Cohesity’s Marc Mombourquette on Enhancing Data Cloud with AI

This is Textron tv. Hi everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong tv.

Well, we're back from Black Hat, but the security and cyber world stands still for No Man or Nobody. Um, in that vein, I want to introduce you to Mark, mark, ma Bette. Mark is the senior product marketing at, uh, manager Ccp MM at Cohesity.

And Mark, welcome to Techstrong tv. Great. Thanks for having me.

Alan, Were you up, were you outta Black Hat by chance, or? No, I was, uh, I was not. I was back on the East Coast, uh, working on our, uh, AI products, so, um, I didn't get a chance to, to run out to the show.

Well, you didn't. Well, it was a nice show, but it was 115 degrees outside, you know, and they could say dry heat, all they want 115 degrees is hot, hot, dry, wet, cold. I mean, it's hot.

It felt like I take meat off the grill when it's that hot, hot. But, um, anyway, mark, you know, I mentioned you were a senior product marking manager over at Cohesity, but you know, I'm sure there's more dimensions to Mark mumbo than that. Why don't you give people a little sense of, of, of your own journey and how you got here?

Yeah, thanks. Uh, I've been in the backup industry for, I don't know, 20, 25 years or so at this point. Um, you know, with a variety of, of different, um, roles, you know, from product marketing to business development.

I was a product manager, uh, running up against, uh, some, some, you know, Goliath, uh, competitors in the market. And, uh, I recently joined Ity about a year ago, uh, to work specifically on their new ai uh, products. So I'm, I'm very excited to, uh, to, to kind of that new chapter in my career and, uh, new chapter in technology.

Sure. So, you know, mark, people say, ah, back up. Not sexy, not a lot changing, but AI is everywhere and AI is changing everything it seems.

Maybe not as fast as some of us would like, but it it certainly is be. Before we jump into it though, co I, I pronounce it Cohesity, if I mispronounced it, my funny New York accent, I'm sorry, but it's Cohesity sounds like from the way you're saying it, um, but, you know, give our audience a sense of, you know, what's Cohesity about. So, uh, we are, um, uh, foremost a, a data management company, um, and it, and it starts at that core foundation.

And from there, you know, there's lots of different, uh, avenues that, that you can really, uh, get into. And so backup and recovery was one of our, our, uh, our biggest and, and probably where most people would've heard us, uh, about us before, but we're also, uh, very strong in security. We've got a, uh, a security line of products and solutions, and now we're moving into some of the ai, uh, uh, not only features and functionality, but products.

Uh, and so, uh, it's about managing your, your data and then being able to do different things with it. Absolutely. Um, and you know, it's, it, to me, it's part of this whole not renaissance, but people, it's like we live in a, an in protect industry in general, has a little bit of a DD, right?

And, and it manifests itself in this shiny trinket syndrome. We're always looking what's new, what's sexy? What, what, what's the shiny new object that attracts our attention?

And, and sometimes we do that at the expense of, of sort of bread and butter, you know, meat and potatoes types of things, which is more like what Cohesity is about. Right. And here we have a case, though, and that's what I want to talk to you about today, though, is new and sick, new and sexy meat meats, meat and potatoes a little bit.

And, and that's kinda what you've been working on. So tell Us. Yeah, it's, it's funny, like I, I, I tell this story about, um, about how, why I am still in backup after all these years.

Um, you know, when I first started in this, this industry, you know, our biggest competition wasn't necessarily, uh, you know, another brand name that was up against us. It was trying to get, uh, customers to understand that you needed a second copy of your data. And so, so we were competing against, you know, hey, hard drives are never gonna fail.

And that transformed into, uh, you know, disc, you know, backing, backing up on disc versus tape, uh, you know, is, is a smarter thing. And then we moved into virtualization and, uh, cloud, um, the intersection of, of security. And now we're at this new junction where AI is, is, uh, uh, the new, the new thing that we're doing at the core of it, it's still the same message.

It's, it's, it's about being ready, uh, in case of a disaster. And, and that, that definition of disaster has changed the whole lot over the years. It went from, you know, hard drive failure or someone tripping over a power cord in your data center to what we have now where you're, you're, you know, you're fighting off, uh, cyber attacks and, and, and being able to make sure that you're, you're systems are recoverable and, and, uh, back online, you know, minutes or seconds after, after something happens.

So, uh, it's, it's changed a whole lot over the years, but it, it's, it's still a really, uh, exciting, um, you know, kind of market for us. And, and that, you know, we are discovering new use cases for that, having that secondary data, uh, every time that we talk to a customer. Absolutely.

I, and it's, it makes for exciting times. I, I, I was recording our Textron gang show this morning, and it was a lot of AI stuff, but a lot of us cybersecurity coming back from black hat, you know, that was kind of top of mind and, and then, you know, transposed that on what's going on in the world today. Right.

It's, it's crazy time. I mean, it's, so take your pick, whether it be wars, finance, famine, pestilence, I mean, there's just, you know, there's so much going on and, and it's, it's quite a backdrop for these things. But let, let's jump into this.

Is it a flat out new release? Is it just, I mean, how would you describe it? So it's a, it's a series of updates.

We, we run, uh, agile development, so we're, we're constantly releasing new fixes and new functions and new features all the time. And, and so what we've done, uh, in this product, uh, we introduced it, uh, quietly back in February. But, um, what we're, what we're unveiling now is, is basically an AI kind of driven security bot.

And, and so this is part of the core program. Uh, this is not something that you need to, uh, go and, and purchase. Of course, if you want additional functionality, you could, you could bring in our, our data hawk security products and get additional functionality.

But what it is, is, is it's, we've taken a lot of the, uh, machine learning that's happening in the background, uh, underneath, um, you know, that, that that's gonna be looking for anomaly, anomaly signatures. And, and what we've done is built in an ai, uh, tool on top of it that actually will help guide you through some of the, the, you know, what's face it, scary parts of, of getting, uh, those alerts. Um, in a lot of cases, you know, anomaly, uh, detection is, you know, it could be something's just maybe misclassified, you know, someone, uh, spun up something new and didn't classify it the right way.

Well, that anomaly might be innocent. In other cases, it could be, you know, the sign of someone's in your, uh, in your storage mucking around and that it needs further investigation. And so the cyber recovery assistant will actually spin up and, and, and actually give you an AI interface where you can actually start asking questions about it.

Um, you know, when was this detected? Have we seen this, this type of, uh, incident before? Uh, is, have we seen the signature before?

And, and the AI engine will actually start and answer you in, in real time, uh, you know, natural language. You know, this isn't something that, you know, uh, you need to be a programmer to use. This is, this is, you know, help me figure out what's going on.

And then from that point, uh, there's additional functionality that we're gonna be introducing as, as, uh, time goes on, I think in the next couple weeks, where you're actually gonna be able to orchestrate the movement of that workload that is suspicious, uh, to, um, our clean room. And, and within the clean room, then you can go and, you know, do further analysis on it, bring in third party tools to kind of dissect it, maybe disinfect it, but in that clean room, it's safe from, uh, your production, it's not going to explode and spread all over the place. So, um, so we're really excited about this.

This is, this is basically not a, you know, AI like, uh, you know, Hal taking over the world and, and kind of automating things to the point where you don't know what's going on. This is, this is using AI to help, uh, guide you through, uh, the process and, and give you information so you can make the best decisions, um, you know, that makes sense for your organization. So would, would, how is, and, and I asked this a a lot of companies that are building AI capabilities, and does it, is it sort of like a copilot or is it more transparent?

You are more kind of organic, if you will, than that? Uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's built in, you know, so what we're doing is we're, we're looking across our, uh, our signatures, we're looking across anomalies. It's, you know, it's, it's not a, a copilot per se.

Uh, it's, it's more looking at, at kind of, you know, the, the intelligence of what's happening in your system. Okay. That, that's what I mean.

So would, so you haven't built sort of a, a gen ai, um, lack of the better word widget for customers to use to help them navigate your product. You're actually using genai built into the product to make the product better? Yeah, I mean, it, it's, well, first of all, we're, it's not, this piece isn't genai, uh, genai yet.

Uh, we do have Gen AI products in our portfolio. Uh, we have a, uh, ity Gaia, which is a, a gen ai, um, you know, virtual assistant that would let you do analysis of, of your backup data. And then what's in it, uh, this is, this is a more of a retrieval ai, uh, piece, and that we're, we're taking in all the machine learning, uh, pieces that are happening, and we're, we're helping guide you through, um, the process, right?

This is, this is, uh, the Gen AI piece would be creating, you know, new content. This is, this is helping, uh, retrieve, you know, uh, data analysis pieces so you can make better decisions. I stand corrected.

Thank you. No, just going by my notes here. It said J AI capabilities, but what do I know?

Um, so Mark, this, as you mentioned, you know, you guys are kind of dripping this out as you do your agile kinda releases, is it started in February, but it's, it's substantial enough now where, where coming out with it. Um, and as I think you also mentioned, this isn't like an add on, pay me an extra $5 a month something or whatever. Look me, um, this is kind of, you know, goes with, with the, with the product.

How do people, you know, we never even mentioned, what's the website for Cohesity? com. com.

SITY, no, Uh, y sorry. All right. com and where can they go get more information on this particular, Go to our website, uh, check out our blog.

We have a, a new blog that'll, uh, be up that, that kind of talks through, uh, kind of the use cases and, and, uh, walks you through, you know, kind of, um, how this, this, uh, cyber recovery assistant will, would help you out in your, um, you know, in your ransomware and anomaly detection and, and, and basically just upkeeping and making sure that your systems are, uh, running, um, you know, up to date and, and keeping your data safe. Great. Hey, mark, thank you so much for coming on here and telling us about this.

Um, you know, we, we don't cover Cohesity enough, frankly, so hopefully start, we got a lot of Great things going on. We, you know, our AI story is, is pretty robust. We've been doing this for about 10 years now and different, different, you know, avenues of the ai, uh, world.

Um, lots of interesting things going on here. So I, I really encourage, uh, people to take a look at us. Absolutely.

Mark Marc Mombourquette, senior product marketing manager at Co on Tech Drunk tv. Hey, we're gonna take a break on Tech Shunk tv. We have a lot more coming up for you though today, so stay tuned.

But for now, we're out.