Enrique T. Salem
Management
When we look at the opportunity, it absolutely is focused on people rearchitecting how they do data protection. The volumes of data that are out there right now and the growth rate is not allowing people to successfully complete backup of all the critical data in a traditional way. So what they're having to do is drive rearchitecture, which is saying they have to use new technologies, such as deduplication. The second aspect that's driving it is, as they move to more virtualized servers, you're also seeing a need to use updated or new technologies that are more efficient at backing up a virtualized server. So you've got a rearchitecture going on in data protection. The other thing that's happening is, because data and information is so critical in so many different processes, you're also seeing people having the need to keep some of that data more accessible or online using technologies like archiving. And then lastly, because of the legal issues around the discovery process, you're seeing them have to add new techniques and methodologies around the discovery process. And by the way, this is being done now both on-premise and in the cloud. So you look at that, and what you've got is a real rearchitecture of how you think about data protection, Information Management and so forth, so that rearchitecture really creates, in my opinion, a tailwind for us as they think through how do they get ahead of this problem. When you think about the other side of it, obviously, what we do every day is we have to continue to drive innovation. And so a number of the new capabilities that we're delivering into the marketplace with the new Backup launch are that improved support for virtual environments, improved deduplication rates, doing deduplication everywhere, from the client to the data center. And so there's a lot of opportunity for innovation in that market, and so we're continuing to do that. The only thing that I think about is over time, and we've talked about this, is we are going to move to more appliances. Our Appliance business keeps doing very well, and that will put a little bit of pressure on our margins. And so it's just a different cost structure than an enterprise software license. But from a market health, from a competitive perspective on the capabilities that we have, I feel very good about that. And then the only thing, the only headwind that I'm worried about right now is really the -- with the pressure on the margins.