>>Hey everyone. Hello from Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with you, and I'm on the show floor at Reinvent. But we have a very special program series that the Cube has been doing called Women of the Cloud. It's brought to you by aws and I'm so pleased to have an excellent panel of women leaders in technology and in cloud to talk about their tactical recommendations for you, what they see as found, where they've helped organizations be successful with cloud. Please welcome my three guests, Tara Kapor, president and Chief Revenue Officer, consulting and Digital Transformations, NTT Data. We have Rachel Mu, aws, head of North America, partner sales from aws, and Jimmy Barnes joins us as well, managing director, investment banking engineering at Goldman Sachs. It is so great to have you guys on this power panel. I love it. Thank you for joining me. >>Thank >>You. Let's start with you. Give us a little bit of, of your background at NTT Data and I, and I understand NTT has a big focus on women in technology and in stem. Talk to us a little bit about that and then we'll go around the table. >>Perfect, thank you. Thank you. So brand new role for me at Entity Data. I started three months back and it's a fascinating company. We are about 22 billion in size. We work across industries on multiple innovative use cases. So we are doing a ton of work on edge analytics in the cloud, and that's where we are here with aws. We are also doing a ton of work on the private 5G that we are rolling out and essentially building out industry-wide use cases across financial services, manufacturing, tech, et cetera. Lots of women identity. We essentially have women run cloud program today. We have a gal called Nore Hanson who is our practice leader for cloud. We have Matine who's Latifa, who's our AWS cloud leader. We have Molly Ward who leads up a solutions on the cloud. We have an amazing lady in Mona who leads up our marketing programs. So a fantastic plethora of diverse women driving amazing work identity on cloud. >>That's outstanding to hear because it's one of those things that you can't be what you can't see. Right. We all talk about that. Rachel, talk a little bit about your role and some of the focus that AWS has. I know they're big customer obsession, I'm sure obsessed with other things as well. >>Sure. So Rachel Muir, pleased to be here again. I think this will be my third time. So a big fan of the Cube. I'm fortunate enough to lead our North America partner and channel business, and I'll tell you, I've been at AWS for a little under two years, and honestly, it's been probably the best two years of my career. Just in terms of where the cloud is, where it's headed, the business outcomes that we can deliver with our customers and with our partners is absolutely remarkable. We get to, you know, make the impossible possible every day. So I'm, I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to, to be part of this inaugural Women of the Cloud panel. >>Oh, I'm prepared to have all three of you. One of the things that feedback, kind of pivoting off what, Rachel, one of the things that you said that one of our guests, some of several of our guests have said is that coming out of Adams keynote this morning, it just seems limitless what AWS can do and I love that it gives me kind of chills what they can do with cloud computing and technology, with its ecosystem of partners with its customers like Goldman Sachs. Jimmy, talk to us a little bit about you, your role at Goldman Sachs. You know, we think of Goldman Sachs is a, is a huge financial institution, but it's also a technology company. >>Yeah. I mean, since the age of 15 I've been super passionate about how we can use technology to transform business and simplify modernized business processes. And it's, I'm so thrilled that I have the opportunity to do that at Goldman Sachs as an engineer. I recently moved about two years ago into the investment banking business and it's, you know, it's best in class, one of the top companies in terms of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, et cetera. But what surprised me is how technology enables all the businesses across the board. Right? And I get to be leading the digital platform for building out the digital platform for in the investment banking business where we're modernizing and transforming existing businesses. These are not new businesses. It's like sometimes I liken it to trying to change the train while it's moving, right? These are existing businesses, but now we get to modernize and transform on the cloud. Right. Not just efficiency for the business by efficiency for technologists as >>Well. Right, right. Sticking with you, Jimmy. I wanna understand, so you've been, you've been interested in tech since you were young. I only got into tech and accidentally as an adult. I'm curious about your career path, but talk to us about that. What are some of the recommendations that you would have for other women who might be looking at, I wanna be in technology, but I wanna work for some of the big companies and they don't think about the Goldman Sachs or some of the other companies like Walmart that are absolutely technology driven. What's your advice for those women who want to grow their career? >>I also, growing up, I was, I was interested in various things. I, I loved doing hair. I used to do my own hair and I used to do hair for other students at school and I was also interested in running an entertainment company. And I used actually go around performing and singing and dancing with a group of friends, especially at church. But what amazed me is when I landed my first job at a real estate agent and everything was being done manually on paper, I was like, wow, technology can bring transformation anywhere and everywhere. And so whilst I have a myriad of interest, there's so many ways that technology can be applied. There's so many different types of disciplines within technology. It's not, there's hands on, like I'm colder, I like to code, but they're product managers, there are business analysts, there are infrastructure specialist. They're a security specialist. And I think it's about pursuing your passion, right? Pursuing your passion and identifying which aspects of technology peak your interest. And then diving in. >>Love that. Diving in. Rachel, you're shaking your head. You definitely are in alignment with a lot of what >>Duties I am. So, you know, interesting enough, I actually started my career as a civil engineer and eventually made it into, into technology. So very similar. I saw in, you know, heavy highway construction how manual some of these processes were. And mind you, this was before the cloud. And I sat down and wrote a little computer program to automate a lot of these manual tasks. And for me it was about simplification of the customer journey and really figuring out how do you deliver value. You know, on fast forward, say 20 plus years, here I am with AWS who has got this amazing cloud platform with over 200 services. And when I think about what we do in tech, from business transformation to modernizing to helping customers think about how do they create new business models, I've really found, I've really found my sweet spot, and I'll say for anyone who wants to get into tech or even switch careers, there's just a couple words of advice that I have. And it's really two words, just start. >>Yes, >>That's it. Just start. Because sometimes later becomes never. And you know, fuel your passion, be curious, think about new things. Yes. And just >>Start, I love that. Just start, you should get t-shirts made with that. Tell me a little bit about some of your recommendations. Obviously just start is great when follow your passion. What would you say to those out there looking to plan the letter? >>So, you know, my, my story's a little bit like jus because I did not want to be in tech. You know, I wanted an easy life. I did well in school and I wanted to actually be an air hostess. And when I broke that to my father, you know, the standard Indian person, now he did, he, you know, he wanted me to go in and be an engineer. Okay? So I was actually push into computer engineering, graduated. But then really two things today, right? When I look back, really two pieces, two areas I believe, which are really important for success. One is, you know, we need to be competent. And the second is we need to be confident, right? Yes, yes. It's so much easier to be competent because a lot of us diverse women, diverse people tend to over rotate on knowing their technical skills, right? Knowing technical skills important, but you need to know how to potentially apply those to business, right? Be able to define a business roi. And I see Julie nodding because she wants people to come in and give her a business ROI for programs that you're executing at Goldman Sachs. I presume the more difficult part though is confidence. >>Absolutely. It's so hard, especially when, when we're younger, we don't know. Raise your hand because I guarantee you either half the people in the, in the room or on the zoom these days weren't listening or have the same question and are too afraid to ask because they don't have the confidence. That's right. Give me, let's pivot on confidence for a minute, Jim, and let's go back to how would you advise your younger self to find your confidence? >>That's, that's a tough one because I feel like even this older self is still finding exercise to, to be real. But I think it's about, I would say it's not praise. I think it's about praising yourself, like recognizing your accomplishments. When I think about my younger self, I think I, I like to focus more on what I didn't do or what I didn't accomplish, instead of majoring and focusing on all the accomplishments and the achievements and reminding myself of those day after day after day. And I think it's about celebrating your wins. >>I love that. Celebrating your wins. Do you agree, Rachel? >>I do. Here's the hard part, and I look around this table of amazing business leaders and I can guarantee that every single one of us sometime this year woke up and said, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that. Oh >>Yeah. But >>What we haven't followed that by is, I don't know how to do that yet. Right. And here's the other thing I would tell my younger self is there will be days where every single one of us falls apart. There will be days when we feel like we failed at work. There will be days when you feel like you failed as a parent or you failed as a spouse. There'll be days where you have a kid in the middle of target screaming and crying while you're trying to close a big business deal and you just like, oh my gosh, is this really my life? But what I would tell my younger self is, look, the crying, the chaos, the second guessing yourself, the successes, every single one of those are milestones. And it's triumphant, it's tragic, but every single thing that we have been through is fiercely worthwhile. And it's what got us >>Here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Think of all the trials and tribulations and six and Zacks that got you to this table right now. Yep. So Terry, you brought up confidence. How would you advise the women out there won't say you're gonna know stuff. The women out there now that are watching those that are watching right there. Hi. How would you advise them to really find their, their ability to praise themselves, recognize all of the trials and the tribulations as milestones as Rachel said, and really give themselves a seat at the table, raise their hand regardless of who else is in the room? >>You know, it's a, it's a more complex question just because confidence stems from courage, right? Confidence also stems from the belief that you're going to be treated fairly right now in an organization for you to be treated fairly. You need