Nobody could have expected the way that COVID-19 would derail so much of the world in 2020, and various industries, companies and leaders have handled it in different ways.

Actifio Inc., whose software platform helps businesses become data driven, just reported the strongest Q1 in the company’s history despite the pandemic. So what are their thoughts on leadership during a time of crisis, as well what businesses need to do to push through in this uncertain time?

Brian Reagan (pictured, left), chief marketing officer of Actifio, and Paul Forte (picture, right), chief revenue officer of Actifio, spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed leadership, data-driven companies, and what businesses need to do in order to survive the future. (* Disclosure below.)

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

You had a record first quarter. What’s going on in the marketplace? 

Reagan: Today more than ever, businesses are realizing that data is what is actually going to carry them through this crisis … whether it’s changing the nature of how companies interact with their customers, how they manage through their supply chain, and, frankly, how they take care of their employees. And so businesses that are protecting that data, that are helping businesses get faster access to that data and ultimately give them choice as to where they manage that data — on-premise, in the cloud, and hybrid configuration — those are the businesses that are really going to be top of a CIO’s mind.

Paul, I want to let people know you’re an ex-Army Ranger. We’ve never seen anything like this, but you’re trained to deal with things that you’ve never seen before. So how are you seeing organizations … manage through this crisis? What are some of the moves that you are advising, recommending?

Forte: The reality of what just happened to business across the globe — this is just a punch in the face. And so you’ve got a playbook that you rely on, and then you have to remain nimble and creative and candidly opportunistic. And from a leadership perspective, I think you can’t lose your confidence.

I’ve watched some of my friends and I’ve watched some other businesses cripple in the midst of this pandemic, because they’re afraid. … In my first commentary in our first staff meeting …  it was, ‘OK, so what makes Actifio great in this environment?’ Not why is it not great. And so we didn’t get scared. We jumped right into it. We adjusted our playbook a little bit, and … we just had a record quarter.

So let’s dig into cyber resiliency. Can you give us some specifics on where you fit in?

Reagan: There’s a stack of capabilities when it comes to cyber resiliency. At the lowest level, you need a time machine, because most people don’t know when they’re infected. And so the ability to go back in time, test the recoverability of data, test the validity of the data is step one.

Step two is once you found the clean point, being able to resume operations, being able to resume the applications operation instantly or very rapidly is the next phase. And then the third phase … is you probably want to go back and mitigate that risk. You want to go back and clean that system. You want to go back and find the infection and eliminate it.

What about cloud? We’re seeing elevated levels in cloud demand.

Reagan: The move to the cloud that we’ve been witnessing and the acceleration of the move to cloud that we’ve been we’ve been witnessing over the past several years probably ramped up in intensity over the last two months. The projects that might have been on the 18-to-24-month roadmap have of all of a sudden been accelerated into maybe this year of our roadmap. I think that the world is still hybrid when it comes to cloud.

Forte: Any business that’s trying to transform is either talking about hybrid cloud or they’re talking about AI and machine learning. And that’s kind of it, right? And so every digital business is talking in one of those categories.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE