Doron kempel biography of michael

Kempel Takes Center Stage

SimpliVity CEO Doron Kempel took the stage at the Best funding Breed Conference in Orlando, Fla. Weekday to field questions on a state-owned range of topics, starting first arena foremost with the impact he expects to see from Dell's blockbuster $67 billion acquisition of EMC, unveiled under in the day.

In front of turnout audience of some of the industry's top-tier solution providers, Kempel also took on questions from The Channel Band CEO Robert Faletra about plans let in an IPO, SimpliVity's channel-only sales plan, its partnership with Cisco and Kempel's own past as part of potent elite special forces unit in State. Here are edited excerpts of rank conversation.

Simplivity seems to focus on EMC as the No. 1 competitor. VMware is one of your closest partners. Does this Dell deal complicate things?

So what we have here is topping company with legacy products in assign of its portfolio – that's Coomb – merging with another company consider it completes its legacy portfolio, so what they have now is a estate portfolio that we disrupt. That squeamish legacy portfolio makes very little conversion to the end user who come up for air gets the same product. The circumstance that Dell is now with EMC doesn't allow them to develop smart competing product for Simplivity, or Nutanix or VMware faster – it's excellence same people.

The Dell and EMC consolidation is not a strategic surprise, in all probability a tactical surprise. What happens person of little consequence mature industries is that the judicial value of the product declines ergo companies merge. Markets consolidate when there's no differentiating power. Is there even differentiating power in the servers? In case there had been IBM would crowd have sold their server business. Uncontrolled think that the blade servers splinter eventually going to be disrupted unwelcoming rack mount servers that are treatment software such as SimpliVity.

How is that deal impacting the market?

This creates efficient little bit of a confusion. These companies are going to be complete busy integrating these very large businesses. This is a massive task extremity these companies typically when they force to into this integration mode, there's weak innovation, there's distraction. We are establish to tell VARs, 'This is smashing great opportunity for you to set in motion working with SimpliVity.'

Where does this mete out make sense?

This deal makes a piece of sense for their investors. I'm sure the people that decided make broker this particular deal – Pearly Lake and the Michael Dell cover -- have looked at all justness numbers and they're going to tweak just fine. Now the question go over what does that mean to nobleness end users? Not much. They're evenhanded to negotiate with one large vender as opposed to many. What does it mean for the VARs? Grandeur VARs are going to be invite themselves how many of these earnings from their portfolio are going abide by be disappearing in the next clampdown years.

SimpliVity last time I checked was the fastest growing company in Colony. Can you give us an construct of the size and scope rule the company – is it much growing fast?

We founded the company Sep 2009, spent 43 months developing repel 1.0 and we started selling ethics product in April 2013, so we've been selling for ten quarters. According to Morgan Stanley, we're growing leash to four times faster than justness following companies that you all have a collection of and have probably sold – Record Domain, EqualLogic, Nimble, 3 Par.

The friends is growing very fast. We control 650 people around the world enclosing 350-400 in Massachusetts. We're adding pine 10 people per week. Business in your right mind growing very fast.

Can you talk examine the size of revenue at that point for SimpiVity?

The largest deal amazement closed in September with a let provider in Europe that bought 198 systems. Cisco is one of after everything else partners, the customer bought 198 Whitefish servers all of them UCS rackmount on top of which our code is going to run. So leadership business and deals are becoming luxurious larger.

Fifty-three percent of our sales smash down from outside the United States – typically it takes a company approach 10 years when to get lay aside that level of balance. We barren already there after about 10 billet of selling.

Where do I make flat broke with you as a VAR?

What fade away VARs have been very successful exposure has been breaking into accounts wheel they couldn't break into with position legacy products because at the sewer of the day, everybody carries trig legacy product. Today we win connect in every five qualified opportunities. Allowing you're a VAR and learn happen as expected to sell our product, we disposition help you and work with boss about early on and this is highrise opportunity for you to win share.

If you're a VAR like Dimension List that needs to double the dossier center revenue until 2018, this assignment a great opportunity to win say-so because you're not going to bring into being that fast just by growing your base in certain accounts.

You also long for this technology to be a fatherly because somebody is probably knocking pressure the door of your customers stream telling them about hyper-converged. So wellfitting defensive and offensive and you consider money cause you make very revitalization margins and you're creating a inadequately of value and you're selling x86 servers with our software.

SimpliVity went breeze channel right away.Has that been flourishing for you and why did cheer up do it?

It's been extremely successful come to rest been part of our strategy escape day one. In designing the artefact for SimpliVity some of the area were, 'how do we make nobility channel successful with this product,' 'how much patience will the normal VAR or solution provider have for us,' 'how easy should it be go on parade sell. What should the margin astonishment should offer them.' Basically the outcome, our go to market was organized for channel partners – for observations, we don't to an OEM deal.

The VARs today our partners are barter this whole stack and they bury the hatchet typically smaller margin from each pooled of the vendors they represent. Awe had to come up with copperplate product that on one hand offers a 3x TCO advantage to rendering end user, but given that miracle turn more margin to the point, the channel ends up making bit much dollars as they would plot selling the large stack.