to have, be surrounded by supporters that are going to promote your voice. And very often women don't invest enough in building that support system around them. Yeah. Right. We have mentors, and mentors are great because they come in and they advise us and they'll tell us what we need to go out and do. We really need a team of sponsors Yes. Who come in and support us in the moment in the business. Give us the informal channel because very often we are not plugged into the informal channel, right. So we don't get those special projects or assignments or even opportunities to prove that we can do the tough task. Yeah. So, you know, my, my advice would be to go out and build a network of sponsors. Yes. And if you don't have one, be a sponsor for someone else. That's right. I love that. Great way to win sponsorship is by extending it todos. >>And sometimes too, it's about, honestly, I didn't even know the difference between a mentor and a sponsor until a few years ago. And I started thinking, who are I? And then I started realizing who they were. That's right. And some of the conversations that we've had on the cube about women in technology, women of the cloud with some of the women leaders have said, build, and this is kind of like, sort of what you were saying, build your own personal board of directors. Yeah. And that, oh, it gives me chills. It's just, it's so important for, for not just women, but anybody, for everybody. But it's so important to do that. And if you, you think about LinkedIn as an example, you have a network, it's there, utilize it, figure out who your mentors are, who your sponsors are, who are gonna help you land the next thing, start building that reputation. But having that board of directors that you can kind of answer to or have some accountability towards, I think is hugely very >>Important. Yeah. >>Very important. I think, you know, just for, just for those that are listening, a really important distinction for me was mentors are people that you have that help you with, Hey, here's the situation that you were just in. They advise you on the situation. Sponsors are the people that stick up for you when you're not in the room to them. Right. Sponsors are the ones that say, Hey, I think so and so not only needs to have a seat at the table, but they need to build the table. And that's a really important delineation. Yeah. Between mentors and sponsors. And everybody's gotta have a sponsor both within their company and outside of their company. Someone that's advocating for them on their behalf when they don't even know it. Yeah. Yeah. >>I love that you said that. Build the table. It reminds me of a quote that I heard from Will I am, I know, very random. It was a podcast he did with Oprah Winfrey on ai. He's very into ai and I was doing a panel on ai, so I was doing a lot of research and he said, similar for Rachel to build the table, don't wait for a door to open. You go build a door. And I just thought, God, that is such brilliant advice. It is. It's hard to do. It is. Especially when, you know, the four of us in this room, there's a lot of women around here, but we are in an environment where we are the minority women of color are also the minority. What do you guys think where tech is in terms of de and I and really focusing on De and I as as really a very focused strategic initiative. Turner, what do you think? >>So, you know, I just, I, I spoke earlier about the women that we have at Entity Data, right? We have a fabulous team of women. And joining this team has been a moment of revelation for me coming in. I think to promote dni, we all need to start giving back, right? Yes. So today, I would love to announce that we at Entity would like to welcome all of you out there. You know, folks that have diverse ideas, you know, ISV, partners with diverse solutions, thought leaders out there who want to contribute into the ecosystem, right? Customers out there who want to work with companies that are socially responsible, right? We want to work with all of you, come back, reach out to us and be a part of the ecosystem because we can build this together, right? AWS has an amazing platform that gives us an opportunity to do things differently. Yes. Right. Entity data is building a women powered cloud team. And I want to really extend that out to everyone else to be a part this ecosystem, >>But a fantastic opportunity. You know, when we talk about diversity and inclusion and equity, it needs to be intentional for organization. It sounds very intentional at ntt. I know that that intention is definitely there at AWS as well. What are your thoughts on where tech is with respect to diversity? Even thought diversity? Because a lot of times we tend to go to our comfort zones. We do. And so we tend to start creating these circles of kind of like, you know, think tanks and they think alike people to go outside of that comfort zone. It's part of building the table, of building the, is the table and getting people from outside your comfort zone to come in and bring in diverse thought. Because can you imagine the potential of technology if we have true thought diversity in an organization? >>Right? It's, it's incredible. So one of the things that I always share with my team is we've got the opportunity to really change the outcome, right? As you know, you talked about Will I am I'm gonna talk about Bono from you too, right? One of, one of his favorite quotes is, we are the people we've been waiting for. Oh, I love that. And when you think about that, that is us. There is no one else that's gonna change the outcome and continue to deliver some of the business outcomes and the innovation that we are if we don't continue to raise our hand and we don't continue to, to inspire the next generation of leaders to do the same thing. And what I've found is when you start openly sharing what your innovation ideas are or how you're leveraging your engineering background, your stories and your successes, and, and frankly, some of your failures become the inspiration for someone you might not even know. Absolutely. And that's the, you know, that's the key. You're right. Inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, yes. Have to be at the forefront of every business decision. And I think too often companies think that, you know, inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility is one thing, and business outcomes are another. And they're not. No, they are one in the same. You can't build business outcomes without also focusing on inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility. That's the deliberate piece. >>And, and it has to be deliberate. Jimmy, I wanna ask you, we only have a couple of minutes left, but you're a woman in tech, you're a woman of color. What was that like for you? You, you were very intentional knowing when you were quite young. Yeah. What you wanted to do, but how have you navigated that? Because I can't imagine that was easy. >>It wasn't. I remember, I always tell the story and the, the two things that I really wanted to emphasize today when I thought about this panel is rep representation matters and showing up matters, right? And there's a statement, there's a flow, I don't know who it's attributed to, but be the change you want to see. And I remember walking through the doors of Goldman Sachs 15 years ago and not seeing a black female engineer leader, right? And at that point in time, I had a choice. I could be like, oh, there's no one look like, there's no one that looks like me. I don't belong here. Or I could do what I actually did and say, well, I'm gonna be that person. >>Good, >>Right? I'm going to be the chain. I'm going to show up and I am going to have a seat at the table so that other people behind me can also have a seat at the table. And I think that I've had the privilege to work for a company who has been inclusive, who has had the right support system, the right structures in place, so that I can be that person who is the first black woman tech fellow at Goldman Sachs, who is one of the first black females to be promoted up the rank as a, from analysts to managing director at the company. You know, that was not just because I determined that I belong here, but because the company ensure that I felt that I belong. >>Right. >>That's a great point. They ensure that you felt that. Yeah. You need to be able to feel that. Last question, we've only got about a minute left. 2023 is just around the corner. What comes to your mind, Jimmy will stick with you as you head into the new year. >>Sorry, can you repeat >>What comes to mind priorities for 2023 that you're excited about? >>I'm excited about the democratization of data. Yeah. I'm excited about a lot of the announcements today and I, I think there is a, a huge shift going on with this whole concept of marketplaces and data exchanges and data sharing. And I think both internally and externally, people are coming together more. Companies are coming together more to really de democratize and make data available. And data is power. But a lot of our businesses are running, running on insights, right? And we need to bring that data together and I'm really excited about the trends that's going on in cloud, in technology to actually bring the data sets together. >>Touro, what are you most excited about as we head to 2023? >>I think I'm really excited about the possibilities that entity data has right here, right now, city of Las Vegas, we've actually rolled out a smart city project. So saving citizens life, using data edge analytics, machine learning, being able to predict adverse incidents before they happen, and then being able to take remediation action, right? So that's technology actually working in real time to give us tangible results. We also sponsor the Incar races. Lots of work happening there in delivering amazing customer experience across the platform to millions of users real time. So I think I'm just excited about technology coming together, but while that's happening, I think we really need to be mindful at this time that we don't push our planet into per right. We need to be sustainable, we need to be responsible. >>Absolutely. Rachel, take us out. What are you most excited about going into 2023? >>So, you know, there are so many trends that are, that we could talk about, but I'll tell you at aws, you know, we're big. We, we impact the world. So we've gotta be really thoughtful and humble about what it is that we do. So for me, what I'm most excited about is, you know, one of our leadership principles is about, you know, with what broad responsibility brings, you know, you've got to impact sustainability and many of those other things. And for me, I think it's about waking up every day for our customers, for our partners, and for the younger generations. And being better, doing better, and making better for this planet and for, you know, the future generations to come. So >>I think your tag line just start applies to all of that. It does. It has been an absolute pleasure. And then really an honor to talk to you on the program. Thank you all for joining me, sharing your experiences, sharing what you've accomplished, your recommendations for those others who might be our same generation or older or younger. All really beautiful advice. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. We appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Thanks for watching.

>> From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube Covering CloudNow 7th Annual Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. >> Lisa Martin on the ground with the Cube at Facebook Headquarters. We are here for the 7th Annual CloudNow Top Women Entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. Welcoming to the Cube for the first time, one of tonight's winners, we have Charu Sharma, the Founder and CEO of Nextplay.ai. Charu, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thanks Lisa, I'm really excited to be talking to you. >> And congratulations on your award. Your pedigree, when I looked you up on LinkedIn, I thought wow, where do I even start, the things you've accomplished in such a short time period are pretty impressive. I want to share a few with our guests. You've built, in college, in your spare time, two award-winning start-up companies out of your dorm room before you got napped up by LinkedIn to grow their talent solutions revenue. You've won awards by Grace Hopper. We mention tonight you're here with CloudNow, one of the top women entrepreneurs in cloud innovation. Tell us about, I'd love to get your story of what inspired you to go off and found Nextplay.ai, the inspiration, also the chutzpah to say, "You know what I want to do this, "and I need to go get funding" which is really challenging for women in technical roles to do. Tell us about that. >> Yeah, so tonight I'll be giving a talk next to Sheryl Sandberg and that's nothing short of a miracle for me because I grew up in a family in India where women were not allowed to work, and so growing up it was important for me to have access to economic opportunities and that's how I came to the US for a scholarship, and I'm here today because a lot of mentors serendipitously came in my life and opened doors for me. So, to pay it forward, when I worked at LinkedIn before, I built a mentoring program for women at LinkedIn specifically cuz I think in the workplace especially women, minorities, and introverts suffer in finding a sponsor in helping open doors for you and mentors at your company can specially help you navigate the political landscape and help you grow your career at the company which helps the companies with retention as well. Exactly two years ago I started Nextplay.ai to be able to do this at scale, so today we work with companies from Coca Cola to Lyft to Splunk, and we not only connect their employees internally for mentorship, we also have robust analytics to show the ROI on retention. >> I was looking at some of your stats, I was telling you before we went live, I geek out on stats, that really show that your technology can make significant business impact for, you mention Coca Cola, Lyft, Splunk, etcetera but you obviously saw a gap a few years ago when you got into tech yourself saying not only do we know the numbers and the stats of women in technical roles as being quite low, but one of the things that you saw is one of the things we need to do to help increase those numbers is start internally and mentoring these women. To your point, of not just helping them establish confidence to stay but navigate that political landscape. I think that's a really unique opportunity, when you pitched this idea to these Cs, what was their response? >> Yeah, so mentorship is not an established product category, and on top of that, I inserted gender, race, accent, age, etcetera, and so frankly I got mixed opinions, but I chose to focus on the people who saw the big vision and who cared about the story and the impact something like this could have, so LinkedIn's executives, 500 Start-ups, TechCrunch's former CEO, who's a woman, they're some of the earliest investors who put their bets on us. Today we have shown success stories at every scale, so after six months of working with us employees are 25% more likely to recommend working at their company which actually when you do the math, it's huge. It saves millions of dollars for companies. There was a woman at a company who became the first woman at her company to get promoted while away on mat leave, that's huge. >> Wow, that is huge. >> A new product manager was able to, because of us, connect with somebody who they otherwise wouldn't know, and they were able to help identify a multi-million dollar market opportunity for the company, so there are definitely these case studies which is now creating a movement and now we have over 300 companies who want to work with us. They're on a waiting list. >> A waiting list? >> Mmhhm So we're definitely creating this momentum. >> And we talk about groundswell and momentum, especially at an event like tonight where there's over 300 attendees, 1o winners, one of them being yourself, and there was no advertising to buy tickets because the groundswell is growing so much. The trajectory that Nextplay.ai is on, in two years is pretty steep, you got some exciting things coming up in March, tell us about that. >> Yes, thank you, so when ai play and we sell to enterprise companies to do their mentoring and sponsorship programs internally for talent retention, that said, we started the company to help level the playing field so now that we're relatively stable and are a strong robust team with decent traction, this March we want to give a give back, so we're launching a social impact campaign where around the world we're going to help 100,000 women get mentored. So, if you want to host events at your company, if you want to get involved as a mentor or a mentee, please e-mail me at charu@nextplay.ai. >> And people can also go to the website to find out more information about that? >> Not about that campaign specifically yet, but they'll find my contact information, so it's nextplay.ai. >> And even at your Twitter handle which is probably in the lower third here. >> Yes >> Excellent, so congratulations on the award. The amount of work that you have done in such a short period of time is incredible. I can see it in your attitude and your smile and your energy, congratulations on getting to present to Sheryl Sandberg tonight and for seeing this opportunity in the market to help with that retention from within. What a great opportunity and thanks again. >> Thank you Lisa. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. I am Lisa Martin on the ground at Facebook headquarters, thanks for watching. (light electronic 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)