>> From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston massachusetts, it's theCUBE. (techno music) Now, here's your host Stu Miniman. >> Hi, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation here in our Boston area studio. One of the biggest topics we've been digging into as we head through 2020, has really been multi-cloud and as the customers as they're really going through their own transformations understanding what they're doing in their data center to modernize what's happening between all of the public clouds they use, and all the services that fit amongst them. Happy to bring back one of our CUBE alumni to dig into a specific topic. Simon Taylor, who's the CEO of HYCU. Of course data protection, a big piece. A big buzz in the industry for a number of years, in one of those areas, in multi-cloud, that's definitely of big importance. Simon, great to see you, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having me back on, it's exciting to be here. >> All right, so, Simon, first, give us the update. >> Sure. >> It's 2020. We've seen you at many of the conferences we go to. You're based in Boston, so not to far for you to come out to our Boston area studio here. You know a 40 minute drive without traffic so, >> Not bad at all. >> give us the latest on HYCU. >> Certainly well and Stu, thanks again for having me into your studio, it's gorgeous, everything looks great. It's a lot easier than traveling over to Europe to see you. So this is very very convenient actually. But since we last spoke, which I think was about six months ago now, HYCU has been growing fast and furiously, you know we started out with the world's first purpose built backup and recovery product for Nutanix Of course, we added VMware we added Google Cloud, we wrapped all the data together into multi-cloud data protection as a service, and we called that HYCU Protege. Well I am so thrilled to announce that in just the three months since we've launched Protege, we have seen hundreds of customers flocking to it. And what we're finding is that customers are calling us and they're saying things like, "let me get this straight, "I'm already backing up my data on-prem with you, "I can now migrate to the cloud, "bring it back again for disaster recovery as a service, "and it's all part of HYCU?" and we say yes, you know, and they say, "and this is all offered as a service?" Yes, "and it's natively integrated "into all the platforms that I'm using?" Yes. And I think so customers today, are more and more in need of the kind of expertise that HYCUs providing because they're looking now much more strategically than ever before, at what workloads to leave on-prem and which workloads to migrate to the cloud, and they want to make sure that, that entire data pathway is protected from beginning to end. >> Yeah, it's really interesting stuff, I think back to early in my career that you know that data protection layer was like, "well, this is what I'm running "and don't change it." Think about like when you've rolled out like virtual tape as a technology it was, you know, "I don't want to have to change my backup "because that is just something that runs "and I don't do it." For last five years or so it feels like customers. There's so much change in their environment that they are looking for things that are more flexible, you talked about some of the flexible adoption models for payment and the like that they're looking for. So, you know, what do you think customers are just more embracing of that change, is it just that changes their daily business and therefore data protection needs to come along with that. Well it's funny you asked because just a few years ago I was on theCUBE with you and you said to me, "you guys have a perpetual license model, "what are you doing about that?" and I said, "don't worry, it is shifting to as a service it's going subscription," which was super important for the market is, I've had conversations with folks who are selling cooking gear and they're trying to sell that as a service, I saw yesterday, somebody, I think Panera Bread, is offering a coffee as a service. You know, I think what we've started to realize is that the convenience of the as a service model, the flexibility, which I would argue was probably driven by cloud technology and cloud technology adoption, is something the market has truly embraced and I think anybody who's not moved in that direction at this point is probably very much being left behind. >> Okay, another technology that often goes hand in hand in discussion with data protection is security. Of course ransomware is a hot topic conversation the last few years, how does that fit into your conversations with customers, what are you saying? >> That's a great question. So you know one of our advisory board members, his name is Kevin Powers, and he runs the Boston College cyber security program. I had the privilege and the honor of attending the FBI Boston College cyber program recently at a large scale event at Boston College, and FBI Director Ray was actually on hand to talk about this problem, and it was incredible you know he said, "cyber crime as a service "is becoming a major issue," you're talking about the commoditization of hard to build malware, that's now just skyrocketing off the charts, the amount of cyber exploitation that's going on across the world. This is creating massive massive issues for the FBI because they've got so many thousands of cases, they've got to deal with. And while they're doing a fantastic job. We believe prevention is certainly the key. So one of the things that has been really really wonderful as a CEO to watch has been the way that some of our customers