Your backup product is probably lying to you
Krista Macomber, analyst from the Futurum Group, joins us this week to talk about a number of things, but one thing really bubbled up to the top: co-opting of marketing terms. That is, it's probably using terms to describe their product, because they think you want to hear them. Two big ones these days are "air gapped" and "immutable." Krista and Mr. Backup talk about what these terms really mean – and whether or not your product should be using them to describe their product. You may not get any answers from this episode, but your darn sure will get some questions to back to your backup vendor with.
Mentioned in this episode:
Interview ad
You keep using that word air gap?
Speaker:I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Speaker:Uh, this is what we ended up talking about with analysts, Krista McComber
Speaker:this week, both that term and another one that a lot of vendors are using that.
Speaker:I don't think it means what they think.
Speaker:It means.
Speaker:Hope you enjoy the episode.
W. Curtis Preston:Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore All podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup, and have with me a guy who is possibly more excited about my recent
W. Curtis Preston:purchase than I am Prasanna Malaiayandi.
W. Curtis Preston:How's it going?
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I am good, Kurt.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm actually a little disappointed that like your sort of happiness,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:excitement ended so quickly.
W. Curtis Preston:It's in end.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, did well in the sense that you sounded not as excited.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think your words just last night were, I'm starting to get buyer's remorse.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh.
W. Curtis Preston:I did have a moment of buyer's remorse.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, you know, so, so for those that didn't listen to y uh, last week's
W. Curtis Preston:episode, uh, I bought a Tesla, um, after many months of, of, you know, Will
W. Curtis Preston:I, will I not, I decided that it was time to replace the, the old Faithful,
W. Curtis Preston:this trustee Steed that had, uh, you know, 10 years and 220,000 miles on it.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, the Toyota Prius with an ev.
W. Curtis Preston:Or should I say the e v?
W. Curtis Preston:And um, it's funny, I, I had, I had lunch yesterday with a, another guy in
W. Curtis Preston:the industry down in La Jolla, and he, he was like, oh, you, you got a Tesla?
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And uh, he, he said, you know, I have a Kia ev.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and my son was like, dad, Why didn't you buy a Tesla?
W. Curtis Preston:So he has a, he has a little bit of Tesla envy.
W. Curtis Preston:It is a really nice car.
W. Curtis Preston:It's really crazy the amount of extra things that the base model is able to do.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, if I spend another.
W. Curtis Preston:Like six grand to get the enhanced autopilot.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the, the other things that that car can do are even more amazing, but just
W. Curtis Preston:the things that it can do and the, you know, the way it does things for you.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, um, You know, the charging is super, super easy and it is less
W. Curtis Preston:expensive than gassing it up even at the crazy rates that we pay for electricity
W. Curtis Preston:here in uh, Southern California.
W. Curtis Preston:I really wish I lived where you live, Prasanna, cuz you have, you
W. Curtis Preston:pay nothing compared to me cuz yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of Santa Clara does have a benefit of having its
Prasanna Malaiyandi:own power company, and so because of that, our rates are ridiculously low.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like I, I want to say it's probably like a quarter of what you pay Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, cuz I'm paying like at like at night, like at like the
W. Curtis Preston:lowest rate that I pay when I would charge an EV is like 35 cents a kilowatt hour.
W. Curtis Preston:That's the lowest rate
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's like a third of the ba.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:You suck.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm sorry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'll just rub it in.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Pour salt on the wound.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You know how it goes,
W. Curtis Preston:That's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but at least you should continue
Prasanna Malaiyandi:enjoying your car, you know, and
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, I'm enjoying it every time, every time I'm in it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, my wife is still terrified of it.
W. Curtis Preston:We'll, you know, we'll see.
W. Curtis Preston:Get her over over it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, uh, she, yeah, she just, you know, it is, it is
W. Curtis Preston:definitely a different enough car.
W. Curtis Preston:We had an EV before we had a, a leaf, um, and this, this, this car is so
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a, it's, yeah, it's, it's a very, very different
Prasanna Malaiyandi:experience versus what you had
W. Curtis Preston:It's, it's a very, very different experience.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, you know, even, even just something so simple as
W. Curtis Preston:while I'm charging, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz I, cuz right now I am predominantly charging at Super stations because
W. Curtis Preston:believe it or not, it's actually cheaper for me to charge down the
W. Curtis Preston:street at a super station than it is to charge at my house at midnight.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so I'm, I'm just doing that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So I'll charge, I'll charge at the Super station for now.
W. Curtis Preston:So, But I can pull up, I can pull up, uh, what did I say?
W. Curtis Preston:Super Station.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:The tbs.
W. Curtis Preston:The TBS Super Station.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So, uh, so I go to the supercharger and I can charge there.
W. Curtis Preston:And, you know, if I want a full charge and I've driven the car for a,
W. Curtis Preston:what, you know, I'm looking at 30, 40 minutes, um, which is still crazy that
W. Curtis Preston:I can do that in that amount of time.
W. Curtis Preston:And, but, but here's the thing.
W. Curtis Preston:I can sit there and watch Netflix or YouTube, I.
W. Curtis Preston:I might as well be at home.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm in this comfy seat right.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm interacting with the, the video and yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's kind of cool.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But I, I did have a moment of buyer's remorse because, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:know I,
W. Curtis Preston:money
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah, I know we talked about this yesterday.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm glad you sort of walked off the ledge there and came back to normal
Prasanna Malaiyandi:civilization, you know, and, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so I'm enjoying it.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, well, our, our guest is, is probably at this point
W. Curtis Preston:wondering, you know, what in the world did she sign up for?
W. Curtis Preston:Couple of, couple of ev nerds.
W. Curtis Preston:She's, uh, she's an analyst and advisor and all things data
W. Curtis Preston:protection and cybersecurity.
W. Curtis Preston:Having been in the industry for 13 years, I ran into her insights
W. Curtis Preston:quite a bit on LinkedIn, and so I, I wanted to have her on the pod.
W. Curtis Preston:She's now a senior analyst at Futurum Group.
W. Curtis Preston:Welcome to the Pod Krista Macomber.
W. Curtis Preston:How's it going?
Krista Maccomber:Curtis and Prasanna, thank you so much for having me.
Krista Maccomber:I'm, uh, not lucky enough to, uh, own a Tesla, but definitely maybe someday.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, person, Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:Prasannawas my sort of, I was, I was living vicariously through Prasanna's.
W. Curtis Preston:Ev uh, ownership or Tesla ownership.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't know if it counts as being vicariously
Prasanna Malaiyandi:living through my experience since I didn't really, I don't really
Prasanna Malaiyandi:use the car as much as you, for
W. Curtis Preston:Isn't it ridiculous, Kristy?
W. Curtis Preston:He's, he's, how, okay, how long have you had your car
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Four years, three months,
W. Curtis Preston:and how many miles do you have on your car?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:uh, 12,700 miles.
W. Curtis Preston:I, your Honor, I arrest my
Krista Maccomber:Even I, wow.
Krista Maccomber:Even I do more than that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's just, that's just, it's just wrong.
W. Curtis Preston:But
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Of which 750 was done over the long weekend when I
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's crazy.
W. Curtis Preston:He had a long weekend and drove, you drove to, where'd you say you, uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yosemite.
Krista Maccomber:Beautiful.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, beautiful spot.
W. Curtis Preston:You don't have anything beautiful like that out where you live.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you, Krista,
Krista Maccomber:Well, I am about a mile, uh, mile away from the ocean,
Krista Maccomber:so that doesn't, that doesn't suck.
Krista Maccomber:But it's not quite Yosemite, so.
W. Curtis Preston:but, and you're just surrounded by green all the time, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, it's just, um, yeah, that's what you have,
Krista Maccomber:bit of everything.
Krista Maccomber:Beach trees, mountains.
Krista Maccomber:Good mix.
W. Curtis Preston:Good mix.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I, I, you know, I'm curious to know, um, I mean, I know how I got into
W. Curtis Preston:this business when I talked to somebody.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, I, I am curious, like, how did you find yourself
W. Curtis Preston:in this side of the business?
W. Curtis Preston:Like
Krista Maccomber:Sure.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, it is.
Krista Maccomber:Um, it's an interesting story actually, Curtis.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so when I was in school, I actually studied, um, journalism and, um, I had
Krista Maccomber:a, a minor in business and so I wrote for the student paper actually here
Krista Maccomber:at the University of New Hampshire.
Krista Maccomber:And, um, there was a gentleman that.
Krista Maccomber:Used to work at the first analyst company I ended up working for.
Krista Maccomber:And um, I interviewed him for a story for the school paper.
Krista Maccomber:Um, he actually won their business competition a few years prior.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and he said, you know what?
Krista Maccomber:We need some kind of research and, uh, proofreading and editing interns.
Krista Maccomber:It's kind of a, you know, a good mix, good experience.
Krista Maccomber:So why don't you kind of come on board and check it out.
Krista Maccomber:So I interned for, um, about a year and a half or so, and then
Krista Maccomber:I ended up coming on board.
Krista Maccomber:Full-time, um, as I graduated and the rest has been history.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Nice.
W. Curtis Preston:Nice.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, what.
W. Curtis Preston:What, what's it been like?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, you, you know, that like the, the backup side of things.
W. Curtis Preston:I think you, you, you've certainly expanded or I don't know how long,
W. Curtis Preston:if you've covered the cyber side of things, but you've certainly
W. Curtis Preston:now uncovered the cyber side.
W. Curtis Preston:What, I mean, what's it like covering this industry from the outside?
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz I mean, I, I, I've, I've been on the outside, I've been on the, I've been on
W. Curtis Preston:the, I've been sort of, I've been on three sides now I think of, of the industry.
W. Curtis Preston:So what's it like, what's it like being, uh, you know, doing that?
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, so, you know, one thing that's pretty unique, I
Krista Maccomber:think, in terms of where we sit in the market, um, so our team, so you
Krista Maccomber:mentioned we're, we're with Futurum group, we're actually acquired at the
Krista Maccomber:start of this year by Futurum group.
Krista Maccomber:Previously we were evaluator group.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and we work very closely actually with IT operations.
Krista Maccomber:So when you talk about covering a topic like cyber, what I think is really
Krista Maccomber:interesting because you get that sort of firsthand perspective in terms of,
Krista Maccomber:okay, you know, I'm all of a sudden seeing everything being branded.
Krista Maccomber:As security in cyber, um, you know, how do I know what's what, how do I really
Krista Maccomber:know what my full stack should look like?
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I think it's a very important topic because there is
Krista Maccomber:no silver bullet, you know, cyber resiliency solution, unfortunately.
Krista Maccomber:You know, it's all about how does you know, data protection
Krista Maccomber:play, um, you know, with incident response as just one example.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so that's been, I think, you know, Valuable just in terms of, you know,
Krista Maccomber:we really have to be able to understand how the piece parts fit together, but
Krista Maccomber:make sure that we're being very clear as well on our side about where does
Krista Maccomber:our expertise, you know, sort of lie.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so a lot of what you provide, like you mentioned,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's talking to like the IT folks, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And figuring out like what does the process look like from there?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like where do you go from there, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's like, okay, here's my problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Here's kind of what I'm looking to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like, how do you help them solve those challenges, I guess?
Krista Maccomber:Sure.
Krista Maccomber:So it depends a little bit.
Krista Maccomber:Um, I'll give you the analyst answer, but.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah.
Krista Maccomber:So I would say typically they might want us to help them to narrow down to a
Krista Maccomber:small handful of solutions to consider, um, based on the particular criteria of
Krista Maccomber:their environment and their requirements, which of course are always unique.
Krista Maccomber:So they're never is sort of one size fits all just, you know,
Krista Maccomber:for any customer of course.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so that really does, um, That's where we do spend quite a bit of our time.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and sometimes it might even be helping them to, um, you know, look at
Krista Maccomber:their current implementation a little bit skeptically and say, okay, where
Krista Maccomber:might some of the gaps, you know, exist?
Krista Maccomber:Um, what are some of the things that maybe we aren't necessarily thinking about?
Krista Maccomber:Um, That we might wanna consider moving forward.
Krista Maccomber:And that's where actually we have what we call our IT insights community.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and what we find is that does tend to be really valuable for IT
Krista Maccomber:operations because that's a community where, um, not only can they get,
Krista Maccomber:you know, kind of our feedback as.
Krista Maccomber:Analysts, but they can also have some peer to peer conversations and
Krista Maccomber:feedback and, um, you know, understand what are some of their peers maybe
Krista Maccomber:doing to address particular, you know, challenges or requirements and, and
Krista Maccomber:again, have those types of conversations.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, uh, a few years ago, uh, I give, um, I give Randy
W. Curtis Preston:some credit, um, from back in the day.
W. Curtis Preston:It was a few years ago when I was working, I.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, by the way, before I continue, I'll remember this
W. Curtis Preston:time to do our usual disclaimer.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, this is an independent podcast and, uh, you know, it doesn't reflect
W. Curtis Preston:necessarily, uh, anybody's employer and the opinions that you hear are ours.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, also, uh, be sure to rate us, go to your poca, your pod catcher and
W. Curtis Preston:give us lots of stars and comments.
W. Curtis Preston:We'd love to see comments, and we'd really love to talk to you.
W. Curtis Preston:If you, uh, you know, you wanna be part of the conversation, you wanna
W. Curtis Preston:send me a private message, you just say, Hey, make sure you cover abc.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you haven't talked at all about such and such.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, the episode this week, uh, that, that, that I published this week is a
W. Curtis Preston:perfect example of that where somebody wanted to know like, how do I, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, like I lost everything, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Not just I lost all my servers, but I've lost, I.
W. Curtis Preston:Like the handhelds that I use to authenticate with my password management
W. Curtis Preston:system and my, my, uh, MFA system.
W. Curtis Preston:How, how do I start from a hundred percent scratch, which isn't something
W. Curtis Preston:that I haven't been asked before that.
W. Curtis Preston:So that's the show that went last week, and that was from a user.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, or, or a listener of the podcast and, um, uh, we had her on.
W. Curtis Preston:So yeah, so contact us, um, you know, even if it's just privately.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, I am WC Preston on Twitter, w Curtis Preston gmail,
W. Curtis Preston:and, uh, linkedin.com/i n slash mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, so a few years ago, one, one thing I think that.
W. Curtis Preston:When you get to talk to independent, independent analysts, they can
W. Curtis Preston:sometimes call you on your bs.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I was working for a vendor, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the, the last time I talked to Randy, which was a few years ago, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, he, uh, called me.
W. Curtis Preston:So the vendor that I worked at liked to use the word immutable a lot,
Krista Maccomber:I knew where this was going.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, and he's like, right, but do you have the, you know, he described
W. Curtis Preston:a very specific thing of like, you know, do, do you have a feature that
W. Curtis Preston:you can turn on so that even the users can't delete their own backups?
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, well, no.
W. Curtis Preston:And he's like, well, then you're not really immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, very good point.
W. Curtis Preston:And then I
W. Curtis Preston:went, I went and, and, and, um, I mean, you know, I still think
W. Curtis Preston:of immutability as, as a, as a.
W. Curtis Preston:Like a spectrum, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Nothing's a hundred percent immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and nothing's 0% immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:Is that right?
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so I think you could be more and more immutable over, over time.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but that, that specific request, uh, that feature made it into
W. Curtis Preston:my previous employer's product, uh, significantly because of the
W. Curtis Preston:input that I got from, uh, Randy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, and I think sometimes we just sort of have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:our own blinders on in terms of what we think people need in customers
Prasanna Malaiyandi:these, and being able to talk to independent analysts and be like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hey, what are you actually seeing?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And hearing as you're going out and talking to all these people, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because you see and touch so many different people who may not even
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be existing customers, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like, yeah, that's critical.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, it's, um, it really helps to keep us grounded.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so I remember that conversation, Curtis distinctly, so I figured you
Krista Maccomber:were, I figured you were going there.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you
W. Curtis Preston:coffee shop in Vegas.
Krista Maccomber:Yes.
Krista Maccomber:Yes.
Krista Maccomber:It was.
W. Curtis Preston:right where that meeting was.
Krista Maccomber:We try to make sure people have thick
Krista Maccomber:skin in those conversations.
Krista Maccomber:Right.
Krista Maccomber:But, um, yeah, it, it keeps us grounded.
Krista Maccomber:I mean, one example that comes very clearly to my mind that
Krista Maccomber:I've been, um, partaking in recently is around air gapping.
Krista Maccomber:Um, because of course we're seeing all these different cloud solutions
Krista Maccomber:and oh, they're air gapped and this it insights community that I referenced,
Krista Maccomber:they're saying, well, wait a minute.
Krista Maccomber:It's not really right, because there does need to be some connection somewhere
Krista Maccomber:to get that data into the vault.
Krista Maccomber:So why are they calling this an air gap and is it just, you know, um, an
Krista Maccomber:AWS bucket that's sitting out there somewhere that I'm just putting data into?
Krista Maccomber:How do I know right, that there is some sort of.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, isolation there, right?
Krista Maccomber:So we've kind of taken that feedback and not only does that influence
Krista Maccomber:sort of, um, you know, our research and, and where we're covering.
Krista Maccomber:So I wrote, um, you know, a piece about, okay, what we call this, you
Krista Maccomber:know, operational air gap versus your more traditional physical air gap
Krista Maccomber:where you're actually shipping, you know, tape media offsite, for example.
Krista Maccomber:Um, but also kind of to what you're alluding to.
W. Curtis Preston:An actual air gap.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it's funny, this came up, this came up, uh, yesterday
W. Curtis Preston:on, we, we were recording with another, with somebody else, and they, they,
W. Curtis Preston:they said exactly the same thing.
W. Curtis Preston:So you're saying, you, you, you do, you're doing, you're using the term operational
W. Curtis Preston:air gap versus physical air gap.
Krista Maccomber:I Either that or data vaults, you know, I'm kind of.
Krista Maccomber:Playing with both of them.
Krista Maccomber:Um, operational does seem to make more sense to it operations, um,
Krista Maccomber:you know, versus like a, a virtual air gap or, or anything like that.
Krista Maccomber:But, um, I, I'm even hesitating to use air gap in context.
Krista Maccomber:If anything, that's not a, a pure physical air gap, just.
Krista Maccomber:Due to the feedback that we've been receiving, you know,
Krista Maccomber:from those conversations.
Krista Maccomber:So, but yeah, operational seems to, seems to be sitting a little bit better.
Krista Maccomber:I, I would describe it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I like the notion of avoiding the term air gap
Prasanna Malaiyandi:because like you said, it means so many different things and it sort of.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Also leads people down the path of saying, oh yeah, it's an air gap.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it's like that first word becomes so key that they forget
Prasanna Malaiyandi:about it and what it really means.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I like using the word operational.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was also thinking as you were talking, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Instead of like operational air gap, it's like operational isolation
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or things like that because that's really what you wanna do, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like, hey, this is really a separate environment that is operationally isolated
Prasanna Malaiyandi:from everything else you normally run.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that's how you get the protection.
Krista Maccomber:I completely agree Prasanna, and that's why a
Krista Maccomber:vault is actually not a bad term in my opinion, because it does have
Krista Maccomber:that connotation of being isolated.
Krista Maccomber:But yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, it's, it's funny, um, Krista, um, it's like the
W. Curtis Preston:argument that I have over.
W. Curtis Preston:Snapshots and, um, because like, and again, this came up yesterday, so I, I
W. Curtis Preston:don't like that vendors like AWS use the term snapshot to refer to image copies.
W. Curtis Preston:I.
W. Curtis Preston:Right, because like a, like a, an AWS snapshot is actually a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Like it actually goes into s3, it goes to a different place.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not a snapshot in the traditional it sense.
W. Curtis Preston:But then the thing is, if you think about the word image, it's
W. Curtis Preston:just another word for snapshot.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just they're all, they're all pictures, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So it's like, you know, you're saying vault.
W. Curtis Preston:It's like, I, I agree.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Basically you've chosen to use a different term and there's nothing wrong with it.
W. Curtis Preston:But vault is where I would make my air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:That's what I'm, that's historically I would put my tapes in a vault.
W. Curtis Preston:This is no more a vault than it was an air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, but I, I understand what you're, you're trying to get
W. Curtis Preston:away from that term air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I guess the question is like, if we're gonna keep, like the way, like the way.
W. Curtis Preston:The way Randy kept me honest a few years ago, if we're gonna keep vendors honest,
W. Curtis Preston:like there's, and I'm not gonna name the vendor, but there's one particular
W. Curtis Preston:vendor that has, has, uh, you know, an appliance that sits on-prem and it's an
W. Curtis Preston:on-prem appliance in the data center, and they call that appliance air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, and it just kills me.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm like, it's not even whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, so how do, how do you, how do you like, That's, that's what
W. Curtis Preston:I'm saying is I'm, that's, hi.
W. Curtis Preston:Historically, when I, when I wasn't part of the vendor community, I
W. Curtis Preston:was trying very hard to get them to use term to not misuse terms.
W. Curtis Preston:And air gap is currently air gap and immutable, I'd say are the,
W. Curtis Preston:the two words that are very much
W. Curtis Preston:misused.
Krista Maccomber:Absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I dunno where to go from there, but it's just, it's just, uh, so, so, well, I
W. Curtis Preston:guess my question is, so do, would you, are you trying to get vendors to use
W. Curtis Preston:that term or, you know, does that matter?
W. Curtis Preston:What's your goal with that term?
W. Curtis Preston:The vault term?
Krista Maccomber:I would say honestly, my bigger, um, Goal is
Krista Maccomber:to try to get the vendors to be as clear as possible about what they're,
Krista Maccomber:what they're actually providing.
Krista Maccomber:Right.
Krista Maccomber:Because it's okay, you can use any term you want, but you know, to your point,
Krista Maccomber:Curtis, there's, there's only so many words and terms that we can use, right?
Krista Maccomber:Because then if you do throw out something completely new, then the market.
Krista Maccomber:You know, in, in, in it, they have no idea, you know, what you're talking about.
Krista Maccomber:So there needs to be some education anyway.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so I think I would say my, my goal wouldn't necessarily be to get the, you
Krista Maccomber:know, the vendors in the industry to standardize on that term, but more, okay.
Krista Maccomber:Let's consider, you know, is there something else we can
Krista Maccomber:describe this as, but also bigger picture, you know, You, Mr.
Krista Maccomber:Bender, please be aware that, you know, your customers are
Krista Maccomber:looking at this messaging and they're wanting to understand
Krista Maccomber:what's actually going into this.
Krista Maccomber:To truly make it isolated and to make it more than just your, your general
Krista Maccomber:purpose S3 bucket that's just sitting out there that anybody can penetrate.
Krista Maccomber:They want that information and they wanna know, um, because this
Krista Maccomber:is just too important for them.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so I would say at the end of the day, that's really,
Krista Maccomber:um, you know, my bigger goal.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:It's a very noble goal.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:I wish you luck.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:No, because that's, because that's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:always a hard thing like Curtis talked about, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:It's like vendors like to make up terms, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And like to reuse terms because they think that's what customers want.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:I, I've worked in with vendors my entire career, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And so I've always seen that path, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:It's like, Hey, we could call it this, but it's not quite that, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:We'll use the word snapshot when we really mean backup, but it's like people know
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:snapshots and it's like, Yeah, that's just confusing users in the end, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And so at least making sure users understand what they need to look for.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And it doesn't matter what terms a vendor uses, it's like, this is what I need.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:I need a mechanism to make sure that my backups are protected.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And it's operationally separate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:And if you decide to call it a vault, or if you decide to call it a virtual layer
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:gap or whatever else you decide to call it, that's fine, but this is what I need.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
Krista Maccomber:And um, we've actually gotten hands on, um, with some of these solutions
Krista Maccomber:in particular, there's a couple of them that we were contracted to actually
Krista Maccomber:do an audit and say, okay, you have, you know, solution X and solution Y
Krista Maccomber:that are, you know, you're calling.
Krista Maccomber:Air gapped or whatever that term is.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, let's break it down.
Krista Maccomber:Um, let's spend some hours kind of really going through the solution.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, as the analyst firm, we tried to put on our, our hacker hat,
Krista Maccomber:I guess, if you will, and try to think about, okay, what are any ways that there
Krista Maccomber:might be to get around, you know, using Curtis's example of the immutability,
Krista Maccomber:you know, the controls for that.
Krista Maccomber:And maybe when an IMMU bill copy expires, um, You know, do you have
Krista Maccomber:your controls to be able to sever the network connection, um, so that it is
Krista Maccomber:only open, you know, when your data's being transferred and maybe it's even
Krista Maccomber:over a private link, for example.
Krista Maccomber:So, um, you know, we've tried to do that as well, um, when
Krista Maccomber:we've had the opportunity.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and that way we can go to the customer and say, we got hands on
Krista Maccomber:with these couple of solutions.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, we're not saying pick one of these two, but what we are
Krista Maccomber:saying is that based on what we've seen, um, you know, Here's some
Krista Maccomber:things that you might think about.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and by the way, here's, you know, the write up of what we did, if you
Krista Maccomber:do wanna look at these solutions.
Krista Maccomber:So
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, it sounds like it, it sounds like, uh, air gap
W. Curtis Preston:or vault or whatever, um, is similar, at least my understanding of sort
W. Curtis Preston:of the, the modern manifestation.
W. Curtis Preston:Of it is that it's, it's like immutable in that some things are
W. Curtis Preston:more air gap than others, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Some things are, you know, you think, you think of air, air gap and immutable,
W. Curtis Preston:they're both binary terms, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It's, you know, it's like dead or pregnant, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You're either, you're either dead or alive, pregnant or not pregnant.
W. Curtis Preston:You can't, it's, it's a binary
W. Curtis Preston:term.
W. Curtis Preston:You, Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But, but the, but these, these aren't, you would think they would be like,
W. Curtis Preston:that it, you know, immutable just means can, can or cannot be changed.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So you would think that this is a, this is a binary condition, but the,
W. Curtis Preston:but the thing is that, You know, because, you know, I make the point that
W. Curtis Preston:nothing's a hundred percent immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, give me, gimme a solution that says it's immutable and hand me a torch.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it's not immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not immutable anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:It can indeed be changed if I get access.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But think some things are more immutable than others.
W. Curtis Preston:Some things are more isolated than others.
W. Curtis Preston:I like, I like the term isolated.
W. Curtis Preston:I like that a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, some things are, are isolated, farther away, right on, on one end.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, you, you use the term s3, but all S3 buckets aren't,
W. Curtis Preston:aren't created equal either, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So an open, an open S3 bucket with no authentication, not isolated, not
W. Curtis Preston:air gapped, not immutable, right?
W. Curtis Preston:None of those things.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and on the other end, I, I would put maybe not on the far,
W. Curtis Preston:like on the far end, might be.
W. Curtis Preston:Actual worm media, like optical or something like that, or, or,
W. Curtis Preston:or a worm tape, uh, where you actually have physical, uh, stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Where would you, is there something you,
W. Curtis Preston:think is more immutable than
Krista Maccomber:has one of those and Randy has one of those in his office.
Krista Maccomber:Uh, Randy does,
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, he
W. Curtis Preston:has the already the,
Krista Maccomber:in Boulder, one of the worm tapes.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So
W. Curtis Preston:that's like on one
Krista Maccomber:terms, he
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Krista Maccomber:been around for a long time.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, it has, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So that, that's like on, on, on the opposite end of the spectrum.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but somewhere in between there, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, you've got, you've got append only file systems.
W. Curtis Preston:You've got immutability built into, uh, Linux, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, like Veeam uses.
W. Curtis Preston:The immutability feature of Linux for their harden, their
W. Curtis Preston:hardened Linux repository.
W. Curtis Preston:But at the same time, if I get root, I can turn that feature off.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:And so it's, it's, it's more immutable than the other thing,
W. Curtis Preston:but, but it's not a hundred percent.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so that's, that's, it sounds like what, what you're doing is
W. Curtis Preston:just digging into these vendors to see where they actually fall.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
Krista Maccomber:And um, a lot of what you're alluding to Curtis would be, you know, when we
Krista Maccomber:do have more higher touch, more, you know, consultative type engagements
Krista Maccomber:with it, that's where it might take into some of the nitty gritty and,
Krista Maccomber:okay, let's look in your environment and let's think about where some
Krista Maccomber:of the vulnerabilities might be.
Krista Maccomber:You know, we're not necessarily.
Krista Maccomber:You know, full security auditors, you know, by any means.
Krista Maccomber:But we can certainly, you know, help with, um, you know, maybe thinking about,
Krista Maccomber:about, um, some of those unique, you know, requirements and potential pitfalls.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So as you're talking to a lot of these IT operations
Prasanna Malaiyandi:folks and various companies, Where do you see, like, how are people shifting?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like I know back in the day, right, Curtis will probably, Curtis
Prasanna Malaiyandi:has told numerous stories, right when he first started, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It was, you had your backup server, you had tape, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You were doing backups to it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now we've seen everything from that to sort of purpose-built backup
Prasanna Malaiyandi:appliances, to integrate data protection appliances to SaaS based services.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How are customers shifting, um, what they think about when it comes to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:data protection and how they plan to deploy and use these solutions?
Krista Maccomber:Sure, sure.
Krista Maccomber:So looking at the deployment itself, um, we are certainly, you know,
Krista Maccomber:you mentioned SaaS Prasannaand we're, we are seeing a bit of that.
Krista Maccomber:Typically it is for more point use cases.
Krista Maccomber:So for example, okay, I've migrated over to Microsoft 365.
Krista Maccomber:I'm already subscribing to Microsoft in the cloud.
Krista Maccomber:It probably makes sense that I get my data protection for that.
Krista Maccomber:In the same manner.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so data protection is really interesting because it does have
Krista Maccomber:that very long tail of adoption.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, it's very, very hard right to migrate off of legacy systems.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you might have, you know, legacy backup copies that
Krista Maccomber:ultimately might need to recover.
Krista Maccomber:Um, these processes are in place for, in some cases, you know, years, decades.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so we're not necessarily seeing kind of that.
Krista Maccomber:Wholesale lift and shift by any means.
Krista Maccomber:But we are seeing, you know, kind of SaaS delivered data protection
Krista Maccomber:for those point use cases that is starting to enter the equation.
Krista Maccomber:Um, we've already been talking of, of course, a little bit about some
Krista Maccomber:of these, you know, kind of cloud.
Krista Maccomber:Air gap or cloud vault solutions?
Krista Maccomber:Well, even just thinking about kind of a general, um, target for
Krista Maccomber:backup or for disaster recovery, um, you know, we are seeing the
Krista Maccomber:cloud being used for that as well.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, and of course I think that makes sense when we think about, um,
Krista Maccomber:Just, you know, kind of the simplicity of being able to subscribe to that
Krista Maccomber:infrastructure versus having to buy and deploy it and manage it all in house.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so, and, and that kind of brings me to, um, The big thing that, you
Krista Maccomber:know, we're seeing face, um, you know, not only just IT teams that are
Krista Maccomber:working on data protection, but you know, it operations teams in general,
Krista Maccomber:which is just that they don't have it.
Krista Maccomber:They just don't have time.
Krista Maccomber:So staffing pressures, you know, our second only to.
Krista Maccomber:PR, cost and budget in terms of the challenges that we're seeing
Krista Maccomber:customers trying to address.
Krista Maccomber:So that's where kind of a SaaS or a cloud type delivery, um, where it's appropriate
Krista Maccomber:and where it can, you know, fit the bill.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, that can really help to alleviate some of those pressures.
Krista Maccomber:So I kind of threw a lot at you, but that's a little mixture of
Krista Maccomber:what we've been seeing, at least from a deployment perspective.
W. Curtis Preston:That's a, that's a, that's a perfect answer.
W. Curtis Preston:I, but you and you, you brought up a, a favorite topic of mine,
W. Curtis Preston:so I want to ask you about that.
W. Curtis Preston:And that is, um, what percentage of people, when you're talking out, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, when you're talking out there and they go and they get 365 or G Suite
W. Curtis Preston:or Salesforce or pick some other SaaS offering, what percentage of those people.
W. Curtis Preston:Then realize they need to back it up and then get something, anything to
W. Curtis Preston:back it up versus, versus the percentage that go, well, it's, uh, it's included.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, it's, it's part of the thing.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah.
Krista Maccomber:And that, honestly, that has been a problem for years.
Krista Maccomber:Um, I would say Curtis, it's getting better.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so
W. Curtis Preston:You are
Krista Maccomber:that some.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly right.
W. Curtis Preston:We're, we're
W. Curtis Preston:all doing it together.
W. Curtis Preston:We're all
W. Curtis Preston:doing it
Krista Maccomber:Oh yeah, exactly.
Krista Maccomber:Exactly.
Krista Maccomber:It's like you, you, you know, if you scream enough people notice.
Krista Maccomber:Right.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so we fielded, um, a primary research study right around the turn of the year.
Krista Maccomber:Um, we published it back in January and, um, what that research found
Krista Maccomber:was that actually a little bit over.
Krista Maccomber:Half of enterprises were, if they had Microsoft 365, we're protecting it now.
Krista Maccomber:Which of course is not where we want it to be, but it's, you
W. Curtis Preston:way more than it was
Krista Maccomber:Exact, yes, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:The only time I saw a survey, it was like 5%.
W. Curtis Preston:So I'll take
Krista Maccomber:and granted these were, you know, we did speak with
Krista Maccomber:folks that were, you know, very hands-on with data protection.
Krista Maccomber:So maybe that number you could make a case maybe was a little
Krista Maccomber:inflated just based on the audience.
Krista Maccomber:But I, I think it was still very heartening.
Krista Maccomber:Um, I think when we look at.
Krista Maccomber:Some of the other applications like Salesforce.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, certainly we're seeing interest in demand there, but you
Krista Maccomber:know, I think in practice we're certainly still getting there.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, I mean, you've sort of alluded to, um, that concept that,
Krista Maccomber:oh, well if it's in the cloud, then the protection is the cloud providers.
Krista Maccomber:Problem, and I don't have to worry about it.
Krista Maccomber:Of course, we on this call.
Krista Maccomber:No, that's not true.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I think in part, due to the education, Curtis, as you were
Krista Maccomber:mentioning, that we've all been doing, but I also think, honestly, some
Krista Maccomber:of the ransomware attacks and those headlines, um, I think they probably
Krista Maccomber:have helped a little bit because I, we've seen that that has grabbed the
Krista Maccomber:attention of the C-Suite to say, oh, I'm seeing that this could potentially be
Krista Maccomber:a major problem for us, so we need to make sure we've got a handle on this.
Krista Maccomber:And of course, um, you know, your state of SaaS applications, um, is
Krista Maccomber:certainly gonna play a role there.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, you look at, you look at what
W. Curtis Preston:happened with Rackspace, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that, I mean, it wasn't 365, but it was, it was hosted exchange.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, you know, basically they, they did get the customers, well,
W. Curtis Preston:they did make the customer's data available.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Be because they, they made, I don't know, they had a tough decision as to.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they couldn't get the data back quick enough, and so they made a decision
W. Curtis Preston:to just move everybody over to 365.
W. Curtis Preston:But all they did was they just moved their accounts over to 365.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And they started doing email.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And the customer's like, okay, good.
W. Curtis Preston:We're glad we have email.
W. Curtis Preston:What about the old email?
W. Curtis Preston:And the, there was no vehicle to get the, there was no path to get the data out
W. Curtis Preston:of exchange and sort of, Into, into 365.
W. Curtis Preston:And so they eventually, they created like little, little, um, PSTs basically
W. Curtis Preston:that customers could download their own data and then import it into 365.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but, uh, uh, but yeah, it just illustrates.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and by the way, that took months, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and there's a, and there's a lawsuit about it, but there, I, I
W. Curtis Preston:don't think there's been enough there.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I, as, as sad as this sounds, it will probably take a few more, um, very
W. Curtis Preston:public, very damaging, very newsworthy ransomware attacks on SaaS providers,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, for people to, to wake up and
Krista Maccomber:To really get it.
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, it's, um, yeah, no, I, I completely agree.
Krista Maccomber:And I think one thing that's kind of a little bit unique with this
Krista Maccomber:market too, I think is just the number of SaaS applications that
Krista Maccomber:enterprises are using and that they will be using moving forward.
Krista Maccomber:And so, um, You know, how do you pick your battles, right, in terms of having a
Krista Maccomber:solution that is, you know, specifically tailored to that, to protecting that one
Krista Maccomber:application versus potentially something that's a little bit more general purpose,
Krista Maccomber:maybe more API driven in terms of how it integrates with, um, the SaaS application,
Krista Maccomber:just to make sure that there at least is some basic levels of protection.
Krista Maccomber:So, um, I think that's something, you know, over the next maybe year or two,
Krista Maccomber:I think we'll, we'll probably start hearing a little bit more about as
Krista Maccomber:the awareness, um, increases and, um, just as enterprises are using more
Krista Maccomber:SaaS applications, I think that's gonna be, well, one of the problems,
Krista Maccomber:um, on the list to address for sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:W I know we talked about SaaS applications, and I'm not
Prasanna Malaiyandi:surprised, like enterprises probably have hundreds of SaaS apps, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, that they're using internally.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And it's probably, like you said, it's gonna get worse because everyone's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:constantly, like if you look at how many new SaaS apps are being built every day,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and it's like, Hey, here's this new app.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Should we start using it or not?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It gets difficult to manage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, Switching from Sapp.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I was wondering your thoughts around Kubernetes, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know Kubernetes has been hot for a while.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, everyone's been like, Hey, it provides availability and scalability
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and just sort of, I know Curtis, when we've talked about Kubernetes and the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:past had sort of exploded with like, how are you gonna protect things as they're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:constantly spinning up, spinning down and
W. Curtis Preston:It's, it's the only thing I care about is that,
W. Curtis Preston:how are you gonna back it up?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And sort of like, what are you starting to see in this area?
Krista Maccomber:Yeah.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, so it's been interesting and it's something that we've, um, so
Krista Maccomber:we've been tracking it from, I would say three perspectives as a company.
Krista Maccomber:So we have been looking at, um, you know, the adoption of what
Krista Maccomber:we're calling some of these, um, container management platforms, right?
Krista Maccomber:Like a Kubernetes.
Krista Maccomber:Um, we've been looking at how the market for persistent storage, um, for Kubernetes
Krista Maccomber:applications has been developing as well.
Krista Maccomber:So that includes not just backup, it includes the production storage as well.
Krista Maccomber:And then really my role has been to look at, okay, you know, as Curtis
Krista Maccomber:is mentioning, that's all great, but what about the protection?
Krista Maccomber:Um, so, um, we are seeing that, um, There still is a little bit of a disconnect.
Krista Maccomber:I'm sure this will shock you between developers and IT operations.
Krista Maccomber:I know this will shock
W. Curtis Preston:Shocked.
W. Curtis Preston:Shocked.
W. Curtis Preston:I am, I tell you.
W. Curtis Preston:Shocked.
Krista Maccomber:don't try, don't fall outta your chair.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so, um, you know, I guess double clicking down into, you know, really
Krista Maccomber:the focus of, you know, Our perspectives and maybe our audience on this show.
Krista Maccomber:So, um, these applications are beginning to enter production.
Krista Maccomber:Um, so they are, you know, doing things like requiring persistent
Krista Maccomber:storage, which as we all know is going to need protection.
Krista Maccomber:Um, Now how that's translating over to IT operations by and large.
Krista Maccomber:So I did not have the pleasure of attending KubeCon, um, in
Krista Maccomber:Amsterdam this spring, but I was out in Detroit this past fall.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and we did have a number of team members, um, at the,
Krista Maccomber:the spring event this year.
Krista Maccomber:And, um, for IT operations, it's still very much a narrative of, okay, I'm
Krista Maccomber:hearing about this Kubernetes thing.
Krista Maccomber:I am aware that I need to pay, be paying attention to it, and I
Krista Maccomber:need to start figuring it out, but it's not really yet crossing my
Krista Maccomber:desk, um, on a day-to-day basis.
Krista Maccomber:So that's what we're seeing by and large, whether or not that is the reality
Krista Maccomber:of the urgency that they should have.
Krista Maccomber:That is maybe a different story, but, um, especially when we think about protection,
Krista Maccomber:um, it's, it's still very nascent.
Krista Maccomber:Um, And I would say what we're seeing is still a lot of the,
Krista Maccomber:you know, do it yourself.
Krista Maccomber:I'm using an open source tool like Valero, um, to kind of script it.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I'm maybe not quite really using a lot in the form of a third party tool
Krista Maccomber:for protecting these applications, at least from a data protection standpoint.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and I'm guessing just like SaaS applications, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Until you get to that point where there's.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Data that gets lost because no one backed it up or I couldn't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:restore it, or ransomware hit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was just reading something recently about ransomware now starting to target
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like Kubernetes applications, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So until you get to that stage, right, there's probably no
Prasanna Malaiyandi:driving force necessarily.
Krista Maccomber:yeah, yeah, exactly.
Krista Maccomber:Because it's, um, you know, Kubernetes has been driven into
Krista Maccomber:the enterprise by developers and.
Krista Maccomber:In fairness, developers are doing their job, they're developing
Krista Maccomber:applications and they're trying to be as agile and quick, you know, all
Krista Maccomber:those terms that we love as possible.
Krista Maccomber:And they're, they're not trained, um, in data protection and
Krista Maccomber:proper data protection, hygiene.
Krista Maccomber:And, you know, I would argue, nor should they be, um, But you know, as
Krista Maccomber:you're alluding to Prasanna, it's only when it becomes a problem, I think
Krista Maccomber:that there becomes that awareness.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I think in the Kubernetes piece, you're also fighting against a couple
Krista Maccomber:of other challenges, one of which I kind of alluded to, which is, oh, well
Krista Maccomber:Kubernetes is only for test and dev.
Krista Maccomber:Well, we're number one.
Krista Maccomber:We're seeing that that's.
Krista Maccomber:Actually not even true anymore.
Krista Maccomber:We are seeing production workloads are being run on Kubernetes environments.
Krista Maccomber:Um, but also when you think about if a developer needs to roll anything
Krista Maccomber:back, well then there does need to be a form of protection there.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I think the other piece too is that there's this, um, Assumption
Krista Maccomber:that because Kubernetes applications are architected to be very resilient,
Krista Maccomber:that that then translates into data protection, which of course, you know,
Krista Maccomber:I think we, we know that that's not true, but I, I think there needs to
Krista Maccomber:be some education on that front also.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you know, it, it is just, it's just like the la you know, SaaS and Kubernetes.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just the latest.
W. Curtis Preston:Thing on a long list of stuff that isn't backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Like, you know, the, the first thing I remember was raid, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It was like, well, you know, we, we got it on Raid.
W. Curtis Preston:It's on raid.
W. Curtis Preston:We don't need to back it up.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, ah, you know, you know, I, I had the luxury at, when I first, my first
W. Curtis Preston:job, it was at a bank credit card company.
W. Curtis Preston:And we had a guy, his name was Joe Fitzpatrick.
W. Curtis Preston:He was the guy that always, he wasn't a backup guy, he was a cis admin guy, but
W. Curtis Preston:he would always, every time he was a, so he was in a lot more meetings than I was.
W. Curtis Preston:I was a backup guy.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm just, you know, the guy in the data center with the tapes, right?
W. Curtis Preston:He's in like the meetings where they're talking about new things.
W. Curtis Preston:And Joe would always raise his hand and say, are we getting this on tape?
W. Curtis Preston:That was Joe's question.
W. Curtis Preston:Are we getting this on tape?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:As in this, this new application that you're describing sounds amazing.
W. Curtis Preston:I.
W. Curtis Preston:How will we back it up?
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Because you know, you talk about, you talk about, when I hear like,
W. Curtis Preston:oh, it's only test and dev, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Dev is what?
W. Curtis Preston:Test.
W. Curtis Preston:Not so much maybe, but Dev, that's actual work that someone's doing.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:That, you know, when I think about, oh, it's only Dev.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I think back again, back to that bank, one of the last things that
W. Curtis Preston:happened to me when I was there is a group of people came up and, um, they, um,
Krista Maccomber:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:they had lost their entire, it was like a group of
W. Curtis Preston:like, it was a bunch of developers.
W. Curtis Preston:Like the number 45 is up in my head, but this is.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, 35 years ago, it's like 45 developers.
W. Curtis Preston:They were consultants, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So they were being paid back then, probably a hundred,
W. Curtis Preston:150 bucks an hour, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And they had worked for three months on a source code tree,
W. Curtis Preston:and they had stored it in temp.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay, on, on, on hps, which on hps, back then temp was in ram.
W. Curtis Preston:So when you rebooted the server, temp was cleared out and um, they, um,
W. Curtis Preston:they were, they were coming to me.
W. Curtis Preston:They wanted me to restore the source code tree.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm like, we don't back up temp.
W. Curtis Preston:It's.
W. Curtis Preston:It's, it's ram, right?
W. Curtis Preston:They're, they're like, yeah, it's temp, it's temp.
W. Curtis Preston:And they're like, no, you don't understand this source code is really important.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm like, you don't understand, we, we don't back up temp.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Like,
Krista Maccomber:wand.
W. Curtis Preston:who, who puts, who puts their source code in temp?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, You know, it's like, like I, like I knew somebody that stored important
W. Curtis Preston:stuff and they would, they used the, uh, the recycle bin as a filing method.
W. Curtis Preston:Like they would do their stuff and then they would delete it and they
W. Curtis Preston:would put stuff into the recycle bin.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, and then they would pull it outta the recycle bin when they wanted
W. Curtis Preston:to work with it and then delete it and put it back in the recycle bin.
Krista Maccomber:my God.
W. Curtis Preston:When you, when you, when you mentioned that like developers
W. Curtis Preston:or, or a lot of, just, a lot of people, not just developers, but a lot of.
W. Curtis Preston:IT people, they just don't have the, you know, the backup and recovery and
W. Curtis Preston:the cyber recovery chops to know the things they should be doing or not doing.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah.
Krista Maccomber:Yeah, it, yeah, exactly.
Krista Maccomber:So how do we, how do we build that awareness, you know, and a little bit
Krista Maccomber:more, but you know, you don't necessarily wanna bog, especially these devs down
Krista Maccomber:with, you know, all the nitty gritty.
Krista Maccomber:So then how do you start, you know, The term is kind of baking it in, but
Krista Maccomber:how do you integrate tools across that pipeline, um, to make it at least as
Krista Maccomber:streamlined and as easy as possible?
Krista Maccomber:And that way you don't get to that point where, oh, well we just lost three
Krista Maccomber:months of source code development work because we had to reboot our server.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, I mean the, the key, I think the, the,
W. Curtis Preston:the, the first hurdle that we all have to get over for, for SaaS, for
W. Curtis Preston:Kubernetes, for, um, multi node.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, high availability databases like Cassandra and Mongo, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Is we just, can we all just agree this needs to be backed up, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That, that's the, that's the first hurdle, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Because there's just way too many people that are like, well,
W. Curtis Preston:Microsoft's backing it up, right?
W. Curtis Preston:No.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, well, it's, it's, it's, it's a multi-node database.
W. Curtis Preston:It can survive, you know, all these things, right?
W. Curtis Preston:What happens when you drop a table?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Can I add, can I add something to your list?
W. Curtis Preston:Add,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:object store.
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, object story.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, the, the question is how do we, you know, can we, can we, can
W. Curtis Preston:we just, that's the, that's the hurdle.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, you, you talked, Krista, you talked about, um, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, we just need to educate.
W. Curtis Preston:That's the initial hurdle, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And then, So then it is like, well, how do you get any kind of backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So like Salesforce, you, you can manually get a crappy backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You can do it once a week.
W. Curtis Preston:You can download it, just get something so that when.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, and, and I've told the story, I'm not gonna tell it again,
W. Curtis Preston:but I, once, when I was administering a Salesforce environment with a million
W. Curtis Preston:and a half records, basically jumbled the thing and put all the wrong phone
W. Curtis Preston:numbers to all the wrong people, like in, in, in like, like that, I
W. Curtis Preston:managed to corrupt the entire company.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:But in case something like that happens, What do you have?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Even, even and, and then, and then it's the walk before we can run.
W. Curtis Preston:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I do.
W. Curtis Preston:I hope I, I know, I know that over the next few years, the number of ways that
W. Curtis Preston:we can protect SAS apps will get better.
W. Curtis Preston:I was very encouraged by, I was at HYCU, uh, headquarters, uh, last week.
W. Curtis Preston:I was very encouraged by their approach of the.
W. Curtis Preston:The API so that the SaaS companies can program to them.
W. Curtis Preston:I was very encouraged by that.
W. Curtis Preston:I know they, uh, and at least one other company,
W. Curtis Preston:um, GRA is taking that approach.
W. Curtis Preston:I was very encouraged by that.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and, and there's a lot going on in the Kubernetes backup space.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, S3 is problematic Prasanna, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:there's, well, granted, there's versioning, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There's cross region replication, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, they've built a
W. Curtis Preston:No, what I, no, what I'm saying,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:sorry to interrupt you, but what I meant was, what I meant
W. Curtis Preston:was it's difficult to back up, right?
W. Curtis Preston:There's not the, the features aren't there necessarily.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, I, I, because I speak working at a company that was
W. Curtis Preston:trying to figure that out.
W. Curtis Preston:It was not easy.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, sort of like Microsoft 365, it's, they didn't want a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:They didn't want people backing it up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:They, it wasn't until just recently that they
W. Curtis Preston:actually came out with an API for it.
W. Curtis Preston:But anyway, my hope, my hope is for the future that stuff will
W. Curtis Preston:get better, but just like day one.
W. Curtis Preston:My, my, my thing is, and I think it sounds like you're on the same page,
W. Curtis Preston:Krista, is like, just make sure we can all agree that there is nothing magic.
W. Curtis Preston:The cloud is not magic.
W. Curtis Preston:Kubernetes is not magic.
W. Curtis Preston:My Tesla is not magic, even though it feels like it sometimes, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know what?
W. Curtis Preston:That, you know what?
W. Curtis Preston:I need Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:back up for your Tesla.
W. Curtis Preston:I need a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Tesla.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, one, one step at a time.
W. Curtis Preston:One step at a time.
W. Curtis Preston:Right now my backup Tesla is a Prius.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, that's sitting right next to it and very sad.
W. Curtis Preston:It's, it's thinking like I'm gonna get rid of her.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's probably true.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but yeah, if we can just, if we can all just say, let's look at, let's
W. Curtis Preston:prayer, let's acknowledge the problem.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:We need like a 12 step thing, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Acknowledge that we are powerless over data loss, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and then we just, and then we just, we prioritize, uh, what we, so
W. Curtis Preston:we're, we're, we're a company, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And we prioritize, all right?
W. Curtis Preston:We're using Kubernetes, we're using 365.
W. Curtis Preston:We're using Salesforce.
W. Curtis Preston:What would really shoot us in the foot if we lost it, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And we're like, oh my God, that's Salesforce for, for whoever.
W. Curtis Preston:No, it's just a fictional company.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:So for us it's, so, it's gotta be all right.
W. Curtis Preston:So get something quick, get a backup of that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Get us, save ours.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not a good one.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a crappy manual and we gotta do once a week, just get that done.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and then, and then go out and start looking for like better solutions.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm sorry, I I, I got up on a soapbox there for a minute, Krista, but what do
W. Curtis Preston:you think, what do you think about that?
Krista Maccomber:So.
Krista Maccomber:I think it's great advice.
Krista Maccomber:I think we need to crawl before we can walk, before we can run.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I think that having something basic in place is better than nothing.
Krista Maccomber:Um, of course.
Krista Maccomber:And then from there we can start to look at, like you were
Krista Maccomber:mentioning, Curtis, what is critical?
Krista Maccomber:Um, and if it is our Salesforce implementation, maybe we do
Krista Maccomber:need, um, one of these more sophisticated third party tools.
Krista Maccomber:You know, kind of what you're alluding to Curtis in terms of, okay.
Krista Maccomber:All of these, um, different records and hierarchies, we need to be able
Krista Maccomber:to, um, you know, bring those back as quickly as possible if something happens.
Krista Maccomber:And so that's where some of these third party tools might come in.
Krista Maccomber:But I do appreciate the soapbox.
Krista Maccomber:I think it was good advice.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think like, if, if, if we like just you, you got, we gotta triage, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And like in, in the case of Salesforce, I, yeah, I keep throwing it out.
W. Curtis Preston:In the case of Salesforce, they have a product, like Salesforce has a native,
W. Curtis Preston:they now have a native backup product.
W. Curtis Preston:My understanding is it's, it's expensive af but it's there, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And you could sign up for that.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know, in classic Salesforce, you know.
W. Curtis Preston:World, you probably have to sign up for a year.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, Salesforce is right.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they charge you by the month, but they bill you by the year.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so that, that might, that might be a way to do it, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Get something for those critical apps.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, you know, maybe your critical app is Cassandra, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, maybe it's Kubernetes, maybe god forbid Prasanna, maybe it's s3.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Who knows, it might be right, but I think this is
Prasanna Malaiyandi:where, and Curtis just calling out your, uh, plug for your book, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Modern Data Protection.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But this is where, right, the, I think what it's chapter two, where
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's like, talk to the business and the stakeholders, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Get down the requirements.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Really understand what is important, because what you might think is important
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is different than what someone else thinks is important or what someone else
Prasanna Malaiyandi:thinks is important different than what someone else thinks is important, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So, Make sure you're all on the same page, and you can sort of prioritize that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:list and be like, yep, Salesforce is our top critical app for our entire company.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Let's go figure that out.
W. Curtis Preston:Number one mistake.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, number one mistake made by backup people is not backing stuff up.
W. Curtis Preston:Number two is making up their mind on what's important.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:You, you, you know, if you're a typical, as I make quotes in the air, a typical
W. Curtis Preston:backup admin, you're often junior, which I hate that, but that's just the way it is.
W. Curtis Preston:You're up to junior in the organization.
W. Curtis Preston:You're not privy to all these discussions on what.
W. Curtis Preston:Is important to your company?
W. Curtis Preston:Get get yourself in those discussions.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I bet, I bet you see that a lot, Krista, where like, you know, people
W. Curtis Preston:that they don't, they don't know what they know or they don't, they
W. Curtis Preston:don't know what they don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I think that was, I
W. Curtis Preston:think that's what I was trying to say there.
Krista Maccomber:a hundred percent.
Krista Maccomber:A hundred percent.
Krista Maccomber:And that comes down to what you're mentioning, Curtis, those higher level,
Krista Maccomber:more strategic conversations about what is important to our business.
Krista Maccomber:But in the world of cloud and Dev DevOps, bringing these Kubernetes environments,
Krista Maccomber:you know, into the equation as well.
Krista Maccomber:It also literally comes down to what is our organization using?
Krista Maccomber:What data are we even creating?
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, we're, we see in some cases significant blind spots
Krista Maccomber:because, um, you know, it just was not kept in the loop and.
Krista Maccomber:You know, somebody on the l o B side just went and swiped their credit card
Krista Maccomber:and now they're using, you know, this different SaaS application, for example.
Krista Maccomber:Um, and I know we already kind of talked a little bit about that, um,
Krista Maccomber:you know, that little bit of breakdown between, you know, dev and IT ops.
Krista Maccomber:So it's, I think it's, um, twofold from that perspective.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, shadow it and man, it seems like we could talk all day.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I just wanna, I just wanna finish this, this idea.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:The shadow IT thing again.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, um, I'll just plug HYCU again.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they've got this cool app, it won't fix the shadow IT problem,
W. Curtis Preston:but one thing they were able to do, if you do use like Okta, Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and the SaaS apps that work with Okta, they can basically use Okta
W. Curtis Preston:as a way to inventory your environment.
W. Curtis Preston:I thought that was kind of, of the, of the SaaS apps that you plug into
W. Curtis Preston:because the first thing, you know, the first thing, uh, going back to that
W. Curtis Preston:list earlier, the first thing before we figure out what's important, we
W. Curtis Preston:gotta find out what we have, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, all those apps.
W. Curtis Preston:So shadow it, shadow it.
W. Curtis Preston:That's a problem, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, the only way you can really a you, you can address that
W. Curtis Preston:with policy, like, don't do that.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, and you can address it with like, if you turn around, if you turn around
W. Curtis Preston:and you've tried to expense those apps and you're told, I'm sorry, what is this?
W. Curtis Preston:What, what, what is this product that you're using, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, this looks fascinating.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, what is it and what does it do and, and why is it not plugged into Okta?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or whatever it is that the company's using.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway,
Krista Maccomber:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:uh, we could talk all day.
W. Curtis Preston:Krista, uh, I think we've covered enough.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, is there anything that we, that we didn't cover that you,
W. Curtis Preston:that you wanted to talk about?
Krista Maccomber:I don't think so.
Krista Maccomber:I mean, those are two of really the big, you know, the two big trends.
Krista Maccomber:I guess three, you know, if you factor in, um, you know, cybersecurity as well.
Krista Maccomber:You know, those are really kind of the big things that we're seeing.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, of course we're getting into all these conversations about, you know,
Krista Maccomber:I, you mentioned, you know, different third party tools need to be integrated
Krista Maccomber:with the data protection solution.
Krista Maccomber:Um, You know, you mentioned kind of Okta from, you know, kind of
Krista Maccomber:authentication and things of that nature.
Krista Maccomber:Um, you know, we're also seeing a lot of these, you know,
Krista Maccomber:ransomware scanning tools.
Krista Maccomber:Um, okay.
Krista Maccomber:Where exactly does this fit within that stack?
Krista Maccomber:But that probably could be a topic for a whole nother conversation, unless we
Krista Maccomber:wanna hang out for another hour here.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, I honestly, I can't believe we
W. Curtis Preston:didn't talk about ransomware.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, it came up, came up a little bit here and there.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we'll have you back on to talk
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, we'll definitely
W. Curtis Preston:have you back
Krista Maccomber:wonderful.
W. Curtis Preston:that, that's a, that's an incredibly important
W. Curtis Preston:conversation that we continue to have and I, I, I, I don't think we
W. Curtis Preston:can get enough perspectives on that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and clearly you care about this topic.
W. Curtis Preston:Clearly you understand this topic.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, uh, I want to thank you so much, uh, Krista coming on.
Krista Maccomber:Curtis and Prasanna, thank you both so much.
Krista Maccomber:This was very fun as always, to chat with both of you.
Krista Maccomber:And yeah, it was, it was a pleasure.
Krista Maccomber:Thank you.
W. Curtis Preston:And Prasanna, I want to thank you.
W. Curtis Preston:And by the way, also, if you want to get me a backup, Tesla, it's okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:one of those little tiny toy car ones
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that counts.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thank you, Krista.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That was so nice to meet you and I hope you come back on the podcast so
Prasanna Malaiyandi:we can chitchat about cybersecurity.
Krista Maccomber:Anytime I'd love to.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, we of course want to thank our listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:We'd be nothing without you.
W. Curtis Preston:Remember to subscribe so that you can restore it all.
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