The world of multicloud computing means data can live anywhere, but challenges can arise when it comes time to recover data quickly. Networking service provider Cisco Systems Inc. faces this challenge regularly, and is revamping its data management strategy in partnership with Veeam Software Inc. to ensure safer, simpler backup processes.

Alan Stearn (pictured), technical solutions architect at Cisco, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VeeamON event in Miami Beach, Florida. They discussed some of the challenges and opportunities that come with multicloud, Cisco’s partnership goals to support faster data recovery, and how it all fits with the company’s objective to optimize computing at the edge of the network (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Vellante: What’s your role in supporting digital business strategies, keeping businesses up, and doing fast recovery, as well as your partnership with Veeam?

Stearn: We provide great platforms for folks like Veeam and the object storage vendor. So, Veeam now has fantastic integration with the S3 interface that many of these object providers allow. Cisco has very deep platforms. We’ve got a 4U box that can hold 768 terabytes of data. If you think about how much data that is, you know two of these units is a petabyte and a half of data. I mean, that’s a fantastic amount of data. It’s online. It’s available for them.

If they need to restore it, they can do it quickly, because each of those nodes has 160 gigabits per second of network connectivity; but, more importantly, if they want to use some of this data, it’s available to them right on the platform. They don’t have to pull back the tape, restore it from the tape, and hope they got the right one.

Vellante: Could you talk about how your strategy has evolved?

Stearn: If you look at the capabilities of folks like Veeam, it’s really about data management. It’s not just, “Hey! Back it up! Put it over in the vault, and forget about it and never use it again.” It’s back it up, put it in the vault, and if you need it, I can bring it back quickly. I can use it to test data with. I can use it to scan for malware, so I’m not reintroducing an infection after I’ve cleaned it out.

So, there are a lot of ways to use it, and then Cisco is providing the platforms to do that. The days of the old monolithic storage arrays, they’re still going to be here, but the world for them is shrinking, because you think about what they do. They’re the last bastion of vertically integrated systems. We saw storage, the mainframe, which is still here, but the world for it shrunk as we had x86 systems with the operating system of choice. So, we’re seeing the same thing happening with storage. Customers just want to be able to use all this data that’s out there.

Vellante: The time to recover [data] has really compressed. How are you guys responding to that, both technically and just from a business standpoint?

Stearn: Yes. Now, it’s about building a platform that will enable the software side of recovery. If the platform can’t keep up with the software, you’ve got a disconnect. You’ve got to have disc systems that can keep up. You’ve got to have networking, you’ve got to have a completely integrated system.

We do Cisco validated designs with folks like Veeam to make sure the customers don’t have to turn all the different nerd knobs to make sure they’re going to get the optimal performance. Because at the end of the day, they don’t have time for that. That’s not their area of expertise, and we want to make sure they’ve got the “always-on” enterprise.

Vellante: How do you see the multicloud opportunity? What’s Cisco’s strategy with that?

Stearn: There’s a famous quote by [former Cisco CEO] John Chambers. He said we were plumbers for the network. While we’ve certainly expanded beyond that, we still do that when you’re talking about multicloud strategies. You’ve still got to connect to all these different clouds. Whether it’s infrastructure or as a service, you’ve still got to connect to it so that it works efficiently for your enterprise. We want to make sure we enable that technology; that we’re giving the customers what they need from that technology and there’s still room for on-prem.

It’s not like any of this is going away. You select whatever feature is best for that customer. If there’s an as a service provider that does customer [customer relationship management] better than anybody else, go use them, and we’ll help you connect to them.

Vellante: What’s your strategy with the edge? What do you see as the opportunity there?

Stearn: The hard part is always defining the edge. Is the edge the branch? Is it my home office? Is it a telephone pole? So, at some of the edge, we’ve got the Cisco HyperFlex Edge device, which is a two-node HyperFlex cluster. We’ve got small servers that fit into our routers for collecting edge data there. So really, the idea is meet the data where it is. And to the degree that we can, let’s help process it there, because you can’t always bring all the data back.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VeeamON event. (* Disclosure: Veeam Software Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Veeam, Cisco, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE