W. Curtis Preston:

Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it All podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm your host W.

W. Curtis Preston:

Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.

W. Curtis Preston:

Backup, and I have with me my pick and pull analyst, Prasanna Malaiyandi.

W. Curtis Preston:

How's it going, Prasanna?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I'm good Curtis.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Unfortunately, I'm not doing a great job in helping you, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Just given the number of times that you sort of struck out

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I, I, um, I still want a part or two that I can

W. Curtis Preston:

only get from a about 2012 to 2014 Prius and, uh, the silver Prius.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

I it's a very specific, uh, subset.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the thing is, you know, with the pick and pulls, as you know,

W. Curtis Preston:

it's like super cheap, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

The, if you, if you have the wherewithal to go and pull a part

W. Curtis Preston:

off the car yourself, you save tons.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, besides the fact that it's a used part, it's like, I don't know a fourth

W. Curtis Preston:

of the price than, than a normal part.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, um, so, but I have to

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

everyone has the same thought as you

W. Curtis Preston:

what's that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

that you go to the pick and pull.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's cheap, but the supply is limited.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and the, and I have, and the, the company that I use L KQ

W. Curtis Preston:

pick your part, not a sponsor.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, that they, they have a really good system for notifying me with

W. Curtis Preston:

when any, you know, uh, pick and pull yard within whatever radius I specify

W. Curtis Preston:

has the car that I'm looking for.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then I have to go like right away, because.

W. Curtis Preston:

The Prius is popular and it's either get there like that day or you get

W. Curtis Preston:

there and, you know, there's not gonna be much left, but so I, I had another,

W. Curtis Preston:

I had another, uh, failed run, uh, at the pick and pull down in Chula Vista,

W. Curtis Preston:

which is about a 45 minute drive.

W. Curtis Preston:

But yeah, not a big deal,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Now I'm

W. Curtis Preston:

here to counsel me on that.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

well, and I'm sure some listeners are like, oh, why don't

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

you just get like a red color Prius door?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

They don't understand how expensive it is

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, they, yeah, they don't, they just don't clearly.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Body work and paint is insanely expensive to do it right

W. Curtis Preston:

it's ridiculous.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

This all started because I had a minor scratch on the door, a minor dent on the

W. Curtis Preston:

door and they wanted $2,500 to fix that.

W. Curtis Preston:

So I'm like I can get a used door from a pick and pull place for like 70 bucks.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway, anyway, we could talk about that for a while, but, I am once again, excited

W. Curtis Preston:

to have a long time friend on the podcast.

W. Curtis Preston:

She has been in the data protection space for a long time as well.

W. Curtis Preston:

In fact, I got to know her in one of her previous lives at Spectra

W. Curtis Preston:

Logic, They've been on the podcast a couple of times as you guys know.

W. Curtis Preston:

She's a fascinating person, both from a technical standpoint and

W. Curtis Preston:

also this other, very interesting, aspect of her personality that

W. Curtis Preston:

she really likes large animals.

W. Curtis Preston:

We're gonna, we're gonna talk about that because it's a fascinating part of her.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, she is now the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Hammerspace,

W. Curtis Preston:

a global file system provider.

W. Curtis Preston:

Welcome to the podcast, Molly Presley.

Molly Presley:

Well, thank you so much for having me, Curtis.

Molly Presley:

I have to say, um, Curtis is also a colorful personality.

Molly Presley:

I've known him long enough to know that to be very true.

Molly Presley:

And without him knowing I'm gonna bring this up, I will mention that

Molly Presley:

I remember the very first time I met Curtis was at Storage Networking World.

Molly Presley:

So those of you've been around for a while.

Molly Presley:

SNW was a thing, um, both from a work as well as a personal perspective.

Molly Presley:

So when I first met Curtis at SNW he was dressed like a clown, and

Molly Presley:

we were sitting in the after hours, and it wasn't just like a clown.

Molly Presley:

It was, I believe, a net backup, or it was actually maybe a backup

Molly Presley:

exec seven launch or something.

Molly Presley:

And they actually offered to do Halloween costumes for everyone.

Molly Presley:

And Curtis chose to be a very flamboyant clown.

Molly Presley:

So it absolutely stuck

W. Curtis Preston:

I do remember that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, that was,

Molly Presley:

There must be somewhere

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Maybe.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, that was, yeah, that was a Symantec dinner event, like we were,

W. Curtis Preston:

we, I guess we were both guests, uh,

Molly Presley:

I think we were guests and it was on Halloween

Molly Presley:

because it was the end of October.

Molly Presley:

They tried to make right on keeping us away from home on Halloween

Molly Presley:

by making a dress up event.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

event?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I.

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, I do, I do now.

W. Curtis Preston:

I was, when you first said me dressed up as a clown, I'm like, I think

W. Curtis Preston:

she's sticking about somebody else.

W. Curtis Preston:

And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh,

Molly Presley:

No, it was

W. Curtis Preston:

Yes.

W. Curtis Preston:

The Symantec dinner, uh, where I was dressed up as a clown.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah, that was, that was something.

W. Curtis Preston:

Talk to us about the animals in your life, Molly.

Molly Presley:

Wow.

Molly Presley:

Well, yeah, as Curtis has mentioned, I have a particular interest in large

Molly Presley:

animals, and this is both from having them cruising around my home with a few, um,

Molly Presley:

very large 200 pound great Danes that have at one point I had three of them at once.

Molly Presley:

In a very small Seattle apartment downtown.

Molly Presley:

So we were,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Oh, my.

Molly Presley:

tasked through COVID with walking 600 pounds of

Molly Presley:

dog, um, without the apartment dog walk areas in downtown Seattle.

Molly Presley:

So everyone of course knew who we were in the area.

Molly Presley:

Um, we have Clydesdales and then a particular interest in elephant

Molly Presley:

protection and conservation.

Molly Presley:

So in Asia and Africa, a lot of holidays spent, um, tending to cleaning

Molly Presley:

up after large elephants as well.

W. Curtis Preston:

I like how you just casually mentioned

W. Curtis Preston:

that you have Clydesdales.

W. Curtis Preston:

It was like a parenthetical.

W. Curtis Preston:

Oh.

W. Curtis Preston:

And we have a couple of Clydesdales.

Molly Presley:

course, of

W. Curtis Preston:

Um,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

like small to large, to larger.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, and, and you live and you live in, uh, Colorado, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Or you?

W. Curtis Preston:

No.

Molly Presley:

Yeah, I do.

Molly Presley:

moved back Seattle a bit ago.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, what's, what's it like, um, caring for, you know, animals

W. Curtis Preston:

like that, that are just that large.

Molly Presley:

You know, they tend to be the classic saying the

Molly Presley:

gentle giant tends to be true.

Molly Presley:

They're very kind loving, good animals, but everything's just harder.

Molly Presley:

You have to have bigger vehicles, bigger bags of food, bigger bags of cleanup gear.

Molly Presley:

There tends to be just, everything is a little bit more complicated as far

Molly Presley:

as how, I mean, just think about how do you get arounda 600 pounds of dog.

Molly Presley:

We ended up dedicating a minivan with no seats in the back to that.

W. Curtis Preston:

Wow.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

And you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind

Molly Presley:

being asked, in fact, enjoys being asked about them and people wanna pet

Molly Presley:

them and know about caring for them.

Molly Presley:

Or do you have a saddle for your dog or do you really ride your Clydesdales?

Molly Presley:

Those kinds of questions, because people are, you know, truly interested,

Molly Presley:

even though you may have heard the question before a few times.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Cuz I mean, I mean there are horse people.

W. Curtis Preston:

But as just Clydesdales, you just don't, you don't see Clydesdales very often

W. Curtis Preston:

unless you're watching beer commercials.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, you,

Molly Presley:

So people

W. Curtis Preston:

see them quite often.

Molly Presley:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

I mean, people are surprised to see you on a trail ride with the low quarter

Molly Presley:

horse and the little arabian goes by, and then the big old Clydesdale

Molly Presley:

comes clumping along with his crew.

Molly Presley:

And you know, his back stands over six feet tall and people like what?

Molly Presley:

I didn't ride a Clydesdale.

Molly Presley:

I had no idea.

Molly Presley:

This is incredible.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

how do you get up on

Molly Presley:

Steps.

Molly Presley:

they, they actually make steps, mounting blocks, type things to get onto.

Molly Presley:

But even then when you use the ones that you would use for your traditional

Molly Presley:

sized horses, quite a jump to go from the steps to the back of the horse.

W. Curtis Preston:

I, I don't know if I've ever told you this, uh, Molly, but

W. Curtis Preston:

I, when, when my kids were little, they, they wanted to do some horseback riding.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

And so we went to one of these places it's actually on base I'm, I'm just

W. Curtis Preston:

south of camp Pendleton in San Diego.

W. Curtis Preston:

They had a trail ride, you know, uh, set up where you

W. Curtis Preston:

could go and ride these horses.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and we, we came up, me, my wife had zero interest in getting up.

W. Curtis Preston:

She, she actually has, she has a, a thing that happened to her when she

W. Curtis Preston:

was a teenager that like a horse ran away with her and she's like, I'm

W. Curtis Preston:

not ever getting on a horse again.

W. Curtis Preston:

But anyway, so, so it was just me and the two kids and one of

W. Curtis Preston:

which was like really little.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, we walked up and, and I hear the lady that's leading

W. Curtis Preston:

this thing, say something along, you know, better get Bessy.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, and I was like, oh, it's cute.

W. Curtis Preston:

They got like a small horse for, for my little one.

W. Curtis Preston:

No, they weren't talking about my little one.

W. Curtis Preston:

There was a special horse just for me, was basically like Clydesdale sized.

W. Curtis Preston:

They're like, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

That's your horse over there?

W. Curtis Preston:

That, that gentle giant.

W. Curtis Preston:

I was like, That's just, that's just harsh, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Anyway.

W. Curtis Preston:

So I just, you know, whenever I talk about you, it's just one of the

W. Curtis Preston:

things I find most fascinating about you, even though you, you are, you

W. Curtis Preston:

are like, you know, a nerds nerd.

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, you, you, I love how much you're into the technology and you

W. Curtis Preston:

know how good you are at your job.

W. Curtis Preston:

I mean, we've, we've talked for years about, you know, multiple

W. Curtis Preston:

of your previous employers.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, obviously, you know, I spent so many years talking to you about Spectra,

Molly Presley:

Absolutely.

Molly Presley:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

And you know, yeah, great company.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, uh, now you're, you're close to them again.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, uh, what do you call it?

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, geographically speaking,

Molly Presley:

am just up the road.

Molly Presley:

Now I can see all my old friends and probably the folks you've

Molly Presley:

had is guests on the show

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, absolutely.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, yeah, we actually had them on, they had a, as I'm sure you're

W. Curtis Preston:

aware they had a ransomware attack.

Molly Presley:

I did.

Molly Presley:

And they recovered successfully.

W. Curtis Preston:

yeah.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So we had

W. Curtis Preston:

that was.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah to, yeah.

W. Curtis Preston:

Tony talked about that.

W. Curtis Preston:

That was great.

Molly Presley:

Good on them.

Molly Presley:

Nathan's always been good about using his own company as an example of technology.

W. Curtis Preston:

And I will insert our standard disclaimer, uh, Prasanna

W. Curtis Preston:

and I work for different companies.

W. Curtis Preston:

He works for Zoom.

W. Curtis Preston:

I work for Druva and this is not a podcast of either company.

W. Curtis Preston:

And the opinions that you hear are all Prasana's.

W. Curtis Preston:

, if you like what you hear or are, you know, watching us by the way, if you, if

W. Curtis Preston:

you, if you're listening and you wanna watch, you can go to backupcentral.com.

W. Curtis Preston:

We have the video version of it over there.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, if you, if you like what you see or hear, then, you know, go rate

W. Curtis Preston:

us, at ratethispodcast.com/restore.

W. Curtis Preston:

And if you wanna join the conversation, just, you know, gimme

W. Curtis Preston:

a holler @wcpreston on Twitter, or wcurtispreston@gmail and we cover all

W. Curtis Preston:

manner of topics, uh, backup, you know, storage, archive, protection storage.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You said that

W. Curtis Preston:

what,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Speaker:

you already said that?

W. Curtis Preston:

oh, did I say, did I say storage twice?

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, well that I made a copy.

W. Curtis Preston:

I made a copy I just, I just can't help, but make a copy.

W. Curtis Preston:

The company that you work at now, how long have you been at Hammerspace

Molly Presley:

about six months

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

W. Curtis Preston:

I referred to them as a global file system provider, but I

W. Curtis Preston:

don't think that it does justice.

W. Curtis Preston:

So why don't we before we sort of say what, what, what it is, how about you

W. Curtis Preston:

tell us, what problem do you think Hammerspace was designed to, to solve.

Molly Presley:

Yeah, that's always a better place to start.

Molly Presley:

And we were designed to solve the problem of kind of using industry

Molly Presley:

terms, decentralized environments.

Molly Presley:

So you think about what's happened with.

Molly Presley:

Our industry from first, just a infrastructure perspective.

Molly Presley:

It used to be all the data sat in one server.

Molly Presley:

Then we started to maybe have multiple, multiple clusters in the lab.

Molly Presley:

Then we started to have some clouds and your data became decentralized

Molly Presley:

or dispersed into many places.

Molly Presley:

And that idea of now I have an application or a data scientist or somebody who wants

Molly Presley:

to take advantage of my data and it's all decentralized in multiple places.

Molly Presley:

We make it easy for that computer or human or application who wants to use

Molly Presley:

data that's spread in many locations to work with it as a single data set.

Molly Presley:

. And then along with that, you think about the other decentralization, which has

Molly Presley:

occurred is where human beings are living.

Molly Presley:

And so people are working remotely.

Molly Presley:

Applications may be sitting in multiple clouds.

Molly Presley:

And so where the things are that need to use the data are also distributed.

Molly Presley:

And so Hammerspace makes it very easy.

Molly Presley:

Even if your data is geographically far from you over networking and latency,

Molly Presley:

that would make it difficult to access.

Molly Presley:

We overcome that, that barrier.

Molly Presley:

So we solved the problem, making data accessible, that is decentralized, um,

Molly Presley:

to remote users and remote applications.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Are you, when you talk about making data

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

available, is it sort of intended for like the primary use case?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Like someone's building an application and the data for the application might

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

be stored across like different clouds with Hammerspace being that interface, or

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

is it more intended for data is already being stored today in various spots and

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Hammerspace sort of gives people who need to consume that data visibility

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

in a sort of centralized way or both.

Molly Presley:

It's honestly, a little bit of both.

Molly Presley:

I'll give you a couple examples.

Molly Presley:

Um, one of our partners is Snowflake and I think most people

Molly Presley:

would listen to this show would know who Snowflake is, but snow.

Molly Presley:

Primarily worse with data that's already stored in the Snowflake cloud.

Molly Presley:

However, they've built an enormous amount of inter intelligence in the

Molly Presley:

applications and the processing and analytics which Snowflake can provide.

Molly Presley:

So let's just say that you wanted to use the Snowflake applications, um, but your

Molly Presley:

data didn't live in the Snowflake cloud.

Molly Presley:

We could bridge that gap and make the data.

Molly Presley:

Still live, live, where it was created, but easily accessible

Molly Presley:

to the Snowflake application.

Molly Presley:

So there is that application piece, but there's also the

Molly Presley:

visibility for the human being.

Molly Presley:

Whether it's an AI engine or it's actually like a genomics researcher

Molly Presley:

working on looking at COVID variants, um, easier ability to access data sets

Molly Presley:

that are dispersed over multiple places.

Molly Presley:

So one of our customers, um, if you think about, um, the research around COVID.

Molly Presley:

There's variants coming out and different countries have their

Molly Presley:

different data around which variants they have, how quickly is it spreading?

Molly Presley:

Is there a new variant and ideally.

Molly Presley:

You would look at all that data together instead of Ethiopia looking

Molly Presley:

at it separately from South Africa.

Molly Presley:

And this is a African, um, initiative that's underway right now is to bring

Molly Presley:

all those data sets together with Hammerspace, to make it easier, to look

Molly Presley:

at larger populations of data together instead of isolating the data sets.

Molly Presley:

So it can be person too.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I guess in the case of the COVID example, you brought

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

up the research it's I guess another method people could do today is try

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

transferring and synchronizing data manually across all these various sources,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

like moving the data, which is painful and probably not very practical either.

Molly Presley:

I mean, that's exactly it.

Molly Presley:

So of course it's been solved somehow today, but it's been expensive and

Molly Presley:

inefficient, so maybe you've now got two or three or four copies of

Molly Presley:

data, which you have to pay for.

Molly Presley:

Storing two or three or four copies of the same data you have maybe ingest

Molly Presley:

and egress charges around, moving in between clouds, networking issues.

Molly Presley:

Um, and then just the human factor of an it person making

Molly Presley:

scripts to move data around.

Molly Presley:

And then you try to figure out what's the master copy?

Molly Presley:

Who has it?

Molly Presley:

Do I have all the data or not?

Molly Presley:

So it's being solved, but not very elegantly today.

Molly Presley:

And this is an elegant, automated software driven solution.

W. Curtis Preston:

In our career, we are often fighting the laws of physics.

W. Curtis Preston:

And once again, that's kind of what you're doing.

W. Curtis Preston:

, you're trying to, you're trying to defy the laws of physics.

Molly Presley:

I think one way you might look at that is, um,

Molly Presley:

There are lots of different ways.

Molly Presley:

People have addressed trying to move data around, make data accessible.

Molly Presley:

And even in our space, what is a global file system or global name space?

Molly Presley:

It's a bit confusing people, different approaches.

Molly Presley:

But the thing that I think is super important to think about is, um, you

Molly Presley:

know, for, to do data, data discovery, the more data you have access to the better.

Molly Presley:

So Hammerspace really tries to solve the problem of breaking down the

Molly Presley:

storage silo, making it so you can look at all of your data together.

Molly Presley:

In one view, that would be a global name space, and then to solve that

Molly Presley:

latency problem, you, we don't move the data around the data stays put.

Molly Presley:

And so you were talking about physics and it's funny, it's something

Molly Presley:

I talk about with our CEO pretty regularly that we actually don't

Molly Presley:

believe the concept of data gravity is valid anymore with the Hammerspace

Molly Presley:

technology, because you no longer have to move the compute to the data.

Molly Presley:

We will let the data stay put, and our everyone interacts

Molly Presley:

with metadata instead of data.

Molly Presley:

So metadata is light, you know, for every petabyte of data, you know,

Molly Presley:

you maybe have a couple hundred megabytes of metadata, whatever it is.

Molly Presley:

And you can make multiple copies of the metadata.

Molly Presley:

You can easily move that to a new location, a new application

Molly Presley:

to solve the latency issue, but the data can just stay put.

Molly Presley:

So all of a sudden this idea of are we trying to overcome physics and this

Molly Presley:

concept of is there data, gravity and all of that, we're trying to make it where

Molly Presley:

really create your data where you want to.

Molly Presley:

And then use it where you want to, and we'll use smart software so

Molly Presley:

you can interact with it without expense and everything else that has

Molly Presley:

become kinda, almost a truth in our.

Molly Presley:

That's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

in the end you eventually will be pulling

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

the data of some sort when you're reading or accessing, if that's

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

what your application needs.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It's just because.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Correct me if I'm wrong, because you're sort of processed things by the metadata,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

which resides close to you, right?

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you deal with the latency issue.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

It helps you filter down what, in the end you need to access.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

So you don't need to necessarily pull all the data, just the select data you need.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

That's right.

Molly Presley:

And then we of course take care of interesting technologies that exist today

Molly Presley:

and, you know, using object storage in the cloud to move things around efficiently

Molly Presley:

and low cost object, stored object store.

Molly Presley:

Even though what we present is a file system, but we use the backend of

Molly Presley:

smart object stores to move things around efficiently when it's needed,

Molly Presley:

but we only move what we need to.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I guess I'm, I'm, I'm trying to fathom how that works.

W. Curtis Preston:

Obviously I get the difference between metadata and data.

W. Curtis Preston:

I'm trying to understand, like, if you could gimme an example of an

W. Curtis Preston:

application that's first just using the metadata to make a decision.

W. Curtis Preston:

Then later accessing the data, I guess maybe because I spend so much of my

W. Curtis Preston:

time in the, in the backup space and we're, you know, I mean, yeah, obviously

W. Curtis Preston:

metadata is important, but the data is like, we're all about the data.

W. Curtis Preston:

So

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

we, yeah, maybe we can expand on that COVID

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

example from the beginning, if, and show that if that works.

Molly Presley:

we can definitely talk about that.

Molly Presley:

So, if you go back to the COVID example that we were talking about, and you're

Molly Presley:

looking at variants of different, um, you know, generations and whatnot,

Molly Presley:

that's occurring within COVID a great example would be in a lot of cases.

Molly Presley:

What organizations need to do is keep their data set in country for maybe

Molly Presley:

compliance patient care regulations.

Molly Presley:

And they need to leave it in place, but they wanna be able to have a view to an

Molly Presley:

analytics application through metadata of the, the amount of test results that

Molly Presley:

have occurred maybe specific results, but they don't need the entire data set.

Molly Presley:

So we use something called objective based policies.

Molly Presley:

And so this is getting super, like nerding out and I'm not gonna nerd

Molly Presley:

out on you, but, um, you would set an objective saying really my objective,

W. Curtis Preston:

We love people that nerd out, Molly.

W. Curtis Preston:

It's fine.

Molly Presley:

as the, you know, so my objective as the data administrator of

Molly Presley:

this in the organization is, to be able to look at the number of tests and the

Molly Presley:

number of variants that are occurring and all the rest of the data around that's

Molly Presley:

being collected, which could be location, um, you know, whatever ethnicity,

Molly Presley:

gender, that stuff doesn't matter to me.

Molly Presley:

So they would only interact with the metadata that's associated

Molly Presley:

with their objectives and pull in.

Molly Presley:

If they need to move data, they would only move the parts that's

Molly Presley:

relevant to that objective.

Molly Presley:

So there's, and this is all automated and set through the Hammerspace

Molly Presley:

interfaces so that you can say, these are the bits I care about.

Molly Presley:

I'm not gonna get a human involved with it.

Molly Presley:

And then you can also set rules about, you can move my data, but only to

Molly Presley:

this country and not that country.

Molly Presley:

So you can manage your compliance.

Molly Presley:

There's a lot of different things that occur within an objective

Molly Presley:

that helps to automate all of this.

W. Curtis Preston:

Interesting.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, and so like when you, when you say those, the data rules, if you

W. Curtis Preston:

can move my data, but only here.

W. Curtis Preston:

So when someone is accessing the data, are you a portal through

W. Curtis Preston:

which they're accessing their data or is it just sort of giving

Molly Presley:

We're yeah, we're actually the name space.

Molly Presley:

We're a network share an NFS Mount point, an SMB Mount point that all the users.

Molly Presley:

So if the three of us were using Hammerspace technology, we would

Molly Presley:

all see the exact same folder structure, directory structure.

Molly Presley:

As each of us made changes.

Molly Presley:

We'd see each other's changes, but that would be done on a single.

Molly Presley:

We would be interacting with the metadata and that's what we would

Molly Presley:

be presenting the directory tree.

Molly Presley:

So it is a NAS, it's just a NAS that has storage environments

Molly Presley:

that can be in many places.

W. Curtis Preston:

interesting.

Molly Presley:

I'm gonna give you another example that sometimes a little, so the

Molly Presley:

fastest adoption that we've had of our environment is in visual effects studios.

