Data protection is hot again, making this the perfect time for data management and backup company Veritas Technologies LLC to rebirth itself. The company was relatively quiet for the past few years, but it’s back now honking a message of data value for multicloud.

At today’s keynote during the Veritas Vision conference in Las Vegas, speakers were keen to bring Veritas up-to-date. Terms like software-defined, multicloud and hyperscale peppered presentations.

Grade “A for hitting all the buzzwords,” said Stu Miniman (@stu) (pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. Miniman and co-host Dave Vellante (@dvellante) (pictured, left) discussed Veritas’ past and future at the conference today. (* Disclosure below.)

Buzzwords can only take a company so far in tech’s current competitive landscape. Over the next few days, the hosts will be interviewing Veritas executives and partners to “dig in and see where the reality is,” Miniman said.

Any backup or software-based storage company needs to find a way into the unfolding multicloud environment, according to Miniman. Veeam Software Inc. — a popular backup solution for storage provider VMware — is increasingly positioning itself as data management for multicloud. Now Veritas is following suit.

“If you’re not living in that multicloud world, what is your future?” Miniman said.

Veritas-Veeam-VMware ‘what if?’

The rising temperature of the data protection market could be felt at VMworld in Las Vegas last month. Veritas’ and VMware Inc.’s fates came very close to merging years ago, just before EMC acquired VMware. Symantec Corp. owned Veritas at the time.

“The company that almost bought VMware was Symantec, and lots of us say, ‘what if?'” Miniman said. If that had happened, Veritas may have been integrated deeply into VMware, much like Veeam.

Making up for that lost chance, Veritas is going hard after the data management market now. This is an area where a company born in backup may have a unique advantage, Vellante pointed out.

“Can you use that sort of data protection backup corpus of data to really leverage that to turn information into an asset?” Vellante asked.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Veritas Vision 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Veritas Vision 2017. Neither Veritas Technologies LLC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE