Karissa Breen [00:00:15]:
Welcome to KB On the Go. This week, I’m on the ground at NetApp Insight 20 24 Conference of the MGM Grand in the heart of Las Vegas. For this bonus series, we’ve been lucky enough to have lined up conversations with the selection of NetApp executives and other guests exploring the future of data and AI. Stay tuned for the insight track from some of the world’s leading authorities presenting at Insight 2024 as KBI Media brings you all of the highlights. Joining me now in person is Ashish Dhawan, senior vice president, general manager, and chief revenue officer of cloud business unit at NetApp. And today, we’re discussing the drive to enterprise cloud adoption. So, Ashish, thanks for joining and welcome.

Ashish Dhawan [00:00:57]:
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Karissa Breen [00:00:59]:
So, Ashish, let’s start with your view on what’s driving enterprise cloud adoption.

Ashish Dhawan [00:01:04]:
I think cloud adoption in our customers is largely to do with our customers’ need to innovate faster. It’s they also need to make sure that they have a very, optimal, IT infrastructure. They also would need to have a very elastic IT infrastructure. And cloud computing really helps them achieve all these, at one goal. When, they move their applications and their workloads to the cloud, they’re able to, command resources like compute and storage and networking at at at will. They’re able to have a infrastructure which is elastic. They’re able to, ensure that, with the compute and storage of the hyperscaler, they’re also able to, use services like, open source, services like data services, and now increasing the AI and gem AI services. So that’s what’s driving our customers to the cloud.

Ashish Dhawan [00:02:03]:
It’s making sure that their IT infrastructure is optimal, elastic, and they can innovate faster.

Karissa Breen [00:02:10]:
And do you think, historically, people were sort of apprehensive about migrating to the cloud, would you say, in your experience?

Ashish Dhawan [00:02:16]:
Well, a few years ago, migrating to cloud seemed like, a difficult proposition. But, you know, we, with NetApp’s, cloud storage solutions along which are jointly built with our hyperscalers, have tried to make it very simple for our customers. Migrations need not be difficult because what we try and offer to our customers is, first of all, technology that is very akin to what they’re used to on prem. Feature serve, which is very similar to what they’re used to on prem. But given in in the first one p format, which our customers are used to, these services that we’ve built with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are first party services, dog storage services. And these first party services are actually positioned through, the hyperscalers console. The hyperscalers, they’re part of the migration story of the hyperscalers. They’re part of each and every application migration, sales play that the one hyperscalers have.

Ashish Dhawan [00:03:24]:
So our customers are now finding it easier to migrate because we are able to complement, the hyperscalers compute services along with, the storage services that they’ve built with us, making it easier for customers to migrate their most critical workloads on prem.

Karissa Breen [00:03:40]:
So speaking of hyperscalers, I wanna now talk a little bit more on to hear your thoughts on the perspective from your customers. What is it of hearing from that point of view?

Ashish Dhawan [00:03:49]:
Yeah. So customers have started developing cloud at a large scale. We’re now having the most critical assets, which is applications, databases, and their data are on the cloud. Having said that, they’re also choosing the right cloud for the right purpose. And, therefore, for us, it was important to make sure that we develop our first party cloud storage services with each of the hyperscalers. So, for example, we are the only company that has these services with each of the hyperscalers. For example, with Amazon, we have, Amazon FSXN, which is cloud storage service for for AWS. With Google, we’ve got Google Cloud NetApp volumes.

Ashish Dhawan [00:04:34]:
And with, with Azure, we were Azure NetApp Files. These services integrate into the migration plays of the hyperscalers and make it easier for our customers to migrate their critical assets on us. Now these partnerships are critical to us because with these first party services, we are not only able to help our customers migrate their assets, but once migrated, they’re able to utilize the data on the cloud to get the AI and Gen AI outcomes that they so desire. The outcome that you’re looking at with our customers is help them migrate first so that they can have an agile IT infrastructure. And then once they’ve done so, use the data that they’ve migrated so that they can get the AI engineering outcomes that they so desire in these days.

Karissa Breen [00:05:25]:
And then on that, what would you say, to the main challenges customers are facing when trying to probably adopt a cloud first approach?

Ashish Dhawan [00:05:34]:
Yeah. The biggest challenge that any customer faces from a cloud so for a cloud first approach is actually top down alignment. A lot of times, we see senior management wanting to adopt cloud technology, but, there’s no alignment with the rest of the, leadership. So ensuring that there is top down alignment within the leadership of the customer is extremely important. We help our customers arrive at that. The second challenge that they have is making sure that they have enough skill sets. Right? Making sure that the skill sets that they have know how to implement, a cloud storage solution along with us, along with the hyperscalers is extremely important. And therefore, we try and, you know, provide the level of training, certification, and ongoing support for them to make sure that that never remains an issue.

Ashish Dhawan [00:06:28]:
And lastly, we we help them build, you know, very good, cloud economists, cost cases so that they realize for the long term, they’re actually making investment, which is not just efficient for, for the current, but also will pay risk dividends in the future. Right? Making their IT infrastructure agile and more innovative.

Karissa Breen [00:06:52]:
And you said before, no alignment with the leadership. Why is that the case from your experience?

Ashish Dhawan [00:06:58]:
Yeah. In many companies, you know, one part of a company wants to, let’s say, adopt cloud technology, but the other part of the company, has certain assets which they are very used to. Right? So it’s a question of, you know, ensuring that they also understand the long term benefits of using cloud technology. And that’s why that alignment is super critical. It’s the number one inhibitor to implementing cloud computing is making sure that there is alignment within the senior leadership of the organization, making sure that the CEO is aligned with the CIO who in in who are in turn aligned with the the various business units is is is is very critical for for our, for our implementation of target funds.

Karissa Breen [00:07:47]:
So how would you approach or what would be your to getting that alignment from a leadership perspective?

Ashish Dhawan [00:07:52]:
You know, we first approach it from a cultural perspective. We look at it. Technology, almost always means a little bit of a cultural overhaul. You’re you’re you’re asking the company not to own assets, what to rely on a utility that is provided by a cloud provider. Right? And that utility obviously comes with feature sets that they’re not used to. Like, SLAs that are slightly different. Terms of, engagement that are slightly different. So ensuring that once we are able to earn the trust of, let’s say, one part of the senior leadership, that trust is, is is propagated in the vessel leadership being formed.

Ashish Dhawan [00:08:44]:
We do this by explaining how the these differences actually are for the better. We go to the customer and make sure that these differences are understood, and we also explain what kind of cultural differences they need to implement or they need to have, in the form of different mechanisms so that they can utilize this technology better. You know, they’re not now paying in, for, you know, kits that they will purchase, but they will they’re paying for services that they will consume. It’s a consumption based, consumption based engagement that we have, which is very success oriented. Right? So in their success is our success. Right? So, therefore, we focus more on their customer success, and that that’s a huge change in mindset that we try and help them understand.

Karissa Breen [00:09:40]:
Join me now in person is Gargan Gulati, general manager data services at NetApp. And today, we’re discussing the focus on data protection and governance. So, Gargan, thanks for joining and welcome.

Gagan Gulati [00:09:48]:
Thank you very much.

Karissa Breen [00:09:49]:
So as we all know, data is king. Tell us a little bit more about the focus specifically on data protection and governance from your point of view?

Gagan Gulati [00:09:58]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, look, our customers are in the data journey. They are hybrid today, multi cloud. Pretty much all our customers have, the data on all types of, clouds today. At the same time, data is sprawling. Right? New workloads, AI is coming in. At the same time, cyber threats are a big deal.

Gagan Gulati [00:10:22]:
Almost all our customers are at a place where they need to protect their data button Okay. To make sure that their crown jewels are saved and they can recover very quickly when it comes to resiliency against cyber threats. So that’s one. And AI is is just an example of a workload that’s brought a big focus on data governance to understand what their data is, to be able to make sense of it, then and to hand it over to the right people so they can access it, to stay compliant with new regulations like GDPR and others. So generally speaking, you’re right. Data is the king. And at NetApp, we have a huge focus therefore on data production and governance, because, you know, we are the intelligent data infrastructure company.

Karissa Breen [00:11:06]:
And in terms of governance, what’s your sort of view on how people should be addressing that? Because again, speaking of Jeff Baxter before you, he was sort of talking about, you know, not and majority of companies don’t even even know all their data is, for example. So how do people effectively govern that, would you say?

Gagan Gulati [00:11:22]:
Yeah. You’re absolutely right. And I think this is the constant problem. You have to know your data before you can govern your data. You know, we talk to a lot of, we talk to a lot of storage admins, and we basically ask them simple questions. Why do you wanna buy more storage? Why not governing your data better and delete the old data? Well, because they don’t know your data. The their own data. They may have temp files sitting in a storage unit with, you know, let’s assume, petabytes or, you know, terabytes of, stem files, which you can delete because they were 10 years old.

Gagan Gulati [00:11:52]:
But they’re afraid. They don’t know what their data looks like. If you go to them and say, I need access to this file share, they don’t know whether they should give you access to the file share or not because they don’t know their data. So knowing the data itself is a huge deal. And then, of course, you have to govern your data. This is to not only make sure that the companies meet their compliance needs. Sure. For example, if I have an m and a file share, you know, merger and acquisitions file share, should Dagen have access to merger and file acquisition file share? No.

Gagan Gulati [00:12:22]:
Yeah. Right? But how do you know that this is a m and a file share? You need to be able to govern your data better. Know your data to govern it better to provide the right permissions to the right set of people, to be able to be resilient. And all of that is just so critical, especially now with the whole AI phase coming in because AI is data hungry. You wanna make sure your data scientists have access to the right data and only the data they should have access to. And you can’t do that if you don’t have good governance on that data.

Karissa Breen [00:12:52]:
So can I ask, how can people get to this stage? Or are they getting to the stage where they’re like, we need to understand, inherently where our data is? Because like back in the day, you wanted to get all of the data, like like Cloudera and those types of days. Yes. Now it’s like, oh, we don’t want it anymore because of data breaches and holding too much PII, for example.

Gagan Gulati [00:13:11]:
Yeah. I mean, most customers there are customers who started their journey many, many years ago. You would find a class of enterprise customer, the biggest financial, customers who are quite ahead in this journey, actually, in terms of understanding their data so you can govern it better, and they are. But I would say the the majority of the customers are not. And, the times of cyber attacks in the time of cyber attacks that are happening, today, in the time of AI, they’re all customers are now struggling and trying to figure out how do they do that. So I would say most of them have just started a journey. You know, customers I’m they meet with regularly, are asking us, you are the intelligent data and social company. Can you please help? So we are building tools.

Gagan Gulati [00:13:55]:
We are giving them, advice on how they should go ahead. We’re connecting them with our partners, and giving them our products. And a lot of our products, we are making them available for free now so that they can start their, data governance journey and under by just understanding what data they have. But I would say majority of the customers, very early stage.

Karissa Breen [00:14:16]:
So you say products for free. What do you get for free here?

Gagan Gulati [00:14:18]:
Yeah. So it’s an example of, Blue XP classification. It’s a product that NetApp has had for years, and our customers love that product, but we used to charge for it. But as we enter into this phase where customers want to discover their data to protect it, to govern it, you know, we see, an inherent need there. And, you know, we are in the business of helping our customer helping our customers to the best we can in terms of discovering the data. So recently, around, I think, 4 or 5 months ago, we made it freely available for our customers to use. They don’t have to pay for it anymore. They can just go to Blue XP, and they can use it at a core functionality.

Gagan Gulati [00:14:58]:
To end this point, that product to their, to their data, to the storage that’s on NetApp, and this product comes back and tells them what’s in it based on time sense, based on the sensitivity of data, based on, like, a heat map, what’s being used, what’s not being used so they can make sense of it. And we have seen the growth, an amazing growth. Like, 4 times more customers use it today than they used it just 4 or 5 months ago. So it’s an amazing at time Why do

Karissa Breen [00:15:24]:
you think that’s the case?

Gagan Gulati [00:15:26]:
I mean, the the case is, of course, one is just the rise of, regulations, the rise of cyber threats and size. And number 2 is, it’s the ease of use. You don’t have to go to your, you know, your finance team now, procurement team now to say we want to do this all and the, and this will be only done in the next annual, you know, planning cycle. They can just start using it today, by just going to Blue XP. So I think we made it really easy, for the customers, and they’re all starting their projects right now. Yep. Thanks to the urgency and need, but at the same time, we took away the biggest inhibitor that they have to go and purchase it separately. We made it part of the common licensees that they have.

Karissa Breen [00:16:07]:
And did it as well? And people are obviously doing the discovery phase. They’re getting a bit rattled by what comes back around what

Gagan Gulati [00:16:14]:
they’ve got. You will be surprised. Yeah. Our customers who, for example, have run data classification, have come back. I’ve assumed an example of, oh my god. The only it’s a it’s a folder full of, or it’s a volume full of just 10 files from a project that we discontinued 10 years ago. But it’s taking 50 50 terabytes of space.

Karissa Breen [00:16:35]:
Quite now.

Gagan Gulati [00:16:36]:
Right?

Karissa Breen [00:16:36]:
It’s a lot.

Gagan Gulati [00:16:37]:
Right. And or or there are files from an old project, and nobody’s touched them in 10 years. And they’re big image files, big video files, and they’re useless to the company. But the storage admin so far were extremely hesitant to try to, to delete that or move them somewhere else. But now they have the ability to do all of that. The surprises are are massive. Like, these guys are getting like, oh my god. We didn’t even know this existed because the people that use them have left the company.

Gagan Gulati [00:17:06]:
I was

Karissa Breen [00:17:06]:
gonna say exactly someone’s left, someone didn’t know about it, things change. So then with Blue XP, with the discovery side of it, is this continuous then?

Gagan Gulati [00:17:17]:
Or yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So the way to, run this system is many folds. A lot of the customers use the Blue XP classification to just understand their data so that they can migrate it, delete it, retain it, move it to the cloud, move it to, you know, other kind of cheaper storages. So that’s one example. But the true value of classification is the continuous, process of classifying data as more and more data changes.

Karissa Breen [00:17:45]:
Right.

Gagan Gulati [00:17:46]:
Right? Good example is compliance needs. Let’s assume you basically say that I do not want any, project x data to be sitting on this folder. I’m just giving an example. Or I’m using this data set for a project. Right? And the project is all about marketing, helping marketing. So therefore, I don’t want any, less new finance files to come into this data set. Yep. Right? So the power of Blue XP classification is that is continuous, and it’ll tell you what’s going on all the time.

Gagan Gulati [00:18:18]:
So when when things go wrong or the rules are not met or the regulations are not met, it’ll come and tell you, I found this 50 files that do not meet, the basic compliance needs, so you should do something about that.

Karissa Breen [00:18:30]:
And are people doing things about it?

Gagan Gulati [00:18:33]:
Today, manually. Today, they’re just reporting. The it’s a start. So pretty much everybody’s in the report zone Sure. Which is I just want to know. Very soon. Yeah. It’s a great start.

Gagan Gulati [00:18:43]:
I think it’s an know your data to go learn your data. So pretty much everybody is like, I just want to know my data. Give me the reports. I wanna take it to my board of directors. I wanna take it to my CSO. I wanna take it to my chief compliance officer and just show them what exists.

Karissa Breen [00:18:55]:
Correct.

Gagan Gulati [00:18:55]:
And somebody else will make the decision of what we should do about it. But I think that the tide’s starting to turn. Very soon, there will be government regulations, and more and more customers will now start enforcing, the the compliance regulations or other needs they may have.

Karissa Breen [00:19:14]:
So I sort of flick over now, Gargan, and slightly change gears. This is a cybersecurity podcast. Yes. And I wanna talk more about, autonomous ransomware protection and then how that that works with Aon.

Gagan Gulati [00:19:26]:
Yeah. Look. As you know, every con almost every company has gone through a ransomware attack. If they have not gone through, they will. And when it comes to ransomware, and when it comes to ransomware attacks, it’s all about real time ransomware detection. Because the sooner you can detect that there’s an attack, the sooner you can respond to it.

Karissa Breen [00:19:45]:
Sure.

Gagan Gulati [00:19:45]:
Right? And you wanna do this all of this has to happen on the primary storage where your data is. Because if you don’t do that on the primary storage, then by the time the backups are taken and you want to run your anomaly anomalous anomaly detection over there. It may take 6 hours, 8 hours, and these attackers are gone by them. They’re finished up. They’ve encrypted their entire drive. They’ve finished up their entire, encrypted their entire storage. And that’s the key. So real time ransom detection is a feature that we have put in a few years ago into On Tap, and it’s worked really well.

Gagan Gulati [00:20:19]:
What it does, it is a r and we call it ARP. And what ARP allows you to do is to say, whenever there’s an, attack, you can respond. You can respond by generating an alert for your security operator. Mhmm. You can respond by taking the snapshot. You can respond by many like, blocking users and many other action. What we have done recently is we have enhanced the capability for our customers to be able to more accurately detect their ransomware attacks in real time by introducing the power of AI models, and therefore we call it KNPN. And what these new AI models do is that they’re way more effective and accurate in detecting the attacks.

Gagan Gulati [00:21:03]:
Some of the studies and we’ve worked with the security breach company called, SE Labs, to validate this. And they give us a triple a rating on the first attempt, because we were able to detect 100% of all encryption attacks that are, you know, are happening today with 99% recall, which means we don’t really miss any attacks either. Right? And that is the power of AI models as you bring them into ARP, and we call it ARP AI. And that’s now shipping in, On Tap 960 in 1. But that’s not all. It’s not just enough to ship these models and let in let them be static. Right? Because the attackers are moving at a fast pace. They are using AI to come up with new techniques.

Gagan Gulati [00:21:48]:
So therefore, we have to make sure that these AI models that we have put in into ONTAP also continue to stay update all the time. So we have built in a complete auto update pipeline for these models. Just like, you know, on your laptop right now, there’s an antivirus running. You don’t know when the antivirus company gives you a new signature. You’re not rebooting the machine every time. They just keep you safe. So we are bringing the same consumer like technology into enterprise now where your On Tap systems will always remain safe because we are gonna keep sending the new AI models to your On Tap system without you even knowing about them if you wanted to. Without upgrading the ONTAP ever and without worrying about patching ONTAP.

Gagan Gulati [00:22:31]:
So that’s been the most beautiful thing in the entire journey as we bring these AI models, you know, into ONTAP that and call it the ARDA.

Karissa Breen [00:22:44]:
And there you have it. This is KB on the go. Stay tuned for more.