Molly Presley:

And this is environments where again, you think about that, what happened with

Molly Presley:

COVID and nobody was flying actors to have physical shoots of film, because

Molly Presley:

they're worried about travel and proximity and all social distancing.

Molly Presley:

So visual effects and animation was how a lot of the entertainment

Molly Presley:

and production films were done.

Molly Presley:

So the need for animation and visual effects went up dramatically.

Molly Presley:

Like orders of magnitude.

Molly Presley:

And in the meantime, the artists were scattering to all over where they wanted

Molly Presley:

to live, where their families lives and they were no longer close to the studios.

Molly Presley:

And so what they have done is used Hammerspace as the way to, um, make

Molly Presley:

it easy to spin up a new artist.

Molly Presley:

So a new artist could be in Africa or India or wherever

Molly Presley:

they happen to be living.

Molly Presley:

You give them access to the global name space and they instantly can see.

Molly Presley:

What is all the content, all the clips, they aren't actually moving them.

Molly Presley:

They're making copies of the video close and they're just viewing.

Molly Presley:

Okay.

Molly Presley:

I have, um, Moana and I have this Netflix show depending on who the studio is and

Molly Presley:

I can see, okay, here's all the content.

Molly Presley:

My job is only to edit the motion of the faces in this particular clip of film.

Molly Presley:

So I'm just gonna move that one clip.

Molly Presley:

The rest of the film can stay wherever it is, and they can work on that animation.

Molly Presley:

And then as they do their work, this metadata is being synchronized.

Molly Presley:

So if another artist says, oh, I thought I was supposed to be working on the

Molly Presley:

animation of that face, they can see what the other person is doing and not step

Molly Presley:

on each other or later have to figure out how do I merge changes, things like that.

Molly Presley:

So it's, it's really helped ramp up remote artists working on content, that's

Molly Presley:

massive and you can't move around easily.

Molly Presley:

And so they can just work on the clips and segments that they want to.

Molly Presley:

And this is all done integrated with their tools.

Molly Presley:

So with Autodesk shot grid and Tara deci their virtual studio tools.

Molly Presley:

So there's a lot of tools that's integrated with to make it really easy

Molly Presley:

that they're using their own tools and this kind of data orchestration.

Molly Presley:

The background is automated.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I think that's interesting.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I feel a lot of storage vendors tend to sort of say, Hey, here's an NFS

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Mount point or an SMB Mount point, go at it versus kind of what, uh,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Hammerspace is doing is giving you that automation, those policy management,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

integration into the consumers or the end users tools, rather than just

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

saying, Hey, here's a point go for it.

Molly Presley:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

I, I really think this is just the next generation of how storage and data

Molly Presley:

management and hybrid cloud will work.

Molly Presley:

And I've worked in all of these types of companies.

Molly Presley:

And I know this is a thing that customers and I've been using the term, the

Molly Presley:

missing link in what customers expect will work when they go to a hybrid

Molly Presley:

cloud versus how it actually works.

Molly Presley:

So if you think about the technologies that exist today, sure.

Molly Presley:

You can run a NAS instance of any of the popular NAS vendors in the

Molly Presley:

cloud and in the data center, but they're separate silos of data.

Molly Presley:

So you as user would still have to say, Hmm, okay.

Molly Presley:

Where am I gonna put my data?

Molly Presley:

Where is the data I created before?

Molly Presley:

How do I make that available to someone else?

Molly Presley:

And.

Molly Presley:

Then the matter of opening a ticket with it and say, okay, now Curtis

Molly Presley:

needs access to this share and let's open up a share and set up the

Molly Presley:

IP networking for him to do that.

Molly Presley:

And the DNS servers and everything is very manual.

Molly Presley:

The way Hammerspace handles it is: you just set up both

Molly Presley:

of you with access to our.

Molly Presley:

NFS share.

Molly Presley:

Let's say the Hammerspace share and no matter where the data is stored, if

Molly Presley:

Curtis says you can have access to it, um, he just says that permission in TaDa!

Molly Presley:

you have access to it.

Molly Presley:

There's no it involved.

Molly Presley:

There's no data silos where you're saying, gosh, I don't

Molly Presley:

know what's in, Curtis' share.

Molly Presley:

I only know what's in mine.

Molly Presley:

How would I ever know?

Molly Presley:

We, we overcome that so you can see the data that's being created and

Molly Presley:

collaborated on by many data users.

Molly Presley:

And you know, most environments need that.

Molly Presley:

It's not designed for where you want your own personal information.

Molly Presley:

Well, to yourself.

Molly Presley:

It's environments that are collaborative and are doing

Molly Presley:

research or that type of thing.

W. Curtis Preston:

Yeah, I, I will say I, I understood the second example

W. Curtis Preston:

a lot better than the first one.