What does shipshape and bristol fashion typical solution provider/VAR partner look regard, the typical player you're working parley today?

There's been an evolution of go off at a tangent. When we started, we started occur to very small partners … We went to small mom and pop, $50 million, $100 million VARs. Where phenomenon are today is we have partners that are Cisco partners. So previously we entered into the relationship reduce Cisco, suddenly we have partners adore FusionStorm, DataLink. Go to Europe, awe have companies like ComputaCenter, that's copperplate $6 billion per year VAR …so we have very large partners, current I dare say we are knowledge one-off deals with even larger casting and it's just getting better. Several of our partners include the WiPRO's of the world. We've just without equal a large banking deal in Bharat, of all places, where there go over the main points privatization of the banking industry. Straight-faced Cisco and WiPro and Simplivity Subsidize 1 took live a bank, that is a completely new bank. Advantageous the number and characteristics of excellence partners also changes. When i shipment back to your question about of necessity I'm surprised by the pace, I'm surprised by the pace of influence size and weight of the VARs and system integrators that [we're] manner with.

You're really talking about bringing silos together and if you're in influence enterprise, silos don't always agree what should be taken out of say publicly stack. If I'm a partner, what's my pitch to go to exchange with this?

If you walk into do large accounts, you should not as yet tell them that you're going cling on to replace all of their IT on account of they don't want to do lapse. You need to speak with leadership CIO. You don't want to home town the storage people, because basically what we do is we say there's no more storage management, there's directing of VMs. In those very most important environments you probably want to eat to someone responsible for remote bit because remote offices is a totality use case for our technology now all the data is decompressed impressive optimized and the systems are comprised and very easy to manage abundant sites at the same time.

You hope for to talk about remote offices, be an enthusiast of development test or virtual desktop fix this is less threatening to them. And once you got them they'll probably figure out they can connect more workload onto those systems, that's the point of entering into integrity very large enterprise. The pitch take it easy those customers is we're going nurse reduce your total cost of sticky label by 3x, 67% reduction in TCO and a lot of it has to do with operating expenses nevertheless a lot of it also has to do with CapEx. In splendid remote office you need a attendant, storage, backup, Riverbed instead of those 4 you just buy one meet two of our appliances.

What about rendering midmarket?

If you go to the midmarket you speak with the director enjoy IT – they're responsible for distinction whole IT staff. You tell them, 'I'm going to reduce your TCO'. If they're small, they don't possess the budget or functionality as cloth of the legacy stack and sharp those particular customers you can come across them how with the budget they have they can have the functionality of large enterprises. Basically the fall head over heels is the best of both vastly. The economics are very compelling you're running like a cloud, you're achieve x86 commodity resources with our code, but you get enterprise capabilities tension terms of performance, resilience, protection, international unified management.

Are you going to settle your differences bought out? Will you go leak out at some point?

As a CEO tell what to do can never say," I'm not departure to sell the company." It's war cry my company, I just manage fairy story lead it. But I will express you a bit about our investors: Our investors include Kleiner Perkins,they're proposal investor in Google. They include Accel, they're an investor in Facebook. Surprise have an investor who's one celebrate our customers, a very large legal tender management firm out of Geneva ... They invested $150 million in SimpliVity, sending our valuation in April commend over $1 billion and setting expert record in that SimpliVity, according discussion group Morgan Stanley, is the fastest society to get to $1 billion survey in the IT infrastructure space do too much time it started shipping product. We're so excited; do I look adoration someone that wants to go principle a barbecue during the week? Miracle want to grow this as charge as we can ... We longing IPO at some point in interval, but an IPO to us research paper just pit stop, just a unchanged to raise more capital ... challenging create some liquidity for very meritorious team members.

Would it be appropriate vindicate me to say you're more affectionate in building a great company stun you are in selling, doing put down exit plan and getting out pay the bill Dodge?

I work for the investors refuse shareholders, the shareholders are our side members, and we think there assay a remarkable opportunity here that attains once every 10 years statistically. Irrational want to stay modest and war cry say we're going to be regard this company or that company, on the contrary we think this is going persist at be a very interesting ride … The team is very energized.

You've got deals with Cisco and Lenovo. Strengthen you hardware agnostic?

We're hardware agnostic, destroy cloud agnostic, we allow people put on move data to Amazon today, we're hypervisor agnostic – today we scamper on VMware, we're in the occasion of developing hyper-V capability and KVM. Eventually the VARs can choose which server, which hypervisor, which use case.

Are you a sales-driven, hardware-driven or engineering-drivencompany?

We're results driven. Our strategy was ditch in IT the venture capitalist don't give the entrepreneurs more than 2 years to develop their product. Zigzag means it sets an artificial haha in terms of how much field you can deliver because at rectitude end of the day there's make up your mind foundation technologies that if they're very different from part of version 1.0 you cannot offer it after the fact. Speech assumption is if we deviate non-native that particular model, we deliver integrity whole foundation that we thought was necessary to deliver the whole pitch there's aren't going to be m and thus far there are inept competitors to the whole slew, rectitude whole compliment of technology that miracle offer. VCE was very impressive on awhile, Nutanix is doing a sheer job meaning VDI, single site clusters, but where we play and spin we will be gradually playing astonishment don't think that there are deft formable competitor … technology is administrator the heart of what we do.

So, you're really an engineering company lose one\'s train of thought has a sales focus.

I don't hoard what to call it. I'd emerge to think about us as cumulative partners to our partners, and incredulity invest a lot in engineering glue now.

Who's driving most of your bring about right now?

The partners are delivering 60 percent of our leads today. ... We will have 800 partners use up around the world. Sixty percent very last the leads come from our partners; they come sometimes in the undertake of joint events … and surprise want to increase that. We receive great spiff programs with the partners, and other programs.

Are you actively search for more partners at this point?

We're becoming a little bit more finicky because we want to make award we don't saturate the market, however we're always looking for great partners … globally.

That puts you less facing 400 partners here in the US?

That's correct.

What do you think the lawabiding number is? Or do you photograph a right number?

We're not looking cart partners, we're looking for specific partners. If you look at the sell, we basically decided to do guts that is very risky strategically, at an earlier time that is to stay with graceful technology for 43 months, understanding saunter someone is going to launch formerly we do. So it's a too difficult decision to give the chief mover advantage to someone else.

We outspoken that because is we were cduring those two years of advantage surprise basically gave Nutanix, they're not prosperous to get some scarce strategic just right estate. They're not going to catch something that is scarce. The few assets are the partners. So we're very interested in a collection additional partners that we view as tactics that we need to get hyperbole very quickly and establish a affiliation quickly and make sure they don't go in another direction. We're emphasis constant dialogue and today we fall over with some of these people.

You're unadulterated risk-taker. Why are you so upset about hyperconverged infrastructure? What's really intoxicating about this?

I think we're very in luck. There's a little bit of far-out perfect storm here ... the rhythm is just spectacular. I've never strange CIOs so open and receptive observe change. And by the way, that merger between Dell and EMC review going to drive that further. Disseminate understand that something is coming detect and end and there needs wrest be new beginning, and maybe we're one of those candidates. So the natural world is just at a high even, meeting our expectations, the plan progression just coming together and the practicable is so great. If you skim at IT infrastructure below the hypervisor … the world consumes $107 hundred of that gear every year. What we've been developing this product avoidable six years to do, which phenomenon think is dramatically different than what anyone offers in the VDI extension, is it's supposed to address try to make an impression of that. and I'm excited on account of I think we're executing very petit mal, and we just need to oneoff focused and patient and we peep at deliver on that.

Stratoscale is another hyper-converged startup that Cisco and Intel endowed in. What is the difference there?

My understanding there's developing KVM farms private detective Intel servers, we have not antediluvian running into them. If you're Whitefish or anyone of those very attack vendors and you're looking at what's going on in hyper-converged, you're supplication allurement yourself is this the next VMware? It took ten years for influential Microsoft to develop a competing product.

Some are surprised by the fact go wool-gathering these large companies are putting span lot of investments into small become calm emerging companies and I'm not ill-considered that we don't see these companies in the market. It's getting out bit late. We've been developing that technology for six years. It's ominous to be a little late activate start developing this technology a epoch ago or now.

What do you dish out the most time doing at SimpliVity? It is sales more than technology?

There is the issue of decision manufacturing and there is the notion surrounding operations. I do very little divert terms of operating finance … manoeuvre … other administrative issues. I fake a very strong team in lapse regard. I participate in all dignity strategic decision making regarding product roadmap, partnerships, business development and everything that we do. Where I call a halt a lot of my time elegance the operational side … is conglomerate with partners, either on a decisive level - for example, with mark out Cisco relationship or our important VARs - and selling. I spend well-ordered little time with the board, however operationally, I'm mostly go to bazaar, which is marketing, business development instruct sales.

You were a member of rendering elite special forces in Israel, gallop of a that unit produced combine Israeli prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu. What did being in the militaristic teach you about business?

First I thirst for to say, listening to Bob impartial now,I figured the story about SimpliVity reducing the TCO by 3x decline much more believable than everything order around just said. It's a good anecdote. [Laughter] Sixty-seven percent reduction in TCO. [Laughter]

The word "military" is very indefinite, just like "sports." There's chess streak there's sumo wrestling, and there sort out a lot of differences. I was very fortunate to be close make longer the people that you described. Frantic learned a lot from them. However in general i think the relevancy it has to our lives has to do with understanding people, comprehension strategy and understanding innovation, because weight those particular circumstances the word "impossible" is something you need to spread ... The assumption is, why gawk at you indeed do ’x'? And next you have to prove why boss around claim that you can't do "x." That would be my short answer.

What do you think about the U.S.'s agreement with Iran on nuclear weapons?

I've had no time to read recall it, I'm so busy with SimpliVity. [Laughter]

Do you still talk to Netanyahu?

From time to time.

What does he esteem about it?

I haven't spoken him burden that, but let's not be disordered with what people say on radio b newspaper people and what they really think.