's it. And we are trying to introduce the service actually to like everyone and into the world right now. We're protecting over like 10,000 customers and we want to protect even more. And we actually are trying to arrange even like B2B corporations, we're open to that also because it can be efficient for us and even like for our customers. So right now we want to focus mostly on the fact that you can be part of our global infrastructure because as we said, like the more locations, the better the service and the protection, thanks to dividing the traffic and everything. And you can actually be part of our global infrastructure. So it's like we can do like 50/50 quid pro quo and it's like you're going to, we're going to have the space from you, the connectivity, the power and everything, and then you can for free use our services so we can protect you, you can protect others, others can protect us. So it's like win-win situation, like, you know, from all the sides. So that's a, that's possible too. We do white labeling. So right now I would say it's not like the biggest amount of customers that we are protecting, but we're hoping that people will understand, you know, the philosophy like behind this whole service and what it is and they will try it and will be able to, you know, just protect everyone. Like everyone will be able to protect everyone, so.

>> It seems like as you protect, like you said, 'cause you being the super geeky guy, right? I've actually configured BGP and for a corporation and all that in the past,

long time ago. >> I have no idea

what he is talking about. >> Yeah, so anyways, but wait, well she brings up BGP and I was like, okay, I thought we weren't getting technical here, but you know.

>> That was a tricky one. Noted.

>> I was like, it was, it was good. It was. So as you do that, you're basically, as you bring on more, it becomes more secure because you are spreading the, you can spread the load of the defense over all the different. And, so for that, when you say you have 10,000 customers, are they hosted customers or actually they're on-premise, both? How does that work? How does somebody engage with, how would somebody engage with you?

>> Well, I would say it's like both basically. Like, it's not only like hosting customers or like, you know, it's a make mix of everything I would say. Because for us it's not only about like protecting hosting services or something, like I said, we have even governments under our protection, we have even banks under our protection, et cetera. So it's like a mix of everything, I would say. And you don't even need to be our customer, like in a regular, it doesn't matter if you have our hosting services or not, so.

>> So how do people get in touch with you or engage with you or find out more?

>> Well, you can always see everything for yourself on our websites, you can always have a trial because I think it's really good to just try it for yourself and see if it's like good for you or not. We have 24/7 actually customer support, so you can always reach someone there. And I would say like, the email is everywhere, so you can always find us. I think right now you can always find us or someone from the company. Even like on LinkedIn we have our own like social media, so like Facebook, LinkedIn, everything. So if you want to know something more, you can always send us an email or you can, you know, just start the chat somewhere. So that's possible too. And for the people who are really interested, actually we're doing even tours in our data center. We have two of them, private ones and the second one is actually cooled with oil. So that is really interesting for people. And it was thanks to HPE because they actually like afforded full cooperation in this. And they were absolutely okay with us submerging the servers into oil and get everything greasy. So, yeah, so if people want to see something for themselves, they can always reach to us and we can arrange a tour or something.

>> Get a look at the action. Excellent. Well thank you so much, Vendula,

for coming on "theCUBE." >> Thank you too.

>> It was a pleasure having you.

>> It was a pleasure. Thank you.

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

Vendula Králová | WEDOS

search

(upbeat music)

>> Hi everyone, and welcome back to "theCUBE's" live ongoing coverage of HPE Discover Barcelona 2023. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host and analyst, Rob Strechay. One of the things that has really come through at this conference is just how many partnerships and collaborations HPE has with different technology companies throughout its own ecosystem.

>> Yeah, and I think, again, they're showcasing it very well in showing that it's a very robust European based community as well, from hosting to security, and sometimes even both.

>> And sometimes even both. Which is the perfect segue, Rob, to introduce our guest here she is Vendula Kralova. She's the CSO, CMO of WEDOS. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

>> Thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure.

>> Why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about you and your career at WEDOS and what WEDOS does.

