>>from the bellagio hotel >>in Las Vegas, it's the cube covering Ui Path forward. Four brought to you >>by Ui Path. Welcome back from the bellagio in Las Vegas. The Cubans live at Ui Path forward for I'm lisa martin here with Dave Volonte. We're gonna be talking about roadblocks to automation and how to navigate around them, joining us next as Pernando Panini expert associate partner at bain and company per night. Welcome to the program. >>Thanks lisa. Happy to be here. >>Talk to us about some of the use cases that bain is working on with you I Path and then we'll dig into some of those roadblocks that you guys have uncovered. >>Yes. Uh I started a few months ago where we're working with Brandon who's the product lead on the Ui part side. We wanted to understand what's the state of citizen development and what are the blockers and how we should Both from the product side. But also on the automation journey side we need to dig deeper and understand where each of the clients and the employees are going through the journey together >>and if you look at it from the citizen developer perspective, what are some of those roadblocks? >>There are a few. So when like if you before we go to the roadblocks there are three main concerns or I would say critical groups that are involved in being successful with automation. The organization or bu leaders, the I. T. And employees. So each of the groups have different perceptions on like misconceptions or perceptions on benefits of automation and how to go up go about it. The blockers that we have seen where like a three sets of blockers. The first is cognitive where employees are unaware of automation on the benefits of automation and the second one is more organizational where organization leaders and how they feel about automation or how the how they think about employees when we introduce automation to them. One part of that is there is a misconception without nation leaders that employees are fearful of job loss when you introduce automation. What we have seen in our research is it's completely the opposite of employees are eager to adopt automation have given an opportunity, they are willing to upscale themselves and they are willing to save the time so that they can spend that on critical value added activities for um for their customers in the process. And a third blocker that we have seen is more on the product side where the some of the employees that we talked to as much as progress has been made by RPF vendors and local local vendors. It's still these tools are not intuitive user friendly for business users. They still feel they need to go through some training programs and have a better user friendly interface is >>what's the entry point she would organization first time I ever heard of Arpaio Years and years and years ago was at a CFO conference. Okay so that's cool. It seems like it forward for there's a lot more C. I. O presence here and that. Is that relatively new or did I just miss it before? >>It is relatively new. So like when we looked at like in the past few years the empty point has been someone in finance or I. T. Has heard about R. P. A. The benefits of head. They went and bought a handful of licenses and then they went and implemented it but it's just a handful of processes. It's not organizational wide. It has been mostly on a smaller sub scale of processes. And projects now that like organizations are realizing employees are asking and we are like slowly growing up with automation ceo es it's now it's intersecting with the C XL level of if it has to intersect with your or if you want to reinvent your business through automation, it has to come from the sea X level and that's where we're seeing more and more. See IOS are being involved in decisions on automation journeys, the technologies they have to buy and adopt for the business processes. >>So I. T. Can be an enabler of course. Also sometimes it can be a blocker. Um and you know, certainly from security standpoint governance etcetera. And so one of the things that we heard today in the keynotes was you don't want to automate the C I. O. He or she owns this application portfolio and everybody wants to do new projects because that's the fun stuff we heard from one CFO. Yeah. You add up all the NPV from the new projects. It's bigger than the valuation of the company. Right. But the C i O is stuck having to manage the infrastructure and all the processes around the existing application portfolio. One of things I heard today was don't automate an application or a process that you're trying to retire because we never get rid of stuff in it. So I wonder should automation like an enterprise wide automation? Should there be kind of an application rationalization exercise or a business process rationalization coincident with that >>initiative? Absolutely. I think that was one of the blockers that we have seen. Like some of the misconceptions and some of the blockers when I looked at it for them, they consider like you're bringing all these tools you're asking business users to like who haven't had haven't been trained in technology or programming, You're asking them to build these automation ins So one they have to manage with the all the applications and the tools for all that happens. And to manage these automation is after business users have either left the company or moved on. So it is essential for them to think through and provide a streamline tools it on on two aspects. one it needs to be as as you started off, it needs to be an enabler to provide them the specific tools that they can, they have already blessed. They've curated it which are ready for business consumption. A second part I can also do is providing collaboration platforms so that business users can learn from each other and from it so that they can one are developing the right processes with the right methodology that is governed by I. T. And no security or data governance issues. Come through. >>One of the things that you mentioned in terms of the three roadblocks ceo uncovered was that you were surprised that the results of the research showed that in fact employees are really wanting to adopt automation. In fact I think the stat is um 86% of employees want automation but only 30% of leaders are giving them the opportunity to use that. That's a big gap. Why do you think that is >>so a few things. Right. I mean as we talked about the three constituents that you have right one is automation leaders. If you consider from them. Their view is their employees are not capable of adopting or building on the automation is using these tools and they need technical skills. But the all the automation vendors have made progress and if you look at the tools today are much more user friendly and business users are willing to adopt. The second part as we talked about is like the fear of job loss from the employee standpoint. Whereas employees are looking at it as an opportunity for them to up skill but also eliminate the pain points that they have today in the day to day activities using the automation tools. And for them it is like this is helping them spend the time with the customers where it matters on critical value added activities versus going through reparative process of the journey. And the third part we talked about earlier with I. T. I. T. Has this notion that they need to build and develop anything technical. Business users will not be able to build or manage and they're also worried about the governance, the security and the third part which you brought up earlier is that tool sprawl, It's like we need to manage like this volume of tools that are coming in which is only adding to their plate of already busy busy workforce. >>I have one of those. It depends questions and it's a good consultant I'm sure you say well it depends but are there patterns best practice or even more than best pressures? Are there sort of play books if you will? And patterns? I'm sure it's situational. But are you seeing patterns emerge, you can say okay this sort of category should approach it this way. Here's another one in a different, maybe it's a department bottoms up top down, can you help us sort of squint through that? >>Yeah. So in terms of approaches like at least up till now the prevalent thing that is happening is like C. O. Es went and buy some licenses they talk about like opportunities that they have. So it's more of a top down driven uh like ceo driven agenda. What we're seeing now especially with citizen automation or democratisation of automation is there's a new approach of including employees into the journey and bringing the bottoms up approach. So there's a happy path where you marry up the top down approach with bottoms up and one you will find opportunities which are organizational wide with the bu leaders and they are ones which are on the long tail of opportunities which employees feel the pain but I. T. Or C. O. He doesn't have the time to come and implement or automate these activities. Um considering like one part we have seen which is increasingly helpful for people who have done this properly is including employees. And one thing we talked yesterday is invest in employees. They consider automation as investment in employees rather than something they're doing to employees. So it's kind of collaborating with employees to make progress which seems to be helping evangelize and also benefit with automation. How >>Have the events of the last 18 months impacted this as well, we've seen so much acceleration and the mandate for automation. What are some of the things that you've seen? >>Sure. So for us like even before the pandemic we've seen in our research so like more than close to 50% of the organizations that they started the automation journey were unable to achieve the savings or targets that they set themselves for whatever the success factors are. Which which hard. A few reasons one they didn't have the organizational support, not they were taking the end to end journey or a customer journey to figure out like what are these big opportunities that they can go through and they haven't included employees and to figure out what are the major pain points to go through the journey. One thing it was clear was with covid, no one expected this kind of disruption in a pan and a pandemic. There are a lot of offshore centres or like pretty much different geography is got disconnected from the work that's being done. You still need to support your customers, there is still a higher demand, what do you do? It's not like you can scale up your employees in a pandemic, that's where like we have seen increasing push towards automation and technology to see that can help and support and scale in a pandemic environment uh and also help your customers in the journey. >>So has in your opinion has automation become a mandate? Uh As a result of the pandemic >>I would say. Yeah I I would consider it's more of like now it's become a I would say uh business won a competitive differentiator to say like one I needed to keep my lights on and resiliency but also the companies have done really well they saw the advantage and they whether the pandemic better with the customers now they use that as a platform to create a competitive differentiation against their peers and push things forward. >>one of the things we heard of today and the keynotes is you got to think about my words, the life cycle, you don't just put in the bot and then just leave it alone. You really have to think through that. And that seems to me to be where you would help customers think through how to get the most return out of their investment. You I passed product company I think it's great. And so you talk about the value layer that you guys bring. >>So for us it's it's like when we talked to mostly be bringing from the business side of the house to understand what are the key drivers that you need to work on. I mean even before we talk about technology, we talk about, let's understand from the customer standpoint what is your customer journey into end and look through that journey lens and let's take the process and to end, let's look at redesigning process and making it more optimal and streamlined and where technology fits in. That's when we talk about like if it is an RPG or if it's a UI Path platform that can support, let's go through that journey versus taking the tool itself as the solution and trying to find every nail that you can hurt, which usually is not sustainable to your point. Like we need to think through the whole life cycle, make sure this is going to last. Or if you are retiring. Like in the ceo panel that was a discussion where that we need to think through when we are going to retire and make sure like we are in that journey versus building all these automation zor bringing all these tools and leaving them alone for I. T. To manage long term. >>No. Again the last 18 months. Again, question about the the um reactions catalyzed facilitated thinking about those three roadblocks. The cognitive roadblocks the organizational roadblocks since particularly what I'm interested in this question and product, what are some of the conversations that you've seen or trends that you seem to help those organizations better understand how to collaborate with each other so that what they're not doing is putting in our P. A point tools but really starting to build the right part of the nomination and and journey into their digital transformation plans. Yeah. >>I mean in a way to again, I'll go back to the three concerns that we talked earlier, right? It's it can only go so far and automate so much because they haven't seen the business lens of like how the processes are what they have to do and to end, which is where you need to involve the business leaders who can give you that view from the business side and employees who are seeing the work day to day and where they can eliminate the pain points. So the organisms that are successful, they are creating a collaborative environment between the three groups to push things forward. You >>have to have that collaboration that's critical. Otherwise, that's probably one of the road blockers as well. >>Yeah, absolutely. >>Where does automation fit? I mean you're obviously heavily into automation, but let's think about the bane portfolio, the boardroom discussions. Where does automation fit? I mean there's security, there's how do we embed ai into our business? How do we sas if I our business um how do we do transform digitally? Where's automation fit in that hole discourse? >>So I think the automation is like at the heart of digital transformation, the part which we have seen where the gap is is not taking the business angle and actually thinking through the process and to end versus picking up a tool and trying to go solve a problem or find a problem to solve. And that's where we think in our discussions with boardrooms, it's more of let's think through how you want to reimagine your company or how you want to be more competitive looking into the future and like walk back from that standpoint and then started part from, I mean, the way we call it the future back like where you are today and now, like let's go forward and to what your end status and where technology broadly a digital tools and where automation fits in the process. >>How do you see what you i path is talking about at this conference? The announcements from yesterday? There's a lot of people here which is fantastic. How do you see what they're announcing? The vision that they set out a couple years ago that they're now delivering on. How is that a facilitator of organizations removing those roadblocks? Because as you said automation is a huge competitive differentiator these days and If we've learned nothing in the last 19 months you gotta you gotta be careful because there's always a competitor in the rear view mirror who might be smaller faster more agile ready to take your place. >>Yeah so like a few things that we've seen in the product roadmap that you talked about is they are providing the collaboration platform or tools where the I. T. Business owners can work through. Like for automation hub is what they talked at length yesterday is that's the platform where business users can provide their ideas. Like you provide process mining tools which can capture the process and the business users understand the process and they are the ones who are putting in an opportunity on the road map. So you have now a platform where all the ideas are being catalogued and once you implement they're being tracked on the automation hub so that that is providing a platform for everyone to collaborate together. The second one which Brandon talked yesterday is the tool itself for Studio X. When we're talking about citizen developers, employees trying to use and make it more user friendly. Is that where the Studio X which is providing that you are interface? Which is easy intuitive for business users to build basic automation is and try to take that long tail of opportunities that we talked about. So all these tools are coming together as one platform play, which you ipod has been talking about all through the conference and that is critical for everyone to collaborate to make a progress versus only thinking it's an easy job to implement the automation opportunities. That >>collaboration is business critical these days. Right. Thank you for joining David me and the program talking about some of the roadblocks that you've uncovered, but also some of the ways that organizations in any industry can navigate around them and really empower those employees who want automation in their jobs. We appreciate your insights. >>Happy to be here. Thanks for having us. You're welcome >>for day Volonte. I'm lisa martin live in las Vegas at UI Path forward for we'll be right back with our next guest. Yeah. >>Yeah. Mm. Mhm

>> Announcer: theCUBE presents Dell Technologies World brought to you by Dell. >> Welcome back to Dell Tech World 2022. You're watching theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with my co-host John Furrier, live event, I would say seven to eight thousand people, really exceeded our expectations. And we're here with Chuck Whitten, who is the co chief operating officer and chief dot connector, I sometimes call him, at Dell Technologies. Chuck, welcome to theCUBE. >> I am thrilled to be here. How great is it to be, you know, back in Las Vegas, seven to eight thousand people here, talking innovation. It's great. >> Yeah, it's like Jeff said this morning, I'm not really thrilled to be in Vegas maybe, but I'm happy to be back live, so yeah. >> It's great to be here. >> Awesome. Okay, the operative phrase is multicloud by default, that's kind of the buzz from your keynote. What do you mean by that? >> Well, look, customers have woken up with multiple clouds you know, multiple public clouds, on-premises clouds, increasingly as the edge becomes much more a reality for a customer, clouds at the edge. And so that's what we mean by multicloud by default. It's not yet been designed strategically. I think our argument yesterday was it can be and it should be, it is a very logical place for architecture to land because ultimately customers want the innovation across all of the hyper scale public clouds. They will see workloads and use cases where they want to maintain an on-premises cloud. On-premises clouds are not going away, I mentioned edge cloud, so it should be strategic. It's just not today. It doesn't work particularly well today, so when we say multicloud by default, we mean that's the state of the world today. Our goal is to bring multicloud by design, as you heard. >> Yeah. I mean, I totally agree with you a hundred percent. We all know multicloud exists. It's by default, it's not going away. It's only going to get more complicated. What are you guys seeing in terms of the customer needs as this becomes more of the strategy plus operations, I want to operationalize multicloud as an abstraction layer, how do you guys see the customer requirements? What problems are they trying to solve? >> Well, look, multicloud by default today are isolated clouds. They don't work together. Your data is siloed. It's locked up and it is expensive to move and make sense of it. So, you know, I think the word you and I were batting around before, this is an interconnected tissue. That's what the world needs. They need the clouds to work together as a single platform. That's the problem that we're trying to solve. And you saw it in some of our announcements here that we are starting to make steps on that journey to make multicloud work together much simpler. >> It's interesting. You mentioned the hyperscalers and all that CapEx investments. Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of a cloud and build on the CapEx and then ultimately have the solutions, machine learning is one area, you see some specialization with the clouds, but you start to see the rise of super clouds, Dave calls them, and that's where you can innovate on a cloud. Then go to the multiple clouds, Snowflake's one, we see a lot of examples of super clouds. >> Project Alpine was another one. I mean, it's early, but it's clearly where you're going. The technology is just starting to come around. I mean, it's real. >> Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't you want to take advantage of all of the cloud innovation out there? Well, the answer would be, I don't want to do that if I'm going to feel locked up, if it's going to be too expensive. So again, I think Project Alpine's a perfect example of a step on that journey. If you can create a common storage pool, a fabric if you will, that allows you to choose how, where you're going to process your data and store it. And more importantly, give your teams the same M and O tools, the same skillsets, the ability to operate on-premises or in the public clouds. You know, I think ultimately the theme of the last couple days in multicloud for us has been customer choice. We want to give them the choice to operate, how they want to, so they can take advantage of all those cloud services. >> Real quick. Where does that innovation go from that Alpine Project? Because that's software defined, and I believe that's all your IP to all Dell technologies IP. >> It is, yeah. >> So that factors in, so is that going to make the hardware more innovative? Is it going to be more application specific? Where do you see that going? >> Well, look, our, you know, putting our file block and object storage into the public clouds just gives them choice on taking advantage of enterprise class storage software. You know, you saw in our announcements today, we're not stopping the innovation in our core arrays and hardware. And in fact, the theme today was software innovation. I think we announced five hundred different software updates across power flex, power max and power store. So look, we're going to continue to innovate across the storage portfolio. Now we're giving customers the choice. Hey, you want it in the public cloud? That's what Project Alpine will let you do. >> Michael had a smile on a, I won't say a spring in his step, because he was sitting in that chair, but he was smiling about the market share numbers on that, so pretty impressive. You guys got a good commanding lean there. The super cloud thing, back to that concept, Snowflake is we consider super cloud. They took their IP, put it on a hyperscaler, differentiated themselves, have great value and scale and they're running away with it. It looks like at this point, I mean, you've got data breaks, and you've got Redshift in there and other stuff, but as a concept that's working, and now they're on multiple clouds. How do you see that super cloud connecting with Snowflake, because you guys are building a little Snowflake connected. It's one of the big announcements here is Snowflake and Dell. >> Yeah. >> So can you talk about that? >> It was probably the one that got the most excitement from customers in the last day. And so look, you said it well, Snowflake, you know, one of the most exciting companies in the data space right now, and a vision from that company to say, hey, let's make the consumption of data as simple as cloud operating models have made the consumption of infrastructure. Well we share that vision and love that vision but we're each coming at it from different parts of the stack, right? So we're coming at it from storage up to data, they're coming data management down to data. It's a perfect match of our capabilities. So that, the announcements we made in our partnership, we're going to start with two use cases that our customers have been asking for. You know, the first is the ability to buy directionally copy data from our storage to Snowflake's data cloud. That's exciting, but the more exciting one that created the buzz is, if you don't want to move your data to the public cloud, Snowflake only operates in the public cloud today, we're now giving the opportunity to access their data services on-premises. And that's the excitement from customers that have said, hey, look, I want to take advantage of Snowflake's capabilities, but for regulatory or security reasons, I'm not doing that today. This is a groundbreaker. >> Well, it's the interesting thing, because, you know, as many people know, Snowflake requires you to put their data in their cloud, in Snowflake format, this is the first example of non-native data being accessed into the Snowflake cloud. >> Exactly right, exactly right. So, you know, again for customers that say, I just can't do it, I cannot move my data, now they have the option. It's the first time Snowflake has collaborated with an on-premises infrastructure player. >> How'd that deal come about? >> Well, it started as all great deals in our business do, Michael, to the top. So it was a, you know, and then it's been our teams working together closely, always, you know alongside our customers, because that customer feedback of I want to take advantage of Snowflake's capabilities, you know, it's been, we've been incubating it for a few months now and it was great to bring it out on stage yesterday. >> I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You connected dots so to speak. When you look at what Michael was saying, these compute hubs, towers for 5G to >> Yep. >> Small edges and big edges and data centers all coming together, really key value parts of how data's going to be moving around, it's not just storage, it's data as code. It's a big part of >> Incredible, yeah. I mean, look, this is, that was the, the start of the theme yesterday. Look, the great unsolved problems in infrastructure right now is data is everywhere. It's sprawling. It is less secure than we would like. Help, and help me make sense of multicloud. >> I'd love to get your reaction real quick while I got you up here, because data science is a well known practice. >> Yeah. >> There's been the rise of a hot persona, that seems to be, you know, growing in numbers, but it's a scarce skill that's data engineering. Because the data's not just doing visualizations, there's a lot of architectural work being done to solve that strategy problem. What's your reaction to this new data engineering at the scale that we're talking about? >> Yeah, I mean, it's a space I'm just learning about to be honest with you, data engineering, but look, part of what we observe is, it takes a lot of calories from organizations to get data in a place where you can make sense of it and make decisions. And whether that's data scientists spending too much time cleaning or the advent, as you said, of data engineering to create the architectures, to help make that decision. Look, there's a lot of work that goes into that. It would be great over time to automate that. I think that's also the next great stuff on the journey. >> You know, Chuck, when I did the intro, I really didn't set it up that well, because you know people, oh, hey, here's the new guy, but you have a lot of experience with Dell. You've been a consultant to the company for a long, long time. Tell us a little bit about that. I'm interested in what you see as your greatest strengths that you bring to Dell. >> Yeah, well, as you said, look, I am the new guy-ish, I think it's been eight months. I don't know how long I can continue to use that as the excuse, but I had worked with Dell for over a decade as a consultant previously at Bain Company. So, you know, look, my background is as a strategist and I did lots of work in sort of M and A and private acuity, and so that's my background, I'm your sort of classic MBA, whose spent a decade in technology and a decade alongside Jeff Clark and Michael in the transformation of the company. So I hope I bring the right sort of outsider's but insider's perspective to, you know, to the party, if you will. But you know, I've certainly learned a lot in the last eight months, as you get alongside and inside the machine at Dell. >> So irrespective of the financial magic. >> I think I know what question he's going to ask. >> Irrespective of the financial magic that Dell did with the VMware skin, as a consultant, one could have gone through a mental exercise of saying, hey, what about, you know, spinning it in, because you got this great software asset. Everybody wants software marginal economics. Okay, the decision was made and now we're onto the future. That obviously has an impact on margins and gross margins and everything else. So, I guess as a consultant, you turn that into opportunity. >> Yeah. >> Right. So where is that opportunity? How do you feel about, how do you think about, that really hardware, heavy hardware exposure, and where you want to go in the future? >> Well, look, I think we, that's what we've been been talking about the last couple of days. So, you know, the VMware spinoff was a moment in which the world looked at us and I think asked the question, you did, you know, what are you, right? Are you a legacy hardware company or where you're going? But the reality of the world is, it's a multicloud world, so we are, it was a signal also to the world that we're not a VMware stack competing against other cloud stacks. We are first and best with VMware. They are still our most strategic partner, but we work with all the hyperscalers and it's a big world that is becoming multicloud. So strategically speaking as that becomes the reality of infrastructure and importantly as data explodes at the edge, you know, we're perfectly positioned as a company. That's the strategy, we like to say these trends are coming our way. It's never been a better time, honestly, to be the leader in infrastructure, and the leader in client devices, all the way to sort of the core data center in the cloud. >> How do you think about, you have quite an observation space, as you know, a long time, you know, Bain consultant. How do you think about the skillsets required to make that transition? >> Yeah, absolutely. Well look, we think a lot about it, right? Because certainly we have a lot of the native skills we need to win in the data era as the leader in storage and the leader in infrastructure, you know, we secure more mission critical workloads than anybody. We know a lot about data, but what we're talking about now is not just persisting data. It's about protecting data. It's about moving data, right? And those are different skill sets that we're sort of acquiring and always looking at our teams to think about and look, you know, we can do a lot of that organically. We are also always, you know, contemplating the right strategic M and A at the right time to sort of add to that talent and technology. >> You got the balance sheet for it now, so. >> We do indeed. We do indeed. >> We get the M and A question in there, but my question to you is, as you look at these systems, because we've always said in theCUBE, many times, distributed computing is back. >> Yeah. >> It never went away. Cloud is just a version of that with on-premises and edge. It's an operating system. It's got all the IO, it's got the control plane, it's the internet, right? And so as you look at that, there's a system and with the scale of cloud, ecosystems are emerging and they're super important because if you're plugging and playing solutions, you've got glue layers, you've got automations coming, AI machine learning, the partners aren't just totally dependent on each other, the interdependencies go away. So, as you see partners that could be LEGO blocks, and be composed into these large scale solutions that you guys are rolling out, what is the role of the ecosystem? What does the future ecosystem look like? How do you tell if it's healthy, and take us through that new formula, because we see it changing. >> Well, look, I, you know, we've been very explicit in our strategy, that partnerships have to be a part of our strategy. We can't solve all of the problems of the data in multicloud world alone. And when you see announcements like Snowflake, or you see us announce, continued collaborations with each of the hyperscalers, or even how we continue to invest in and double down on our VMware relationship, it's an acknowledgement that, to solve the problems that our customers are telling us, this super cloud you're describing, this integrated multicloud journey, you know, we're going to solve a lot of it ourselves, but a lot of it we're going to have to partner with. It's just got to be part and parcel of any good strategy. Luckily we're a natural ecosystem partner. As I said, we are not another cloud stack looking to build a walled garden, right. We know our spot in this game and it is to make multicloud simpler across the infrastructure layer. >> Somebody asked me, is Snowflake a part of Dell's ecosystem, or is Dell part of Snowflake's ecosystem? I said, yes. Right, because that's a perfect example. >> I think that's exactly right. These only work, and we've learned this with VMware, when it's mutually beneficial to both sides. So you look at the use cases we're talking about with Snowflake, right? Bio directionally copy data from our storage to their data cloud. That's beneficial to Snowflake and our customers. And of course bringing data cloud on-premises is beneficial to us, so look, there's more win-wins when you stare at these partnerships, than there are zero. >> I think that's a key point from even a decade ago, the platform wars were well identified, viewer platform. They competed against each other. You got now platforms with platforms because of the synergies of the integration. This is new, this is a new dynamic. >> It's the great world of tech, it's cooperation and it's, you know, there's certainly places where we compete sometimes, but other places that we, you know, we cooperate. And so, yeah, we're excited about our position in this multicloud ecosystem. We think we positioned the company perfectly. >> How do you spend your time? >> As a COO? >> Just at Dell? I mean, you know, give us the sort of breakdown. >> Yeah, well look, I mean, I think that what makes it fun is no two days are alike, but, right? But together, Jeff Clark and I share a responsibility for setting strategy with Michael and then aligning the leadership team on our strategic priorities. And you know, in the world we live in, there's days you wake up and today is supply chain day, because something has happened in the world, but you know, often it's with customers or investors, so it's a true COO general manager job. And I would tell you, no two days are the same. >> Strategy, solving problems, keeping things moving. >> Leading the team, setting a vision, and listening to customers. I mean, at the end of the day, we talk a lot about our durable, competitive advantages as a company. I think our single greatest competitive advantage is our go to market reach. And the fact that we touch more customers and partners than anyone in technology. And that gives us a inside track on what they're worried about, what they're thinking about and how we can help. >> It's interesting, you mentioned how earlier, how things come back around on cycles and we're seeing hardware matter more than everything, in fact, we're doing a editorial thing on why hardware matters. Look at the advances in Silicon. >> Yeah. >> And smaller footprint of powerful devices compute, about towers and edges. And so the role of hardware, I think they got the software defined software and the role of open source in all of this, it's almost a perfect storm to kind of reset this, none of the trajectory of growth, where hardware innovations working with the new software. >> For sure, for sure. >> Can you react to that? >> No, I think it's spot on. I think the future of architectural innovation is really exciting, when you look at what CPUs and GPUS and DPUS, and all it's able to do in the future of infrastructure and eventually the ability to compose your infrastructure to the workload versus, you know, have it be rigid and silent. I mean, there's as much innovation inside the infrastructure as there is in the ecosystem. And, you know, that's exciting for our customers, right? It's going to make them more efficient. It's going to make them able to make decisions with data better than they are today. It's great to be in our space for sure. >> It's great to have you on. Now, you're a CUBE alumni. >> All right, well, I've watched from afar and admired, and it was really painless. So thank you. >> Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> Keep it right there, everybody, Dave Vellante and John Furrier will be back right after this short break, you're watching theCUBE at Dell Tech World 2022. (upbeat music)

(soft music) >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE on Cloud, where we're talking to CEOs, CIOs, Chief Technology Officers, and investors on the future of Cloud, with me is Dave Humphrey. Who's the Managing Director, and co-head of private equity in North America at Bain Capital. Dave, welcome to theCUBE first time, I think. >> First time, yeah, Dave, thanks very much for having me. >> So, let's get right into it, as an investor, how are you thinking about the evolution of cloud, when you look back at the last decade? It's not going to be the same, in this coming decade it's ironic 2020 is thrown us into, the accelerated digital transformation and cloud. How do you look at the evolution of cloud, from an investment perspective? What's your thesis? >> That's a great question, David for us we're focused on investing, in technology and really across the economy. And I'd say ,the cloud is the overarching trend, and dynamic in the technology markets. It really affect two reasons. One is a major shift ,of course that's going on. But the second and frankly even more interesting one, just as all the growth, that the cloud is creating, in the technology marketplace. The shift, think is been well covered, but five years ago in 2015, by our analysis, 2/3 of all computing workloads were done on premises. And only five years later, that's that's split. So, 2/3 of all computing workloads now done in the cloud and of course that shift, there's a lot of ramifications, as an investor. But even more interesting to us, is the growth in technology and the usage of technology, that the cloud is creating. So, over that same period of time, the total number of computing workloads run has increased, by 2.6 times, in just a five-year period of time which is really a dramatic thing and it makes sense when you think about, all the new software applications that could be created, all the data that can be used by new users and new segments, and the real-time insight that can be gleaned from there cause that growth, that really were focused on investing behind, as investors in technology. >> It's interesting you share those numbers, and you hear a lot of numbers. I actually think you're even being conservative. Ginni Rometty, used to talk about 80% of workloads, are still on-prem. Andy Jassy at re:Invent said that, 96% of the spending is still on premises. So, that was kind of an interesting stat. And I guess the other thing that I would note is it's not just a share shift, it is, it's not just, the cloud eating away on-prem. We've clearly seen that. But there's also incremental opportunity as well. If you look at Snowflake, for example adding value across multiple clouds and creating new markets. So there's that one-two punch, of stealing share from on-prem (clears throat). Also incremental growth, which is probably accelerated as a result, of this compressed digital transformation. So when you look at the big three Cloud players. I mean, roughly speaking, there probably account for $80 billion in total revenue. Which I guess, is a small portion of the overall IT market. So, it has a long way to go, but what's the best way to get good returns, from an investment standpoint, without getting clobbered, by their tendency to sometimes co-opt some of the best ideas and put them on their primary services. >> Yeah, absolutely, well, for us, it really comes back to the same fundamental principles, we look for in any investment. Which is finding, a business that solves, a really important problem for its customers, and does so in a way that's really advantage, versus competition and can do something, that other competitors just can't do. Whether those be the hyperscalers that you're describing, or other specialized and focused competitors. And then finding a way ,that we can partner with those companies to help them to accelerate their growth. So, surely the growth of the likes of AWS and Microsoft and Google, as you were describing has been a profound, competitive shift, along with the cloud shift, that we've all talked about. And those companies of course can offer, and do things that you asked, purveyors of computing couldn't. But, fundamentally they're selling an infrastructure layer, and there is room for all sorts of new competitors, and new applications that can do something better than anybody else can. So, any company that we're looking at, we're asking ourselves the question, why are they the best ones, to do what they're doing? How can they solve the most problems, for their customers and do that, in a way that's resilient? And we see lots of those opportunities. >> And I want to pick your brain, about the Nutanix investment, but before we get there. I wonder if you could just talk, about Bain Capital their history of investment in both cloud and infrastructure software and how do those investments, how would they perform and how do they inform your current thesis? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, Bain Capital was started in the mid 80s, 1984. Actually, as a spin out Bain Company Consulting. And the basic premise was that, if we're good at advising and supporting businesses. We should partner with them and invest behind them and if they do well, we'll do well. And as I said, focusing on these businesses but do something really valuable for their customers in a real advantage way with some discontinuous growth opportunity. That's led us to grow a lot. We started out actually in the venture business, and grew into the private equity business, but now we invest across all life stages of company all over the world. So we're $105 billion in assets that we manage, across 10 lines of business and we're truly global. So I think we have about 470 investment professionals and 210 of those, at this point are located outside the US. One of the really interesting things for us in investing in technology broadly and in infrastructure and the Cloud more specifically is that we're able to do that all over the world and we're able to do that across all the different life stages of a company. So we have a thrive in venture capital business, that really we've been in, since the origins of Bain Capital has invested across countless cloud and security and infrastructure businesses, taken successful companies public like SolarWinds sold companies to strategic and grown businesses in really thriving ways. We have a growth mid-market growth technology business, that we launched last year, called our Technology Opportunities Fund. They've made a really interesting, cloud-based investment in a company called the Cloud Gurus, Cloud Guru, excuse me. That trains, the next generation of IT professionals to be successful in the cloud. And then of course in our private equity business where I spend my time. We are highly focused on technologist sector. And the impacts of the cloud in that sector broadly, we have invested in many infrastructure businesses, scale businesses like, BMC Software and Rocket Software, security businesses like, Blue Coat Systems and Symantec. And of course, for those big businesses they've got both on premises solutions. They've got cloud solutions and often we're focused on helping them continue to grow and innovate and take their solutions to the cloud. And then, this taken us to our most recent investment in Nutanix that we're very excited about it. We think it's truly a growth business in a large market that has an opportunity to capitalize, on these trends we're talking about. >> I wonder if you could comment on some of the changes that have occurred, you guys have been in the private equity business, for a long time. And if you look at kind of the early days of private equity, it was all, EBITDA suck as much cash out of the company as possible and whatever's left over we'll figure out what to do with it. And it's, it seems like investors have realized, wow, we can actually, if we put a little investment in and do some engineering, and some go to market we can actually, get better multiples. And so you've got the kind of rule of 30, 35 and 40 where EBITDA plus growth is kind of the metric. How do you think about that and look at that evolution? >> Yeah, it's interesting because in many ways Bain Capital was started as the antithesis to what you're describing. >> Great. >> So we started again as, with a strategic lens and a focus on growth and a focus on, if we got the longterm and the lasting impact of our businesses right, that the returns would follow and you're right that the market has evolved in that way. I mean, I think some of the dynamics that we've seen, has been certainly growth of the private equity business. It's become a much larger piece of the capital markets than it was certainly 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Also with that growth comes the globalization of that business all over the world and the specialization. So you certainly see technology focused firms and technology focused funds in a way that you didn't see 10 years ago or certainly 20 years ago. Actually Bain Capital interestingly enough, we had a technology focused fund in 1989 called Bain Information Partners. So we've been focused on the sector for a very long time. But you certainly see a lot more technology investors, than you did in your 10 to 20 years ago. >> How are you thinking about valuations these days? I mean, it's good to be in tech, it's even better to be in the cloud, software, cloud, if you're looking at, some of the companies, especially the work from home pivot. But a lot of that appears to be, many people believe it's going to be permanent. How are you feeling about the both public market and private market valuations in that dynamic? >> Yeah, well, it's amazing, right? I don't think any of us in March when the COVID crisis was just emerging, would've anticipated that come November, the markets and certainly the technology markets, would be even more robust and stronger than they were say in January, February. But I think it's a testament to the resilience of the technology and just how intricate and intertwined technology has become with our daily lives. And how much companies depend on its use. And frankly, it's been, the COVID environment has been an accelerant, for many of the ways in which we depend on technology. So witness this interview, of course, through the cloud, and you're seeing the way that we operate our business day-to-day, the way companies are accessing their data and information it has only further, accelerated the need for technology, and the importance of that technology to how businesses operate. So I think you're seeing that, you're reflected in the market values out there, but for us we're focused on businesses, that still have that catalytic opportunity ahead that can, do more to compensate for the price of entry. >> Let's talk about ,this massive investment you guys made in Nutanix, $750 million. I guess it's a small piece of your 105 billion, but still massive investment. How did that opportunity come to you? What was your thinking behind that investment and what are you looking for in terms of the go-forward plan and growth plan for 2021 and really important beyond? >> Yeah, absolutely, we're thrilled to be partnered with and invested in Nutanix. We think is a terrific company and our most recent technology investment are private equity business. It really came about through a proactive efforts that we had in the spring. We've got a team focused on the technology sector, focused across infrastructure and applications and internet and digital media businesses and financial technology. And through those efforts, we were looking for businesses, that we felt had faced some dislocation in their market values, associated with the COVID environment that we're facing. But that we thought were really attractive businesses, well positioned have leading solutions, and had substantial and discontinuous growth opportunities. And as we look through that effort, we really felt that Nutanix stood out just as a core leader and in fact, really the innovator and the inventor of the market, in which it competes with a substantial market share and position, solving a really important problem for its customers, with a big growth opportunity ahead. But, the stock price had come down, because the business has been undergoing a transition. And we didn't think that was fully understood, by the market. And so, we saw an opportunity to partner with Nutanix, to invest money into the business, to help to fund its transition and its growth, and to be partners along for all the value of the business we'll continue to create, we think it's a terrific company and we're excited to be invested. >> Well, you and I have talked about this, that transition from a traditional license model, to one that's an annual recurring revenue model which many companies have gone through. Adobe certainly has done it, Tableau successfully did it. Splunk is kind of in the middle of that transition right now, and maybe not well understood. You've got companies like, Datadog and Snowflake again to doing consumption-based pricing. So there's a lot of confusion in the marketplace. And I wonder if you could talk about, that transition and why it was attractive to you, to actually place that bet now. >> Yeah, absolutely and as you say, number of companies at this point have been through, various forms of of this shift from selling their technology upfront to selling it over time. And we find that the model of selling the technology over time, is one that can be powerful. It can be aligning for customers, as well as for the vendor of the software solutions. And in Nutanix in particular, again, we saw all the ingredients that we think, make this an opportunity for the business. Again, market-leading technology that customers love that is solving a really important problem that technology because Nutanix had been grown, and bootstrapped under the leadership Dheeraj when it was built and founded. Had been selling its software together within appliance. Often in a upfront sale. And has been undergoing under their own initiative, transitioned from selling that software with an appliance to a software based model to one that's more rattle over time. And we thought that there was the opportunity to continue that transition and by doing that. To be able to offer more growth, and more innovation that we can bring to our customers to continue to fund their shifts. So, something that frankly was well underway before we invested. As the business makes this transition, from collecting upfront to more evenly over time. We saw a potential use for our capital, to help to fund that growth. And we're just focused on being a good partner, to help the company keep investing and innovating, as it continues to do that. >> As I was talking to somebody other day, Dave and I told him, I was interviewing you. And I was mentioning the Nutanix investment. And I said, I'm definitely going to cover that. As part of this Cube on Cloud program and they said, well, then Nutanix, that's not cloud. I'm like, well, wait a minute, what's cloud? So, we heard Andy Jassy at re:Invent, talking all lot about hybrid. Antonio Neri ,right after HPE, made its earning last earnings announcement. He came on and said that, well we heard the big cloud player talk about hybrid. And so the definition is changing. But so how are you looking at the market? Certainly, there's this hyper converged infrastructure, but there's also this software play, there's this cloud play. Help us squint through, how you see that. >> Absolutely, so, Nutanix as you alluded to pioneer the market for hyper converged infrastructure, for bringing compute and storage and networking together. Often in private Cloud environments, in a way that was really powerful for your customers and they can of course continue to be the leaders in that marketplace. But they've continued to innovate and invest in ways that can, solve problems for customers and related problems across the hybrid cloud. So, combining both the public cloud with that private cloud and across multiple public clouds, with things like clusters and lots of innovation, that the business is doing, in partnership with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft and others. And so we think that Nutanix has a powerful role to play, in that hybrid cloud world, in a multi-cloud world. And we're excited to back them in. >> Well, I think too, what maybe people don't understand, is that not only is Nutanix, compatible with AWS and compatible with Azure and GCP, but it's actually trying, to create an abstraction layer across those, those clouds. Now, there's two sides of that debate. Some will say, well, that has latency issues or yes it reduces complexity, but at the same time it doesn't give you, that fine-grained access that's kind of the AWS narrative customers, want simplicity and we're seeing the uptake across clouds. I have a multi-part question for you, Dave. So, obviously Bain very strong in strategy. I'm curious ,as to how much you get involved, in the operational details. I mean, obviously $750 million you've got a stake there. But what are the two or three major strategic considerations for not just even just Nutanix, but Cloud and software infrastructure companies? And how much focus do you put on the operational and what are the priorities there? >> Absolutely, well, we pride ourselves in being good partners to our businesses and in helping them to grow, not just with our capital, which I think is of course important, but also with our sweat equity and our human capital, and our partnership and we can do that in lots of ways. It's fundamentally about supporting our businesses, however, is needed to help them to grow. We've been investing in the technology sector, as I described over, over 30 years. And so, we've built up a set of capabilities around things like, helping to a partner with the Salesforce of a company is helping them to think about the ways in which they allocate their research and development and their innovation ways in which they, continue to do acquisitions, to further that pipeline. We support our businesses in lots of ways. But we're not engineers, we're not developers. Of course, we're looking for businesses that are fundamentally great. They've got great technology. They solve problems for customers in a way, we could never replicate. That's, what's all amazing about a business like Nutanix and just over a 10 year period of time, it literally has customer satisfaction levels, that we haven't seen from any other infrastructure software company that we've had the pleasure of diligencing over the last several years. So, what we're focused on, is how can we take those great products and offerings that Nutanix has, and continue to support them, through the further growth and expansion of areas like, the further Salesforce investment, to expand into these new areas like clusters, that we were talking about and thinking about, things that they can do, to further expand the strategic hold. And so, we have a large team of Bain Capital as I mentioned, 260 investment professionals, in our private equity business alone. About a third of those are just available to our companies to help support them, with various initiatives and efforts after we invest. And we'll certainly, of course make all of those available to Nutanix as well. >> Somebody was asking me the other day, what's hyper-converged infrastructure? How did that come about? And I was explaining, back in the day you had, you'd buy some servers and some storage, and you'd have a network. And you sort of have different teams. And you'd put applicant, you figure it out all out and put the applications on top, test it and make sure it all works and then the guys at VCE and VMware and Cisco and EMC, they got together and said, okay, we're going to bolt together a bunch of different components and pretest it here you go, here's a, here's a skew. And then, what Nutanix did was actually, really transformational and said, okay. Look, we can do this through software. And now that was what late 2000? Now, we're sort of entering this new era, this next generation of cloud, cross clouds. So, I wonder how you think about, based on what you were just talking about the whole notion of MA versus organic. There's a lot of organic development that needs to be done but perhaps you could buy in or inorganically through MA to actually get there faster. How do you think about that balance? >> Look I think that was an articulate by the way explanation of I think that the origins of a hyperconverged infrastructure, so I enjoyed that very much. But I think that with any of our businesses and with Nutanix we're of course looking at where are we trying to get to in several years and what are the best ways to support the business to get there? Of course, they'll primarily that will be through continuing organic investment in the company and all the innovation in the product, that they've been doing. Will the company contemplate acquisitions, to further achieve the development goals and the objectives for solving paying points for customers, to get to the strategic places they're trying to get to of course, but it all, is a part of the package of what's a good fit for the company and its growth objective. >> I mean, with the size of your portfolio, I mean, you're a full stack investor, I would say. Is there any part of the so-called tech stack that you won't touch that you would actually not walk, but run away from? (laughs) >> Well, I wouldn't say that we're running away from anything, but the questions that we're asking ourselves are, is the technology that we're investing endurable? Is it advantaged and does have a growing role in the world? And if we think that those things are true, we're absolutely, thrilled to invest behind those things. If there are things that we feel like, that's not the case. then we would tend to shy away from those investments. We've certainly found opportunities in businesses that people perceived as one, but we believe to be another. >> Well, so, let me ask you specifically about Nutanix. I mean, clearly they achieved escape velocity. One of the few companies actually, from last decade, it was Nutanix pure, not a whole lot of others that actually were able to maintain independence as a public company. What do you see as their durability? They're, moat if you will. >> Yeah, absolutely, well clearly we think that it's a very durable and very advantaged business. Yeah, thus the investment. Look, we think that Nutanix has been able to offer the best hyperconverged infrastructure product in the market bar none. One that is got the best ease of use is the most nimble and flexible for customers. And you just see that resulting customer feedback. And also that plays across very heterogeneous architectures in a way that it's really powerful. Because of that we think that they're best positioned to be able to leverage that technology as they have been, to continue to play across both public and private hybrid cloud environments. And so we're excited to back them in that journey. It really starts from solving an acute customer paying point, better than anybody else can. And we're looking to back them to continue to expand that vision. >> Yeah, well, I've talked to a lot of Nutanix customers, over the years and that is the fundamental value proposition it's really simple, very high, customer satisfaction. So, that makes a lot of sense. Well, Dave, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE and participating in theCUBE on Cloud. Really appreciate your perspectives, wish you best of luck. And hopefully we can do this again in the future. Maybe face to face >> Yeah, face to face maybe someday. Dave, I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure and good luck with the rest of your interviews. >> All right, thank you. Well keep it right there, everybody for more Cube on Cloud. This is Dave Vellante, we'll be right back. (soft music)

>> Livefrom London, England, it's theCUBE, covering .Next Conference Europe 2018. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to London, England. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Nutanix .Next 2018 Europe. My name's Stu Miniman. My cohost for these two days of coverage has been Joep Piscaer. And happy to welcome to the program, two first (mumbles). We're gonna talk about culture and people. To my right is Rukmini Sivaraman, who is the vice president of business operations and chief of staff to the CEO. And sitting next to her is Prabha Krishna, who is the senior vice president of people and places, both of them with Nutanix. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> All right so, we've been covering Nutanix for a long time. I've been to every one of the shows. I start out, I guess... Dheeraj talked for a long time about the three Hs. It was humble, hungry, and honest, if I got those right. And more recently, it was with heart. Actually sitting not too far behind us, there's a big booth for heart. So, the culture of the company is something that is tied with the founders. We've watched that growth. I've watched the company go from about 35 people to over 3500 people. So, having those core principles is something that we look at in companies. Why don't we start? If you could both just give quick introduction, what brought you to Nutanix, and what your role is there. >> Sure, I've been at Nutanix a little over 18 months and I started out as an engineer, then went to finance and investment banking of all things, was at Goldman for almost a decade. And Nutanix is a client of Goldman's back form the IPO, and I had heard great things about the company, of course, but wasn't intending to leave Goldman Sachs. But when I got introduced to Dheeraj, there was so much that was compelling about the company, the disruption, the category-defining, category-creating kind of position that the company had. And more importantly, I think, where we were going, which was just phenomenal. it was ambitious, it was bold. And I think for me, it's always been about the people. We spend a lot of time at work and it's really important to feel that connection to the people. And that was really important 'cause I had to pick up and move from New York City to the Bay Area to make this move. And we can talk more about this, but to me the people were, like I said, ambitious, but they were also grounded. And I see it and after being at Nutanix now, it's phenomenal how truly humble the people are and that's always struck me as a great combination. You want ambition and challenging problems to solve, but you also want humility and people that you can relate to. So that's really what got me to Nutanix. >> Please. >> Yeah so, I've actually been following Nutanix for quite a while. It's a company that addresses a space that's very underserved and has created a suite of products that's nothing short of amazing for our customers, entirely focused on our customer base. But for me, the most interesting thing was, it's a company that is as right-brained as it is left-brained. I've actually spent 19 years of my career in engineering and made a career switch into the people side. And it's one of the few companies where that fit is almost perfect. And once I met our founder and our CEO, Dheeraj, this became even more obvious. So. I'm actually very happy to be here. I've been here for about four months now, and it's already very clearly the beginning of a very, very exciting journey. >> Yeah, interesting, both of you kind of making those shifts. Talk a little bit about that, talk about... People from outside of Silicon Valley, always, it's like, "Oh, there's the one where they have the playground "and free meals and free drinks." And it's like, "Yeah, that's because you do the analysis "and if they'll work 18 hours a day, "if we can keep them there, "maybe even put a cot in the office, that's good." I haven't seen cots in the office when I go to Nutanix, but hey are really nice offices. And even on the east coast, we're tartin' to change and see some of those things there. Maybe give us a little bit of insight as to that culture. And Nutanix is much more than just Silicon Valley based now. >> That's right. So we are truly a global organization. And we decided very early on that we wanted to be a global organization, but we're also thinking local. All right, so we do have multiple offices within the US, in Durham and Seattle and other places, but we're also truly global. Our Bangalore office, in India we have a big presence. And so for us what that means is there's people from different perspectives and background. But ultimately, it's our sort of, like you said, the four values, but also our culture principles that we've qualified fairly recently that bind us. And that really help us move forward in the same direction and pointing that same direction, and growing the same way. So that has been a phenomenal to see and it's one that I think we've very deliberately qualified more recently. It's sort of the how, how do we behave that embodies those four values that you talked about. >> So Prabha, so you're a new hire, right? >> Yes. >> You haven't been with Nutanix as much. So while we're talking on the subject, what's your personal experience coming into Nutanix? Is it true what you're talking about? How does it work in real life, in practice? >> No, absolutely. All companies state a culture. All companies, I think, in this day and age at least and definitely in Silicon Valley, are very clear about having a specific culture. But the key, as far as I'm concerned, and the strength of a company is how they live and breathe their culture every single day, in every decision, and every action, right. In every difficult balance that they need to meet, that's where the culture really shows up. And at Nutanix, it is... How shall I put it? It's really the core of every single thing we do. It's the core of how we interact. It's the core of how we grow. It's the core of how we recruit, how we define our organizations. And frankly, I have to say, I have been in a lot of organizations and a lot of organizations over time, actually, and particularly as they reach our size... We're a bit at sort of an inflection point, if you will, in terms of size. Our growth has definitely been very, very quick and continues to accelerate. Having that culture being something that we really live is the most important thing. And it is what will allow us to continue to innovate and continue to succeed all over the globe as Rukmini just explained. For me, it's quite extraordinary to see it in action. >> Yeah, that's really interesting because, one, our industry has some challenges hiring. It's finding the right skillset there. If you match that with a culture, what challenge are there? What are you looking for? What is the fit from the outside to match what you're looking for? >> Yeah, I'm happy to address a little bit. So recruiting for us is everything. We want to bring in the best. We wanna bring in the brightest and we wanna bring in folks who really value our culture and our values, who really understand them. And again, are willing to live them every single day. So we do look for great talent all over the planet because great talent exists all over the planet. This is absolutely fundamental to our growth. We are an infrastructure company and we offer, actually, very interesting work for anyone who is interested in the engineering side, who is interested in the sales side, who's interested in market. And for me, the most interesting part in the roles we have, and frankly the most unusual piece if you will, is we offer opportunities to build things from scratch. So, the creative side, the creative mind is really what we encourage. And it shows up in every single aspect of the way we're structured. So, the diversity of thought, the diversity of background, the diversity of... Whether it's gender or location, philosophies, and all of that, is really what we want to bring in and what will allow us to continue to create these products that are quite unique. >> If I may add to that, we talk internally a lot about the founder's mentality. It's a concept, a framework that was developed by Bain & Company and the gist of it is as follows: When you think about great disruptive startups, they're on this rocket ship, accelerating growth. And then they get to a certain size, so they become a little bigger. And they get enjoy the benefits of scale, economies of scale, and that's a good thing. But the best companies take that and then they enjoy those benefits, but they then also don't lose what got them there in the first place, which is the innovation, the ability to disrupt and look around corners, and all of that. So we want the best of both worlds. And in this framework, it's called a scaled insurgent. So you're scaled, but you're still an insurgency. And that is important to us. Folks that can sort of balance the two, really make sure that we are benefiting from one, but also not losing sight of the other. And it's a paradox in many ways and we believe in embracing those paradoxes. And folks who can sort of balance those two would be really a great fit. >> And so, if you're growing that fast, I can imagine that keeping the balance between culture and engineering, and you're growing, that's difficult. How does Nutanix handle that paradox? >> I think it goes back to what Prabha was saying. And for us, culture and the way we behave is like oxygen. So it almost fuels the fire as opposed to the other way around or having to do two things at once. And that's how we've thought about it. And the principles, when we thought about them and conceived them, it was the same idea, which is how can this just be the way we conduct ourselves we treat our customers, we treat each other, we treat our partners? How can it just become the way we do business? And so far, that's worked well for us. >> So one of my favorite culture principles, actually, is comfortable being uncomfortable. And there's a real reason that because given our scale, given the way we wanna grow, and given the fact that we want to preserve that innovative seed at every step, for us, every single day is about balancing opposing forces. Do we invest in the short term? Do we invest in the long term? Do we manage locally? Do we manage more globally? Do we centralize things, do we not? Do we distribute, right? Every single day is about balancing those kinds of things and it's that balance that encourages the creativity in every single one of us. So, the very fact that we've sort of embodied that in a culture principle, really is a very strong indication of what we look for and what we wanna be. >> Right, with the time that we have left, I wondering if you could talk about both at the show and beyond the show, what things Nutanix is doing. Think tech for good, think about the charitable things. Some of speakers I've seen at these shows... Mick Ebeling is one that stood out from a previous show. On talking about tech for good, Dr. Jane Goodall, who I know spoke at a women's lunch event and in the keynote here today, is just so inspiring. As someone that loves science and animals, it was very powerful. You've got the .heart initiatives here. Maybe help for those that don't know here and what else you're doing around the globe and around the year. >> Did you wanna go first? >> Yeah, so giving back is very important for us. It's very fundamental. Gratitude, understanding where we all came from, where we are, and where we wanna go, and not losing ourselves, that's really the key of, I think, any type of success, frankly. So we have an organization around that. It's a very active organization, we all participate. And the company is very much involved in as many different types of charities as possible. It also feeds into the kinds of sourcing that we do when every bring people in. We look for folks who care. We care very much about our people. The amount of attention and the amount of just knowledge and thought that goes into structuring our organization is very much reflective of that sense of giving back and gratitude as well. Our employees are everything and the folks around us who are in need are also everything. It sort of goes together, if you will. So basically to us, it's a hugely, hugely important effort and we'll continue investing in those kinds of things as we go forward. >> I think one thing I would add is as you saw at the end of the closing keynote, I think we announced or shared that thanks to everyone here, really all the folks here, our customers, partners, all of our participants, we were able to collect over 10,000 pounds for .heart and that is phenomenal. We're forever grateful to our community to be able to do things like that. We also partner with organizations like Girls in Tech, which is doing great work on making sure that we are bringing all kinds of talent, as Prabha said, to the table. We believe there's great people everywhere. And so, how do we harness the power of all of those initiatives? >> All right, those are some great examples. And Prabha, to your point, I think that that individual touch to your employees, that also translates to the customer side. Something I hear from Nutanix customers is despite the fact how large you've grown and how many customers you have, they feel that they get that individual attention. So thank you so much for sharing all of the updates. Wish you both the best of luck in your continued journey. And we wanna thank our community, of course, for tuning in to our coverage. It is truly our pleasure to help document what's happening out in the industry, hopefully be a surrogate for you, to ask the questions that you wanna hear and help you along your journeys. My name's Stu Miniman. My first European cohost who also did a segment in Dutch, Joep Piscaer, Can you goodbye in Dutch for us, Joep? >> (Dutch). >> All right, I'll have to learn that one some time because, unfortunately, my english and speaking numbers in a couple of different languages is where I'm a little bit limited. But once again, thanks for watching. Turn to thecube.net to catch all of the replays from this show as well as all the shows that we will be at. Including, next year, Nutanix will be at Anaheim and the spring and Copenhagen in the fall. And our team look forward to bringing you coverage from both of those. So once again, thank you for watching theCUBE. >> Thank you. (slick electronic music) >> Hi, I'm John Wallis. I've been with theCUBE for a couple years serving as a host here on our broadcast, our flagship broadcast on SiliconANGLE TV. I like to think about the hows and the whys, and the whats of technology. How's it work? Why does it matter? What is it doing for end users? 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