Most consumers know Under Armour Inc. as an American manufacturer of footwear, sports and casual apparel. Yet, the company also relies on a lot of data behind the scenes to power its popular brands, and that’s where Dell EMC has stepped in to help protect increasingly valuable virtual assets.

Under Armour backs up approximately 2.6 petabytes of data with over 1,000 virtual machines spread across multiple regional hubs, according to Nick Hennessy (pictured, left), the company’s senior manager of compute and storage/network services. That requires not only protection, but centralized management as well.

“At Under Armour, we call data the new gold,” Hennessy said. “Now we have centralized management. We can speed up and really take the brand farther.”

Hennessy spoke with Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Dell Tech World event in Las Vegas. He was joined by Rüya Barrett (pictured, right), vice president of marketing, data protection, at Dell EMC, and they discussed Under Armour’s use of Dell’s technology to meet information management needs and survey results, which highlighted the explosion of data across the enterprise (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Integrated data protection fits need

Under Armour uses Dell’s Integrated Data Protection Appliance, or IDAP, according the Barrett. Last week, Dell announced a number of enhancements to its data protection solutions, including a smaller-capacity IDPA.

“They use cloud prolifically in terms of their information technology environment,” Barrett said. “IDPA really fit that need for them.”

Dell EMC’s technology solution for Under Armour underscored the continued enterprise need for protecting data amidst its rapid expansion. A recent survey of 2,200 IT decision-makers found that the rate of data growth increased sharply in just a 24-month span.

“There was over 586% growth in the last two years in terms of how much data on average customers are managing,” Barrett said. “The people surveyed valued data more than ever.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Tech World 2019 event. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE