VMworld 2020 goes digital.  Will you be in attendance?  If the event were physical, I would have looked forward to visiting with Clumio.  So we reached out to them digitally instead.

With the current pandemic, we're seeing a lot of changes taking place in our normal, everyday lives -- both professionally and personally.  One of those changes is the end of physical trade show events as we move to socially distance ourselves from one another.  While some trade shows simply cancelled or postponed until 2021, others have made the switch to a 100% digital format.  VMworld, the world's largest virtualization and cloud computing event hosted every year by VMware, is one of those shows -- enter for the first time ever, VMworld 2020 Digital. 

While a physical VMworld event would normally have north of 150+ sponsors, a digital VMworld event won't be able to effectively support that number of sponsors. 

Clumio is an innovator of authentic SaaS for enterprise backup.  Using their secure service, organizations eliminate hardware and software for on-premise backup and avoid the complexity and cost of running third-party backup software in the cloud.  As enterprises move aggressively to cloud, they can use Clumio to protect workloads like VMware Cloud on AWS and AWS native services.

Are you gearing up for VMworld 2020 digital?  Get started now by reading this exclusive interview with Joe Ferguson, Cloud Sales Engineer at Clumio to learn more, and start getting excited for what's to come!

VMblog:  Are you sponsoring this year's VMworld 2020 digital event?  Can you talk about what that sponsorship looks like?

Joe Ferguson:  Yes, Clumio is excited to be a Gold Sponsor of the event, while we work to keep our title as Best Of VMworld. We will be showcasing how we help companies move to the cloud with the robust data protection they need. They shouldn't bring the baggage of yesterday's backup along to the cloud- it won't work well anyway. As part of our sponsorship, Clumio will have a Demo Zone with a chat feature to be staffed by expert Clumio cloud data protection experts. Attendees will also be able to view a 5 Minute on-demand demo: Easy and Rapid Recovery for VMware in the Cloud  by John Stine; and access our VMware-focused assets. Learn more about Clumio and our presence at VMworld by visiting us prior to the event at our Clumio for VMware page.

VMblog:  And do you have any speaking sessions during the event?  If so, can you give us the details?

Ferguson:  Yes, our Chief Technologist, Chadd Kenney, will be presenting an on-demand Breakout Session in the Multi-Cloud track: Best Practices for Protecting VMware Cloud on AWS. He'll be describing the journey to the cloud VMware customers pursue, the data protection challenges they face, and the best practices to navigate them.

The journey to the cloud is challenging with many barriers to optimization and full leverage. For many enterprises, SaaS is the easy button to get to cloud faster and their data protection strategies are poised to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this approach. By removing the complexity of on-premises hardware, sizing exercises, and time-consuming upgrades as well as using the scale, elasticity and economics of the public cloud, Clumio can help an organization build and deploy cloud apps in VMware Cloud on AWS much faster. We encourage your readers to join Clumio in this session to learn the best practices for VMware Cloud on AWS that will make data protection simple and help your organization focus on more strategic priorities.

VMblog:  Are you giving away any prizes at your virtual booth or participating in any prize giveaways?

Ferguson:  Absolutely.  This year, we may not have a spinning wheel in our booth but attendees can test their luck with a digital lottery scratcher to win lots of cool prizes. We will also have a fun Clumio Trivia Challenge where attendees can test their knowledge and be entered in a raffle to win a fun experience.

VMblog:  Another change has been a shift to working from home.  What are your thoughts on this, how has it changed things for your company both internally and externally?

Ferguson:  As an early stage startup built in the cloud, the transition to full work from home has been pretty seamless. We've experienced the same challenges that all companies with direct sales teams have to transition to a digital approach to customer calls vs. in person. However, the biggest change has been the increase in remote workers and growth in ransomware attacks.  Since we're Enterprise Backup as a Service, this has driven a greater need for our capabilities to help companies protect their data, deal with a broader attack surface with remote employees, and protect data without requiring physical datacenter access.

VMblog:  Can you give us the high-level rundown of your company's technology offerings?

Ferguson:  Clumio provides SaaS data protection for an all cloud world. We protect VMware, VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS Native Services, and Microsoft 365. Clumio is a secure, backup-as-a-service for the enterprise that replaces the complexity of managing data across all clouds with an authentic approach to SaaS.

VMblog:  Talking about your product solutions, can you give readers a few examples of how your offerings are unique?  What are your differentiators?

Ferguson:  We are the only Enterprise Backup as a Service that protects private cloud, public cloud, and SaaS with the same single, secure platform. The same uniform policies can protect VMs in VMware on-prem and VMware Cloud on AWS, greatly reducing operational complexity.  Clumio's architecture gives customers a way to recover from ransomware or data loss by defining an air gap where data is safely stored outside of production, under separate credentials, fully encrypted, and in an immutable format.  Our rapid recovery capability delivers cloud recovery performance that's faster than traditional hardware appliances and legacy tools - because only changed blocks are restored with our reverse change block tracking feature.   We offer per VM pricing, with no egress charges resulting in robust data protection with predictable costs. This is all delivered at a cost as much as 50% lower than competitive backup tools. Take a minute to read Duncan Epping's Blog to learn more about Clumio.

VMblog:  For those individuals attending the VMworld 2020 digital event, or those who have attended VMworld in the past, why should they be interested in your company and solutions? 

Ferguson:  We provide lower cost,  robust data protection that is easier to manage and requires no hardware or physical data center access. In today's challenging environment, Clumio helps customers take care of data protection, gives companies a way to recover from ransomware, and does it all with unprecedented simplicity, with no requirement for physical data center access. 

VMblog:  What specifically does your company offer a VMware shop or VMware implementation?

Ferguson:  We offer a single, secure Backup as a Service for VMware on-prem and VMware Cloud on AWS.  This means VMware customers can quickly define and apply a uniform set of backup policies to their VMs regardless of where they run.  There are no separate logins, no new tools to learn, no egress charges, and no expensive virtualized backup apps running 24x7 driving up customer's cloud bills.  And with rapid recovery we can smartly recover data from the cloud faster than on-prem tools. We can also recover data to any clumio registered vCenter.  And with the same service, Clumio protects AWS native services and Microsoft 365 workloads.  To learn more, please click here.

VMblog:  How does your company work with VMware?  Where do you fit within the VMware ecosystem?

Ferguson:  Clumio has attained VMware Partner Ready for VMware Cloud on AWS validation and earned our VSAN Ready badge.  This achievement demonstrates that Clumio has tested and verified interoperability and can fully manage customer support requests for Clumio Backup as a Service with VMware Cloud on AWS.

VMblog:  VMware may be covering things in their keynote, but what big changes do you see taking shape in the industry?

Ferguson:  We see that the explosion of data growth and cloud adoption are combining to disperse enterprise data at a rate and pace never seen before.  With this as a backdrop, the challenges around and importance of data protection has never been greater.

VMblog:  Finally, do you think physical trade shows will come back?  And if so, when and do they change?  Would you sponsor?

Ferguson:  2020 has tipped the physical events industry upside down and caused all of us to reevaluate how we engage with our attendees, customers and prospects. "Virtual" Trade Shows have been discussed in our industry for the past 10 years but are able to come to fruition with increased use of technology, improved network speeds and most importantly reliable safe backup in the cloud.  We believe events will morph into a hybrid model with both the physical aspect and an online version to accommodate the global citizen and the changing landscape around us. Clumio has embraced the virtual events and is working hard to reach our customers on many different platforms to continue to engage, collaborate and stay connected. Clumio is happy to be a Gold Sponsor of VMworld 2020 , and will continue to help businesses take their journey to the cloud while we secure your Backup Without Baggage.

Get to the Cloud, Leave your Baggage behind. Join us at VMworld 2020.

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