>> Okay, so I would probably start with me and I started as an event manager. So I was organizing all those events abroad, similar to those ones actually. And that was it, like all the communication, all the organization to get the team there and all of those kind of stuff. And then presenting our services and present like the brand and everything, what we can provide and just, you know, let people know. And then I was promoted to be the CSO and CMO, but I'm still involved a lot in those kind of events and, you know, the presentations and the interviews and all of those kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's going to be me probably. And then WEDOS the most important part. We were founded 2010 and we've started as a hosting services provider. And throughout the years we've thought about like cybersecurity and we started to think about it, I guess 2013. That was the first thought, because that was the first VDOS attacks that appeared, and it wasn't fun. So we had to, we had to think about it and we've tried like multiple different solutions from different companies, but it just wasn't enough. It wasn't efficient and it wasn't what we needed with the amount of traffic and everything because we grew in like 31 months, I guess we were the top one on the Czech market. So it, it was a huge traffic and it was a big deal. So we've started to focus on developing our own cybersecurity. So right now we're mostly focusing on that and, you know, faster websites and loading and everything. And that's the top priority for us right now to be able to protect ourselves and our customers, so.

>> How does the relationship work with you and HPE? Are you a partner, are you a customer? How does that, how does it work?

>> We're basically, I would say we're a customer and we actually have the GreenLake Corporation, so that's where we started with HP. And actually when we were founded, we started with different company because at the time the servers for us weren't like, you know, that much efficient and effective and they haven't got what we needed. But in like 2013, I guess we've actually tried first servers and that's when the cooperation started. And they actually offered like the GreenLake Corporation, which was perfect for us because we've had like free hands and we could've done what we wanted to, and that was like just the perfect, thing for us to do. So that's where it started. And right now we actually used only like hardware from HP and basically the whole global infrastructure that we are building is based on moonshots from HP, so.

>> Wow, well, we definitely want to get more into that, but I want to go back to WEDOS's history and you and the transition, you alluded to it being a little bit of a trying time in your company's history. Making the transition from hosting to cybersecurity. What was the reason behind that

and what was going on? >> What was the reason? The really strong DDoS attacks and it started slowly like, you know, with the typical ones and everything and in 2019 we actually started to think about this kind of solution because until then we've been only like using, or only we've tried even like the magical black boxes, which costs like huge amount of money and it's a nonsense basically, and uses actually the unicast solution, which is probably the worst thing you can do for the protection, because it's really destroying, like if you have a huge attack that is, you know, that goes towards like only one spot on the last server, it can be really harmful. So we wanted to focus on any caste solution, and that's where it started, like the whole thought. And till then we've been using blackholing, but then the war in Ukraine started and we showed support publicly, and that was a good thing from our point of view, but a bad thing from, you know, the outside world's point of view. So we faced the most terrible attack that we've ever faced, and they actually attacked like every single IP address that we've had. So blackholing wasn't like an option. Like we still had to do something and like half of the banks in Czech Republic, they weren't working and everybody was angry because, you know, nothing was working and we were angry too, and we wanted to cry a little, but then we were like, okay, so this solution that we've been thinking about, we wanted to launch like two to three locations in one year. So it was like a long future plan and we had to act fast. So we were like, okay, so we're going to skip like the long part of the plan and we're going to do like everything we can in a really, like short period of time. So it was like, in few months it was like 15 locations that we had to get connected, to find the spots, to find the data centers and everything. And we turned everything on and we were, even we were surprised how effective it is and how well it works. So at the beginning, it was only solution for our company. It was something that we wanted to do to be of course able to protect like our customers by being protected ourselves. But in a few months when we had the ability, when we were able to like test it and everything, we've decided it's a good product and we should be able to provide it even to our customers. And one philosophy that we actually have or trying to have is to have quality services for reasonable prices. And we've always done that, even with our hosting services. So we want to keep this philosophy even in like, you know, this area of cybersecurity. So that's what we want to do. So it doesn't matter if you're like a startup business, single person trying to do business or a huge company or like really a corporate or something government, it doesn't matter. Everybody can use this service. So that's the main goal for us, probably.

>> Is it using some unique hardware or software? Combination of both or?

>> We have developed our own software for the cybersecurity and yes, we have exceptional hardware from HPE. It's actually Moonshot 1,500. And sadly they're not going to, you know, do them anymore. So we need to transfer to different ones, but we still have ordered like 30 more.

So yeah- >> Get them while you can.

>> Yeah, right. >> Yes, yes, exactly. Because you know, it was like a long journey to find the right hardware for what you want to do. And with the HPE Moonshot, it's really easy to actually like install them and to, you know, function with them. So usually when you need to, because it's like a chassis with 45 servers, two switches, and then you have, you know, like four power sources, et cetera. And if you want to install somewhere and connect like 45 servers, it's going to take you like two people and probably one to two days. And with the HPE Moonshot, it's actually really easy because our CEO and one of our colleagues, they actually flew to Switzerland, I guess, and it was all prepared, even with the phone calls, like back home so they can test it if it's working and everything. It took them like 40 minutes. So that was like the game changer for us because with this specific hardware, we were able to install everything really quickly and it's easy, you know, to send them somewhere and just to install them there. So, yeah, that's going to be probably it. That's the unique hardware and that's why we chose it.