have actually been able to crack the code in terms of not having to give in to these bad actors. We've had actual customers who have had ransomware attacks had millions of dollars in data, literally stolen from them, and they've been told, "you've got to deposit, "$5 million on this Bitcoin account by midnight, "or we're deleting the data." Right? Because HYCU is Linux based because HYCU is not Windows Server based because HYCU is natively integrated into all the platforms that we support. We were able to help those customers get their data back without paying a penny. So I think that that's one of those moments where you really sort of say to yourself, "God I'm glad I'm in this business here," we've built a product that doesn't just do what we say it's going to do, it does a heck of a lot more. And I think it's it's absolutely a massive problem and data protection is really a key part of the answer, >> You know it's great to hear their success stories there, you know I think back to earlier days where it'd be like well you know what if I set up for disasters and data protection and things like that, well maybe I haven't thought about it or maybe I kind of implemented it but I've never really tested it, but there's more and more reasons why I might actually need to leverage these technologies that I've deployed, and it's nice to know that they're there. You know it's not just an insurance thing that I've never used. >> Oh absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. >> All right. So I started off our discussion time in talking about multi-cloud So you talked about earlier we first first met it was at the Nutanix shows in their environments, and some of that you've gone along with Nutanix as they've gone through hybrid and multi-cloud what they call enterprise Cloud Messaging. >> Sure. >> And play with those environments so bring us up to speed. What have your big customers doing with cloud where does HYCU fit in and what are the updates on your product. >> Yeah, sure. And I'll start off by saying that at this point about a third of all AHV customers are using a HYCU for backup AND recovery. >> And just for our audience that doesn't know, AHV of course is Nutanix's >> Yes. >> Acropolis Hypervisor >> Absolutely. >> That comes baked into their solution as an alternative to people like VMware. >> Perfectly said as always sir, yes very much, and you know we've been thrilled as the rise of AHV and Nutanix has sort of taken the market by storm. And when we started out, you know we use to came on the show with zero customers and a new product and said, "we believe in AHV and we think it's going to be great "and we're going to back it up." And that's really paid off in spades for us, which was wonderful, but we also recognize that customers needed that VMware backups. We built a VADP integration and then we started going after the public cloud. So we started with Google Cloud, and we said we're going to build the world's first purpose built backup and recovery as a service for GCP. We launched that last year and it was tremendous you know some of the world's largest companies and organizations and governments are actually now running HYCU specifically for Google Cloud. So we've been thrilled about that. I think the management team at GCP has done a terrific job of making sure that Google can be really competitive in the cloud wars, and we're thrilled to support them. >> Yeah, and I'm glad you've got some customer stories on Google because you know the industry watchers out there it's like, "well you know Google they're number three," and you know we know that Google has some really strong data products Where they're very well known but I'm curious when you're talking to your customers. Is there anything that's kind of commonalities to why customers are using Google and you know what feedback you're hearing from your customers out there. >> Sure I mean I'll start off by saying this, we've polled our customers and we've now got over 1,300 customers in 56 countries. So we polled all of them and we just said, "how many data silos do you have, "how many platforms, how many clouds?" The average was five. Right, so the first thing to say is that I think almost all of these large enterprise customers in public sector and private sector are really using all of them, the extent to which they may be using AWS versus Azure versus GCP, versus Nutanix versus VMware on-prem. we can argue and debate but I think all customers at this point of any size and scale are trying them all out. I think what Google's done really well is they've started to build a really strong partner program. I think where they were a little bit sort of late to the party in terms of AWS and Azure being there sort of first. But I think what Thomas Kurian did when he came in is he sort of tripled down on sort of building out that ecosystem and saying, "what's really important "to make cloud customers comfortable "that their data is going to be as safe on Google Cloud, "as it was on-prem," and I'm thrilled that they've elected to make data protection sort of one of the key pillars of that strategy, not just because we're a data protection company, but because I do think that that was one of the encumbrances in terms of that evolution to cloud. >> Yeah, absolutely, seen a huge growth in the ecosystem around Google. The other big cloud provider that has a very strong partner ecosystem is the one when I went to the show last year, their CEO Satya Nadella talked about trust, so of course talking about Microsoft and Azure, very large ecosystem there, trying to emphasize, maybe against others and by the way you saw this as much of a shot against Google >> Sure. >> you know, how do I trust Google with my data and information from the consumer side as AWS is I might be concerned that they might be competing against them. So, how about the Microsoft relationship? >> It's a great question. So again, so when we started on-prem, with our initial purpose built backup recovery products. We added Google Cloud. You know I'm now thrilled to announce that we're also going to be launching Azure backup and recovery. It's also native, it is purpose built into the Azure Marketplace. All the things you've come to expect from HYCU backup. The simplicity, the fact that it's SLO based. The fact that you can actually go in and decide how many times a day you want a different recovery point et cetera. All of those levels of configuration are now baked in to HYCUs own purpose built backup and recovery as a service for Azure. But I think the important thing to remember about this wonderful wonderful new addition to our portfolio. Is that, it is a critical component of HYCU Protege. So getting back to your question from before about multi-cloud data protection and what we're seeing, we call this the year of migration, because for all of these cloud platforms, what are they really trying to do they need to move massive amounts of data in a safe and resilient manner, to the cloud. So remember after we built out these purpose built backup recovery services, Azure is now one of those. We then pulled all that data together under a single pane of glass we called it HYCU Protege. We then said to customers, we're going to enable you to automatically migrate with the touch of a button an entire workload to the cloud, and then bring it back again for disaster recovery, and we will protect the data on-prem in the cloud and back again. >> Yeah, it's interesting 'cause when we kind of look at what's happening in the marketplace, for many years it was a discussion of what's moving from the data center to the public cloud, some things are moving back from the environment edge, of course, pulls things even further. Often it's, I say it's not even migration anymore it's just mobility, because we are going to be moving things and spinning things up and building things in many more places, and it's going to change. As we started out that conversation, there's so much change going on that so you're giving customers some optionality there, so that this isn't just a one way, you know, let's stick it on a truck put it on this thing and get it to that environment but I need to be able to enable some of that optionality and know what I'm doing today but also knowing that you know six months a year from now, we know things are going to be different >> Yes, yes! >> And in each of these some of those environments. >> Absolutely. We call it the three Ds data assurance, data mobility, and disaster recovery. So I think the ability to not only protect your data, whether it's on-prem as it journeys to the cloud or whether it's in the cloud, the ability to actually assist the customer in the migration. And what I hear time and time again is, "oh but Azure has a tool," or "Google has a tool for migration." Of course they have tools for migration, but I think the challenge for customers is, how do I affect that data resiliency, how do I ensure that I can move the data as a complete workload. Moving an entire SAP HANA instance, for example, to the cloud. And it protected the entire time as it journeys up there, and then bring it back for the disaster recovery without professional services. Because again, you know HYCU it's about simplicity, we want to make sure that these customers can get the same level of readiness, the same ease of deployment that they get from their cloud vendor, when they're thinking about the data protection and the migration. >> All right, I want to click down one layer >> Please. >> in here. We're talking about multi-cloud, you talk about simplicity. >> Sure. >> Well, Kubernetes might not be the simplest thing out there but it absolutely is a fundamental piece of the infrastructure in a multi-cloud environment so you know your partners, Google with GKE, Azure with AKS and >> And Carbon. >> Carbon with a K from Nutanix everyone now, I say it's not about distributions it's really every platform that you're going to use is going to have Kubernetes built into it so what does that mean from a data protection standpoint? Do you just plug into all of these environments you've tested it got customers using it? >> It's a great question it comes up, as you can imagine, all the time. I think it's something that is becoming more and more ready for prime time. A lot of the major vendors are moving to it, making heavy investments in Kubernetes, we ourselves have over 100 customers that are actively using Kubernetes in one form or another and backing the data up using HYCU so there's no question in my mind that HYCU is Kubernetes ready. I think what's really exciting for us is some of the native integrations we're working on with Google and with Nutanix so whether it's Carbon whether it's GKE, we want to make sure that when we work with these platforms that we mimic, how the platform is supporting Kubernetes, so that our customers can get the same experience from HYCU that they're getting from the platform provider itself. >> All right, Simon want to give you the final word. Bring us inside your customers what they're doing with multi-cloud and where HYCU fits there, here in 2020. Sure, we talked about prime time. Cloud for many years has been something that I think large enterprises have talked a big game about, but have been really dipping their toe in the water with. What we've seen the last two years, is a massive massive at scale migration to the largest three public clouds, whether that's GCP, whether that's Azure or the other one. (laughing) We're thrilled to support GCP and Azure because GCP and Azure, we believe do provide the most value to our customers. But I think the name of the game here is not just supporting a customer in the cloud, it's understanding that every customer today is to is on a journey, whether they're on-prem, whether their journeying to cloud or they're in cloud those three Ds, data assurance, which is our backup, data mobility, which is the automated migration, or disaster recovery readiness. That's the name of the game and that's how HYCU wants to help. >> All right, Simon Taylor. Always a pleasure to catch up with you thank you so much for the HYCU updates, >> Stu thanks so much for having us on. >> All right, be sure to check out www.thecube.net for all of our inventory of the shows that we've been at the videos we've done, you can even search on keywords in companies, I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (Techno Music)

(uptempo techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Chicago, Illinois. It's theCube, covering VeeamOn 2018. Brought to you by Veeam. >> Welcome back, here in the windy city. This is theCube's coverage of VeeamOn 2018. I'm your host Stu Miniman, and they're breaking down the show, but we always have room for bringing some diversity to the show. Both, we've got Charu Madan, who is the director of strategic alliances with Nutanix. Always want more women in technology on our program. >> Thank you. >> And also, we can't go without getting in to talk to more users. So also happy to welcome to the program Chris Hippensteel, who's network and system administrator with New Resources Consulting. Right over the border in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thank you both for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> So Charu, I saw you last week. You're following me around at all these shows. Of course I was at your show Nutanix. NEXT in New Orleans. Just give our audience your role at Nutanix. What brings you to the Veeam show? >> Absolutely Stu, thank you for having us here, and it looks like we'll be forklifted out of here as being the last Cube event of the day. But yes we had an amazing event last weekend in New Orleans and as you saw the customers were stoked, they were pumped. I just got a chance to talk to so many customers about our direction, about what they heard at the keynote, and I think they were absolutely excited. Our direction in software being a cloud company. All those things resonated so well. And I think the fact that we launched our freedom campaign, you probably heard that freedom to build, freedom to run any application, freedom to invent, freedom to really focus on multi-cloud, and not be bogged down by which cloud. And hybrid cloud is a complex journey, and finally freedom to play. And I think that would resonate very well with Chris out here. So I think that was a very powerful message we sent out that we are giving our customers choice, and ability to run Nutanix anywhere and any workload. >> Yeah absolutely, I had a great conversation with your new CMO, Ben at the show as a customer. So Chris is this your first VeeamOn? >> Yes, this is my first VeeamOn Conference. >> All right, tell us a little bit about your role and your organization. >> Yes, so I'm the network and systems engineer and administrator at New Resources Consulting. And so I pretty much take care of the whole show. Anywhere from simple help desk questions to rebuilding an SAN environment. I came into the company, and there's a lot of legacy equipment, and things were breaking. It wasn't good so-- >> So Chris before we get into the tech, and the company itself. Give us a thumbnail what the operation is. >> Yeah, so New Resources Consulting is a consulting firm out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have users based all over the U.S. and in Canada. We focus a lot on managed services, Oracle solutions, PeopleSoft. We do a lot with the water and waste management out in L.A., in Boston and Denver. We focus on that part of IT. >> It sounds very much as changing dynamic happening there. What are some of the stresses on the organization? What's your role in connection with the business? >> Some of the stresses that I was having was we're sitting there trying to get development servers spun up and with the legacy equipment. It going down a lot. I just wasn't able to do that. So now I'm happy that with Nutanix, I'm able to keep everything running smoothly. It's almost like the company doesn't even know I'm there sometimes. >> It's interesting. Last week, we've been talking a lot about invisible. This week, it's about availability. So maybe you could speak to what that means for your operation. Give us the before and journey that you went through. >> Yes, so before as I mentioned, I had a lot of legacy equipment. I was bidding on things on eBay. They didn't even have the option to buy some things that I needed to replace, and my availability wasn't really there. Both at work and in my home life. I was constantly putting out fires instead of working on growing the company, getting new equipment in, doing new processes. That was before, now after my wife is quite happy that I'm home at reasonable times, and not leaving the house at 9 or 10 p.m. or four o'clock in the morning to go switch out controller cards or drives in my SAN. It's allowed me to work on other projects doing Office 365 roll out. As well as a lot of documentation that wasn't there before me, and helping out my users. Where I wasn't able to do so much because I was putting out all those fires. All right Chris, I've heard from Nutanix customers forgive me my weekend back. Lots of new opportunities. As the first one I think, it helped me in my home relationship. >> Chris: Yes. >> So families are happy to see, a happy wife, a happy life. >> Chris: Yes, exactly. >> Charu give us a little bit of color on what you're seeing and maybe some of the Nutanix Veeam partnership. >> Yeah, and I'll replay what I heard and what I saw actually from customers last week in New Orleans and this week here in Chicago. In New Orleans, Veeam folks had a break out session where they were going to talk about the partnership, and what we are doing together. And it was a full house, people had to be turned back, and could not be accommodated in that room. So that's just a testament to show how much interest there is in Nutanix, in Veeam and the joint solution. Then I talked to customers like Chris. Got talking to him in details on Monday, and Chris is talking about how Veeam and Nutanix has simplified his operations, reduced costs, tremendously for his company. And really helped in focus on driving business value to his internal clients verses like he said, "Keeping the lights on." Just talking to customers about this and hearing the excitement, the elation from our customers. That is really empowering, so I think the two companies have very similar principles. We both love simplicity for our clients. We are both extremely customer-centric, so that makes us very well positioned as companies who work very well together having that common DNA. So we are very excited to have a great partnership with Veeam and I would say now amping up our partnership, and doing even better, bigger stuff. >> Chris, one of the things I hear through both companies. Multi-hypervisors, all good. How the cloud story is maturing. Any commentaries? What you're using from the hypervisor space and what does cloud mean to your organization? >> Yeah, so we don't do too much of the cloud. We keep everything in-house but we are a VMware shop currently, but we're looking forward to Veeam and Nutanix to roll out their hypervisor. Get that solution ready for us. VMware is what we currently use and it's working great, but moving to Nutanix, it allowed me to save a lot of money on cost with the licensing I currently had to the licensing I have now. And Nutanix is going to help me out even further when I move over to their hypervisor, saving me even more money for my company, which is always good for everybody. >> All right, well Charu. Chris is a good set up there. We're talking about age V. I talked to Peter McKay a little bit about it at Veeam, but give us the update on bringing those solutions together. >> Yeah, great question, and yes, I guess some of the rumors are true. We are working on it. The teams are actively working on bringing that delight to customers like Chris because Chris you're not the first one who's asked for it. We've had thousands of customers asking us for that capability of Veeam being able to back up, not just with VMware but also now with our Acropolis Hypervisor. It's imminent. We already have hundreds of customers running the beta. We launched the beta a couple of months back, and the GA is right around the corner. It's not years, it's not months. What the Veeam folks tell me, it's a matter of a few weeks and we are very excited about getting that out. And really like Chris just said it so well. Helping them save costs and helping our thousands of customers do the same. >> It's really nice to see both companies working together, and know that they actually listen to their customers. They listen to what we want and then they go and they find the solutions and work together to actually make it a reality. >> All right Chris, I want to give you the final word. We're getting towards the end of the show. They got the closing keynote. They've got the big Veeam party. >> Chris: All right. >> Nutanix had a great party in New Orleans last week. Veeam actually had a great party too. >> Charu: That's true. >> New Orleans last year. So just for your peers, tell them some of the key take aways. One of the main things that you got out of coming to the show. >> Yeah, the big things I really liked. A lot of the break out sessions, I was able to actually sit down face-to-face with technicians that I had talked to over the phone that I looked up and I've learned so much from. And actually dig deeper into conversations with them 'cause coming to something like this, it's different than just being on the phone with somebody for support or asking questions, or reading knowledge-based articles. So a lot of the break out sessions, getting to meet more of the faces from Nutanix and Veeam, and talking to them about new things that I'm looking forward to. And just brainstorming how I can better run my business with their advice. >> All right, well Chris and Charu. I appreciate you helping bring us to a close of our coverage. Here in Chicago has been a deep dish of all of the technology for the culture. A little bit of sports discussion. So thank you so much for watching. Of course, always go to theCube.net for all the replays of this show. See where we're going to be at. Come say hi to us. Hit us up on any of the social media. For Stu Miniman, my co-host for the week Dave Vellante. The whole crew here from SiliconANGLE Media. Thank you so much for watching theCube. (uptempo techno music)

(uptempo techno music) >> Announcer: Live from New Orleans, Louisiana. It's theCUBE covering .NEXT Conference 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> One of the only constants in the technology world is that everything is always changing. Talking a lot about digital transformation. If I roll back to 2012, converged infrastructure, changes in data centers and infrastructure were all of the buzz, and it was before we were talking about things like hyper-converged infrastructure. We ran across a company called Nutanix. First interview we did in 2012 with Dheeraj Pandey, the CEO of the now public company. Surprised us a little bit in that not how they put things together but the why and what they had behind it. That almost 40 minute interview with John Furrier and I did really talked about the biggest challenge of our time is distributed architectures. Not about boxes, not about even just reconfiguring some of the silos but really some of the softer challenges that we've been attacking for decades really in our industry. Fast forward here we are in 2018 and want to welcome you to theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT Conference here in New Orleans. I'm Stu Miniman, joined by my co-host for these two days of broadcast, Keith Townsend. Keith, thanks for joining me. >> Thanks for having me Stu. >> So we spend time, it's like what are we doing today? I think right down the block from here is the World War II monument, and how many years after World War II before it was called World War II? >> Keith: Yeah, good point. >> When we look back at what was happening converged infrastructure was a wave. At Wikibon, we were tracking cool things like flash really invading what's going on. Hyperscale architecture, for me personally I'd gone from looking at these enterprise architectures really hardware focused, failure domains, make sure that nothing ever breaks to the softer model of applications where you expect everything is going to break. And that's okay, chaos monkey rules supreme. At the end of the day, your application lives on. Much more granular, we weren't talking microsegmentation architectures and the like. Want to bring you in here, we've had the pleasure of being at every single Nutanix show. This is your first one for you so give us your first impressions of Nutanix .NEXT and what you're seeing. >> I go to a awful lot of shows and I've heard that Nutanix .NEXT was special and all to itself. I had breakfast with just customers, regular attendees, and there is slightly a different energy here. I was surprised at how open customers are about talking about their journey. Just talking about how they're using Nutanix. Where they have it deployed. Their origin stories much different atmosphere than many of the conferences that I've attended. >> And actually so when you talk software companies. There's certain shows where there's the passion and love. Keith, you and I cut our teeth on the virtualization community. >> Right. >> And I use to have the I love VMware bumper stickers and things like that. We've got a team at ServiceNow Knowledge. Dave Vellante said is one of the most passionate groups there. And it's interesting, some of the board members of Nutanix actually co-populate with what's going at ServiceNow. Another show we have going on this week is Red Hat. Obviously the open source community. Very passionate communities. The goal that Nutanix has is rather audacious. When they set out it's not like they said, "Hey, we want to be the leading "hyper-converged infrastructure player." They started in 2009. That word didn't even exist in our lexicon. They have a rather audacious goal. They want to be the next VMware in the model of Microsoft platform. What do they own, where does it fit? What does their ecosystem look like? And we've been watching this maturity, and we're going to have a lot of guests, customers, partners and executives but yeah, comments there. >> The goal is three billion dollars in software billings by 2011. I mean sorry by 2021. That is a big, big number. I think VMware revenues are somewhere around eight billion to put this into perspective, big ambitions. I think on stage, Sunil said that Nutanix is the world's best or leading cloud OS. That was a bold, bold statement. While one part of the Nutanix is a lot bravado backed with some pretty decent technology. The customers that we've talked to have said, they have not ran into a more humble company, and wanting to build brick by brick a relationship to help solve. I'm surprised that customers used this word, partner. They believe Nutanix is truly a partner in their journey towards cloud in delivering IT services. So while again, very bold from the financial statement, very bold from a technology statement. The customer passion here about Nutanix being a true partner in their journey. That's quite real. >> Yeah and it's interesting when you look at the pace of change. The half life of how long people love a brand has been shrinking very fast. >> Keith: Right. >> You think of the old days, it was brands like IBM and Microsoft had decades that they were in love. Apple still beloved by many but they get poked and poked and prodded. We talked about VMware, talked about Nutanix. The landscape today is one of the things. Let's talk about cloud for a second. You and I were making some comments in the Twitter stream during the keynote. When I think hybrid cloud, and I think who's got leadership there. Well first of all, you can't talk about cloud without talking about AWS. >> Keith: Right. >> First solution that anyone's going to support. The Nutanix solutions. It's either API compatibility or integration with what Amazon is doing. Secondly, you talk about hybrid. That's Microsoft's strategy from day one. Azure Stack, same OS, same operating model that's there. So for Nutanix to say they have the best. It's like Microsoft been doing this for a few years. They have a few more customers than Nutanix. >> Right. Not saying Nutanix is not doing great. They're adding a thousand customers a quarter, which is great for an infrastructure company. For a software company, it's good. >> Keith: Yes. >> It's not blowing it out of the water. If you're a Salesforce and you said, you're only adding a thousand new companies a quarter. It's like well Wall Street is not thrilled. So different space, how they're positioning themselves. We mentioned revenue. They're well over a billion dollars. Looking back, some of the shows we've done. I think it's like a $1.4 billion run rate. Market cap, a phenomenal nine billion dollars. When we talk about just value creation, the customers that they're doing. A lot of things really in the Nutanix tail wind pushing them along. As you said, coming to these shows it's always when you talk to the customers. When you talk to the customers in the hallway, are there certain things. It's like oh well we're glad the micro-segmentation stuff is something that we really wanted, but not the big gripes. They're not yet complaining about the pricing models. >> There is not a Nutanix text yet. Not a age retext. And it will be interesting, they made a lot of announcements today. Around Kalm, around flow, around database management. A lot of features. Extremely ambitious technically, and those technologies have to be paid for somehow. So long term, I really want to see if that love extends into when Nutanix needs to get to that three billion dollar in revenue. >> Yeah so maybe quick take on the announcement so far and the keynotes. I thought it was a good balance. A little bit of pageantry upfront, Mardi Gras. >> Keith: Marching band. >> The marching band and everything coming through. They had partners, Hackathon winners, customers up on the floats coming in. No beat probably four. Wanted to make sure that they weren't pegging somebody in the head with that stuff. But they had a good mix, I felt. They had a few customers onstage tell their stories. They got through the announcements. Some real meaningful announcements. Their first SaaS product with Beam. One of the four acquisitions that they've had over the last couple of years. That was from Minjar, was the acquisition. Netsol is another acquisition that they had recently and then Kalm was the basis. >> Keith: Right. >> A long with PernixData a couple years ago. Saccharin Vagoni, PernixData is somebody working on the IoT in Edge stuff. Keynote, announcements, what's your take? >> You know what, there's a lot there. They are innovating extremely fast. I think I interviewed Gar-iage, maybe a couple of years ago at Dell EMC World and I asked, is Nutanix a platform yet? And he say, "You know what. "We might be a little bit early to call Nutanix a platform. "I think today we've solved the completion of the foundation "of being called a platform." As we look out onto the show floor, we're starting to see a growing number of partners who are looking to integrate. We'll have Beam on later on in the program but specific announcements. The things that I'm somewhat excited about Netsil. They're taking a very different approach to network segmentation. And their micro segmentation and VM warriors. There are some advantages, disadvantages. Really looking forward to having that conversation. One click database management with Oracle and Microsoft. There's some guard rails around that we're thinking wow, how does Nutanix walk the line of making database administration deployment simple, but not anger Oracle to the point if there is court action. That's going to be an interesting set of conversation. >> I mean Keith, you know better than me. I hear database migrations and I just think of all the customer horror stories. David Foro from our Wikibon team has talked about, it's never easy. You'll get 80% or 90% of the way there and then things break, and you have to put it back together. AWS has been doing a lot of database migrations, and they've got 80, 90,000 of these that they've done. So how do they do this? It's great to say push button simplicity, but the proof is in the pudding. What are customers seeing? >> Yeah, when you're talking about big database mission critical. And that's another thing we heard on the stage this morning. A lot about mission critical. They're trying to shed this persona of being a VDI platform and that the platform is ready for mission critical applications. We've talked to customers that are indeed using it for mission critical stuff. But again, migration. They've had the relationship with IBM and Power for a couple of years now. And they still ran into a lot of customers that are saying they have no plans of moving AIX to Nutanix, however there's a plate. >> Well since you mention it actually, that was one of the announcements today. Nutanix is now supporting the AAX. >> Keith: Right. >> So before it was Power, now you need to get over to Linux, and that's something we've heard, gosh Keith. How long have we've been hearing the migration from Unix to Linux with the work load. 10 years ago, I remembered going events, and we were talking about that. And it's challenging, you need to-- >> Yeah, I remember getting excited about being-- >> The platform, the tool. >> Having IBM support Linux on mainframes, and thinking man I can finally get this stuff off of AIX. And then to Linux, and that was literally almost 20 years ago, so there you go. >> Yes, so many different announcements but started some the basic piece of it. 'Cause if you talk, there are customers that they have that are drawing over new things. We've got one of the customers that was on the keynote stage, Northern Trust. And he's throwing out things like PaaS and CaaS, which I'm hoping is containers as a service that he's talking about. Some of us propeller heads love talking about this. Lamb-dogot mentioned in the keynote talking about server list but the average Nutanix customers. This is the sand replacement. Many of the customers come and they say, going from my three tiered architecture, server, storage whether that be a traditional storage array or even an all flash array. I'm going to save 20%-40% just by collapsing it down to this architecture. Multi-Hypervisor, VMware of course very heavy, interesting dynamic always between VMware and Nutanix. Aged V growth, a little bit less of the aged V, the Acropolis Hypervisor and surrounding Acropolis services. At least to me, it felt a little bit less than before just 'cause the portfolio is broadening. But you've got so many pieces, it's basically almost any server you want. Nutanix is either an OEM or they will support it. There's all the Hypervisors they can connect to the cloud. When I look at that hybrid cloud message. It does start in your data center but it does extend to all of those pieces. If there is a little criticism I have there is that, at least my quick take. 50%-75% of the Nutanix customers are mostly of the, I use SaaS but I don't use a ton of public cloud. And therefore, I want to control my environment as opposed to but there are other customers that are, I'm doing a ton on Amazon, and Nutanix is great there. So went on about a bunch of things there. But just the base platform, what do you hear from people that are using Nutanix specifically HCI in general, and how that fits in the overall cloud picture? >> So overall they're cautious like you said. A lot of what core customers that I have talked to are very lets call it cloud anti pattern. However they're consuming Kalm, they're consuming Prism, they are consuming Nutanix in a cloud-like manner on premises. They're looking to one customer said, "To their internal customer, they are the cloud." They make IT and consuming Nutanix infrastructure simple, so it is a perspective thing. As we start to expand out Kalm and expect design become much more critical to this long term vision. And customers are still in a wait and see pattern. They're saying, "Well let's look." One to two years where the technology gets to be a little bit more mature. A little bit more tested. Tested by who is a good question and that ability to extend their internal infrastructure and operations to the external public cloud becomes more of a reality. >> Okay, Keith want you to just, what are you looking forward to get out of these next two days. Quick take from me. The three pieces that Sunil and Dheeraj been talking for a couple years. Invisible infrastructure, solid basis. They're there, they've got great feature functionality. I think when we talked to customers, other than these two features that VMware has that aren't yet here. I can move 75%-85% AIX one piece to get another 5% of that if we need. Invisible data centers, making good progress. Can see what they're doing today. They have a lot of the pieces. Things like Prism and Kalm are, Prism has been out for years, but Kalms GA and making progress. And then invisible clouds. First pieces are in place. They've got some software pieces there. What are we, look at Nutanix 3-5 years from now, are they a SaaS player? Are they primarily an infrastructure software player? The question I want to point to them. I had an interview with Rowan from Cisco, the number two guy and he said, "Cisco, the networking company. "10 years from now, they're a software company." It's not boxes and ports and things like that. So how far did they go as opposed to you and I were at Dell last week. Dell wants to be the leading infrastructure company, and therefore servers, storage, network are key pieces there. Tie into software, tie into cloud but that's my quick take around as to what I'm looking for. The progress that they're making is we always sniff out what's real. What has some work. Marketing is okay as long as the proof is in the pudding. >> We heard a lot about the delivery. Enterprise, cloud, company is the tag line. That is part of the company's brand. I want to understand how they make the claim. Not just how, how and why they made the claim. They are the leading enterprise cloud company. What does enterprise cloud mean to them when they say that? And you can't have a conversation about enterprise cloud without talking about the developer. So Nutanix by saying that they are enterprise cloud company is they're going in the opposite direction especially of Dell EMC. Dell EMC provides infrastructure to cloud companies. They might point to pivotal in VMware as being the software components of a complete cloud strategy. But Dell EMC itself, infrastructure company. Nutanix is making the claim, they are an enterprise cloud company. How are they pursing the relationship and capability with developers, infrastructure team, operations to make sure that they can live up to that mantle. >> Yeah, Keith, great point to help us wrap up one of the segments we heard talking about Edge computing. Nutanix wants to make invisible Kubernetes Tensorflow functions as a service. Made my head spin a little bit because we know the maturity of those solutions in what you need to do to understand it. So being able to simplify that. Well that would truly be genius. >> That would, if they can Nutanixise that, that will be great. >> Alright, well Keith Townsend, the CTO advisor. Thank you for helping me break down, looking forward to two days of interviews. I'm Stu Miniman. We're going to have wall to wall coverage here from the New Orleans convention center. Nutanix .NEXT 2018. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCUBE. (uptempo techno music)