Storage News
Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen: Storage And Security Are Now A ‘Blended Conversation’
Joseph F. Kovar
‘Once you’ve protected the perimeter network, endpoint and identities, you’re getting to the last line of defense, which is typically a backup. And if the bad guys could take out not just those perimeters but also your last line of defense, you’re very vulnerable,’ Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen tells CRN.
You’ve passed your first 100 days as CEO of Cohesity. What have you learned?
I’ve always believed that great companies that create sustainable shareholder value start with engaged employees. I know I’ve not met all 2,500 employees, but I’ve certainly had a chance to interact with all of them in many town hall meetings and met a large number of them. And in innovation, I’d always respected Cohesity as having the best platform in this category while I was at VMware. Many of us at VMware felt that way because many of our largest customers were picking Cohesity. As I’ve talked to both the engineers who are building the road map of where we are going and my own sitting with the geniuses behind this platform brainstorming where it could go, it’s iron sharpening iron. So I’m very excited about the employees and the product innovation and the current road map.
I’m super excited about the customer base and our go-to-market teams. We have about 3,500 customers, including 40 percent-plus of the Fortune 100 companies, four of the top 10 banks and 300-plus global financial services companies. And the government sector, federal agencies, civilian and military, and health-care organizations, retail, just some really good brands.
And then the ecosystem. I’m very excited about having server, storage and networking vendors like HPE, Cisco and Pure Storage. HPE and Cisco are investors in Cohesity, and Pure is a strong partner. We started working with NetApp and Dell. They should also partner with us. We will do more with them. In many cases, our integration with NetApp with things like [NetApp] SnapDiff is better than that of any of our competitors. And Dell, even with overlap with some with their data protection, I really want to partner with Dell everywhere I can. Many of our customers run with Dell servers and storage.
And in the cloud world, AWS is an investor in this company. We’ve done more with them. I talk to them very frequently. I was just recently with [Amazon CEO] Andy Jassy. We talk frequently with them, and there’s more you’ll see us doing with them.