>> Well, and the fact that this came about because you needed to solve your own problem. You know that you were being attacked from every which way and so you needed to come up with something and come up with something good and fast. Which is obviously a very good marketing message to your customers.

>> Yes, it is. >> As a CMO, how many customers do you have? And what has the response been so far?

>> Okay, we have over 300,000 customers and over like 600,000 services. And right now we already like, you know, protect over 10,000 customers, I would say. And we have even banks, governments, and that's a, like a tricky one because we always have to modify things, but it's not a problem for us. Like you get the full protection and if you have like specific needs or something because we're protecting on layer 3, 4, 7, and on layer seven where we use actually BGP Anycast plus reverse proxies, you can see into basically everything. So it's a lot about trust, but also we can negotiate like anything and we can modify the things so it's like comfortable for our customers. So, that's it. And we are trying to introduce the service actually to like everyone and into the world right now. We're protecting over like 10,000 customers and we want to protect even more. And we actually are trying to arrange even like B2B corporations, we're open to that also because it can be efficient for us and even like for our customers. So right now we want to focus mostly on the fact that you can be part of our global infrastructure because as we said, like the more locations, the better the service and the protection, thanks to dividing the traffic and everything. And you can actually be part of our global infrastructure. So it's like we can do like 50/50 quid pro quo and it's like you're going to, we're going to have the space from you, the connectivity, the power and everything, and then you can for free use our services so we can protect you, you can protect others, others can protect us. So it's like win-win situation, like, you know, from all the sides. So that's a, that's possible too. We do white labeling. So right now I would say it's not like the biggest amount of customers that we are protecting, but we're hoping that people will understand, you know, the philosophy like behind this whole service and what it is and they will try it and will be able to, you know, just protect everyone. Like everyone will be able to protect everyone, so.

>> It seems like as you protect, like you said, 'cause you being the super geeky guy, right? I've actually configured BGP and for a corporation and all that in the past,

long time ago. >> I have no idea

what he is talking about. >> Yeah, so anyways, but wait, well she brings up BGP and I was like, okay, I thought we weren't getting technical here, but you know.

>> That was a tricky one. Noted.

>> I was like, it was, it was good. It was. So as you do that, you're basically, as you bring on more, it becomes more secure because you are spreading the, you can spread the load of the defense over all the different. And, so for that, when you say you have 10,000 customers, are they hosted customers or actually they're on-premise, both? How does that work? How does somebody engage with, how would somebody engage with you?

>> Well, I would say it's like both basically. Like, it's not only like hosting customers or like, you know, it's a make mix of everything I would say. Because for us it's not only about like protecting hosting services or something, like I said, we have even governments under our protection, we have even banks under our protection, et cetera. So it's like a mix of everything, I would say. And you don't even need to be our customer, like in a regular, it doesn't matter if you have our hosting services or not, so.

>> So how do people get in touch with you or engage with you or find out more?

>> Well, you can always see everything for yourself on our websites, you can always have a trial because I think it's really good to just try it for yourself and see if it's like good for you or not. We have 24/7 actually customer support, so you can always reach someone there. And I would say like, the email is everywhere, so you can always find us. I think right now you can always find us or someone from the company. Even like on LinkedIn we have our own like social media, so like Facebook, LinkedIn, everything. So if you want to know something more, you can always send us an email or you can, you know, just start the chat somewhere. So that's possible too. And for the people who are really interested, actually we're doing even tours in our data center. We have two of them, private ones and the second one is actually cooled with oil. So that is really interesting for people. And it was thanks to HPE because they actually like afforded full cooperation in this. And they were absolutely okay with us submerging the servers into oil and get everything greasy. So, yeah, so if people want to see something for themselves, they can always reach to us and we can arrange a tour or something.

>> Get a look at the action. Excellent. Well thank you so much, Vendula,

for coming on "theCUBE." >> Thank you too.

>> It was a pleasure having you.

>> It was a pleasure. Thank you.

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