W. Curtis Preston:

So that's so that's good.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, it's something that, you know, I've spent a lot of time in and around

W. Curtis Preston:

the, the media and entertainment space.

W. Curtis Preston:

I've worked with companies trying to back up that stuff.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, because one of the problems that I remember I was working with the folks that

W. Curtis Preston:

were making Shrek 2, back when that was new, and their problem was each animator

W. Curtis Preston:

needed the entire set of data that at least they needed it to look like they had

W. Curtis Preston:

the entire set of data in order to select which backgrounds they wanted to to use.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, um, that was an interesting problem to solve.

W. Curtis Preston:

And it sounds like that this would, this would help to solve that problem.

Molly Presley:

Yeah, it does very much.

Molly Presley:

Um, and that kind of problem occurs when you think about a studio,

Molly Presley:

maybe that advertises the same film.

Molly Presley:

In different countries and they have to localize a look and feel, or the clips

Molly Presley:

they'll carry for an advertisement in Japan may be different than America.

Molly Presley:

That type of thing.

Molly Presley:

It works beautifully for that type of solution.

Molly Presley:

It's just overall, it's become difficult as we have so many technologies that

Molly Presley:

come out, one's a little better, a little different, or has a little functionality

Molly Presley:

than another in the storage space.

Molly Presley:

And you need those differences.

Molly Presley:

You need the fast performance of Pure Storage or Vast Data, or you need the

Molly Presley:

hybrid cloud, um, image that Qumulo has, or, you know, whatever it's, as you go

Molly Presley:

through the different technologies and you bought something for those reasons,

Molly Presley:

and yet your users don't have access to all the different storage vendors

Molly Presley:

and need to know what data exists.

Molly Presley:

So having the name space that sits above it, that makes it so it can have

Molly Presley:

the performance or capacity or security that they need in their storage systems.

Molly Presley:

And that doesn't limit a user from having visibility to all of the data is really

Molly Presley:

kind of a simple way to think about it.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

And I know you talked about some of the features that

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

these individual storage vendors have.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I know Hammerspace brings its own innovative features.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

For those other storage vendors, do things sort of get least

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

common denominator, if you will.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

In terms of the features functionality of those underlying storage arrays,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

or is Hammerspace still able to allow those storage arrays to bring their

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

innovative features, functionality and Hammerspace leverages, or

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

has its own capabilities on top.

Molly Presley:

Yeah, it's a really good question.

Molly Presley:

Um, So when you take, let's say you assimilate the metadata out of your

Molly Presley:

NetApp and your Vast and whatever it is.

Molly Presley:

Um, at that point you're using the features in Hammerspace, so they

Molly Presley:

can be done at a global level.

Molly Presley:

So if you wanna set that, you know, a specific replication functionality,

Molly Presley:

or if you wanna be able to have ransomware policies put in place,

Molly Presley:

um, if you wanna have encryption set, you can do that at a global level.

Molly Presley:

So you don't have the risk of, oh gosh, I'm encrypting on this environment and

Molly Presley:

not this one or, um, that type of thing.

Molly Presley:

So we take over the management at that level.

Molly Presley:

So really in the end, the other storage systems become capacity and performance.

Molly Presley:

Um, and the features are handled at a global level within Hammerspace.

W. Curtis Preston:

By the way while researching Hammerspace,

W. Curtis Preston:

the company I come, I came across.

W. Curtis Preston:

I I, what I'm absolutely sure is the origin of, you know, why you

W. Curtis Preston:

would name the company that, and this, this idea of a, uh, so I just

W. Curtis Preston:

found the, the Hammerspace Wikipedia page, and, you know, they say a fan

W. Curtis Preston:

envisioned, extra dimensional, instantly accessible storage area in fiction.

W. Curtis Preston:

Uh, and it it's used to describe how, how characters can seemingly

W. Curtis Preston:

out of thin air make objects appear.

Molly Presley:

That's where the name came from is that idea of, you know, bug's

Molly Presley:

bunny has the appearance of very small pockets and yet can pull a massive hammer

Molly Presley:

out of his pocket and Bonk his bow on Um, Hammerspace is that extra dimension

Molly Presley:

of what appears small, you can actually pull this massive amount of data out of.

Molly Presley:

So it's that metadata kind of analogy.

W. Curtis Preston:

I will ask one very obvious question.

W. Curtis Preston:

Okay.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Yes,

W. Curtis Preston:

So does this beautiful, multidimensional, storage space, impact

W. Curtis Preston:

how I would back up the data because in the end, that is, you know, one

W. Curtis Preston:

of the things that we care about.

Molly Presley:

It definitely could.

Molly Presley:

Backup is one of those things that I think most storage vendors have

Molly Presley:

not tried to take on too much.

Molly Presley:

Of course we have data protection, we have snapshots and replication

Molly Presley:

and all those types of things.

Molly Presley:

But in the end, if you were setting up a Druva backup policy, you would point

Molly Presley:

it at the Hammerspace name space, and set it just the way you always have.

Molly Presley:

You know, whatever your requirements are, your retention, you, your network shares.

Molly Presley:

If you're used to backing up NFS, you present NFS.

Molly Presley:

So the process is the same.

Molly Presley:

You just would do it at the Hammerspace level instead, backup for individual

Molly Presley:

silo within the Hammerspace environment.

Molly Presley:

It's easier if you think about that, you can only set the policies once

Molly Presley:

and it covers all of your data.

Molly Presley:

Um, but it do you know, it does require just integrating with

Molly Presley:

Hammerspace file shares instead.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

and I'm guessing because backup, you kind

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

of need access to everything.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Your policies might be slightly different, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

For someone trying to do a backup or like a tool trying to do a

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

backup, then like a normal user,

Molly Presley:

Yeah.

Molly Presley:

There's a lot of access optionality built in, you know, super user access

Molly Presley:

to everything versus you as a user only are allowed to access a certain

Molly Presley:

thing for a certain amount of time.

Molly Presley:

And of course, a backup environment would need access at a massive

Molly Presley:

level, but you know, you can set it just as read, not write.

Molly Presley:

Those types of things, which often would be a best practice.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You mentioned ransomware.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

I know that's a hot topic these days.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Could you talk about how Hammerspace protects you prevent or how you

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

handle ransomware situations?

Molly Presley:

Yeah, definitely.

Molly Presley:

I think anybody who's in any sort of data management or data storage

Molly Presley:

environment needs to be thinking about ransomware as a problem.

Molly Presley:

Obviously that is top of mind for many companies, um, well for every company.

Molly Presley:

And so if you think about a global data environment, which is what we call it, so

Molly Presley:

you create this global data environment, which incorporates all of your data and

Molly Presley:

you can think kind of ransomware person kinda putting their fingers together,

Molly Presley:

going, Ooh, I want access that thing.

Molly Presley:

Um, certainly there's multiple layers of what we have built into

Molly Presley:

the environment, as far as access protections, um, immutable, snapshots.

Molly Presley:

Um, we keep, because we have this very intelligent metadata layer.

Molly Presley:

We actually have the ability to do undelete.

Molly Presley:

So at a administrative level, even if somebody did maliciously delete data, um,

Molly Presley:

we can do an undelete, which is housed in a location, you know, a different metadata

Molly Presley:

environment that they can't touch.

Molly Presley:

So there's, there's quite a few pieces.

Molly Presley:

If you think about the different layers of access encryption.

Molly Presley:

Um, taking of the data, things like that, that are built into the environment.

Molly Presley:

Um, I wouldn't say that we are a ransomware company.

Molly Presley:

I think all of our technologies need to do things to help protect against ransomware.

Molly Presley:

There may be cases where somebody would go partner with a company whose

Molly Presley:

job is to protect against ransomware.

Molly Presley:

Um, and of course we would integrate with that, but there's several

Molly Presley:

levels of controls and we've had customers, you know, who know

Molly Presley:

they've had are undergoing attacks.

Molly Presley:

It's very common.

Molly Presley:

You know, that customers know that they've see, they see 'em having almost daily.

Molly Presley:

I think

W. Curtis Preston:

That is a perfect application for the metadata only access.

W. Curtis Preston:

Right?

W. Curtis Preston:

So if you have a SEIM/SOAR tool that's monitoring what's happening with

W. Curtis Preston:

the metadata changes to the files would react, would, would result

W. Curtis Preston:

in changes in the metadata, right?

W. Curtis Preston:

And you being able to provide access to just the data data without all the data.

W. Curtis Preston:

Um, that sounds like a perfect application for your tool as well.

Molly Presley:

Exactly.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Another example I could think of is,

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

especially with multi-cloud right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

People might be choosing different clouds for cost reasons or feature

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

reasons, and they may not be experts at it, but with Hammerspace, right.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

You could kind of give them that seamless interface across the clouds as well.

W. Curtis Preston:

cool.

W. Curtis Preston:

Well, Molly, I'm glad we had you on.

W. Curtis Preston:

Thanks for joining us.

Molly Presley:

Really interesting conversation.

Molly Presley:

I've known you for a long time.

Molly Presley:

Curtis.

Molly Presley:

Prasanna's a smart, fun podcaster as well.

W. Curtis Preston:

a, he's a great co-host.

W. Curtis Preston:

I am very lucky to have him, so thanks.

W. Curtis Preston:

Thanks Prasanna.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Thank You, Curtis.

Prasanna Malaiyandi:

Molly, it was a pleasure to meet you.

W. Curtis Preston:

And, thanks again to our listeners.

W. Curtis Preston:

You know, you are why we do this after all.

W. Curtis Preston:

Well, that, and we're bored, but, uh so we thank you for listening and remember to