Although legacy infrastructure for information technology is not going away anytime soon, the trends are steering the entire industry in a new direction. The tendency towards hybrid multicloud architecture is changing everything, creating waves of demand in data management, protection and storage. 

Data management and storage company Veritas Technologies LLC is adjusting to these trends. It just announced the availability of its new Data Services Platform made for VMware environments that is focused on the management of hybrid cloud environments. It can run on-premises, with hybrid clouds, or in any popular cloud provider at scale. Currently, 52% of the company’s customers are running in a hybrid-cloud environment, according to Todd Forsythe (pictured), chief marketing officer of Veritas Technologies.

“I would love any competitor to showcase how they can support 500 workloads, a 150 storage targets, 60 cloud providers at enterprise scale with a high degree of reliability,” Forsythe said. “Our differentiator is [that] we can cut across these very complex, very demanding IT environments at scale.”

Forsythe spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Furrier (@furrier), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld event in San Francisco. They discussed data protection in cloud 2.0, Veritas’ messaging strategy, the enterprise’s journey to the hybrid cloud, and the new trends in the marketing tech (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

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

Furrier: This is a re-platforming of the internet we’re seeing with “cloud 2.0,” and I want to get your thoughts on this. 

Forsythe: In our business, data doesn’t care … if you’re running a modern architecture. Data doesn’t care if you’re running legacy. So what we’re really focused on [at Veritas] is helping companies manage data in highly complex and extremely demanding environments regardless of their infrastructure.

Furrier: And cloud 2.0 speaks to the complexity of that. You know, you can’t put something that’s not a silo in a silo. Data has to move around. 

Forsythe: IA 100% agree. We launched the Enterprise Data Services earlier this year, and that was the precise reason why — because we’ve re-looked at what data protection is. Data protection is no longer backing up your data from a cloud to a cloud from your on-prem. It’s a much broader category. So our view of data protection is a platform that is horizontal and cuts across. 

Vellante: What’s the messaging strategy to keep top-spot from both outward-facing and also product development? 

Forsythe: When you have a highly complex environment, you’re in a multicloud world; you can’t afford to have a siloed backup data. So, you need to understand how your data is classified, where it’s stored. Our platform cuts across protection, availability and insights, which categorizes your data. So the data gets categorized in NetBackup, extends to the analytics platform, so you know where your data is and you could take action on your data. 

Furrier: You have legacy customers. How are you going to go out there and refresh? 

Forsythe: We are a quiet company, so we need to be noisier in the marketplace. And we need to insert ourselves into relevant conversations that are top of mind with CEOs and CIOs. So we have to insert ourselves in those [ransomware] dialogues, because we have a very specific point of view that can help customers. 

Furrier: I want to get your thoughts on the customer journey question. You’ve got the enterprise-scale world, and they [your customers] want that cloud nirvana, and then there’s that missing middle in between. What are the patterns of customer profiles that you see? 

Forsythe: Well, we are definitely seeing a hybrid, multicloud world. Fifty-two percent of our customers are running in a hybrid-cloud environment, and we have a core relationship with their legacy infrastructure. Our customers are asking for our help to extend their data protection and their NetBackup environment into the cloud. [They want] to backup the cloud and across new modern workloads. So our customers are pulling us into their environments to do more.

Furrier: How is the marketing tech world evolving with cloud computing? 

Forsythe: So, I’m going to say something provocative. I think the CRM industry has gotten B2B marketing wrong. If you look at most CRM capabilities in B2B, they’re focused on an individual. But … individuals don’t buy. Groups, committees and accounts buy. So where we’re focused is looking at accounts and understanding account company-based behavior that shows buying intent and triggers, which then initiate our marketing. 

Our good friends at Manigo, that’s what they do, which is AI-driven, trigger-based marketing. I would say the ability to leverage predictive analytics — call it AI or machine learning — understand what’s happening at an account and whether there’s a buying trigger. I think is a wide-open territory. 

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE