VMblog: Can you give VMblog readers a quick overview of your company?
Caroline Seymour: Zerto helps organizations to protect, recover, and move data and applications for continuous availability across on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud environments and our focus is to provide Disaster Recovery, Ransomware Recovery and Multi-Cloud mobility in a simple single software solution. Zerto is the only vendor that offers continuous data protection for VM's and Kubernetes platforms, which gives Zerto a unique advantage when it comes to recovering from ransomware or any disruption as we are minimizing data loss across all environments not just a singular platform.
VMblog: Your company is sponsoring this year's VMware Explore event. Can you talk about what that sponsorship looks like?
Seymour: We're a Gold sponsor this year. We'll have a 20x30 booth at spot 1502 on the map. Our zExperts will be there to answer questions and demo our product. We'll also have a theater session, presented by our technical marketing engineer, Anthony Dutra and enterprise architect, Michael Martino called "Data Protection in the Multi-Cloud Era," and a breakout session led by Zerto technology evangelist, Chris Rogers called "Simple, Fast, Flexible Ransomware Recovery."
VMblog: VMware has decided to change the name of the event this year from VMworld to VMware Explore. With VMworld being such a part of the history, do you have any thoughts on the namechange?
Seymour: We've been through so much in the past few years, maybe it's time for us to ‘explore' new ‘worlds'. I like the emphasis being on exploring something new and seeking new frontiers beyond the world we already know and are familiar with.
VMblog: What are your thoughts and expectations with the event being in person again instead of just a digital / online event? Are attendees ready for this? Do you anticipate the crowd size of VMworld pre-pandemic?
Seymour: Yes, people are ready. It's been too long to not see old friends and make new ones. There are concerns and I understand that, but the VMware community is a special one and we really benefit from time together to share ideas and experiences. We love to hear from our customers and we have missed the face to face discussions.
Being there in person is a great opportunity to hear about new technology solutions and engage with customers about how they are using technology to solve their business problems. And of course, hearing insights from executives and industry experts about emerging trends are things I always look forward to.
VMblog: How can attendees of the event find you? What do you have planned at your booth this year? What type of things will attendees be able to do at your booth?
Seymour: We're in booth 1502. I hope everyone will be able to stop by and say hi!
Attendees who visit Zerto's virtual booth will be able to engage with our zExperts to ask any questions they have about Zerto technology. They can also learn more about Zerto 9.5, its powerful new immutability and automation features, enhanced cloud data management and protection capabilities for end users and managed service providers, and new backup capabilities including support for Google Cloud and additional cloud platforms.
VMblog: Do you have any speaking sessions during the event? If so, can you give us the details?
Seymour: We have a 30-minute theater session and a 60-minute breakout session.
The theater session, presented by our technical marketing engineer, Anthony Dutra and our enterprise architect, Michael Martino, will explore how hybrid and multi-cloud models have now become the dominant IT strategy, even as data protection remains a key issue for most organizations. See how disparate data spread across multiple clouds, infrastructures, and formats makes protecting company's most valuable digital assets even more complex. This session will be Wednesday, Aug 31, 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM PDT [MCLB2917USS]
The breakout session will be led by Zerto technology evangelist, Chris Rogers. Chris will explain how it's time to play the Zerto "get out of ransomware jail" card to dramatically reduce data loss and downtime after a cyber-attack. He will dive into five ransomware recovery scenarios that customers are faced with and how Zerto can be leveraged in each case to recover from these potentially disastrous events. This session will be Wednesday, Aug 3, 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM PDT. [SECB2958USS]
VMblog: Can you give us the high-level rundown of your company's technology offerings? What kind of message will an attendee hear from you this year?
Seymour: Zerto helps organizations of all sizes dramatically limit their data loss and downtime no matter what kind of disruption comes along. We help customers protect and recover their virtualized & containerized applications and data, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or both. This year, attendees will continue to hear more about how Zerto is helping neutralize the threat of ransomware, especially across multi-cloud deployments where mission-critical data must be available 24x7.
VMblog: Talking about your product solutions, can you give readers a few examples of how your offerings are unique? What are your differentiators? What sets you apart from the competition?
Seymour: Zerto is renowned for our unique approach to handling I/O and moving data efficiently. Our proprietary continuous data protection (CDP) engine has been refined & battle-tested over the last 13 years to deliver the lowest RPOs and fastest RTOs in the industry. Customers consistently tell us they love the way we do this at scale, across clouds, with radical simplicity.
Zerto is the only solution that brings continuous data protection (CDP) for backup, DR, and data mobility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments in a single solution with flexible deployment options. Traditional backup and DR systems are based on snapshots and saving data to tapes. This outdated technology creates gaps in an organization's data: if its last backup took place days or hours before an attack, all data that was created between the backup and the attack will be lost forever. Zerto is the only CDP solution for a unified and automated recovery and data management experience across virtualized, containerized, and cloud-native workloads.
Zerto eliminates the problem of backup gaps with its CDP. Using unique and innovative journaling technology, Zerto eliminates the need for snapshots by providing thousands of restore and recovery points that are seconds apart. Organizations achieve RPOs of seconds and RTOs of minutes, recovering entire sites, clusters, and applications.
VMblog: How does your company work with VMware? Where do you fit within the VMware ecosystem?
Seymour: We have deep experience, and a strong strategic relationship, with VMware to deliver orchestrated disaster recovery, ransomware recovery, and multi-cloud mobility. Whether using vCenter, Cloud Director, Tanzu, or VMware as a service in the public cloud, Zerto is tightly integrated into the VMware ecosystem and, for many of our customers, our solution becomes a cornerstone solution in their VMware-powered SDDC.
Once companies see what CDP with Zerto can do for them, it becomes harder to imagine putting up with 15 minutes, let alone 15 hours, worth of data loss after an outage. Today's always-on world means that kind of disruption is no longer acceptable-a perfect fit for starting a dialogue about how Zerto can offer continuous availability and fully unlock the benefits of VMware investments.
VMblog: VMware will be covering big topics in their keynote, but what big changes or trends do you see taking shape in the industry for 2022 and heading into 2023?
Seymour: We expect a lot of conversation around multi-cloud is enabling and enhancing our always-on capabilities. That will be a topic we have a lot of interest in. Most businesses have adopted the cloud in some form or fashion, particularly at the enterprise level. We're interested in speaking with many of the small- to medium-sized businesses in attendance that have yet to make the full leap. We've seen a lot of them experimenting with cloud in a measured approach. These organizations are dipping their toe into the cloud via cloud-based services like disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), which provides a means to failover and recover entire applications or sites using a secure, managed cloud as a target site.
Companies and individuals have been operating in the cloud for years without really thinking about it-whether it's streaming personal content or office applications. Most of these experiences have been taken for granted. But when it comes to protecting data and applications against ransomware and other threats, organizations will be forced to understand the nuts and bolts of their DRaaS services. And that's an experience we'd like to discuss and hear more about.
VMblog: Are you giving away any prizes at your booth or participating in any prize giveaways?
Seymour: Yes, anyone that visits the Zerto Booth #1502 will receive a free Zerto t-shirt, along with the opportunity to enter to win a Meta Quest 2 gaming system. We have two prize giveaways scheduled during the show:
- Tuesday, August 30th @ 6:00 PM - The Meta Quest 2 VR Gaming System drawing.
- Wednesday, August 31st @ 4:00 PM - Zerto "REDWED" Lego Giveaways - anybody that wears their red Zerto shirt on Wednesday will earn a chance to win a Star Wars Millennium Falcon Lego set.
VMblog: Is your company sponsoring any type of party or get together during the event?
Seymour: Zerto is sponsoring the VMware Expo Hall Crawl on Tuesday, August 30th between 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM. Attendees can join us at the Zerto booth (#1502) for a cold beer or a glass of wine.
